Diary of a first-time filmmaker: Part 5 –… | Little White Lies

Diary of a first-time film­mak­er: Part 5 – Distribution

03 Oct 2020

Words by Lucy Brydon

In her final jour­nal entry, Lucy Bry­don shares her expe­ri­ence of releas­ing her debut fea­ture dur­ing a pandemic.

Um, so. Hi. Last time I wrote feels like a life­time ago. Before all this. I nev­er thought I would find myself miss­ing chat about Brex­it. In the Covid Clus­ter­fuck that 2020 has turned into, it seems a fond mem­o­ry in what we are uni­ver­sal­ly oblig­ed to refer to as these chal­leng­ing times’. But the world still turns, and peo­ple still want to make things. Peo­ple will also always need sto­ries. At least, I like to think so.

The arti­cles I’ve writ­ten that pre­ced­ed this, now I think about it, did tend to wang on about how hard it is to be a film­mak­er. This is a uni­ver­sal sort of mar­tyr­dom expe­ri­enced by artists and at the time, it seemed fair enough. How naïve I was. How expo­nen­tial­ly more dif­fi­cult will earn­ing a liv­ing in the cre­ative indus­tries be in the com­ing months and years, as the they fall to their knees and have to be cra­dled up again as if from infan­cy. But I’m not here to be a Deb­bie down­er – I am con­fi­dent that you prob­a­bly peruse the news reg­u­lar­ly enough to be cov­ered in that depart­ment. I will, instead, try to focus on things that might give us hope.

The fes­ti­val life and release of Body of Water hap­pened to coin­cide with the cat­a­clysmic fall­out of COVID-19. We do count as some of the lucky ones, how­ev­er. Like the lumi­nous green cock­roach­es that I imag­ine must have man­aged to hang around in the base­ment of Cher­nobyl after the blast, we are sur­viv­ing. By the skin of our flu­o­res­cent anten­nae. But what counts as luck in this brave new world?

Well, to me, luck was a phys­i­cal pre­mière in an actu­al cin­e­ma as part of the last film fes­ti­val in the UK, Glas­gow. A delight­ful expe­ri­ence in Feb­ru­ary, the sold-out screen­ing was real­ly mov­ing for all of us – par­tic­u­lar­ly lead actress/​my hero Sian Brooke. Fes­ti­val Direc­tors, Alli­son Gard­ner and Allan Hunter, have done a tremen­dous job in recent years of cul­ti­vat­ing one of the most for­ward-think­ing and excit­ing film show­cas­es in oper­a­tion – it was a real thrill to be select­ed. As a Scot, it felt like the ide­al home for my debut. And I got to put on a nice dress, which is always a bonus.

The expe­ri­ence of watch­ing Body of Water on screen with strangers was intim­i­dat­ing. As a direc­tor you’re always study­ing people’s reac­tions, and you tend to be par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to pick­ing up ener­gy in rooms. Sian and I sat next to each oth­er and held hands for vir­tu­al­ly the whole film like sev­en-year-olds. The film was well-received though, with some touch­ing and insight­ful feed­back from audi­ences, although being the direc­tor obvi­ous­ly nobody is going to tell me to my face if they think it’s shit. Ini­tial reviews have been very pos­i­tive, but I leave you to judge for your­selves*. After it was over, Sian and I were invit­ed to take part in a short Q&A. What did it feel like,” I was asked, to watch my work on the big screen?” I answered truth­ful­ly, It felt a lit­tle bit like being flayed alive.”

It was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to hear the crew’s impres­sions of how what they had seen us shoot, and how that work had evolved and changed in the edit. The sound recordist Aris, in par­tic­u­lar, was sweet­ly delight­ed with what we’d done and we had emo­tion­al – slight­ly drunk­en – chat about it. These con­ver­sa­tions remind­ed me again of how gen­er­ous those who sole­ly work on set are with their cre­ativ­i­ty. They work their ass­es off in tough con­di­tions, and then they give their work away with­out see­ing the results for months or years. I reck­on most direc­tors are too self­ish for that, myself includ­ed. If some­thing has my imprint I can’t let it go like that. So, a shout out to all crew every­where – some of whom have had their liveli­hoods hit hard­est by this pandemic.

As you can prob­a­bly guess, every­thing changed short­ly after that. The love­ly Verve Films picked up Body of Water for dis­tri­b­u­tion on 16 Octo­ber online and in cin­e­mas. We are look­ing at a the­atri­cal release across the UK with on demand avail­able on the same day (list of con­firmed cin­e­mas below). Nat­u­ral­ly, I want peo­ple to see it as it was meant to be seen: on the big screen where pos­si­ble but it’s also great to main­tain flex­i­bil­i­ty and offer view­ing at home in this cli­mate. This peri­od has changed view­ing habits for­ev­er, but if we can go and sup­port cin­e­mas and inde­pen­dent film­mak­ers now we can hope­ful­ly sus­tain strug­gling businesses.

As I write, the film and tele­vi­sion indus­tries are mak­ing their first ten­ta­tive steps back into pro­duc­tion. Pic­tures of small-scales shoots are pop­ping up on social chan­nels. I feel for those in pre-pro­duc­tion on big projects, know­ing how chal­leng­ing these cir­cum­stances can be with­out the added lay­er of stress that respon­si­ble social dis­tanc­ing mea­sures will add to any set expe­ri­ence. But I take com­fort in the fact that film­mak­ers are noth­ing if not a) tough and b) the best kind of crazy. We’ll get through this, and we’ll be stronger.

As ever, the only thing we can do is keep going at what­ev­er pace fits us and those we’re work­ing with. We need to find hope where we can, in each oth­er and in our sto­ries. It’s always there.

*Please do judge for your­selves by watch­ing the film.

Body of Water is released in cin­e­mas and on dig­i­tal on 16 Octo­ber.
Cin­e­mas include Cur­zon Blooms­bury, Art­House Crouch End, HOME Man­ches­ter, Depot Lewes & Film­house Edin­burgh. The dig­i­tal plat­forms are Sky Store, Cur­zon Home Cin­e­ma & BFI Player

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