Making Films: Every story tells a picture

Every story tells a picture, every picture tells a story. My literary obsessions seem to work this way, with hard-edged moments glowing out from the pages and insisting that I return to them again and again. Solid objects hover in and around these moments, a pearl dropped and found (or unfound) in pale blades of grass, a smoothed shard of sea glass, ocean-green and softly grained, a gold chain nailed to a tree. More recently - an oval stone, rounded, almond-eyed, a human head, levitating, tapping at the skylight. A man, dead, ancient, lying on a beach and turning slowly into a tree. A leaf, full. A watch, removed from the wrist and flung, sideways, into a canal. The undoneness of the thing. The absolute not-doneness of it.

I chased that vision of sea glass, like John of 'Solid Objects', taking his role as he surrendered everything for the pursuit of fragments - the resulting film became another of these fragments, a short 5-minute piece of film, cut and stuck into sequence. Screening 'The Beachcomber' for the first time in Oxford, in the company of my most wonderful friends, was one of the best things of the past year. In November, we screened it again at Picturehouse Central, which was another highlight of the year and of my move to London. With the addition of Jordan's score - which is perfect - the film was properly whole and complete. (I think, or, at least, hope, that Woolf would have approved.) Thank you so much to all of my friends who came to see it twice!

With that moment deliberated and revised, translated, screened, and concluded, I'm ready to greet the next one. This time, the watch and the collage, the conversation by water. The challenge of dialogue and 16mm film. I've been warned of the difficulties of casting and 30-second takes (turns out it's much easier when the only character is me and the most difficult direction is stepping painfully into pebble-churning, freezing waves in the early morning). I have a week at home to deliberate script cuts and tweaks, to ruminate on the best pictures for this particular story. For now, I don't want to give away any more. But it is all very exciting - festooned in the additional excitement of Christmas as I travel home through solid, grey, Shropshire fog.

L x