Breaking Cinema: The focus is figured!

Its a project that examines cinema, but does not really look at the films.

Breaking Cinema is a creative branded entity I am currently developing that is made up of a website, a YouTube channel, social media profiles and a podcast, which is the primary central element.

Potential rough logo/graphic design

This project is drawing heavily on my Postgraduate 2.0 Studies, my Ways 2 Interface research project, my belief in Constructive Film Studies and my continuing interest in NeuroPsychoCinematics; as such, Breaking Cinema is inherently transdisciplinary in its approach and is being enriched by a broad canvas of knowledge.

It's basically a creative mish-mash of diverse knowledge and application, with cinema only being the starting point.

Be under no illusion, this project is not conservative film nostalgia (there are enough sources already taking care of that, Something to do with Film being one of them), I want to do something a little bit more progressive with Breaking Cinema.



The Podcast

The Breaking Cinema podcast will be made up of clusters/seasons of about 10 high-quality episodes a piece that will utilise an experimental documentary storytelling format to constructively explore the subjects of film and media from a lucid and lateral, but highly entertaining and quirky perspective.

Film and Media Studies are SO last century!

Using 'cinema' as the starting point, Breaking Cinema breaks with the tradition of wholly isolated and objectified textual analysis, criticism and appreciation in order to creatively utilise the inherent subjectivity and freedom of the audio form to broaden the canvas of exploration.

"Another observation I have drawn from the many podcasts and audio dramas that I have listened to over the past six years is that, opposed to when I am watching a film, where my brain is constantly being bombarded and distracted by new imagery, the lack of immediate visual information with a podcast allows my brain more time and space in which to ponder points that have been raised in the content of the audio." 

- Me, The Breaking Cinema Overview Document

And a film is an after-print of various other minds - it's mind boggling, I know!

The point of the podcast is to enable the listener to generate their own imagery and introspection while consuming the content as a collaborator in the experience's overall final impact. An experience with the end-goal of expanding the listener's point of view in order to envision a bigger picture of the reality around them.

I believe that in order to really understand what 'cinema' is, you have to approach it via an indirect route, you have to take a step back from all of the audio-visual technological noise that now surrounds us and you absolutely have to get away from the over-discussed two-dimensional images on the screen.
Instead, you have to start looking at the four-dimensional beings who are just as much (in fact, more so) active creators and embodiments of 'cinema', as they are of the imagery and impact of this audio podcast.

As such, the podcast will incorporate many personal reflections from many different points of view - this is ABSOLUTELY essential!

"The human voice can convey much more meaning through tone and inflection than the printed word ever can. It’s why millions of Americans sat, fixated, during the Golden Age of Radio – listening to everything from adventure, comedy and drama to classical music concerts, news and farm reports." 

- Nicolette Beard, Podcasting: Storytelling for the 21st Century

'Cinema' may be the starting point, but I do not believe that it is the end in and of itself. I think that with the very ambiguous concept of 'cinema' human beings have been trying to pin down something vastly more fundamental and universal; something that is now very clearly growing beyond just being embodied as two-dimensional images on a screen.

I believe that 'cinema' represents something that has always been transcendental to films and I think it has an awful lot to do with unlocking the mechanisms behind human consciousness.

That's my theory and my starting point to present an alternative and enriching humanistic exploration of cinema that is not just about films!

The bigger picture I want to get my teeth stuck into.

Hence, why this project is called Breaking Cinema.

Its a project that examines cinema, but does not really look at the films. If that is not motivation for a really creative, divergent and engaging podcast, then I don't know what is!

Finally, as an experimental documentary storytelling podcast, what I am going for in the tone, format and style of Breaking Cinema will be something akin to a fusion of Serial, You Must Remember This, Short Cuts, Attaboy Clarence and The Secret History of Hollywood.



Breaking Cinema with a Selfie Stick: Constructive Film Studies and the Point of the Podcast

"If the study of film just become history, then film will be history!"

Breaking Cinema with a Selfie Stick (a possible alternative name for the podcast) is a spontaneous, flu-induced 40-minute reflection I produced that goes into a great deal more depth about my motivations for the approach of the Breaking Cinema project...



This whole project is born out of passion and frustration in equal measure!

Also see, Breaking Cinema: 1 blog post & 20 key points of the focus...



Teething Problems and a Change in Direction

Initially, the Breaking Cinema podcast was envisioned as sit-down discussions with alternating contributors from one episode to the next and I actually recorded a number of test episodes utilising this format with a selection of contributors.

However, even when we were utilising this format, it never really filled me with any great enthusiasm - I know how to iron my clothes, but it's not necessarily something I enjoy doing!

The test episode approach always felt too passive, because we were just re-hashing the over-stepped path of traditional Film Studies, which is entirely unsurprising and completely my fault considering that I allowed four other Film Studies graduates to come aboard the project!

My incentive for recording the test episodes had been to amass a backlogue of potentially use-able episodes and to see if a better format developed out of the process, which it eventually did (the format outlined above), but only after I had completely stepped away from the test episodes.

Some of the key concepts of the project

Whether or not any of the test episode material will be used in the new format is hard to say at this stage, but, at any rate, I would still like to involve the test episode contributors as future contributors.

I've spent a whole year developing this idea and it has been like pulling teeth without anaesthetic the whole way!

However, I am glad for the mental workout and I am very pleased with the new format and direction!

To be launched soon... ish.

Breaking Cinema: 1 blog post & 20 key points of the focus...

Breaking Cinema is a podcast project I have been developing and, for a good chunk of that development period, I have struggled to figure out what is the project's specific focus.

An idea sitting in your head is useless - write it down!

What follows are twenty concise points I collected together to help myself and the other project members to understand the specific focus of Breaking Cinema which is now emerging as I get ever closer to fully nailing it down...

1) The bigger picture 

2) Constructive 

3)"Human beings are very complicated things. They live in several dimensions at once, not just one. And if they try to live just in one, they warp themselves horribly.”- Olaf Stapledon, Four Encounters, 1983 

4) Five-dimensional thinking a.k.a. lateral thinking 

5) Film history, analysis, criticism and appreciation can take care of themselves 

6) Holistic = transdisciplinary 

7) “The world we perceive is an artificially constructed environment whose character and properties are as much a result of unconscious mental processing as they are a product of real data.” - Subliminal: The New Unconscious and What it Teaches Us, 2014:50 

8) Willful blindness a.k.a. the art of ignoring reality 

9) Reflective 

10) “I am not a good man and I’m not bad man. You know what I am… I am… an idiot! With a box and a screwdriver, passing through, helping out, learning.” – The Doctor, Doctor Who: Death in Heaven, 2014 

11) Homo sapiens are the best and the worst thing about the planet Earth 

12) “[In the future], the Internet will disappear… you won’t even sense it, it will be part of your presence all the time.” - Eric Schmidt, Executive Chairman, Google 

13) Engaging with content is anything but passive 

14) “All of us want to bury our heads in the sand when taxes are due, when we have bad habits we know we should change, or when the cars starts to make that strange sound. Ignore it and it will go away – that’s what we think and hope. It’s more than just wishful thinking. In burying our heads in the sand, we are trying to pretend the threat doesn’t exist and that we don’t have to change. We are also trying hard to avoid conflict: if the threat’s not there, I don’t have to fight it. A preference for the status quo, combined with an aversion to conflict, compel us to turn a blind eye to problems and conflicts we just don’t want to deal with.” – Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness, 2012:211 

15) Hybrid 

16) "Until eight weeks old, every fetal brain looks female - female is nature's default gender setting" – Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain, 2006:36 

17) Creativity 

18) ‘Listen’ – if you re-arrange the letters it becomes ‘silent’ 

19) “my mind was filled with one thought, one conception, one purpose. So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein, - more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation.” – Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 2003:49 

20) Us 

Concise is quite an achievement for me!

 A Concise Achievement - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 274 - 01/10/2015

To understand these twenty points in context with one another, check out Breaking Cinema with a Selfie Stick: Constructive Film Studies & the Point of my Podcast.

More coming soon.

My Re-Encounter with Encounters: A Reflection on the Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival 2015

I was very fortunate to be able to attend the Encounter Short Film and Animation Festival here in Bristol. I had previously volunteered at Encounter 2013, which I wrote about in My Encounter with Encounters, and I missed Encounters 2014, so I was gratified to be able to be a part of Encounters 2015.

However, this year I did not volunteer, I went as just a standard Industry Pass member and it was a very spur of the moment decision; I only decided I would go the day before the festival started! 

I had been suffering from a bit of burnout as a result of my postgraduate 2.0 studies and I reasoned that three whole days relaxing at Encounters would do me a world of good... how only half-right I was!

My Industry Forum Pass cost me £50 - a bargain for what it gave me access to!

I attended the festival on Wednesday 16th, Thursday 17th and Friday 18th of September, as these were the three main days of the festival with the majority of the festival's events happening on these days. 

There was a very impressive spread of screenings, talks and workshops this, I was hard pressed to find something I did not want to attend.

Many of the events I booked a ticket for clashed with one-another.

All of the events I did end up going to I was thoroughly impressed with by the end of them. Even the selection of films and the the way in which they were programmed impressed me a great deal. 

The full festival spread.

Overall, I found this year's offering of Encounters to be vastly superior of that of Encounters 2013 and that is saying a lot considering this year's iteration felt somewhat more downscale than that of 2013.

However, I think the key events for me were...

• Stories in the Round: Introduction to 360 Degree Storytelling
• BBC Three at Encounters: The Future of Short-Form Channels
• Rich Pickings: Attention, Immersion and Psychocinematics
• Pro-creations: Sex and Love Short Film Programme
• Widening the Lens: Panel Discussion of Women in Film
• Carol Morley's The Alcohol Years
• Desert Island Flicks with Carol Morley
• Why Life Beats Fiction: Workshop with director Adrian Sitaru
• About a Girl: Short Film Programme 9
• Reasons to be Cheerful: Comedy Shorts
• Concert of Collage: Citation City 

The Attention, Immersion and Psychocinematics talk is one of the events that caught my eye right before I decided I was going to attend  this year's Encounters. Psychocinematics and its related field of study Neurocinematics are two fields I have a great of deal of investment within, as they seek to understand the empirical workings of the spectator's relation with a spectacle, an endeavour which was a key concern of my award-winning undergraduate theoretical dissertation, Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, and continues to be a concern of my Ways 2 Interface research project.

Always start with the spectator, that's how you come to thoroughly understand cinema.

I knew that the University of Bristol and the University of South West England were actively involved in the filed of psychocinematics research and this talk presented an opportunity to see what they had been up to. On the whole, it did not present much more than what I had already read about in regards to their research efforts, in particular a focus on tracking eye movement, which was demonstrated during the talk. 

Cinema is us. Two-dimensional images on a screen are just that, they mean nothing without us.

However, the most intriguing insight I gained from the talk ironically came from the audience and their very clear interest in this new field of study. When I went into the talk I had not expected it to be that full, but I barely found a seat! 

As I am discovering in the development of my Breaking Cinema podcast, one of the factors that continually worries me about the study of film is this persistent tendency to focus on the two-dimensional images on a screen without reference or consideration towards anything that exists beyond a film, i.e. towards the reality that actually underpins the cognition and enjoyment of those two-dimensional images on a screen. 

Encounters 2015 was based at the Watershed, as ever.

And, of course, is if you stubbornly refuse to leave the comfort zone of those two-dimensional images, the study of film will stagnate and, as I said just the other day, "If the study of film just becomes film history, then film will be history!"

However, it was immensely reassuring to see so many other interested individuals in this new and revitalising study of cinema!

BBC Three @ Encounters - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 259 - 16/09/2015

A focus on new innovations was present throughout the festival, as can be evidenced in the BBC Three's talk about their transition into a fully digital channel and also the 360 Degree Storytelling talk, which absolutely blew my mind! 

I am still trying to get my head around the potential of augmented reality and virtual reality storytelling, so I will not go into a great amount of detail here, but it was hugely invigorating in regards to my passion for future cinema storytelling practice!

Women in Film @ Encounters

Another key focus of Encounters 2015 was of women in film, in front of and behind the camera. This also caught my eye when I was considering attending Encounters 2015, because I do not believe that there are enough female voices in cinema, as indeed there are not. 

There currently seems to be a major drive to change this in-balance of the sexes in cinema and it is something that I am firmly behind and is something I am engineering into my Breaking Cinema podcast project.

Widening the Lens Panel Discussion @ Encounters

The Widening the Lens: Panel Discussion of Women in Film was a fully sold out and insightful talk that dealt with the subject and really set the groundwork for the various related screenings that followed throughout the festival. The About a Girl: Short Film Programme 9, a hugely thought-provoking in this respect; as were the wider programmes , such as the pro-creations programme of short films, that dealt with relationships, but with an emphasis on the female point of view. 

I recently finished reading The Female Brain, a book which explores the latest neuroscience and psychological research into the female mentality and I have to say, after reading it, I now a vastly greater respect for females as whole!

However, another key component of Encounters focus on females in film was Carol Morley and I have to admit, at first I brushed her aside... until I realise who she was - the woman who had made Dreams of a Life.

Dreams of a Life trailer

Dreams of a Life, a film that is on my list of favourites, had a huge influence on me when I watch it back in 2013 as research for my participation in the Short Form Documentary Making module as part of my final year of my BA (Hons) in Creative Writing with Film and Screen Studies.

Dreams of a Life affected me from the jaw-dropping true story it tells, but also it also highly impressed me as a seminal piece of filmmaking, it was without a doubt one of the best constructed films I have ever seen!

Therefore, when this clicked, I dropped what I was originally going to do and headed to the free screening of Carol Morely's The Alcohol Years.

The Alcohol Years trailer

Aside from being a very bold reflexive piece of filmmaking, in many ways The Alcohol Years reminded me of an early accidental hour-long reflexive documentary I made about myself, Down A Word: The Story of NEXT FRIDAY, which I am in the course of dusting off because I want to put it on my personal website, as well as this blog, so stay tuned! 

Although, even if they share a common reflexive study of alcohol, I still think The Alcohol Years is much better than Down A Word.

Private Screening @ Encounters - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 260 - 17/09/2015

However, when two films from a filmmaker both have an effect on you through their subject matter and the way in which their stories are actually told, then you should probably pay attention to that filmmaker.

Carol Morley - the boss!

Therefore, I booked myself a ticket for Desert Island Flicks with Carol Morley and the person I discovered in that talk is hard to put into words, but suffice to say Carol Morley is a truly fascinating human being, who is now one of my favourite filmmakers and who I will be keeping an eye on!

Another filmmaker who caught my eye or rather my eyes and ears was Adrian Sitaru. Why Life Beats Fiction was a workshop in which he discussed his filmmaking approach of working without a script and capturing the first, raw improvisation of his actors and how he goes about constructing a film out of this process.

Why Life Beats Fiction @ Encounters - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 261 - 18/09/2015

The process of Adrian Sitaru especially appeals to me because it is akin to Mike Leigh's system of crafting a script from a series of improvisations; another process I have always admired and which, like Adrain Sitaru's method, I think makes for a much more astounding and involving result. 

A process along the lines of what Leigh and Sitaru do is also something I have been considering for the web series I am currently in the process of scripting... a series of scripts that will hopefully not have too much bearing on the eventual result!

The To Be or Not To Be a Character workshop with Adrian Titieni, from the actor's perspective, was also insightful in this respect to the Why Life Beats Fiction workshop, but I was somewhat at a loss because I missed the first ten minutes of this workshop.

I have to say throughout the festival I found myself thinking about my web series idea a great deal, as the its storyline deals with many of subjects explored in the festival. 

There was one key programme of short films that was instrumental in my thinking about my web series. The Reasons to be Cheerful: Comedy Shorts programme reminded me just how funny the short form can be in its application! This was important because my web series is a comedy.

I only wish I had attended the other comedy programme the festival showcased. I wish I had attended a number of the festival programmes; including the The Bristol International Festival of Cinematography that was running in conjunction with Encounters 2015 over at the Arnofini, but I could not go to everything, it just was not possible.

The events I did not attend - how I would love to have a clone!

However, the icing on the Encounters 2015 cake came fittingly in my final event at the festival, Concent of Collage: Citation City, which in addition to including the spell-binding feature length audio-visual work of Citation City also included various other equally entertaining short subjects before the main presentation.

Citation City trailer

Aside from being something very different, I enjoyed Citation City so much because  it epitomises what cinema has now become, or rather what it has always been, but which we are now starting to latch onto - cinema is a summation of us all. And cinema's future development and evolution requires us to pro-actively embrace that concept, because if we do not, we will get stuck in reboot heaven.

Ultimately, I applaud Citation City as a brilliant piece of audio-visual art and as a testament to the longevity of our greatest art form.

I can not describe it here, just go and see Citation City.

I could not ask for a better end to Encounters 2015.

Encounters 2015 - Cameo #12

However, my time at Encounters 2015 did not prove to be exactly the relaxing break I had initially planned for. Increasingly throughout the festival I found myself feeling more and more lethargic and, two weeks later, I know now that I was starting to get the flu while I was there. I had gone to Encounters to regain my composure and ended up being even more worn out than how I had started! 

That glazed look was not intentional, bloody flu!

Admittedly, I would have like to have been on top-form much more so throughout the three days I was there, so that I would have been able to actually have had some proper interactions with people; as well as actually possessing the effort to capture a great deal more footage and photographs than I did capture. And I must admit I did doze off at certain points, but, meh, it was still worth it and I am still glad I went.

Will I go again next year?

Most definitely!

Breaking Cinema with a Selfie Stick: Constructive Film Studies & the Point of my Podcast

I have been developing a film related podcast project called Breaking Cinema that has been having some teething problems. 

Primary among these problems is a lack of a clarity in regards to the specific focus of the podcast project and it is for this reason that I have not until now detailed the Breaking Cinema podcast on this blog.

However, the project now has a focus that is becoming clearer by the day!

A rough approximation of what the eventual logo will look like. Probably.

For the longest time, the best description I could provide to the other project members was that...

"This podcast is not just about films." 

Essentially what I have been trying to say with this statement is that the focus of Breaking Cinema aligns itself with what I was gunning for in my award-winning undergraduate theoretical dissertation, Ways of Being: The Spectator and the Spectacle, and my continuing transdisciplinary research project, Ways 2 Interface.

And that focus was concerned with moving the study of cinema beyond textual critical analysis of two-dimensional images on a screen and placing greater transdisciplinary emphasis on the wider and empirical implications of the spectator's involvement and human culture as a whole.

"The fundamental focus of the project is the idea of an interfacing process - the introspective and expressive capacity inherent to us all - that we have always interwoven throughout our day-to-day existences and that we continue to do so at a formidably greater capacity in our contemporary digital realities. By examining the habits and manifestations of our cognitive, corporeal, cultural and connected ways to interface, 'Ways 2 Interface' will aim to build a unified understanding of this interfacing process - the brand at the heart of all our stories." 

- Welcome #2Interface, Ways 2 Interface 

Now, after nearly a year of actively working away on this project and recording various test episodes, I am now in a position where I can say that I very nearly have the project's focus and format fully figured out. Finally!

And this epiphany was in great part assisted by the following spontaneous forty-minute reflection I produced while I had a touch of the flu and was in a hugely lucid state of mind...

Breaking Cinema with a Selfie Stick, A Flu-Induced Reflection by Peter O'Brien

Sometimes all you need is a bit of flu!

More coming soon.

Encounters 2015 - Cameo #12

I have produced another microfilm using Vimeo's Cameo app on my iPod Touch based around my three days at the Encounters Short Film and Animation Festival in Bristol.  

This microfilm is more of just a collected of clips opposed to a micro narrative because I just did not have the energy to capture nearly as much footage I would have liked at Encounters. However, I did enjoy being a spectator of the festival.

Film Noir Studies - TCM Presents Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir - Completion Reflection

I have now completed TCM Presents Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir, a free online multimedia course from Ball State University as offered on the Canvas Network and, through the course of becoming a bit tougher and wiser, I now possess a vastly greater understanding and appreciation of the film noir movement.

My Certificate of Completion.

The film noir movement is an area of film that I have always struggled to find a way into; that is not to say that I have not seen any film noir films, I have seen plenty, but studying the progression and intricacies of the movement has always been a challenge. 

Film Noir Studies - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 167 - 16/06/2015

Unfortunately, I was unable to undertake the film noir module, Film Noir: The Dark side of the Screen, as part of my second year BA (hons) Film and Screen Studies because I did not have enough credit to do so. Although, in hindsight, I should have just asked if I could have sat in on the lectures, my tutors would not have said no.

Daily Dose of Darkness - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 170 - 19/06/2015

However, Investigating Film Noir has more than made up for this missed opportunity and I get the impression from the full spectrum of this online course that it equals the full breadth of The Dark Side of the Screen module at Bath Spa University.

One of the common criticisms of online courses or MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) is that they can not compare to a real-world paid course. 

Film Noir Studies Observations - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 176 - 25/06/2015

Okay, let's investigate this assumption a little more.

I did not take The Dark Side of the Screen module at university, but I know for a fact from other students who did take it and from the formats of the other modules I myself took that the The Dark Side of the Screen module would have been comprised of:

• Lectures - in which the tutor (Suman, bless his heart) would have gradually taken the class through the film noir movement; as complimented by...
• Seminars - in which film screenings, readings and active class discussion would have further delved into the complexities of the film noir movement.

Film Noir Day-Off - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 198 - 17/07/2015

Now, as it stands with Investigating Film Noir, I have just undertaken an online course in which I had to

• digest a series of weekly video lectures that gradually peeled back the layers of the film noir movement
• view a program of film noir screenings on TCM (I don't have TCM, so I made do with what I could find online)
• examine various primary and secondary readings of the subject
• take part in the many discussion forums of the course with the other students.

Therefore, I feel that this online offering, in collaboration with TCM, serves as a formidable example of the potential of online learning in regards to the discipline of Film Studies, a discipline that could very easily be taught online, as indeed it kind of already is...

Out of the Past - Film Studies 2.0

Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir is the first Film Studies podcast that debuted online and it serves as the basis for this MOOC, as it was created by Dr Richard L. Edwards, the co-host of Out of the Past. 

I have not listened to all of the Out of the Past episodes, but I sure if I had I would possess a greater understanding of film noir movement and all of the films therein. However, it is clear to see from the episodes I have listened to and from looking through its back-catalogue of episodes that the Out of the Past podcast offers a very comprehensive overview of the film noir movement and it is not at all surprising that TCM approached Dr Edwards to create the Investigating Film Noir MOOC spin-off.

In the most recent episode of Out of the Past - Noircast Special 4: TCM Presents Into the Darkness: Investigating Film Noir - Edwards and company discuss the inception, creation, outreach and potential of the Investigating Film Noir MOOC; it certainly makes for an interesting listen and seems to point towards a desire for there to be many more offerings such as Investigating Film Noir.

I would most certainly be behind any future online Film Studies offerings because that is where I believe the discipline will gain a whole new lease of life, opposed to just repeating itself, over and over again! 

Below is my video review of the Investigating Film Noir MOOC...

Investigating Film Noir - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 233 - 21/08/2015

What did I learn from Investigating Film Noir?

Exactly what I already knew, for such a prolific film movement, film noir is also an oddly illusive entity.

Getting your head around the whole film noir movement was not nearly as hard as I thought it would be, you just have to think of these films as being representative of the full range of the human psyche - not nearly as warm and cosy as we like to believe.

In a recent film noir episode that was recorded for my Breaking Cinema podcast I lamented that the essence of what makes a film noir film a film noir film has become so saturated and absorbed by other filmmakers that you can identify film noir elements in the majority of all the films of modern cinema.

Film Noir Podcasting - 365 FRAMES 2015: Day 187 - 06/0/2015

Obviously, we have the neo noir which is our contemporary equivalent of a film that leans more strongly towards the conventions of a traditional film noir, but even so, the neo noir conventions can still be found in the majority of all the films of modern cinema precisely because they make up the majority of the films of modern cinema. 

After 9/11 there was an insistent transition towards darker and grittier cinema and this is a maturity of cinema that will never fully go away, as was the case with the emergence of film noir in the aftermath of World War 2 and the emergence of the neo noir in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

Ultimately, we have moved on from the film noirs of the 1940s and 50s; they remain purely as a nostalgic footprint of the cultural and societal attitudes and anxieties of their respective time, but we no longer live in the immediate aftermath of World War 2. 

The problem with films today that attempt to be hardcore and traditional film noir films, is that they just end up looking like parodies (which is why a film like Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid works so well) - that style of film does not fit with our current state of cultural and societal attitudes and anxieties. 

In many ways the conventions of the 'traditional film noir film' are utterly absurd and Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid shows you exactly why - they belong to another time.

At the end of all this, my attitude in regards to film noir is simply - why bother looking for film noir? It's been done, move on. 

I spent many years trying to find a way into the film noir movement in order to come to terms with exactly what constitutes film noir and now, after working my through Investigating the Darkness, I realise that film noir is something I always understood, I just did not realise it!

Any human being who looks deep enough into themselves will realise exactly what film noir is and, if you do not know what I mean by that statement, I will leave you to ponder and discover it for yourself.

Busybody: The other adaptations

I think the students were mostly very conscientiously worried about the "low" quality of their adaptations (as indeed I was when I did the module), but I as I pointed out to them - a first effort is never perfect and the whole point of the planning and making a film module is to make all the mistakes in order to insure you become a more competent filmmaker later on.

This post presents some of the additional adaptations that were produced from my Busybody script that I submitted for the Planning and Making a Film module that I undertook in the penultimate year of my BA (Hons). The module's practice was undertaken from October 2011 to June 2012 and it provided me with a hugely enriching experience. For a more detailed overview of the module and the projects I undertook as a part of it, see Planning and Making a Film: The student filmmaking experience.

The following adaptations were made by the following year's students as their practice films for the module.

Together with the team who produced the first adaptation of Busybody, I was invited to the screening session for the following year's students and it was a hugely enjoyable experience, I got a real thrill from seeing my original script twisted and turned in so many different ways.

Some notes I made from the following year's screening session. Photo: Day 338 of my 366 Project.

During the Q&A after the screenings, I think the students were mostly very conscientiously worried about the "low" quality of their adaptations (as indeed I was when I did the module), but I as I pointed out to them - a first effort is never perfect and the whole point of the planning and making a film module is to make all the mistakes in order to insure you become a more competent filmmaker later on.

There were eight versions of Busybody produced by the following year's students and I think there was one which did not quite work out, but I have been unable to locate them all online, so what follows are all the versions I could track down (for now)...

Uploaded onto YouTube by Tdiddingly

Uploaded onto YouTube by Kingt34

This version was directed by George Oram who connected with me after I mentioned that I needed help on a few projects in the screening session. I have since worked with on Remember This, The Miracle of Crowdfunding and Breaking Cinema.

That's it. 

However, you can read more about the making of all the following year's adaptations on the blog for their module.

I did toy with the idea of making my own definitive version of Busybody, based upon the second draft of the script I had knocking around in my head, but I think the Busybody story has well and truly been hacked to death know. However, I do have a habit of changing my mind, so we will see.

If you would like to know how I originally developed the Busybody story, then you can do so by have a look at Developing a Script, Part 3: Submission - Busybody.

Or 

If you would like to learn what I thought about the very first adaptation of Busybody, you can do so by reading The first adaptation: Busybody.

Or

Just have a look at Planning and Making a Film: The student filmmaking experience.