The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

Dear Diary. This weekend there was a 24-hour film competition called Correcurts. You have 24 hours to make a 2-minute film. I won 200 euros the first year I entered. The next year, I won Best Actor, which was unremunerated, unfortunately.

Now the time came again to make a film.

Usually I make films alone, but this fear, instead of working alone, I decided to make a film with other people. Two people, in fact: a couple called Ester and Aleix. Ester is famous here in Catalonia. She's on TV. She used to be a news reporter and now she's a presenter on a show called Tot Es Mou. She does funny skits on there. She's funny and talented.

Aleix is Ester's boyfriend and he's not famous, but he does have a big collection of 80s and 90s memorabilia in his house, so that's something.

So I turned up at their house yesterday at noon, so we could brainstorm ideas together. I pitched a couple of great ideas for the film to Ester and Aleix, but they weren't won over. So in the end, we did one of Ester's ideas instead. It was somehow a compromise (?).

At this point, I would usually start shooting, because you only have 24 hours to make the film, which isn't a long time, so you want to start shooting as soon as possible. But Ester and Aleix wanted to plan everything out first. So Ester had a notebook and was writing down all the ideas for the scenes for the film. Then we went through the ideas to decide on the best ones.

Aleix and Ester were squabbling over some minor details and two hours had passed by this point and we still hadn't filmed anything! I was about to start banging my head against the wall. I felt helpless and powerless.

Then Ester had an idea that both Aleix and I thought was bad. But Ester was stubborn, so Aleix and I had to give in and let her do it. I was disgusted by teamwork by this point. When you work in a team, the people with the big personalities trample over everyone else's opinions, and you end up acquiescing to bad ideas just to keep people happy. I started vowing to myself never to work in a team again.

While Ester went off to find props, I said to Aleix, "It's hard working in a team."

Aleix laughed and said, "Of course it is."

Well if he knows it's hard, why does he do it? Why does anyone work in a team for that matter?

There's a revelant passange about this in the book Rebel Without a Crew:

On the Taxi Driver disc Scorcese said something funny; he said that shooting a movie is a horrible experience. All day long people ask you questions questions questions, all day long, what do you want to eat? what color should this had be? etc. That's why shooting Mariachi was so much fun! I never had anyone ask me questions because I had no crew. No wonder everyone that sees it thinks it was an incredible amount of work and that it must have taken months to shoot all by myself. You'd think that it would be more work and money without a crew, but I tell them it was the complete opposite.

Then we finally started shooting the scenes. Since I was the main actor, Aleix and Ester took turns operating the camera. It was weird because when I make films alone, I can rewatch the footage right away to see if I need to change anything. But here, we just filmed scene after scene, and I had no idea how it was turning out.

We finished filming at 4 pm, which was actually a pleasant surprise because I thought we'd be filming all day. So I said goodbye to them and let them get on with editing. That was another positive thing about working with Aleix and Ester: they did all the editing. It was nice to just walk away at the end of the day, and then to see a finished, edited film the next day. I could get used to that.

When I got home, I realised I still had time to make a second film if I wanted to. That's right, a second film. So I did. It took me five hours and I filmed the entire thing in my kitchen. Two films in one day: not bad!

There was only one problem: I didn't tell Ester and Aleix that I made a second film without them. But I didn't think they'd mind. All is fair in love and film-making, after all. Shakespeare said that.

The next day, I got to the awards ceremony early and got three seats at the back. The place was filling up. I opened Whatsapp and sent a message to Ester and Aleix: "I have seats for you at the back. By the way, I forgot to tell you, I made a second film after we finished making the first one".

Immediately Aleix texted back: "Are you joking?"

I reply: "No, I'm not joking." I thought he must be impressed that I made a second film.

There were no more messages after that. I hoped Ester and Aleix weren't mad at me.

The awards ceremony began. First, they showed all the films that were entered. 22 films this year. Most of them are bad, including my own, but I still thought I could be in with a chance.

Then I saw Ester and Aleix. They were sitting on the other side of the theatre. I waved to Aleix but he just glared at me angrily, which was weird.

The host announced the winners. Neither of my films won anything this year. That was disappointing.

I looked over at Ester and made eye contact with her. I shrugged to say, "Oh well, at least we tried." But she glared at me as well. She looked angry. I didn't know why. Was it because I made a film that competed against the one we made together? If so, then that's stupid.

The ceremony ended and we all walked out. Ester and Aleix were walking ahead of me. Aleix turned around, saw me, scowled, and kept walking. They must really have been angry with me. I felt bad. Now I've turned two potential friends into enemies. You know that enemies are worse than strangers, right? Because at least strangers are neutral towards you. Enemies hate you.

So anyway, neither of the films won anything in the end. I realised that to win, you've got to shoot in the town the competition is held in: Cassa de la Selva. Because all the films that won were shot in locations in Cassa de la Selva. Next year I'll do that.

Here's the film I made with Ester and Aleix, and then after this is the film I made myself: