A word to the wise. What I’m proposing in this article is based on my aspirations and intentions. Some may want to point out that I may fail. Sad to say, there are always people like that in this industry, and the best thing to do with them is to keep them at a distance. We don’t need their negative energy, so we shouldn’t allow them to undermine our confidence.

As we know, there are no guarantees for what we are doing, but we have to face any opportunity with confidence and not doubt. Why would any investor put money into our film if our language during the pitch is full of doubt and self-critique, posited with maybes, perhapses, and possibilities? Our language has to be positive and affirmative, and without a hint of BS. We have to know our story and our market potential. We have to know the business, not project our fears.

Introduction

“Our true identity is not that of independent, isolated creatures battling it out for the survival of the fittest. Our true destiny belongs to a cooperative alliance within which we flourish and grow interdependently.” Diarmuid O’Murchu

I wanted to step away from the business and well-being sides of being an entrepreneur and look at film production itself. In this context, what are we aiming to achieve with Seeing Rachel and beyond, plus how will we measure success?

Now, I don’t want to get into the obvious box-office equations and comparisons of a 5, 6, or 10 times the budget ROI. I want to talk about connecting with the audience as a measure of success.

Tolstoy’s Measure of Success...

I was reading the email from Maria Popova, The Marginalian, when she mentioned that Leo Tolstoy had written about what makes for a successful artist or a work of art.

Here goes with our first definition: (changed for a more inclusive language)

“The activity of art is based on the fact that a [person], receiving through [their] sense of hearing or sight another [person’s] expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which moved the [person] who expressed it---And it is upon this capacity of [someone] to receive another [person’s] expression of feeling and experience those feelings [themselves], that the activity of art is based.”

Popova calls this ‘emotional infectiousness’. In terms of this article, a successful film is one in which the viewer is able to receive or connect with the emotion the film stirred in the writer when the story was conceived and then transmitted to the audience.

Question: Are our films emotionally infectious?

Tarkovsky; Bringing Down Barriers...

In terms of Seeing Rachel, will I be able to connect the initial emotion of writing the story to the viewer? If I can, then society will be impacted. This is my understanding of social impact entertainment. My films can’t be educational; they have to be provocative and imaginative, without any appeal to the didactic or moralistic.

Two filmmakers who have had a great influence on me have been Krzysztof Kieslowski and Andrei Tarkovsky. They are two directors who speak so poetically about cinema and indeed have created what some have categorised as ‘poetic cinema’.

Both spoke lovingly of their audience, and I want to highlight two occasions that have really stirred something within me.

Firstly, Tarkovsky. His film ‘Mirror’ divided audiences; half found it difficult to understand, while others felt a deep, personal connection to it.

Tarkovsky writes in ‘Sculpting in Time’ about letters that he received from his fans:

“You know...in that dark cinema, looking at a piece of canvas lit up by your talent, I felt for the first time in my life, that I was not alone...”

Others affirmed, “This film is about me!”

And again, we are moved by a man who created such emotionally infectious observations about his life, that the film ‘deeply moved’ his audience.

One last example of emotional infectiousness from Tarkovsky’s audience and how a director can help the audience think so profoundly and beautifully about cinema.

“There is another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers.”

Wow!

Now, this is what I call social impact entertainment.

Kieslowski. I Have a Soul...

In the extra material on ‘The Double Life of Veronique’ DVD, Krzysztof Kieslowski recounts a story of a young woman in Paris who had been to see the film five times(?) in one week. She was so enthralled by it. In a conversation with Kieslowski after one showing, the woman said to him, “I now realise that I have a soul!”

Now, as Kieslowski goes on to share, that was not the intent of the film. There was no ‘spiritual message’ cunningly placed in the story, asking people to believe that they had a soul. In fact, I think when that happens and a director succumbs to some internal pressure to ‘get the message across’, then the emotional infectiousness of the film is lost. That, in my mind, is what makes a film a bad film.

And so let me say this plainly, my view of what makes a film good or bad is all down to its ‘emotional infectiousness’.

It simply goes to show that when we create something for the screen, it will be viewed by many eyes and with many points of view, which we cannot, thankfully, control.

I’m reminded of something Sylvia Plath said to her mother:

“Once a poem is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the reader,”

I think that’s the same with film. The observer who interprets a poem or a film needs to remember that this is merely their point of view and that they aren’t speaking for the Universe.

It’s what makes our films, theirs, and that’s the beauty of being a filmmaker. That’s how the barriers are broken down and society is changed through the potency of a film. That’s how we can be changed spiritually; our inner dynamic can be transformed. Film has this great power when it incorporates feelings with images.

A Constellation of Interpretations...

To quote Susan Sontag: “Art [and cinema] is a form of consciousness.”

And then Maria Popova has this to say:

“What is true of a poem is true of any work of art: Art transforms us not with what it contains but with what it creates in us — the constellation of interpretations, revelations, and emotional truths illuminated — which, of course, is why the rise of the term “content” to describe creative output online has been one of the most corrosive developments in contemporary culture. A poem—or an essay, or a painting, or a song—is not its “content”; it transforms us precisely by what cannot be contained, by what is received and interpreted.**”

Films, good films, have more than one meaning, which, yes, are born out of the singular intent of the writer as an entrepreneur. It is this intent which has to transfer through the emotion of the images, to the audience; it is this intent which empowers the story towards a constellation of interpretations and gives it its cultural power

Having a Career...(to be or not to be)

Lao Tzu – Tao te Ching (The Power of the Way)

“he who is depressed, lives in the past

he who is anxious, lives in the future

he who is present, is at peace.”

And so, I am at peace. If I lived with my past failures, I would be depressed. If I were apprehensive or daunted about future success, I would be anxious. However, if little comes of this wild way of the writer, then I can walk away and be content, because I have done everything possible to realise success, and yet, somehow, it did not happen. Not because I’m a failure, but because it simply didn’t happen.

Five years ago, I wouldn’t have been happy with that summation, but today I have a wider perspective of what it means to be successful. I’m also reminded each Christmas that ‘no one is a failure who has friends.’ And you can’t argue with an angel, can you?!

My eldest grandson, Alexander, calls me ‘old man’ – something he grabbed from an episode of Camp Cretaceous, I think - and so this old man would add that the aforementioned measure of success is also true of someone with grandchildren who have a sense of humour.

In this scenario, I would continue to write, but on my passing away, my solicitor would be instructed to sell my screenplays and supporting documents, and from that, I’d have a list of beneficiaries who would profit from the sale, and that would be done.

However, my aim is to leave a legacy to my grandchildren; one which they can see me working on and to understand that my aim is that they don’t have to start from the same position as I did; that is, from a place where they have nothing to help them forge their dreams into a reality. I want them to have me as an ever-present ‘old man’ and an example of persistence and resilience.

A Reminder: Story is...

Story is Intention and Imagination. If there is no intent, then there will be no imaginative connection with the audience. Diarmuid O’Murchu

What are your intentions, as a writer, as a filmmaker?

In my last article in this series, I spoke about the social aspect of filmmaking. My feeling about the power and potency of film is in part due to my reading of Richard Florida’s book ‘The Rise of the Creative Class’, in which he states:

“We cannot hope to sustain a strong Creative Economy in a fractured and incoherent society...[however], diverse and open communities have compelling competitive advantages in stimulating creativity...The key is to create new mechanisms for social cohesion in an era defined by diversity, high rates of mobility, weak ties to contingent commitments...the community itself must be the social matrix that holds us together...”

Where previously social cohesion came through civic and religious institutions, Florida posits that it's now the Creative Economy of the Creatives which drives social cohesion, and I would affirm that film is part of that economy and effect.

We have seen how a film can draw people together, from Comic Cons around the world to film festivals in Cannes, New York, Lisbon, London, and Berlin. At all of these events, there is an undeniable energy and love of filmmaking.

In our interview with Tony Gonçalves on the Seeing Rachel YouTube Channel, he pointed out that for every Euro invested in the arts and culture, it generated three in local/national revenue. Economic generation can bring about social regeneration.

What of Film Itself?

Well, let’s take a look at Schindler’s List and how it brought about broad social change.

The film was responsible for the creation of the US Shoah Foundation, as well as a Holocaust Curriculum for teaching in schools. That’s a pretty broad sweep by anyone’s definition, plus there was the educational market to think about:

“Through cooperation with all United States governors, MCA/Universal, and the theatre owners, the film was shown to more than two million high school students at free morning screenings, preceded and followed by class instruction and discussion.”

FROM: “How Did Steven Spielberg's 'Schindler’s List' Change World History?”

NoFilmSchool.com - Jason Hellerman, May 10, 2021

Note to Self: Never underestimate the power of the Specialty market for your film!

With this in mind, I’m looking at the Specialty Market to bolster “Seeing Rachel” box office potential. Are there any experts out there who can help us with this? Drop me a line!

Aspirations...the Intensity of Writing Seeing Rachel

If we go back to Tolstoy’s definition of good art, we will discuss a little of this process at work for the audience, as they are hopefully:

“...experiencing the emotion which moved the [person] who expressed it...”

The writing of ‘Seeing Rachel’ was an intense process. Whenever a dream invades your life and you are summoned to respond, you know that your writing practice is going to be transformed and challenged.

‘Seeing Rachel’ was born from an unconscious desire for justice. Justice for people who are trafficked and used as commodities; sexual, cheap labour in the manufacturing process, indentured servitude. My desire for their liberation and recovery was manifested in a dream that appears at the beginning of the film, when Rachel speaks to us directly.

My hope is that the intensity of emotion in writing ‘Seeing Rachel’ will be transferred to the audience. It took a year to write, with lots of harrowing research. It will not be an educational film --- this is how it happens kind of story --- nor will it be a story that sensationalises sexual exploitation.

My aim as a filmmaker is to deposit ‘images with emotion’, into the imagination of the audience and for them to generate a story beyond the gaze of the censor and from there, for them to be compelled to take action. This, in fact, has become the mission of my company International Imaginists.

This takes me back to Tarkovsky’s book, ‘Sculpting in Time’:

“to seek one’s own truth (and there can be no other, no ‘common’ truth) is to search for one’s own language, the system of expression destined to give form to one’s own ideas.”

My resolve is to hide the method and give people only the effect, the emotion. That to me would be a mark of me being a ‘good’ filmmaker, if I can achieve it.

Our aim is to connect with people through film; to transform an audience into a community.

I’ll leave you with another quote from Diarmuid O’Murchu’s book ‘Quantum Theology: Spiritual Implications of the New Physics’, which links sweetly with Richard Florida’s views of creative economy and social cohesion.

“The wholistic consciousness, engaging the will and imagination of increasing numbers of people*, calls us to new ways of being in the world, not in oppositional isolation or confrontation, but in convivial cooperation with our evolving universe, leading us to fresh horizons of wholeness...hope and possibility.”*

This, then, is the (quantum) zeitgeist that we’re following. Let’s see where it leads us.

Let's hear your thoughts in the comments below!

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