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Reviews The Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprintby Chris Jones
Review by James MacGregor Guerilla movie maker Chris
Jones has been at it again - and done it bigger and better than ever before.
Authorship that is. Whilst his last feature production Urban Ghost Story,
set in Glasgow, was gathering critical acclaim at Edinburgh International Film
Festival a couple of years ago, Jones was gathering all his notes together as
fresh material for this, his latest foray into authorship. His Guerilla Film Makers
Handbook explored new ground, but this is a far more generous portion of Jones
expertise in creating features with little or no cash. This Guerilla Film Makers Movie
Blueprint does for low budget film what Gray did for human anatomy. It exposes
completely the complexities and hidden conflicts that lie unseen beneath the
film gloss. More important, it shows the aspiring filmmaker how to plot a safe
course through them. The book is not a blueprint for
success. It is no fewer than 25 blueprints – and there’s
one for every department, from production company start-up to sales and
distribution, each packed with essential information. The style is factual and
informal, drawing on Jones’ own experience of helming two features and
producing a third, but regularly pulls in other qualified opinion for snapshot
advice alongside the main text. As you would expect from a film maker it is a
rich visual experience, with detailed photographs, diagrams and graphs and
tables laid out attractively. There’s a strong sense of designer vision as you
browse through the book. Like any good film maker, Jones relies on his crew to
back him up. These particular film types seem two dimensional at first glance,
but they have cleverly been given life by illustrator Jim Loomis. They are keen,
dedicated and when the going gets tough, these guys raise smiles. I would be
prepared to hire any of them. This is a filmmaker who has
shown real dogged determination and persistence in pursuit of his art. Having
rejected his film school – they were into social realism, he wanted drama –
he went his own way. Together with fellow film-school maverick Genevieve
Jolliffe he founded Living Spirit Films and set out to write a script, acquire
some stock and shoot a movie. Unfortunately, as many of us know, it is just not
that simple and Jones and Jolliffe also found, as they got going, the going just
got tougher. Never slow to grab a publicity
gift, filming a serial killer story in Gloucester, they grabbed an opportunity
to ride on the coat tails of the newly discovered West murders. The tabloids
loved that one! At one point, the pair were
suspected of some massive fraud by authorities who refused to believe the pair
were making movies without money. It had to be a scam, reasoned Mr Plod, so they
found themselves locked up, for a short while at least, until true reason
prevailed. You learn a lot fast in those circumstances, as they quickly
discovered. Determined to pass on their experience, they logged it all
carefully. Once the making of the film was by, they started on the book of the
making of the film. The resulting Guerilla Film Makers Handbook made history.
Not only did it become a best selling film production book, it undoubtedly made
more money for the cellulloid comrades as authors, than as film auteurs. Now the pair are pursuing
different lines. Genevieve is working in the US after her successful directing
debut with Urban Ghost Story, Chris Jones has continued to look after Living
Spirit, working on a new feature script and running Guerilla Film Maker courses
as well tackling Movie Blueprint. Meanwhile Genevieve has put her time in the US
to good use – a transatlantic edition of GFMH is just about to come out and no
doubt will climb the dollar sales charts as surely as it did over here. Jones has profited from his
earlier GFM Handbooks and not only because they became best sellers, but because
he has an awareness of what he had not given sufficient coverage to. The
resulting reshoot has not simply revisited previous ground, but also, superceded
it, with much more detail than the earlier handbook format would allow. As a
result, Movie Blueprint has become something of a paperback tome, its 600 pages
packed with essential knowledge, but it weighs in as one point six six kilos of
pure gold. This amalgam of experience, distilled, revisited, re-ordered and patiently recounted is available to any filmmaker for around £25. Published by Continuum, London
& New York ISBN 0 8264 1453 2 Buy The Guerilla Film Makers Movie Blueprint from Amazon.com
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