Junk Mail

It is a well-worn refrain, from the glitterati of the movie business, that press junkets are the worst part of making a film. You know the sort of thing – a gaggle of actors, their faces glazed with the kind of resentful, joyless expression born uniquely of contractual obligation, being interviewed literally hundreds of times over the course of a few hours by journalists from all over the world, asking the same questions, over and over and over again. I once saw an outtake from a press junket for Toy Story, in which Tim Allen blew his top after being asked the same stupid question for, quite possibly, the 300th time that day. It was a priceless moment, but not an entirely unsympathetic one. Junkets are like purgatory for sucessful actors, the penance they must do in order to be invited to all those glitzy parties and award ceremonies. Actors quite simply hate junkets, and they will testify that there is no part of the filmmaking process, from beginning to end, that is less fun and less rewarding.

They're wrong, by the way. Now, I’m usually very defensive of actors when it comes to the sort of the casually unkind things people say about them – that they are stupid, or, most untrue of all, they don’t do a real job, none of which are even remotely true for any actor I know or have worked with – but I must confess to being slightly impatient with actors who complain about press junkets. Not least among the reasons why is that they are probably being put up in a very expensive hotel, with several very comfortable perks to sweeten the pill, along the way. And although, admittedly, I have very rarely ventured in front of a camera lens myself (at any rate, not since a memorable and copyright-flouting turn as Spiderman, in my directorial debut, aged six) I still reckon I can beat that hands down.

The most boring part of making a film is the sound mix.

The best book I’ve ever read about filmmaking, ‘Making Movies’ by the director Sydney Lumet, contains an hilarious and spot-on chapter about the sound mix, his description of which I’m unable to better, so anyone seriously intersted in the process would be well advised to check it out. Briefly, however, the mix is the bit that happens right at the end, when all the pictures have been pieced together, the music recorded, and all that remains is to finessethe disparate elements of the soundtrack into all their 5.1 surround, THX-enhanced glory. It is an absolutely essential part of the filmmaking process, but one almost entirely devoid of creativity, carried out by very skilled and diligent technicians. It is also one at which any director worth their salt should be present as much as possible.

Now, I like sound engineers. I’ve met some extremely nice ones. But I wouldn’t necessarily trust them to mix the sound on my film. And nor should I. If a director is not on hand to curb the perfectionist instincts of these eminently qualified men and women (although they are almost all men), they could very well be left with a soundtrack that is technically flawless, but entirely wrong. If the music sounds a bit loud here, or the dialogue a trifle quiet there, then who’s to say it shouldn’t be corrected? Well, nobody, if the director is not around to tell them when it’s meant to be like that.

The interminable dullness of the mix cannot fully be described to one who has not experienced it, except that it involves sitting in a dark room doing very little but offer the occasional comment, while somebody very clever does a lot of very fiddly work that you don't understand. In front of you is a dizzying array of multi-coloured knobs and digital displays, each one deciding the pitch of this, the tone of that, the aural minutiae of up to several hundred individual tracks. For short films and television (at least, the sort of television that they let me make) the process is mercifully brief by comparison, but still a cold, oddly emotionless experience, nonetheless - akin, perhaps, to watching an autopsy, or dividing up the CDs with an ex. On feature films, this process can go on for several months. In your face, Tim Allen.

Of course, I’m way too unimportant to have ever done anything like a press junket. The lovely Mata Hari – or Mrs. Red Pants of Justice, which she still refuses to be referred to as – has done a couple of them as a reporter, and also found the experience every bit as dry and lifeless as one would expect. However, there is a weird sort of symmetry to be drawn between the experience of the junket – an endurance test for the rich and famous, forced to give the same answers to the same questions, again and again, for hours and hours, like some nightmarish, gold plated treadmill – and that which those very same people most probably had to endure at very beginning of their careers; the endless cycle of opportunity and rejection, knocking on countless doors, getting the same answers to the same questions, again, and again, and again. Perhaps the junket isn’t purgatory. Maybe it’s just good, old-fashioned karma.

Some people really hate all that – the knocking on doors, the pushing oneself, the long, drawn out process of getting a foot on the ladder. I don’t mind it so much, although admittedly it can be a little disheartening at times. I’m certainly well-placed to comment, given that I’ve just spent the last two months sending out dozens, if not hundreds, of DVD reels – the calling cards of the film industry – during the spare time afforded by a particularly long and fiddly sound mix.

Never mind your CV being the tenth that some bored producer or other has received before the morning coffee break; just paying the bills is a necessary evil when you’re an independent filmmaker, in it because it’s all in the world that you’ve ever wanted to do. And if I ever reach a stage in my career where I can honestly say that the worst part of it all is being stuck in a hotel room, answering stupid questions for a succession of people who earn less in a week than I’ve earned since my last cup of coffee – that would be a good time to give up and go home. Believe nobody who says that this business is glamorous. But at the same time, trust nobody who says that it isn’t a hell of a lot of fun, too.

Trust me. I used to be Spiderman.