"Someone Should be Filming Us"

Into the vortex of film production.
Independent film production, no less, so the vortex will be murky, to be sure.
Murky or not, thankful to be back in it – it’s been a while.
This particular idea – one that had originated a couple of years ago, in fact – was always something we talked about doing, something that would be a small side project.
Small, large – we simply never had the impetus (or money) to actually do it. We still don’t have the money, per se, but now, having race-walked away from MTV’s Boiling Points, this project seems to possess the perfect ambition to get us back onto the creative horse.
I’ll call that horse Gary.
The ache to actually do something creative is as flagrant as Gene Shalet’s moustache.
You just can’t avoid it. We’ve tentatively – and ridiculously, I should add – titled the movie, PROJECT: Project.
Clearly a working title.
Clearly our grip slipped when we came up with that one.
Anyway...
My thought is that the film is more of a documentary-industrial, so there’s not much of pitch to it. Regardless…
Giddy-up Gary!
Here’s the pitch as it gallops now…
Often, if not on every TV or film shoot I’ve ever done, a version of the phrase, “Someone should be filming us” (meaning someone should be shooting the crew, the behind-the-scenes of a production) was opined with far less cynicism than one would image.
Former soundman for Survivor and Boiling Points, Tom Warden, used to say this all the time to me.
So did a number of the DP’s and tech guys.
This project will, in fact, be just that.
A documentary about television production.
An optimism exists, in me anyway, that the fiery histrionics that blister a production can readily be captured on tape.
Often it’s dramatic.
Likewise it’s hilarious.
This film hardly has to be narrative.
As always, my modus operandi is this: content will dictate form.
So production itself will uncoil the actual fashion of the film.
And it’s not necessarily the production of a particular show.
Perhaps what it is is the beginning, middle and end of several shows; capturing stages of production on multiple sets.
Really, I don’t want it to be about an individual show, but about production and those people working within production itself.
So…
A documentary on television production;
A behind-the-scenes look of how it’s actually done;
Not in some constructed Project Greenlight nonsense, where the drama is utterly manufactured.
Why do that?
Drama can unfold organically;
Which is something that I require in a documentary.