Make A Movie

I have had a passion for music ever since I can remember. Writing, recording and performing songs always challenged and fed my need to create and be expressive.

Now that passion has been redirected towards film, in particular writing scripts, a much steeper curve has presented itself in being able to foresee a movie project go from a seed of thought to a finished product on the screen beginning as I am, relatively from scratch.

This is a short film but having written and directed “It Is Beyond Everything” my newest creative goal of making, or at least writing, a feature film has become an achievable possibility. I am elated to release this ten minutes fifty one seconds of my vision into the world, buoyed by the prospects and possibilities it poses, another tick on The Life List.

With a huge special thanks to:

Tim Gooding, Film Making and Fun, Bob Starkenburg, Vincent Lee, Jasyl Zonoobi, Dana Kenworthy, Daniel Punton, Marcus Cloherty, Steven Laurent, Matthew Grego, Matt Butcher, Corrine Parker, Eliot Reynolds, Malcolm Larri, Alex Marinkovic, St Canice  - Elizabeth Bay.

Get a photo crossing Abbey Rd

What can I say? This photo/album is my earliest memory and influenced the course of my life in so many ways from dancing around the lounge room with Dad to "Octopus's Garden" and "Come Together" as a child, up to today.

I walked the 3Km from my hotel listening to the Beatles on the MP3, even I was surprised at the rush of rising excitement as I got closer.

The first thing I saw was about thirty people running onto and across the road with cameras and mostly patient drivers rolling their eyes as they had to stop for these crazy tourists doing their reenactments.

At one point I was poised to grab a 2yo girl who wobbled off the sidewalk into oncoming traffic as the young mother was busy standing on the road taking photos of friends oblivious to her child's impending doom. Luckily the traffic stopped as someone beat me to it. The local council is talking about removing the crossing because of the danger and inconvenience to traffic. There was 18 accidents in the eighties, 18 in the nineties and 22 since 2000 but no deaths.

I stood smiling and watching for about half an hour just soaking it up and taking in all the changes and unseen details surrounding the original album cover and sussing out the various tourists for a potential photographer prepared to indulge me ten minutes of their time.

Their names were Dan and Shannon, a couple of cool local musos. Dan used my iPhone and Shannon very generously also took photos on her iPad and emailed them to me.

I did two crossings as Lennon with hands in pockets then two crossings as Paul barefoot with a cigarette. It was tricky to cross with no cars obscuring me, when no one else was getting in my shot and avoiding the traffic at the same time. At one point a car came screaming at me beeping its horn but I held my composure, if I was going to get hit by a car then this would be a great place for it to happen.

A great feeling just to see the famous crossing at last and a humbling experience to get a photo and cross it off the LIFE LIST.

I checked out the studio as well of course from the outside, smaller than I imagined.

Ride the London Eye

I got to the Eye about 1pm and happily paid an extra £10 (£30) for a fast track ticket and was aboard in fifteen minutes, jumping the hour plus queue.

I had this on the LIFE LIST for a number of reasons:

To challenge my increasing high anxiety.

To get a visual sense of the layout of London, this city I have seen bits and pieces of in movies and TV for years.

Also because its 135 metres tall, second highest Ferris wheel in the world (dam you Singapore!) but the highest cantilever wheel in the world.

It moved slow enough to ease my vertigo cautiously to the heights until almost at the top it stopped......."we apologise for the delay in service we are attending to an incident on the ground, we appreciate your patience". When this came over the intercom the fifteen or so of us on board flashed glances at each other and nervously smiled, I had to laugh out loud.

As someone pointed out at least we were stuck with a view.

After about twenty minutes we started moving again.......backwards! The kid standing next to me and I stared at each other with a look of "oh that's not right?" Then it paused and resumed our normal journey as if nothing had happened.

That all said it was exhilarating and I now have a real sense of how London is laid out and where all the major landmarks are in relation to each other. "Highly" recommended for a brief visit to London.

Travel the English tunnel

The tunnel was simple enough, just catch a train from Paris to London.

This was such an engineering feat I just thought it would be cool to go through.

The intercom announced we would be entering the tunnel shortly then with a whoosh at 160Kmh, total darkness surrounded the carriage, goodbye mainland Europe.

After about twenty minutes with another whoosh we came screaming into daylight and everyone gasped, hello England.

See Mona Lisa at the Louvre

I chose this because it seemed like the most challenging thing to do in Paris with the rumored two hour lineup just to get in, the astronomical size of the Louvre and my crowd impatience.

Adding to the pressure was a swollen knee for a week leading up to my visit that I couldn't stand on for long, couldn't bend and had trouble just walking let alone dealing with stairs!

All that taken into account from when I got to the entrance to being front row at this renown painting took all of twenty minutes! I even got to push my way through the crowd from left to right just to make sure her eyes followed me. Yes, they did.

The real challenge turned out to be the Eiffel Tower. I did not make it to any level of the tower, on both occasions I visited the lineups were at least three hours.

But! On the first evening I was there I was treated to an incredible sight when just after sunset and just before the lights came on, a huge yellow full moon rose behind the Tower, an incredible sight I will not forget and unfortunately is not conveyed in the photos.

Of course a visit to Paris would not be complete without paying my respects to Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison at the Pere Lachaise Cemetry.

Hansa Tonstudio

I saw a documentary years ago on Bowie and Iggy and their Berlin years (76-78 when the wall was still up for the recording of Low, Lust for Life and The Idiot). The thing that caught my attention was the studio, in particular the room and technique used for the vocals on Heroes.

My good Berliner friend Ganesha, set me up for a special Bowie tour seeing the studio and Bowie and Iggys old apartment, cafe, restaurant and favourite clubs ending with a Bowie exhibition.

Bowie nicknamed the live room in the studio the "big hall by the wall" because the room is huge and at about 400m you could see the guards in the towers on the wall from the control room window. In a huge list of other artists associated with Hansa are Depeche Mode, Nick Cave and U2.