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Interview

Gold Coast Film Festival p2

Gold Coast Film Festival reading tips continued...

The REELLIFE panels at the Gold Coast Film Festival included a lot of writers, soundtrack composers and camera people: and that was just the audience. I briefly chatted to a soundtrack composer who recommended a podcast called Scriptnotes. This weekly podcast, running since August 30, 2011, is said to be “about screenwriting, and things that are interesting to screenwriters”. And a moderator from one panel told me he liked thrillers like Nathan’s Run, by John Gilstrap.
These panels had some good speakers, and featured film professionals who’d worked on major productions like Pirates of the Caribbean and James Bond films like Casino Royale. And there were some interesting first time independent directors who talked about the different paths they took to make their films a reality: some made commercials to finance their films, like Tony Prescott, who made The Pretend One. This was a fantasy about Charlie, a woman in her twenties, living on a small cotton farm in Western Queensland. She still has an imaginary friend from childhood, Hugo, whose existence is threatened by a new guy in town. Mr Prescott was still making commercials during the making of the movie, to finance the production.
Other directors obtained government funding or funding from other bodies, like the Venice Biennale in the case of the director of Strange Colours, Alena Lodkina. This is a film about about a young woman who travels to the Lightning Ridge opal fields to see her ailing and estranged father. I collected some reading tips from these independent film makers, actors and others.
Here are a few other reading tips: Dan Weaver (stuntman, special effects, actor) liked Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. The authors were Navy SEALs, and they tell combat stories that translate into lessons for business and life.
Armourer Matthew Wollaston liked the Mars series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. These include Swords of Mars (1936), and The Warlord of Mars (1914).
He also liked books on the Akashic Records. Believers hold that there is a compendium of all human events, thoughts, words, emotions, and intent ever to have occurred in the past, present, or future, known as the Akashic Records, and that this can be tapped into. I guess it’s sort of like the way Christians pray or read the Bible to tap into God.
Tony Prescott liked Tuesdays with Morrie, which is a 1997 memoir by Mitch Albom, which recounts the times he spent with his former teacher, a 78 year old sociology professor.

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-copyright Simon Sandall