Friday 19th August, 2011

Our second day at the Bayside Film Festival started out pretty much the same as the first one. I got there early, found Cameron, and then waited for everyone else to arrive.

It started out with youth documentaries. As more people came into the cinema, I noticed there were a lot more schools than the previous day. And majority of these schools were consumed of students much closer to my age. This gave me some of the optimism that I had lost from the previous day's films, considering that most of the student piling in were in fact the directors of these documentaries that we were about to watch.

And just as I thought, the results were much better than Thursday. I enjoyed more of the films and a couple of them were really well done.

There was the same few films after the first youth documentaries that were on Thursday, so Rob told us if we didn't want to watch them we could walk around for a bit and come back for the guest speaker of the day.

I was at first going to stay, but considering I had literally just seen all of these films, I quickly changed my mind.

Once we were back, the guest speaker came out. These are the notes I took during his talk:

Amiel Courtin-Wilson

• Amiel has been making films for about 20 years.
• Made his first film at age 9 about smuggling cocaine.
• Both parents were artists.
• Had made about 4 or 5 short films in Super8 at age 16.
• "Bastardy" (his second film) was a documentary about an aboriginal actor and a cat burglar. 
• He followed his feature man around for years documenting his life.
• He worked a lot of time with ABC and would make 3 or 4 documentaries a week.
• First film was called "Chasing Buddha"
• "Each story deserves a very individual narrative treatment."
• Believes more in a subjective way of filming, rather than objective.

These are the notes I took after watching the clip they showed:

• Opening credits to the film (it is about 83 minutes long)
• Started making 'Bastardy' at age 22-29.
• The man would constantly take drugs and every night steal from 5 or 6 houses.
• "A junkie's life, is a junkie's life, is a junkie's life."
• The man moved into his house and they became very close - which helped develop the film.
• The feature took almost a decade to film. (From the man being 58 to when he was 65).
• He was more interested in the person rather than considering him just as the subject of a film. He got to know him as a human being.
• Man's name is Jack.
• Made a "lifetime journey". It began talking about the theatre company he helped start, to the darkness and turmoil throughout his life, to when he turned his life around and got a lifetime achievement award from the theatre company 40 years later.
• 'Bastardy' had about 300 hours of film and took about 30 weeks to edit.

5 tips Amiel would give to film makers:

1.  Trust yourself. (Trust your instincts)
2.  Keep your eyes open. (Be receptive)
3.  Keep a journal.
4.  Be sponges.
5.  Always keep looking.