They say that creative works are never really finished, we just let them go at some point.  I guess that’s what deadlines are for.  The new versions of step outline, budget and schedule for A Case of the Dismals were due a …]]> For the Spurlock Sisters’ first blog entry, visit: http://filmmakermagazine.com/64191-spurlock-sisters-at-biennale-college-cinema-part-one/

They say that creative works are never really finished, we just let them go at some point.  I guess that’s what deadlines are for.  The new versions of step outline, budget and schedule for A Case of the Dismals were due a week after we arrived at San Servolo, at 2:00PM.  So of course I finished at 1:55. I had also ‘finished’ a couple of hours earlier when I thought the deadline was noon.  With a sigh of relief, Mai and I clicked ‘send’ and off our little package went to the Biennale.  We then had about 15 minutes to savor the accomplishment before rushing off to begin our second week of intensive prep. The concentration this time around?  The Pitch.  We had three days until we pitched Dismals to the folks at the Biennale, so we dutifully ingested our umpteenth espresso and headed to class.

We hit the ground running with a cold pitch of our project to our mentor group and the trainer. The great thing about working on a pitch is that you begin to see where the mechanics of your script are working and where they aren’t.  It forces you to distill your story and whatever it is you are trying to say with it.

I think I mentioned before that it would be interesting to compare my Biennale experience with Emerging Narratives and Emerging Visions at IFP Week last Fall, when I was there with another project The Whispering Giant.  Probably the major difference is the length and the breadth of the training.  While the Biennale is two weeks of story, budget, schedule, pitch and distribution intensives, EN and EV spent a day focusing on our pitch to industry folks for feedback. Emerging Narratives then follows with several days of industry meetings with producers who have expressed interest in your project.  All three of these initiatives offer superb training and exposure for first and second-time filmmakers.

Photo by Tomer Bahat

The morning of our official pitch to Alberto Barbera (Director of the Film Festival) and the Biennale College, Mai and I woke up early to practice a couple more times before we headed to the cafeteria to eat breakfast and find out the running order of the teams.   A Case of the Dismals would be dead last. I guess we’re a hard act to follow!

By lunch break, we were pretty nervous. Ten teams had finished their pitches and were already celebrating over Spritzes and Prosecco. Didn’t want to end up snoring in the aisles when they called our names, so Mai and I stuck to espresso while we had a nice chat with Amy Dotson.

The Spurlock Sisters and Amy Dotson

As our moment approached, I watched the teams ahead of us with a mixture of admiration and anxiety.  These producer/director duos we had gotten to know over the past couple of weeks were impressive – they’d really managed to bring their presentations together in lucid and exciting ways.  Had we come as far as they had?

Finally our names were called.  One of my biggest problems to date had been talking too fast and I had been working hard on enunciating each and every word – even though it sounded to me like I was speaking under water. As we were handed our mikes, I took a deep breath and scanned the crowd for a smiling face. The rest is a blur.  All I remember is looking out at one point and seeing our mentor motioning to me with his hands to slow down.  My sister, who is a bit more level headed when it comes to these things, says we did great.

The rest of the day was a boozy, joyful affair spent carousing with the other teams in a Venice pub before a delicious dinner back at the Biennale, and a bittersweet party back on San Servolo where we said our goodbyes.  While jokes about Battle Royale and the Hunger Games had been tossed back and forth along with tongue-in-cheek murmurings of secret poisons to eliminate the competition, I had grown to truly admire these folks and knew that I would miss them when we returned to the States.

We would find out within 24 hours which three teams would be invited back to the Island, but for now we just enjoyed one another’s company.

Mai …]]> So I was thinking Don’t Look Now, but my sis had Scooby Doo on her mind as we drifted through the eerie fog on Venice’s Grand Canal. We were headed towards San Zaccaria, where we would catch a boat for the last leg of our journey to San Servolo island.

Mai and I met up in Frankfurt – she from LA and I from Brooklyn – to fly together into Venice for the Biennale College Cinema, where we would develop and pitch our feature film A Case of the Dismals.  The fog thickened as we boarded the waterbus to the Island. Any thoughts of Nicholas Roeg and Shaggy dissolved in our minds as San Servolo emerged from the mist like a mirage.  My first thought? Welcome to Shutter Island.

San Servolo was known for hundreds of years as the “Island of the Mad” because it served as Venice’s official insane asylum, so naturally I felt a bit spooked on the approach.

San Servolo

Luckily things got decidedly less creepy after some prosecco and friendly conversation with our fellow filmmakers and the Biennale team.  Amongst the 14 other Director/Producer teams from Africa, South America, Europe and Asia, I met fellow Emerging Visions Director Tim Sutton, whose humor and warmth boded well for our stay. I was actually curious to see how the Biennale Program would compare to my experiences with Emerging Narratives and Emerging Visions last fall.  For sure, I figured there would be more of a competitive element since only three of the teams would move forward for the second lab, as well as the 150,000 Euro to finance their microbudget project.

On day one, all the teams and mentors gathered together for a round robin introduction, where we had the first opportunity to informally pitch our projects.  In hindsight, I can’t believe how far everybody came by the time we pitched to the folks at the Biennale ten days later.  Really blows my mind.

From there, Mai headed off to spend the next several mornings with her producing mentor combing through our budget while I re-worked the creative side of things both in a group setting with a mentor and one-on-one with a script consultant.  I loved how these sessions reinforced each other, with feedback from both mentor and consultant helping me to chisel out the essence of my story.  At one point as I was reworking a sequence of our film where adolescent girls become lost in a mountain forest, mentor and consultant echoed one another with a comparison to Picnic at Hanging Rock: atmospheric, haunting, a bit ominous and subtly sexual…

View from the Island

As week one drew to a close, the attitude among the filmmakers remained supportive and friendly, though many of us were sick and all of us feeling the stress of a deadline:  by the end of the week we were to submit a new and improved version of our story, budget and schedule.  Luckily, evenings gave us a chance to relax and wine/dine Italian style.  The Biennale treated us to lovely dinners in Venice proper.  Primi platti, secondi platti, and great conversation with a diverse crowd of cinephiles… a little bit of film geek heaven.   Too be continued….