Hi, my name is Hakan (grandparents are Turkish). I was born and live in Madrid. In 72 hours I will be a free man for 31 days. Well, not really all that free because I will have different responsibilities than I currently have but they will be responsibilities nonetheless. Something I will not be responsible for, however, is going to work each morning (or afternoon or evening for that matter) (well, at least not my normal work). You see, in Spain there is a certain national film competition. In this particular film competition, when you win the prize for best film you get one month off from your normal job (it's targeted at hobbyist film makers). The government pays you 67% of your normal salary, you don't have to go to (regular) work, but in return you have to spend the month (or at least you're supposed to spend the month) working on turning your short (oh yeah, another thing about this film festival/competition: not only is it aimed at amateur film makers but they're (the films, I mean) meant to be "short" films, but not in the sense of purposely being "short" as in a short story where the format calls for a certain approach but more like "previews"; you make a film that can be no longer than 4 minutes and it's kind of a preview of what you would make if you had more time and budget and all that) film that won the competition (which mine did) into a longer movie, which in this case should be around 30 minutes long (note that while the initial limit of 4 minutes is not really meant to add in additional constraints that would turn the competition into a strictly "short film" competition which would attract short film makers, in the end you have to be pretty good at telling a short story and making people want more which requires some special short film techniques right there so that you will be chosen to make your longer movie but in the end the result is really to get a longer film but still not "feature length"). In addition to your government salary provided by the good King of Spain that aims to partially compensate for you not working (and therefore not getting a regular salary from your regular job that you need to take time off from so that you can devote all your time and energy to making the longer film as good as it can be), you also get a fairly substantial movie-making budget, all of which must be spent on making the movie (rule 23.4, paragraph 6 makes it pretty clear that you can't just use the budget to give yourself a big fat salary and hand in a low-budget movie): a million euros. Scary, right?
So, right now I have 3 days of my regular job left, 860,425 EUR in a special government-controlled account (it would take too much space to explain where the other ~140,000 EUR went but suffice to say that I had nothing to do with it and Felipe VI is no doubt shopping for his next pair of pants), and an empty Word document on my computer with the filename "Script.docx". The organizers of the competition (La Junta Nacional de Cine de España [JNCE]) stress that the government-subsidized time off work and the not-modest film budget are important incentives to further develop homegrown Spanish talent and associated industries in film-making in Spain. To further this aim, they also emphasize that to keep employers happy and for all sorts of other political, social, and other associated reasons that governments have to care about, the winner of said competition should not actually start filming until the one month of non-working subsidized time begins (rule 33.2.5, paragraphs 1-6, further clarified in rule 68.9). What's interesting about this is that filming is so emphasized (i.e., not my emphasis infra). What this says to me is that filming is meant to start immediately upon the start of the subsidized time (and as I've stated is around 72 hours from now). This kind of makes sense because I don't know how much you (the general reader) know about film making (admission: I don't know all that much) but 31 days to shoot, edit, and produce a 30 minute film is one tight deadline. It's probably clear what I'm getting at, but just in case I will spell it out explicitly: I have 3 days to write this script and I currently have zilch.
It will probably help to start with what my winning preview film was all about. In theory, the 30 minute film that I will make in the coming weeks is meant to be the "real" version of the preview that I submitted to the competition. If it wasn't already clear that my day job is as a contract lawyer, this will probably make it so: I've read, analyzed, and documented the correlations, connections, inconsistencies, self-referrals, outside sources, etc. of the competition's 912 pages of rules and regulations (honestly I haven't done much of my real job in quite a while despite the fact that I'm sitting at my desk and watching the 72-hour countdown right now) and I can't find anything that forces one to directly adopt what was "promised" in the preview film. I think it's understood (an unwritten rule, if you will) that that's what one does, but it's not a cold hard rule. If we look back to the framers' intents when drafting the rules and regulations of the film competition (RRFC), I think it's fairly clear that this omission was intentional. First, there are 912 pages of rules and regulations. That alone shows the meticulousness of these people. There are two distinct sections outlining how and when filming is allowed to begin. There is an entire chapter delineating the Spanish-content requirements (no more than 33% of the filming may be done outside of Spain, for instance). There are three appendices (not included in the 912 page RRFC booklet), one of which is a 1200-page dictionary of allowed terms in the script (notable omission: "euzko"). The fact that there isn't at the very least a short clause describing the plot/story requirements and how they connect to the original submission is clear evidence that there were never meant to be such requirements. So, this actually makes things a lot harder for me. Why? Because it opens up the search space incredibly. If I could only expand on the 4 minutes of my original submission then at least I would be constrained in what the 30 minutes should cover. But, alas, I must do my country proud and produce the best 30 minutes of amateur film that I am able to produce (see innate nationalism, supra in main text) and if that requires me to venture outside of what was somehow implicitly promised in my 4-minute submission, then so be it.
So, back to my original submission. I honestly think that one of the prime reasons that I emerged victoriously from the competition is that, unlike every other participant and his brother and his brother's brother, I didn't make a film about our war. One of the films was literally 4 minutes of a man sitting in an armchair reading from the scene in For Whom the Bell Tolls where Pilar describes the execution of a number of fascists in her village. Another somehow squeezes a fantasy of the war into 4 minutes with a beginning (the coup), a middle (Nationalists reaching the Northern coastline), and a fictitious end (the victory by the Republicans). Instead, I (rather cleverly I might admit, but then again the fact that it worked is a troubling conclusion for human nature and the future of the world but in hindsight may actually be something else entirely but I play this out in the following paragraph, supra) played to the undertones of nationalism in Spain (despite the understood hatred that we all have for it and its roll in our unfortunate past) by presenting a 4 minute film on the glorious 2010 World Cup win of La Furia Roja (The Red Fury [the Spanish National Football Team]). The dramatic loss to Switzerland in our first game (which would prove to be our only loss of the tournament) and the media heckling that followed. When no one believed (including the Spaniards) La Furia Roja still prevailed. And so I see my film as displaying two important levels of irony that simmer in modern Spain: (1) the only thing that film critics in Spain love more than imagining a Nationalist defeat in the Spanish Civil War is a nation coming together to embrace the love of our national football team; and (2) while we would never forgive La Furia Roja for losing the first game of the World Cup to the Swiss bankers, and we would never give up the glory that came with the winning of the World Cup, and the glory was only more glorious after having lost the first game of the tournament, we feel ashamed at the loss and would never feel grateful for the added glory, even though the glory is what we ultimately cherish. At least that's what I hope the 4 minutes managed to convey. So if I'm meant to stick with that, how does one extend it to 30 minutes?
To start, it would be nice to understand why my submission was so well received. Of the more than 10,000 (yes, ten followed by three zeroes) entries, there was a single winner and it was my 4 minute film pieced together on my girlfriend's MacBook, filmed principally on an iPhone, and also with a GoPro, and cut heavily with archive footage of the glorious summer of oh-10 and our country's sport heroes. It can't have (only) been the visuals or the editing or the score (that's movie-speak for the music, I think). And that leaves the message. So now I begin questioning myself: did it win at a so-called "shallow" level because of the affinity to the 2010 win where my country became a non-stop party for the months that followed and therefore any connection to that beautiful time (especially pre-20% youth unemployment, etc.) brings us emotionally back to that moment when all else didn't matter and we could all be happy just because of a game? Or, did the jury award my film the prize at a "deep" level, understanding the ironies I was trying to convey and (be still, my beating heart!) see my 4-minute film as art? As a social statement? Which would, of course, make me an artist. If we go down that latter road, this forces me to then ask another basic question: is this all I have to offer? Jokes? Irony? Shallow treatments of a subject that is somehow meant to be deep due to my hinting at its own shallowness? Is it because I'm afraid to deconstruct anything of importance? What's so wrong with dissecting our war? Do I hide behind shallowness and banalities and jokes (&c...) because I fear that I myself have nothing deep to convey? I'm afraid that might be it.
I recently read a Jonathan Franzen essay in the New Yorker (yes, he's big in Spain). In the essay he obviously talked about a bunch of birds but the main topic was a trip he made with his brother to Antarctica. Told by most it would have been a dull article; the daily happenings on the cruise ship full of high-income Americans paddling sea kayaks amongst antarctic icebergs. However, the story is quite dramatic due to an interleaved story about Franzen's uncle form whom he (Franzen) inherited the money required to go on this expensive trip. The uncle had all sorts of interesting (but unfortunate) things happen to him in his life. He left his wife because she had become obsessed with their daughter; his daughter died in a car accident essentially because he had left (OK, not directly because but the obvious unstated argument is that she wouldn't have been driving there if the uncle hadn't left); his wife (obviously) has a full-on mental breakdown; out of duty he comes back to care for her for the rest of his life despite his miserableness. Grim, but makes for a great story.. Or film? This got me thinking about the connection between Spain's loss to Switzerland in the first game of the World Cup 2010 (bear with me here) and Franzen's uncle (who in some ways Franzen was basically honouring by writing the essay). The uncle never would have asked for or wanted for something as terrible as his daughter's death or his wife's descent into madness. Just like Spain never would have wanted to lose any games to anyone. But, that initial loss (which we will never forgive them for, by the way) made their ultimate world champion win all the more meaningful, glorious, and important. What I'm trying to say is, maybe we need bad things to happen for even greater things to follow?
Yikes, I just re-read that last paragraph and what it seems like I'm trying to suggest sounds pretty ugly. I'll just stick with being shallow. The 30 minute video will be the same as the 4-minute submission with an additional 26 minutes of cuts to our players being "injured", crying on the pitch, being carried off the pitch, diving across the pitch in celebration after a goal, and crying in celebration as they carry the beautiful gold trophy above their heads. Hopefully someone will find some irony in there...
