So here’s the amazing Baal and his friend Wendy giving advice to those who are most in need of it: celebrities. The boom operator was suffering at the time of filming. He was plagued by the cameraman’s very friendly but essentially dangerous dog, who kept mistaking the boom for a human baby. Nevertheless, the gods smiled on Baal and Wendy, as the dog had lost his bark in a previous newspaper accident, so the sound is flawless.  

The soothing images are courtesy of the amazing Chris Lince, who says “this is some of my finest work” and “I’ve just got my fingers crossed that Cameron sees this”. (We think he means James, not David. David is too busy with the new baby. Will the mother ever get to hold it we wonder? He’s a bit selfish hogging it all to himself isn’t he?) Ruth Greatrex was a great help to us when it came to sourcing images – a very clever lady she is too. Adam Gough did the edit and apparently “could not contain himself” whilst watching the rushes. We don’t know what this means. 

It is Wendy and Baal’s ambition to broadcast “Celeberama!” in 3D.

Thanks to Michele Caruso for doing the brilliant sound and to lovely lovely DoP Kate McDonough. Thanks for putting up with Baal and Wendy! Thanks to amazing Greer McNally for being a Superwoman as always! The joy that is Hanane Dauki did makeup on this as well as on A Dead Cat. And thanks so much to Jonathon Abbott at Ealing Studios for letting some nutters on the loose!

In the meantime, let’s enjoy some ‘Look Around You’ and get Jealous about it being so funny. Marvellous.

Thanks to Annemarie for being our amazing DoP again. Who knew she could make lemonade smoulder in such an authentically 80s way? Adam Gough once again did an incredible job editing this for us. The genius that is Chris Lince did the brilliant special effects.

A classic 80s music video from ‘Ukranian Flightpath’.

Music written & performed by Alice Lowe.
Directed by Jacqueline Wright.
Cinematographer Annemarie Lean-Vercoe.
Editor Adam Gough.
Digital Effects by Chris Lince.
Makeup by Maria Horv.
Production Assistants Juliet Harshaw & Drea Davila-Boschetti.
Huge thanks to Tessa Nicholson.

This month it was a very close call because we got all caught up with going to Dublin amongst other things. We filmed it all in Bromley (Of course. All the best melodramas occur in Bromley) in director Jacqueline Wright’s family ’seat’. I believe there were a few hairy moments when Jacqui’s actual real life house cat nearly escaped from the house, and we had to prevent the ultimate irony from happening… Anyway, the cat is fine. No cats were harmed in the making of this film. Sam Hardy, who was one of our brilliant DoPs on ‘LifeSpam’, was reunited with us on this shoot, and managed to generate all those beautiful, and authentic looking, images. Claire McGonigal did a sterling edit job for us (she edited ‘Roots’) and Chris Lincé did some just incredible titles for us that just blew us away. Check out the wee jackal at the end! And I’m not just saying that to make you watch it! Please do check out our amazing team on the credits as everyone did such an brilliant job. Hanane Dauki did splendid period makeup and Dawid Wasilewski stepped into to do sound at the last minute! What a trooper! In fact, it’s probably the most exotic and glamorous sounding crew list we’ve had to date. The composer has a particularly 1940s credits style name – Moritz Schmittat – he will go far.

Exciting fellow speakers included Bobby Farrelly of Farrelly Brothers fame, who gave the most brilliant interview, the gist of which was ‘don’t let your stuff get watered down’. Jackal was entirely inspired by this, coming from the genius that brought everyone ‘Dumb and Dumber’ and ‘Something about Mary’. We actually wished that we could have this written on a piece of paper for future use, maybe if in emergencies in meetings with commissioners. It could be very useful as a kind of ‘Farrelly-Approved Special Comedy Pass’. We met Bobby later and, astonishingly, he duly obliged us in this request. And this is what he wrote…

‘To whom it may concern. Please (for the love of Art) do not make these lovely ladies water down their films, to make them more “vanilla”. Thanks for your co-operation.”

Signed Bobby Farrelly

We have now had this  tattooed onto our heads, and photocopied 500 hundred times and laminated, in order to be handed out amongst the other attendees of the conference. We shall now be called ‘The Untouchables’, because we deflect all criticism of our scripts due to a fine protective green comic film which these passes endow us with. There were also great chocolate cookies in the tea breaks.

We were asked to attend by the hilarious Sharon Horgan, who also did a Q&A with us after we showed a few shorts: ‘Sticks and Balls’, ‘Birdhandler’, ‘LoveSong’, ‘Making It With Pam’ and some bits of our pilot ‘LifeSpam’. We were actually quite overwhelmed by the response. We got general feedback from attendees that they felt that what we were doing actually seemed tangible and it inspired a lot of people to do the same, especially as aspiring or starting out filmmakers. We like that and it made us happy. We’ve been asked to go back and do a workshop with new screenwriters. It will really be no hardship to go back to Dublin…

Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong were also interviewed and gave some great insight into working with Chris Morris and how they started writing ‘Peepshow’. It seemed like there wasn’t really enough time for them to talk about all the stuff they have done/are doing. Again, brilliantly inspiring and interesting. Nicole Holofcener talked about her approach to scripts, and her response to criticism/pressure from financiers to conform. We watched her new film ‘Please Give’, which was funny and touching and really a quite refreshing voice.

There were so many comforting overlaps in approach to comedy from all these talented people. Surprisingly, both Bobby and Nicole have a very free approach to the way they work and don’t plan their scripts in advance. Jesse was saying that although they do plan their scripts, they don’t tend to take screenwriting books too seriously. (It seems this is the eternal question: whether to use these books as your bible or not.) It really confirmed to Jackal that we are doing the right thing, following our instincts and making things that make us laugh, and not worrying too much about convention. And I have to say I was surprised how much laughter there was at every single Jackal film we showed. Especially as a couple of the films have never been shown to a cinema audience. Bobby Farrelly was saying that he and his brother do test screenings of various scenes, and they always go with the laugh. He said that often the studios would be applying pressure on them to take out an element which they found ‘odd’ or ‘not helping the plot’, but as soon as they saw this particular element bringing the house down with laughter, they would accept it. He said that comedy was different to drama in that you need to be wrong-footed or surprised as an audience member in order to truly let go and laugh. Encouraging stuff for weirdos like us.

The story goes that this is old archive footage of late seventies, early eighties kids craft show ‘Make It With Pam’. Pam was later involved in a sex scandal, and was sacked by the BBC. But for a while, Pam was the nation’s sweetheart, showing everyone how to make brilliant things out of household objects with a cheery disposition and a cheeky smile! Make it with Pam! Enjoy! I find that the film becomes more enjoyable after the third viewing. My that soundtrack is catchy!

Thanks to the amazing Dave Hughes as ever, for being amazing. He edited it.