My hands are shaking

The name is Nighy, Bill NighyThe internet connection at home will be down until Monday (and has been down since Monday and it drives me nuts) and having been out of the office yesterday – no possibility to write at all. So I apologize for the radio silence. I am afraid it is going to be a somewhat messy post. But one with style and grace and deliciously long legs.

The networking evening
Shortly: nothing happened.
As said, being shy and selfconscious, meeting new people at an event like this is not easy for me. A couple of unexpected tips and tricks things helped me – a lot.

A good friend send me some awesome pictures of Bill – and said “Think about those when you have to talk to people. It will put a smile on your face”. It did, in fact it worked so well that I, from now on, am going to do this every single time I have to meet scary new people like this. One of those pics is currently my windows background. And hitting it home, one of my male(!) colleagues who noticed that – “God he has really long legs hasn’t he?” Oh yeah he does. Rock legs.

Sam (my screen writing tutor) who was there too said “Don’t take it too seriously, just pretend you are walking around in a comedy”. That helped too.

And finally – one of my male classmates, who has loads of experience in the film industry told me:
“I hate this.”
Me “Me too.”
“I am incredibly shy.”
Me: “Oh tell me about it. I hate to have to sell myself and my story like this. I don’t want to do it.”
“Me neither.”
“But we have to.”
“Yes.”
“We’ll take a drink and then we will cast ourselves into it together.”
“Good plan.”

And so we did. It was somehow comforting that he was just as intimidated by the whole setup as I was.

In the end I did try to pitch my story to a producer, but my pitch sucked so much that I saw him switch off his ears after 1 minute. I wanted to die. He politely waited till I was finished. Still did give me his business card and than ran off. (Not quite but it felt like that). I promised myself to shut up from that point on and not do any attempts to pitch my story to anyone that night. I got some more producer business cards just by mentioning “rom-com” but know that those are “producers” who probably haven’t produced a single film yet. And I know one film needs to be their first, but I find it hard to take producers without business cards seriously.

Basically there were a lot of people around pretending to be more than they really were. The Nancy Meyers and Duncan Kenworthy’s won’t come to events like these. I won’t either, not before I have learned how to pitch my story in no longer than 30 seconds. So that’s my goal.

Good things that came out of this meeting:

  • In the tube on my way there the title for my film popped up in my head. So that’s one thing off my to do list.
  • It was quite nice to meet my class mates in a non class room environment.
  • I can talk to people without shrinking in front of them (when concentrating, not taking it too seriously and by thinking about photos like these).

Tonight it’s Cirque du Soleil, tomorrow it’s another day of work on the 60 seconds short.

A short remark about the miniature Trabant on the kebab stick: it was a clean kebab stick! And we just pinned the car on it in order to move it across a green screen. You won’t see the stick in the final result of course, and the stick made it easier to move the car around than fish wire. Green screen work is really cool to do, and by experimenting we learn a lot about it. The 11th of February you will hopefully see what I am talking about.

Sunday is reserved for writing on my no longer title less script, and on Monday I will need a holiday even more than I do already.

Enjoy your weekend.

Oh one more thing- Quantum of what?
Maybe someone had a couple of Wodka martini’s too many chosing a title like that?

Apart from the title,
something to look forward too.

5 thoughts to “My hands are shaking”

  1. Have a good weekend Ingrid. Quantum of solace is a weird title … pics of Daniel Craig = lovely!

    Glad you survived the producers party.

  2. My hands are shaking – Is that the title of your feature film? Or does it have something to do with your post and I just ignored it?

    If nothing else, you can file the networking event under “experience”. And you never know what will result from it eventually…

    I have seen “Cirque du Soleil” twice and found them overwhelming. Enjoy!

  3. No it’s not the title of my feature, I’ll let you know the title soon (in an email)

    It’s the title of a song from (DIRL), and well, I wasn’t very inspired (and too tired) to come up with a real/good title for this post. I guess my hands were shaking when being on this event Wednesday, and my hands start shaking when I look ath this photo! :-)

    And very good point = I’ll file this networking thing under experience. I am sure I have to endure it again in the future so next time I will be better prepared.

    I have seen them twice before too (Cirque), and they are magical. They perform in the Royal Albert Hall tonight which is such a great place for it.

  4. Have a lovely time with Albert tonight (he is special)
    I wouldn’t have even been able to open my mouth at one of those events, I can’t even pitch a tent! (Hey, I give you permission to use that line;))

  5. Oh, how lovely! The Cirque at the RAH – that was precisely where I saw them too :)

    Yes, I read the rest too!! :) Love your tactics of thinking of nice pictures, might try that at some point myself! (And you have a title already, hooray!!)

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