stepped away from the madness...sometimes it makes sense...why we did it, how we did it, what we actually did.
the process is the story. we followed what we were given. when i arrived in dublin, we still didn´t have the story. sometime shortly thereafter, we realized the story was simply going to come to us. birds and quests. stories and songs. it was already there, and we just put our fingers on it and said 'go.' it is always in front of us...all of us. just believe and it comes to life.
have a plan, and also plan to ditch the plan, for things happen that one never plans.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
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In retrospect: 'we didn't have a story' is untrue, but its interesting that you should put it that way.
A lot of the conflicts and ultimately the story itself arose from this opposing view we had of the story we were working with.
Looking back over the notes I took in the months leading up to the shoot, the story we saw eventually unfold was rooted in the development of those ideas we discussed during that time.
The main points of the story- an epic, involving a hero, who visits a foreign land, encounters obstacles, enemies and companions along the way, and ultimately moves on to a higher place, were simple, but this is the story we worked towards.
I think the methods I used to communicate the story I saw for this film were faulty to some extent because it left you (Cavallo/Antonio) reaching everywhere for a framework approaching what you thought might be what i wanted. When you hit on something and I went 'yeah yeah that's it' there was a sense of relief, and then it was on to the next part.
So in devising the story framework around the Seven Valleys (from the Sufi text) in the way we did, it simply fit the story structure we had settled on for the successful production of a film using the methods we chose. In other words, we needed a sequence of distinct segments that followed each other in ordered time, inciting incidents that determined the hero's progress.
The inciting incidents needed to be granular and simple, so that our collective filmmaking group would understand and latch on to the concepts involved with ease. Ideally they'd go "yeah, that sequence makes sense, I can see where this goes next, and I can see how both I and the hero might interact in this piece so he can get there."
In reality, the story treatment became a device containing a sequence of inciting incidents for both you (Cavallo) and the audience/participants (our "cast") to use as a support or platform for movement and development of a very simple story, which we always had.
i.e. the story was, is and always will be:
a man walks into a world, he meets people who's lives he affects and whose world affects him, then he moves onwards, to a higher place, leaving them behind.
in other words, his presence in space creates an effect, however small, in the world, and in people's hearts.
The story is about a man who makes a difference, and creates love.
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