So - that thing that was making me busy is no longer making me busy, so I will no longer be as busy as when that thing that made me busy was still making me busy.

New contributor's first piece... a pseutable suidonym escapes me temporarily, but here goes...

Why Film is Most Definitely a Collaborative Medium

An unfortunate side-affect of my job in film sales requires me to occasionally attend London-based screenings of finished films which are still looking for a sales agent to come on board. Its my experience that, if a film gets to completion without a sales agent on board, there’s usually a very good reason. And that reason is usually because it is very very crap. But that’s a topic for another post.

For now, let me draw your attention to what must surely be the worst of all the films I have ever been made to sit through for professional reasons. Ladies and gentleman, I apologise as I give you Madness In The First Degree.



Now, anyone who was even the smallest amount of knowledge about the way films are made would immediately know that attempting to make a feature film entirely on your own would be a difficult, nay, ridiculous thing to attempt. So I suppose we should give Geoff Searle – MITFD’s producer, writer, director, sole actor, cinemtaographer, editor and composer – some sort of credit. Or we should do, if only the film weren’t such a horrendously self-indulgent waste of time and money. Searle spent 4 years and god-only-knows how much cash making the film, and it is almost entirely unwatchable. Imagine watching a 90 minute long pop video from the early years of MTV. Now imagine doing it whilst grinding your teeth in to the back of your fist because you are so irritated at being made to sit through this nonsense. Somehow, the actual experience of watching this film is far far worse…

Geoff seems like a nice fellow, and I suppose we should be grateful – in case any one of us, in a fit of hideous self-importance, decided that they were talented enough to make an entire feature length film without anyone else’s help, Geoff has been there and proven very definitely that it can’t be done.