Oh okay, well I guess I feel that if I use the money to make more shorts instead, that I will not be able to get the money for a feature later. So after making more shorts, that's it... No money to make a feature after. So that was the downside of making more shorts for me.

Also, you said before I had too too much confidence, that I was willing to do it, but now you say I have a lack of confidence. I was wondering, why it changed, just curious?

And yes I would have to find a DP that is good but still wanting experience and still starting out but good, but is that bad?

Ryan seem unable to comprehend and appreciate the complexity of making a movie. You also lack the ability to make sound decisions based on your limitations. When you lack the fundamental skill set needed to create movies then no amount of advice will help.

You are making it a binary choice between either shorts or a feature. When there is a third option, not making either. You keep discarding my advice to do something simple like a Youtube movie channel, vlog, or behind the scenes docs. These types of film making can be done by yourself with little to no budget. The one thing you do more than anything else is talk about movies instead of actually making them. What is the point of fighting this? Find something that matches that. Do it for our sake so we don't have to read these type of threads.

Oh well I am currently making a youtube video on filmmaking itself with another person, but I want to do both. But I am much more interested in doing fiction though, and would rather do that, than documentary or vlog work.

I have done documentary projects with others in the past and I found those much more difficult to make compared to something that is scripted. I would prefer scripted fiction, that's all.

I guess I would just rather make the movie when a lot of advice is don't do it, do these other things instead, instead of finding a way to do it. I feel the focus should be on how to get the movie made well, rather than not make it all and just do something different.

Unless it's bad of me to think that way?

I don't think anyone said you'd too much confidence, more that you were having difficulties not seeing issues that were in your film. It's easy to be blind to things because you're not seeing the film the same way as a member of the audience.

The fact that you often end your messages with a question implies a lack of confidence.

Selecting a DP is like picking an actor, they have to be right for a particular project. You can only do following conversations with a number of DPs.

Oh okay. The reason why I ask questions is because I like the advice and want to do the best and don't want to to do anything incorrectly, so that is why I keep asking more. I guess the reason why I have trouble seeing issues in past projects is because if I see them in other movies, I wonder, well why is it bad that I did if it's been done in other movies, or I was told to accept and embrace the microbudget and if the cinematography and locations are not that cinematic looking, just embrace it, and go with it.

Unless embracing such things is bad and I am in denial of the issues therefore, and should not embrace subpar cinematography and locations as a possible blessing in disguise.

Just because some things are used in professional films doesn't mean they're correct, When they were shot it may have planned to use the shot in a different part of the sequence, but circumstances meant they had to use it in a different place.

They can also make mistakes regarding eye lines, just because they've made it, doesn't mean you have to.

"embrace the micro budget?" what absolute rubbish Ryan - you really are not in the same world that we are.

You mention you're making a video on tube about film making? That sounds like me making a video about dance - I'd never dare do a dance video for two reasons. My friends would wet themselves but seriously, it would be terrible!

You just seem unwilling for unable to appreciate that for a product to be good, all the ingredients need to be good. You won't spend any time or money getting better, just hoping that it will be great when the scope of a full length feature is immensely more difficult than anything you've done.

Documentaries ARE scripted, maybe not in the sense that everyone learns a script, but I've never been involved with one that didn't;t have a script of some kind. In a documentary, the VO, if there is one is scripted once the visuals have been seen and assembled. Any in or out of vision material is at the very least framework with key points.

I got very confused by this bit.
I just didn't think it was possible to form personal relationships with everyone I work with and that a lot of them will have to be professional especially if something were to happen if I had to replace people with other people I may not know well, which has happened before.

Why on earth do you think you need to know them well. When I work for a production company, I might have a cast, crew and creative team of perhaps 30-40. I will have worked with maybe 20+ who I have worked with before and put them on the re-contract list. Others will be contracted by people from the production companies production department - so I'll have a pile of people recommended by another production or company manager, people I trust - but I know nothing about them at all. In 17 years I have only fired one during a production and put maybe 10 on the do not re-contract list. Some were competent but socially inept, making them difficult to work with. People who were so own role centred, the sound, lights, acting could fall apart, but as long as the picture remained on the monitors and was nice and sharp they'd go home happy and totally unaware of the carnage everyone else suffered. Others would be technically useless but well qualified. Some would be just 'risky'. On the first day of production, people meet very often for the first time. Two hours later, rehearsals are under way. Everyone and everything is considered and judged. By the end of day two - everyone has formed relationships. Good and bad. Square pegs in round holes identified, and potential problems already imagined. Before the end of day two, I'll start to be approached by people on the quiet, pointing out that X hasn't a clue and often suggesting changes to prevent them becoming problems. By the end of day three, sadly, the non-team players are identified and everyone has workarounds so these weak ones don't get in the way. Sometimes, it will be the Director - they just don't work the way the actors expect and actors are always verging on paranoia. These directors have to be 'guided', advised and prevented from wrecking things. Often the directors who are just not up to it shouldn't be directing a production with the budget and scale of the one we're on, and are simply fish out of water. The good directors realise they are lacking and I quietly help and support them. Sadly, some are so awful that, nobody helps and supports them at all. The ones who bellow and yell. I'm working with one shortly who is rude, arrogant and quite nasty - but - he gets good results and makes money. It does mean that I need two different members of crew, because past issues make some people unable to work with the guy. Everyone behaves professionally, that's what we do - but it is difficult.

Inter-personal relationships cause grief. I have one fella I use quite often who has autism. He finds the social interaction difficult, but he's very diligent, and his built in blinkers mean he never hets distracted. Give him a job and it will get done well, with no distraction. For me that's a real boon. It does mean he is the worst person to give a role to that involves general safety. He's totally unable to focus on his job but keep an eye out for unexpected issues. I remember well him ready to lower a very heavy projection screen. It had to start to decend on a music cue, and hit a mark exactly on a beat - the cameras then went live . 3 seconds from no screen to live screen. He had a couple of rehearsals and got it. First time with the audience, I spotted one of the wardrobe people standing exactly where the screen was going to drop. I ran, something I don't do and rugby tackled her. She looked at me angrily and then the screen went thud and landed on the floor right where she'd been. Our friend was 100% immersed in the cue - he didn't register the person standing on the mark, because they weren't there in rehearsal.

It's vital to be able to work with people, but often even after 10 weeks, I still struggle with the names of some people. They all know mine - but I have no memory of them, but I never would dream of letting them know.

Directors have to be people persons to get the best out of them. Insular loners make terrible directors.

I guess I would just rather make the movie when a lot of advice is don't do it, do these other things instead, instead of finding a way to do it. I feel the focus should be on how to get the movie made well, rather than not make it all and just do something different.

Unless it's bad of me to think that way?
This doesn't make sense. Who do you think is more objective you or outside observers? If most if not all are not encouraging you to make this movie there must be a reason.

I feel most of your decision making is flawed and done for the wrong reasons. I get the feeling you couldn't get hired working on other movies so you're are making your own to get around that. You are self appointing yourself into positions you aren't qualified for. It's one thing if you didn't have the credentials to be hired as a director but you had the aptitude. It would make sense to create a few really good shorts to prove you can direct. Instead you've had the opposite result, which has shown you aren't good at the primary responsibilities of a director. So instead of acknowledging that, you are yet again trying to get around that by hiring a co-director.

As long as you are not honest with yourself about your abilities you will continue in this endless loop of getting yourself in over your head and asking for advice.

Oh it was just said before that it's hard to get people to work very a very low pay without having personal relationships. So I was just responding to that.

Perhaps the documentaries I worked on with other people were not scripted then. It's just for example in interviews people would say things that would contract other people and couldn't make a story out of what they said therefore. But maybe I should have what the people say be scripted as well if that would be better.

But I would like to stick to fiction if that's do-able. As for not being able to work on other movies, I have worked on other movies that people have asked me to before. I just wanted to make my own, unless that is too ambitious. And I didn't say anything about that I was making a video about dance. I also have experience of personal relationships causing problems. It was just pointed out earlier on this thread that I could use people to work with that I have personal relationships with, so I was responding to that post.

Ryan. Your biggest snag is that you research, get information but are very, very bad at synthesis and analysis. You lack any ability to understand context. You get told specific things about questions, but use that narrow targeted response to produce a genetic rule. It is VERY annoying to tell you something to then have it repeated back at you later attached to a totally different scenario. Constantly you tell us you were told something and you were NOT! You attached it to something different. What said was that it is very difficult to get people for no/low pay unless they know you well and you can, in practice, twist their arm a little. Clearly you cannot ask strangers to work for low/no pay if you ha e no previous relationship, because they will correctly believe you are using them, and many will be insulted. You might get students wanting experience but they are worse than useless to you.

Over the years you have developed a ‘negative’ filter. Every time people say things you don’t agree with or don’t like, you just ignore it. You never even remotely ask yourself why they say it. Cherry picking comments is pointless.

The best advice for somebody putting even modest money into their project is don’t. It’s throwing it away. We almost feel guilty because our advice to stop gets ignored.

If there was a TV show about people making movies, you would not be out first week when you scored zero. You would be the one people voted through each week because it makes great TV, when you should have never even been on the show.

I fail to see even one positive that makes me think you have an ounce of film making ability, and surely by now you must have realised film making is simply not something you’re good at?

I totally forgot you totally misunderstood pencil and ink contracts. You do understand these are just status and don’t mean real contracts signed in pencil or pen? Pencil denoting an intention or willingness to sign but probably just that, opposed to a real contract agreed in full between two parties and legally binding. The way you tried to use the terms just made me realise you didn’t understand.

Ryan, you seem to have difficulty following what people have written because you take things literally.

Reread Paul's message again and see why he's referring to dancing.

Usually documentaries have had a treatment and other scripting material written, You need this in order to get funding or a commission for the production. This evolves has the material is gathered, and the documentary goes into pre-production how much is involved will depend on the nature of the documentary. A historical documentary is different to a fly on the wall documentary.

Your documentary experience seems to be at the more basic end of the spectrum, without any real production structure,

Well I just want to make a feature film that is fiction, with actors and that is what I want to do. But instead of saying well it can't happen and listing all the reasons, I want to find a way to make it happen. Is that so wrong?

I feel that if personal relationships are not an option because I need more options of people to work with, and if trying to hire strangers is a problem because they will not be interested for low pay, then there must be other options and solutions rather than to have the mindset that it is not do-able and there will always be problems. I think there is always a way, unless that is bad thinking?

These low budget features can be done, but the question is more if you personally currently have the skill set and other requirements that a director needs to make one of these productions.

It requires a large amount od self confidence and determination and you need to be aware that you will be taken to your personal limits. You need to be able to attract people to your film by using your interpersonal skills, because they're not doing it to pay the mortgage.. .

In the entertainment business, things are different from in an ordinary company. The person in charge is rarely capable and effective in all the roles, but always has a good understanding of what the roles can do, even if not how - they just know what can be expected, requested and often demanded. This means the person at the helm is more like a ship Captain - they make sure the people they have under their control are the ones who have the right skills. However, they must also be very good at making decisions regarding the skills they don't have. They listen, often to detailed technical or artistic input, then make an immediate decision. They do NOT have to know the people individually, but know their discipline.

Let's use a wardrobe example. They see costume glint in the lights and discover it's a zip. A zip in a period costume. They do NOT tell the wardrobe person they want the zip removing and replacing with a brown one that will match the fabric, or tell them they want 22 buttons and button holes sewing ready for the 2pm session. They just say fix it, knowing the wardrobe people will choose the most appropriate solution. They don't need to even know the wardrobe persons name - and some might just yell "Wardrobe" and a person comes scuttling across the set. They point and say "Get rid of that shiny zip - what idiot thought a shiny zip should be in a peasants clothing from the 1800's???"

If you have arm twisted your wardrobe person, being spoken to like this, and having no real world experience means they might just burst into tears for being unappreciated or worse, have a tantrum and walk out.

Remember a few months back, everyone berating Tom Cruise for yelling at a crew member for being lax with covid protection - and how the general public thought his behaviour outrageous. My view was that they should have done what they were told. Nobody likes being yelled at, but in the professional world, anyone upset by words would be pretty useless to have on a team - it's not bullying and it's not unusual. It's caused by pressure - pressure on everyone, and for some who don't care about standards, it's deserved.

If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen was a great maxim, but nowadays it's "if you can't stand the heat, we'll install aircon, get you some breathable fabric workwear, and introduce relief breaks every 20 minutes".

We're not actually saying it can't be done Ryan, but we are suggesting that it might be difficult for you, based on our experience of how you do things.

Your rule book gathering, inability to read people, and your lack of people skills and self-confidence make us draw that conclusion.

We KNOW you want to make a feature, but that is currently unlikely at your current level of skill - let alone the local skill base.

Look at your murder movie where your casting was terrible. Some of those actors were totally unbelievable - can you see that? Their inclusion spoiled the result. You didn't audition them, they were just allocated roles and they didn't fit the script. If you were making a movie called land of the giants, and all your actors were 5' 8" and under would you see the problem, or believe that low camera angles would sort it because you had read and been told that low angles looking up make people look taller?

The most fun low budget production I was involved with when starting out was a 16mm film - 20 minutes running time about a WW1 flying ace, and we built as a small team a biplane in the studio, made holes in it and set it on fire. One attempt at getting it right, and it was all sorted in the planning. We all got given a role we were comfy with. My role, of all things was pyros - so my very first outing with pyro devices and there was no internet then, so no books, no google, just post and telephone calls. How did I get pyro? I wanted to be involved so much I lied. Lights (my thing at the time was being done by a much older more experienced guy - so rather than be an 'assistant' or gopher, I said I could do pyro, then had two weeks to learn everything I could. However - it was also my first time on a real movie set, and so much was different from theatre. Learn all that is learnable was my mantra.

The most annoying thing about Ryan is, he asks for advice and acting like this is a profession production when in reality it's amateur vehicle to indulge his desires to do whatever he wants. So that's fine just do what you want and don't ask for advice. We don't have a vested interest in your success or failure. We don't care if you want to hire a co-director or micro manage every aspect of your movie.

I think that's the real thing Pete - there is no audience for Ryan's movie.

The entire process is to grab ideas from dozens of very different movies and join them up together and then be surprised it doesn't work?

There was quite a few information since, but do respond to some of it, I actually did cast the short films, I just went with who showed up in the cast because I wanted to get footage in the can. I was aware that the acting was bad, I just don't like saying that in case actors read me say it. I was aware. But I still wanted to make short films. Unless I shouldn't have until I got good actors and therefore it's a waste to make one therefore until I do.

As for taking ideas from different movies, which movies did I copy from?

Who's in the cast is key to a successful production, if the right people are in the right roles and there's a chemistry between the actors, the performances will sing. .

I talked to another filmmaker about how perhaps I shouldn't have make the short film because I didn't have actors that I thought would be good in the roles, or that I couldn't find a good DP for it, but she said to make it anyway, because you don't want to be known as a flake.

Is that true though that if you don't make the movie because the casting calls or finding a DP didn't go well, that you should try to make it anyway, so you are not seen as a flake? Or is it best not to and then start over again later, hoping other people will respond?

Realistically the only thing to be gained from this project is enjoyment. That's if you find scrabbling around trying to movie with no money fun. I can't see this winning film festival awards, any chance of commercial success, or even reel material demonstrating that you have talent as a director.

With people giving you advice this good Ryan, why am I not surprised?

If you were a chef Ryan, and you opened the fridge and the only food had gone bad, and smelled - would you actually use it?

Some things you say Ryan would be funny if you didn't really believe them? You knew you had bad actors, but you went ahead and used them? That is a something I have never known a director or producer to say. If you have a choice between a poor product or no product - I'd not want to be known as the crap guy?

Have you considered maybe your friend did not mean you to take it this way? Either that or she is frankly a screw loose and her elevator doesn't go to the top floor.

I agree with Pete - you are only as good as your last project!

The only reason to do a film with a poor cast is a technical exercise, you make it and move on. Learn what you can and make another film without looking back.

With people giving you advice this good Ryan, why am I not surprised?

If you were a chef Ryan, and you opened the fridge and the only food had gone bad, and smelled - would you actually use it?

Some things you say Ryan would be funny if you didn't really believe them? You knew you had bad actors, but you went ahead and used them? That is a something I have never known a director or producer to say. If you have a choice between a poor product or no product - I'd not want to be known as the crap guy?

Have you considered maybe your friend did not mean you to take it this way? Either that or she is frankly a screw loose and her elevator doesn't go to the top floor.

I agree with Pete - you are only as good as your last project!
Funny I also had a food analogy in mind, but I was thinking if you are a bad cook will buying better quality ingredients make you a better cook? Most of Ryan topics are really about him trying work around his inability to direct, spending years planning every detail because he can't improvise on set, hiring a co-director because he isn't good at directing actors... I could go on but we are really beating a dead horse. None of what we are saying is going to have any impact.

Oh yes, from now on I am only picking actors I feel will do well in the parts.

But as for the whole, actors and crew will only want to work with me if they have a prior personal relationship with me, that is one one thing I will have to work around and find an alternate solution for then. There are other filmmakers I worked for that have had strangers that they have had no past relationships work with them before on their projects, so I felt it was possible. For example, I was told before that if I want enough actors to choose from that are good, that I should be auditioning 50 people for each major role. If that's true, I don't have time to build personal relationships with over 50 people and what filmmaker does. Best just do casting calls with lots of actors and crew and pick people even if I never worked with them before, I figure.

Find something that matches that. Do it for our sake so we don't have to read these type of threads.

As long as some small group of people is willing to keep responding to the same questions over and over again, Ryan is going to keep asking the same questions over and over again. My theory (as I've mentioned before) is that Ryan would rather talk endlessly about making his dream movie, rather than take advice on what to do instead. At this point he seems to be more of a movie groupie, rather than an actual movie maker. And the consensus seems to be that he's not making any positive progress toward becoming the latter.

You're right I shouldn't have asked the same question again. From now on if I would like advice on a particular part of filmmaking I will ask about that but stick to new areas and only ask questions in new areas and try not to repeat myself.

How's the color grading on your phone going on your other job? Have you walked out yet? Because if this goes wrong it will reflect on being a director or anything else. People remember mistakes more than good work.

It's going a little better now because I have gotten use to the grading now. I wanted to take the phone home so I could put the footage on my computer then put it back on the phone, but the phone has some sort of security on which I cannot do that, so I am stuck with it I guess.

I asked them how they like the grading so far, and they said it was good and they seem to like it so not sure if that is good or bad. But it's starting to look someone better now that I have gotten use to working it. Not as good as it could be on a computer though of course. Well it's a documentary project and those usually do not have big cinematic color anyway, so not sure if anyone will notice a more simpler grade since documentaries tend to have them anyway? I wanted to go beyond that though and make it the best I could, but the phone security is preventing me.

I've shot broadcast programmes that had no or very little colour grading, it was all done in the camera, because it just wasn't an option in post production unless they were rescuing a scene because the white balance was wrong.

One of the rules is that the customer is always right, even when they're wrong. If they can't tell the difference they may be unaware that there higher levels, or it could be a case that it meets their needs, which are basic in nature for these productions.

Colour grading in documentaries varies from little to none to the production being graded to the highest levels for high end flagship documentaries. This web series sounds like it's at the lower end of the spectrum

I think grading for video is very much like mastering is for audio recording, and the real purpose is now surrounded by hype and the idea seems to be that anyone can master, on equipment designed for recording. So somebody sits in their studio and produces a masterpiece. Traditionally they then gave this to a different person who improves it for the general public. Grading is the same mysterious subject.

The trouble is that very often the people who 'master' are the same people who recorded it. So you finish your project and it's perfect. You then do more things to it, on the same system, on the same speakers with the same set of ears and the reality is you simply slap on a few presets that the internet says are flavour of the month excellence tools. Exactly the same with grading. It's something you MUST do, but most of the decisions were done in the edit. You already balanced the shots by adjusting the ones on a dull day to match better the ones on a sunny day and then these get matched against inside shots. You do this in the edit, or at least, I do. Then we could give it to somebody else to do on their properly calibrated monitor with much better contrast ratio capability - or we do it on a cruder device - perhaps cruder that the ones used in the edit. M Mastering and Grading when done by professionals with experience can improve things. When done by amateurs, my belief is that the process can be destructive. Even worse are the people who clearly don't understand it dictating use on the wrong kit. I suppose there is the point that if the viewers will mainly be watching it on a phone then grading for them, using a phone could be appropriate. I think it's probably bollocks!

Grading on a phone. lol I shouldn't laugh because I'm working on a budget dance film and they wanted and inexpensive gimbal so I'm using my iphone 12 with the dji osmo. They needed something small, light and easy to use, to run around in the middle of dance sets. It works well for that purpose. I'm using FilmicPro and paid a little extra for the ability to film in 10bit log. I've found despite using log there isn't a big difference mainly due to it's a phone with tiny sensor.

Oh that's interesting, I haven't seen footage in 10 log on a tiny sensor before. Why does the tiny sensor make less of a difference in terms of log quality?

Probably because the photosites on the phone sensor are so small the sensor has a limited dynamic range.

I had a gimbal for my GoPro and want that impressed but when I read the dji spec on the ronin s I realised my JVC100 would just fit on it, I bought one and I’ve kept the camera on it now semi permanently and despite the weight it works really well. The battery means I don’t have a full range of movement but I can work around that. The GoPro and the JVC both on 1080 look so different. I bought one of those silly cheap Chinese gopros and it’s 4K image on the dinky sensor looks impressive until you realise the dynamic range is quite squashed. I guess this is the same issue?

I think this is a case of DeJaVue
https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/techniques-independent-production/537012-co-directing-feature-film-bad-idea-oppose-being-single-director.html

was that a pun?

Deja View?

I think this is a case of DeJaVue
https://www.dvinfo.net/forum/techniques-independent-production/537012-co-directing-feature-film-bad-idea-oppose-being-single-director.html
Most of his threads are recycled topics he revisits. While his topics are phrased as questions he really is only looking for confirmation of what he wants to do. Sometimes he capitulates but often this is only temporary in a few months or a year he'll be asking the same questions. I get the feeling he bounces around looking someone to tell him what he wants to hear.

I always wonder why when a question gets the answers that loads of us could have predicted on page one, why Ryan tries to rephrase his questions to get different answers. This topic wasn't about a second unit director at all, it was about hiring a director who can do the things Ryan finds tricky. The key factor in all Ryans posts is simply that he's not too good with people. We find him a polite inoffensive fella who really wants to make movies - but simply doesn't have any talent in that area. Ryan isn't alone - when I was teaching we'd always put students into little boxes - where they'd have exactly the same strengths and weaknesses as students in preceding cohorts. Some were eternal researchers, and just never got around to producing anything because they consistently got stuck when research produced conflicting info - and they'd be trying to make sense of it, and never moved on. They were the people who always volunteered but rarely delivered, or delivered a warped version of the intention because tiny, but critical things got missed.

I remember a composer being contracted to write music for 3 opera singers and a big orchestra. The person who commissioned him was swayed by his charisma, larger than life personality and name on posters from outside movie theatres. On the first day I met him I went to see the Artistic Director and told him we needed an assistant for the guy. No budget, not included in the plans, no office space etc etc - why do we need an assistant? Because he cannot read rom write music. He's down there with the orchestra and the singers and is humming everyone's parts, expecting them to learn them. Every job he'd had, he had an assistant to write down the music when he hummed it!

I've had to heavily redact it to protect the reputations of many really good people, but this is what was said in the press at the time. You can still imagine the absolute chaos of the event. Fundamental issues like time - playing music from a large oil rig support ship offshore was a technical feat, but since nobody has invented a time machine, it was seconds late arriving on the shore. Somebody on land was supposed to be singing to the music, dressed as Napoleon (nobody really understood why) Every single Arts or community group had been seconded - so yes, there really was a model boat club contingent working with real opera singers and a load of people rollerskating (or at least trying to rollerskate, as a beach area is not that friendly to roller-skates). The BBC were going to broadcast it, but I think they realised the chances of it working were zero. This review was the kindest.

NOTHING went right. Even the main sponsor, XXXXXX, lost the use of part of their XXXX two days before - not exactly the best of advertisements. And it had all sounded like such a good idea in the beginning - XXX a science fiction inter-active community event set on and around the quiet XXX resort, XX near to XX - a giant happening that would bring professional and amateur together as part of XXXX Year of Opera and Musical Theatre.


In the event, it all came horribly unstuck. XXX, late of XXX endeavour, drafted in to co-ordinate this mammoth undertaking (advance publicity talked of 22 ships of various hues and sizes, a helicopter, 19 vehicles, and a cast of over 500 local people) must have despaired as several hundred people voted with their feet and ''evacuated'' themselves from the seafront in plummeting temperatures and stiffening wind.

A coming together it was not. Over-blown, miscalculated in tone and effect, what started out as twin-stranded, a mixing of actuality - an incident at sea involving a supposed ecological phenomenon (a ''stone-plant'') - and a re-enactment of a Victorian model yacht ''prom'' - descended into risible farce.

What had gone wrong? To be fair, XXX was only one component - but a major one - of a scheme that suffered from its own supra-ambition, mixing opera and open-air daring-do in what turned out to be an unholy alliance.

If a finger has to be pointed, it has to be in the direction of XXXX's arts development officer JXXXX, a personable, rangey former performance artist, who, reported XXXX, originally ''wanted to do an outdoor site-specific show at the model yacht pond'' plus her perhaps unwise decision to draft in artists - XXXX, composer XXX, and visual artist XXX - who had never worked together before.

XXX proceeded to expand on XXX's original brief, taking in not only the beach and seafront site but also the harbour entrance, creating, in the process, a so-called ''national news incident'' with reporters and interviewers, high-speed craft, and even a dredger.

All to no avail. Whilst XXX successfully seemed to overcome the logistics of co-ordinating different craft without crashing them into each other (no mean feat) - one magical moment had a number of outboard-motor craft speeding across the darkened beach-front to XXXX's thrilling electronic oceanic score - the two strands simply never coalesced, descending indeed to a reductio ad absurdum the creators can surely never have envisaged.


XXX's ''sonic playground'' - a direct but inventive steal of forms and styles from end-of-the-pier Wurlitzers to sea-influenced hymns and deconstructionism - deserved better. So indeed did all the people of XXX. A sad end to a two-year public and private-sponsored project that is looking to such arts-led events to help regenerate an area weighed down by youth unemployment and industrial decline, and with almost no professional arts profile.


XXX no doubt will bounce back. XXX, the whole regenerative project in which she is involved, of which XXXX is but the start, has just won a #400,000 lottery grant for a programme of artists-in-residence involving youngsters. XXX chief executive XXXX, despite this initial set-back, is optimistic, too.

''Everybody gets so hypnotised by big buildings issues. But I believe the real enjoyment and birth place of new opera for both professionals and audiences isn't in the big buildings but is happening here in village halls, beaches, and potting sheds, and in the interface between professional and amateur. ''I think there's a revolution happening in the eastern region. It may take a little while before people realise the impact of what's going on. But I truly believe it's where the future of opera lies because it's being done in and around where people live rather than being this hugely expensive event people have to plan all year to do.'' For all their sakes, I hope he's right.

A number of musicians can't read music, but in cases like that I would've assumed that the assistant would be part of the deal and they would be brought in before the orchestra and singers were involved.

The three foreign concert opera singers got engaged on International contracts and lots of it was non-stop wailing, totally tuneless and impossible to learn - and there were pages and pages. Plenty of musicians can't read music, but an 80 piece orchestra has to. If you are a composer for works that need a symphony style orchestra, then you would normally even have somebody assigned to actually being in charge of the pads, but they are essentially copyists and musical grammar checkers. The image is from what the assistant musical director produced, and features the composer's input on the staves below.

This composer seems to be putting in less than you'd expect. They don't seem to be a Irving Berlin, Lionel Bart, Anthony Newly, or Paul McCartney. I guess George Martin laid out the orchestration and score for the latter.

The last two lines looks like a stock market chart or an ekg

The image is from what the assistant musical director produced, and features the composer's input on the staves below.

Apparently the composer wants the fourth part to play a sawtooth wave, and the fifth part to play a sine wave. Since the frequencies are so low (only a few cycles per measure) they will be infrasonic, which is a blessing ... nobody will hear them.

If this guy got a job as a "composer," can someone sign me up for a high-paying gig as a Swahili translator?

Personally, I would rather hear a performance of 4'33" by John Cage, unless there are crying babies nearby, in which case there's a lot to be said for just going home and playing 4'33" on my own piano.

Ryan would get on very well with John Cage, and a video that supported the 4'33" would be interesting - I've never thought of that one? I wonder if I could pop it on Youtube or would the content protection system catch me out? If they removed it, I wonder how I'd know.

EDIT - damn the BBC beat me to it in the Barbican series
https://youtu.be/yoAbXwr3qkg

I'm not sure it was the best choice for the finale of the concert, but it's actually a good track to use a source of background for some uses - a study in coughing and sniffing maybe?