Circle/Line trailer goes live

Beg Steal Borrow News, Circle/Line, Trailers, Uncategorized

The trailer for Beg Steal Borrow’s forthcoming documentary, Circle/Line, has now gone live.

The trailer features snippets from some of the many interviews that William Brown and Tom Maine conducted between May and August 2015 outside stations on London Underground’s Circle Line.

In the film, interviewees are asked one simple (?!), initial question: are you happy? And from there, the conversations go in all manner of different directions… although in order to see those, you’ll have to wait until the finished film.

On that note, William is putting finishing touches to what he hopes will be at least a preliminary draft of the finished film. Keep your eyes open for a preview screening coming up soon…

Partially inspired by Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch’s Chronique d’un été/Chronicle of a Summer (France, 1961), Circle/Line offers a fascinating insight into the well-being of people in London today – from the homeless to the hopeful, from the ambitious to the activist, from task-driven Londoners to visiting tourists.

We hope that you look forward to seeing the finished film!

Circle/Line Filmmaker’s Diary #5

Beg Steal Borrow News, Circle/Line, Uncategorized

I have been meaning to write about the progress of Circle/Line for some time now.

In short, editing progresses not necessarily apace, but steadily.

There have been some frustrations along the way. First and foremost is that it appears that we have lost the video files for one interview conducted at High Street Kensington, all of the interviews that we conducted at Gloucester Road, and part of the long interview that we enjoyed at South Kensington (the very final interview that we conducted).

I guess these things happen – and we still have the sound files, so not all is lost; but this might mean that to include those interviews in, say, a finished film, would mean having the sound over other images, which might seem odd with regard to the look of the rest of the film.

Either way, though, having been through all of the footage it is clear that we have numerous wonderful interviews with numerous fascinating people – all talking about happiness in lots of different ways/approaching it from lots of different angles.

How to arrange it now becomes the big challenge.

I hope that the ‘film’ will in fact take several different shapes.

Firstly, I would like to edit together a film in the traditional sense, which includes footage from a range of the interviews conducted, although not necessarily all of them. I shall return to this shortly below.

Secondly, however, I hope also to create a website with all of the interviews (at least in part) uploaded – in 27 instalments, with one shorter film for each stop on the Circle/Line.

This not only will provide a space for visitors to browse far more of the footage than I can ‘reasonably’ include in a single film (unless watching six and a half hour films is your thing), but I would also like to make the footage available for download, so that visitors can then use the footage potentially to edit a completely different film to the one that I put together.

Finally, more ambitiously and more unlikely, I’d love to find a space where I could mount 27 screens, one for each station, and then allow visitors to come and browse the films at their leisure – for as long or as little as they would like, with each monitor (as per the website) screening footage from that particular station.

Obviously, a yellow theme as per the Circle Line’s appearance on the standard London Tube map, perhaps with a ‘yellow brick path’ around the space, might also be good.

Now, I am editing both the 27 short films and the feature film simultaneously – and what is quickly apparent is that it is very tough to know what to include and what to exclude, in the feature film at least.

It is clear that various themes emerge over and over again: the weather, sport, comparisons between London and other cities – both in the UK and abroad, and so on. I shan’t be able to include all of these, and it becomes clear to me that I am editing a more ‘political’ film, in which issues like the cost of living, work, religion, housing problems and other issues are explored, than I am necessarily editing a ‘feel good’ film (although I hope that the film conveys a lot of the optimism of the people that we interviewed).

Tom Maine – with his customary elegance and sensitivity – has captured absolutely beautiful portraits of the people whom we have interviewed, and so I generally feel happy with the look of the film and in a sense edit more to what people say.

However, sometimes one also edits not only because of what the interviewee does in terms of gesture or facial expression, but sometimes one also edits because of chance events that occur in the background.

I am still undecided as to whether it will make the final cut, but Tom has done shots for example through a taxi that pulled up between him and me/an interviewee at Cannon Street – and which look absolutely fantastic.

In addition, small things like a moving crane also can provide visual attractions that do not necessarily belong to the interview. The vertical framing does, in my humble opinion, work very well – and so the point is that while Circle/Line is a vox pop film, in that it features people talking, it is also – I believe – a very visual film.

Indeed, we set out to create a portrait of London – or at least of London’s Circle Line, the people that pass through and/or inhabit it, and a sense of the relationship between the two by staging the interviews in the street, near public transport, and with an emphasis on the vertical in order to see the human figure in relation to the giant buildings that surround her.

I hope that others consider the film to be successful in presenting not just a series of portraits of people interviewed in London, therefore, but also in many respects a portrait of the city. In the spirit of Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s film from which Circle/Line draws inspiration, I hope also that the film is a ‘chronicle of the summer’ of 2015 in one of the world’s most vibrant cities.

The next time I post, I hope that it will be to announce that a cut of the film is ready. But everything continues enjoyably and hopefully with the result of producing a watchable and engaging piece of work.

Below are some stills – from interviews at (clockwise, starting top left) Kings Cross, Liverpool Street, Embankment, Edgware Road, Notting Hill and Bayswater.

And also keep an eye out for a trailer and a poster somewhere in the pipeline, too!

Kings Cross

Liverpool Street

Embankment

Edgware Road

Bayswater

Notting Hill

News about two feature films and a script

Beg Steal Borrow News, Circle/Line, New projects, The Benefit of Doubt

Long time no blog – for which apologies.

But there have been some interesting/exciting Beg Steal Borrow developments over the past few weeks – with even more brewing – so keep a look-out for future events, too – since there hopefully will be screenings of Selfie, Ur: The End of Civilization in 90 Tableaux and The New Hope to announce in the coming months, both in the UK and further afield.

The script

Let’s start with the script. William Brown’s screenplay, Kiss and Make Up, is in competition for six awards at the Oaxaca FilmFest in Mexico, which takes place 9-17 October 2015.

The script, a comedy that tells the story of a man who disguises himself as different people in order to stalk his ex-girlfriend, is one of the screenplays selected for the Global Script Challenge. And at Oaxaca, William will hopefully be meeting other writers and film people in order to be inspired.

Circle/Line shoot completed

While this blog does not constitute a final diary entry for the film per se, it is to announce that cinematographer Tom Maine and director William Brown finished shooting Circle/Line just before the end of August – and in spite of heavy rain that often made stopping people in the street for an interview next to impossible.

We did a mid-July shoot at Edgware Road, meeting in particular a couple of former students from Kingston University who are engaged in trying to do charitable work in the Middle East, before then filming in late August at Paddington, where we had a fascinating interview with a somewhat distraught and unemployed man, who feels hopeless with regard to being able to turn his life around – particularly in relation to finding a job.

There followed a rain-soaked interview Bayswater with, amongst others, a man from Sicily who talks to people about God, and a very chilled-out/relaxed guy from Australia who seemed to know the formula for happiness.

At Notting Hill Gate, we met some visitors from Germany and a student from Italy, before at High Street Kensington chatting with another German woman and a man on his way to watch the Arsenal play.

At Gloucester Road, we spoke in particular to an Argentine lady who is hoping to find a way to stay in London, a city that she feels that she loves. And at South Kensington, our final location, we chatted to two men, one French and one British, who are working on an app that is designed to help people to maximise happiness.

Given that the topic of the film is, with a hat tip to Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch’s Chronicle of a Summer, about how happy people in London are, this seemed a most appropriate interview with which to finish principle shooting. For, the final interview combined not only people also engaged in happiness, but also an Anglo-French effort to achieve it.

Now, for the edit. More news to follow when the film is ready for preliminary screenings.

The Benefit of Doubt

But, before that, Beg Steal Borrow are also set to shoot a new fiction film, The Benefit of Doubt, which retells the myth of Ariadne after she has been abandoned by Theseus in France’s Nice.

Starring En Attendant Godard lead Hannah Croft in the Ariadne role, the film will also feature performances from Beg Steal regular Nick Marwick, and Greg Rowe, who makes his second film with us after a small, but memorable role as an R2 unit in The New Hope.

Filmed in Nice, The Benefit of Doubt hopefully will also pay homage in part to Jean Vigo’s À propos de Nice, one of the great short films that was shot by Dziga Vertov’s brother, Boris Kaufman.

More news will certainly follow after the shoot, which takes place from 1st to 9th October, with Tom Maine taking up his regular duties as cinematographer, and with Andrew Slater also returning for production duties – with help from Annette Hartwell and Lucia D. Williams.

Circle/Line Filmmaker’s Diary #4

Beg Steal Borrow News, Circle/Line, New projects

Day 11: Sunday 14 June (Victoria)

It is quite surprising how most people whom we interview are very cagey about revealing not only where they work, but also what they do for a job as a whole. I am not sure if people are always worried about what judgements they think that others will make once the nature of their work is revealed, but few people seem willing to say the area of their work.

With regard to naming the company for which they work, the reluctance to name a company speaks surely, meanwhile, of a lack of job security in the current climate: if X interviewee says Y thing about Z company, then Z company might have good cause to sack X interviewee. Indeed, anyone who is in work clothes (from Transport for London employees to Big Issue vendors, both of whom we have interviewed) has in fact been trained not to talk to people in front of a camera. In this instance, the company is also afraid of a lawsuit, since if X interviewee says Y thing about Z company, then W viewer of the film in which the interview takes place might sue Z company because they take offence at X interviewee’s comment/Y thing.

For me, this has two effects. Firstly, it makes me sad that we live in such litigious times, in which people are running scared the whole time, and in which we fundamentally live in a condition of bad faith because no one trusts anyone else.

And secondly, it reveals as in some respects untrue people’s claims to be happy, especially when they relate their happiness to their work situation (which is the first thing that people mention in the majority of cases). For, if they were happy at work, they why not sing from the rooftops what work it is that they do, such that others might be inspired by these claims and thus want to work in the same, happy-making industry themselves?

Nonetheless, at Victoria we meet a TfL employee who does mention his place of work. I am not sure whether I shall include any such mentions in the film – for fear of getting our interviewee the sack! But they seem happy both with work, and to talk to us for a few minutes into their shift. He also speaks about his family, which seems spread all over the world, as a source of happiness as he works on his music.

Across the road from Victoria, in Grosvenor Gardens, we also meet two young chaps who are up in town after their exams. They are studying at a private school outside of London, and are about to break up for the summer – heading back to their respective homes in the north of England and Hong Kong. And we also speak to two young Bulgarian women, one of whom has been in London for a few months now, and one who has arrived today, and who is in transit towards Edinburgh.

In particular, these women speak of how the perception of Bulgarians in London is that they are here to nick jobs from ‘proper’ British citizens. However, from their own perspective, they are just young people looking for a bit of a change of scene. Both hope to make it to New York at some point.

At the end of the interview, the one woman who has lived in London for a while suggests that there are too many black people in the area of London where she lives (Stratford). I am sure that the comment speaks more about an unthinking cultural prejudice, rather than a considered, conscious evaluation of a race of people. Nonetheless, after a pleasant and informative conversation about being young and Bulgarian in London, this seems disturbing, if out of character.

Furthermore, the comment is unjustified given the wonderful conversation that we then have with Egbert, a Dominican Rastafarian who has been living in London for many years now. He speaks of living in the moment and embracing a loving attitude towards others that is inspirational and cheery-making.

Finally, we end in Victoria with a conversation with Lini, a Malaysian cleaner who must be about 60, and whose English is very limited. She smiles broadly, though, exudes a warmth and pleasantness that, while making for a not particularly successful interview, means that she has a memorable face and persona.

Day 12: Monday 15 June (Tower Hill)

Since Grosvenor Gardens proved a successful hunting ground for interviewees (surely the fact that people are sitting down and not rushing is key), Tom and I decide to start out in Trinity Square Gardens, just opposite the entrance to Tower Hill, which otherwise is undergoing works.

We speak to Alex, who is studying history at Queen Mary, University of London. He says that art and other wishy washy things along those lines do nothing for him with regard to happiness, but that he instead is made happy by things logical. We then speak to George, a West Ham fan who is in the area to see a concert at the Tower of London. George is in particular good to speak to, because he is of about retirement age (I would not like to speculate on a precise age) and thus represents a demographic – over 55s, let’s say – that we have had trouble convincing to speak to us up until now.

And then, like the proverbial London buses, along come Mark and Dennis, both of a similar age to George, and who also talk to us. Mark is down from Lancashire on business. Having been involved in the London 2012 Olympics, he still does some work in London, but it seems as though his passion is (beyond his family) playing and training others to play rugby.

Meanwhile Dennis, an Irish-American New Yorker who has been travelling the world of late (he has just touched down from Malaysia), is one of the most enlightened interviewees whom we have met: the oldest of 12 children, he was the senior male in his family after the death of his father in his early teens. He tells us that struggling to raise the family was great shakes compared to the struggles that the average young person faces today, but he does not lord this over anyone. Instead, he is humble and suggests that seeking happiness is today is the only worthwhile philosophy in life – even if it is a philosophy that took him many years to cultivate.

Day 13: Wednesday 17 June (Great Portland Street)

I am always worried when I turn up at a station that I am facing another Moorgate: a station where no one will stop to speak to us because they are too busy. After a couple of false starts, however, we do manage at Great Portland Street to speak to a woman, Sarah, who has worked in housing for many years, and who tells us about the problems with housing in London at the moment.

There are, she says, not enough houses for the growing population, and with too many people snapping up houses that remain unoccupied – a fact also reported in our media. Space, Sarah is convinced, is key to happiness – and without space, it is harder for people to be happy.

We also speak at Great Portland Street to a nurse, Michael, who was born in the UK, grew up in New Zealand, but who returned to the UK as an adult (he still has a New Zealand accent). In what seems like another serendipitous coincidence (three more senior men at Great Portland Street, two people who work in issues relating to social welfare), we discuss the National Health Service in the UK and the role that it, too, plays in ensuring the happiness of as many people as possible.

Finally, Tom and I speak – in our longest interview yet (40 minutes; most are between 12 and 20 minutes, though some are of course shorter) – to two artists, Lyndon and Toby, who have just been putting up stands at London’s Taste Festival.

Lyndon is about to start teaching at a school in Suffolk and is worried about leaving London – although he recognises that the capital is also a hard place in which to eke out happiness as a result of the swelling of its population and the seeming lack of job opportunities.

Toby, meanwhile, is staying in London, where he runs an illegal psychedelic ice cream van that sounds like a sort of installation/performance art piece that he drives around London (getting told regularly to move on because he does not have a license to sell the generic ice creams that he stocks).

The pair also work on party-event-installations, the last of which sounds stupendous if crazy: everyone came in costumes designed by other people attending the party, which had as its theme something in equal measure amusing and bizarre (although my poor memory – I write eight days later – does not recall).

After some early noes, then, Great Portland Street works out well.

Day 14: Monday 22 June (Sloane Square)

Sloane Square itself seemed likely to prove a good place to talk to people – and yet most refused to speak to us. I hate the tone of voice that people adopt when, after I have spent a few minutes explaining what we are doing, a lack of trust remains, a thin smile crosses the would-be interviewee’s lips, and they explain that they do not want to take part. It’s not so much that it is a no, but more what I perceive to be insincere friendliness.

I am sure that in this I am wrong, because there is of course a camera present, but I cannot help but feel that to say no to someone who wants a conversation is unfriendly, and so to try to be friendly in saying no is insincere. The presence of the camera: why does this affect people’s decision not to talk? Because they are wary of their appearance, perhaps. But this speaks of how we are all supposed always to look not like ourselves but ready for a camera, or cinematic. Or perhaps they say no because they are worried about what they are going to say and how it will be portrayed. Again, understandable, but to experience someone’s general lack of faith (they do not trust others) is hard not to take personally (they do not trust me). Clearly I am not good enough (cannot be good enough) at explaining/demonstrating to people that I am, or hope that I am, trustworthy.

And yet, Sloane Square is also the venue of the most annoying interview yet – an interview in which someone does agree to speak to us, and then proceeds to spend 20 minutes being as vague as possible in their responses, resisting right up until the end the invitation to say anything interesting about themselves. Furthermore, the man in the end refuses to sign our Letter of Release, insisting that he gets a cut of the film before we do anything with it because, in his own words, I might put him in a porn film.

While to get rejected is frustrating and a cause of self-doubt, to get accepted – he agreed to do the interview – only then to film 20 minutes of ongoing rejection, which ultimately I am unlikely even to be able to use – just seems to be obstructive and destructive, as if the man took pleasure in wasting my and Tom’s time (in his defence, the man did start by saying that he had nothing to do, so why not do the interview – i.e. he had some time to waste).

The man runs a watch company and has lived in Sloane Square all of his life, except for two years in Westminster, which apparently were awful, although there was a fantastic flat on offer there, so he had to take it. I ask him whether working with watches has changed the way he thinks about time. No. How did he think about time before he started working in watches? He didn’t. How did he get into working with watches? You can do this several ways. Which ways are those? There are several of them. Which one did he do? With some seeming regret he says that he got trained – as if it were an embarrassment to admit that anyone else might have helped him in making his fortune… The interview is painful and, ultimately, unpleasant.

Thank heavens, then, to meet Luke and his friend Ivan. Luke is a writer who writes stories for people for money. He is a traveller and has an uncontrollable laugh and smile – full of the joys of the universe. He cheers us up no end before going off to a Beethoven concert in Cadogan Hall.

Finally, outside the Royal Court we talk briefly to Paul, an actor who, despite wearing shades**, speaks candidly about how most people who tell you that they are happy are liars, and that he is not. I like Paul. I like Luke. I like Ivan. I guess you cannot like everyone.

** I have a theory about sunglasses. Basically it runs this way: curious people look, but curious people also want to show that they are curious by also showing that they are looking. This is a means then to start dialogue, which can engender learning, which satisfies curiosity. Sunglasses are what one wears in order to look, but not to be seen looking (as well as being associated with ‘cool’ – with cool in most of its forms being associated with detachment from, rather than engagement with, the world). I’d much rather be and demonstrate the fact that I am enworlded, and that we are all entangled with the world and with each other than putting on some masquerade that somehow I am detached from the world and that I have nothing to do with it. People who tend to believe that they are simply the authors of their own destiny tend to be the sort of people who have lived lives of privilege, and whose greatest privilege is to believe that they were owed or won their privilege, and to forget the fact that they are enworlded, rather than remembering that all that they have necessarily depends on the contributions of other people.

Circle/Line Filmmaker’s Diary #3

Beg Steal Borrow News, Circle/Line, New projects

Day 9: Wednesday 10 June (Mansion House and Cannon Street)

Cameraman Tom Maine and I were apprehensive as we reached Mansion House. Our experience at Moorgate, also a Circle Line station that sits in the City, had been so poor (and dispiriting) that we feared more of the same.

However, that fear was not wholly necessary, for, despite some rejections (always disheartening), we did manage to convince a few people to talk to us. Brian, the first person with whom we spoke, seemed to enjoy the interview and took my number, since he works at an advertising firm and thinks that he might need interviewers for a show that he is producing in which people discuss what it is like to be thrown out of an aeroplane.

I have no idea whether to believe Brian, and the way he spoke to me led me to believe that he thinks me younger than I am, but either way it was nice of him to offer potentially to offer. Who knows? Maybe my interviewing skills will transfer to a new project before too long.

AJ, Ves, Prash and Kerry all followed, with Kerry perhaps being the most vocal. ‘No,’ she insisted straight away, she is not happy. And she laughed. ‘Why,’ I asked? ‘Money,’ she responded with a smile. ‘I have expensive tastes and I need lots of it.’

Over from New York and studying in London for a year, Kerry said that she is enjoying her time here, and is most happy when walking around London. I find it odd that Kerry, fun as she was to talk with, wants money for happiness, and yet is most happy when she is doing something, walking, that is free. Perhaps I should challenge people more with regard to their definitions of happiness.

Tom finally featured me in some wider shots of the interviews today – mainly with Brian and AJ at Mansion House. This made me think of my friend Jonathan Taylor, who has directed episodes of such high-profile BBC documentaries as Great Ormond Street and Protecting Our Parents.

In late 2014, Jonathan gave a masterclass on making observation documentaries at the university where I work. I remember him saying that more or less the first key lesson he learned about making obs docs – from a figure as influential as Roger Graef, no less, Graef being one of the giants of British documentary – was that while the film wants to give the impression that you, the filmmaker, are invisible, in fact you have to be absolutely visible and fully participating (after a fashion) in the events that you are seeking to portray.

The logic is that if you are invisible, or say nothing, then people will not open up to you. It is only by being fully present that your subjects can trust you, Jonathan explained. And given that so many of our interviewees have a propensity to speak for as long as possible in abstract terms or in generalisations, without ever being specific about things that interest them, what makes them happy, then getting them to open up becomes important.

Therefore, even though Circle/Line is not an observational documentary, I believe that this idea of needing to make yourself present is equally true with Circle/Line. The more I put into these conversations, the more I get from people in terms of them opening up and moving beyond those generalisations – even if the film will not reflect my participation as it emphasises the people whom we have met rather than me. In effect, while based increasingly on conversations rather than on monologues from the participants, it is through a two-way conversation that the most interesting things that people say can come out.

This evening a few people did the usual ‘walking away as soon as they see us coming’ routine. This is fair enough and one learns not to take offence, even though we (or at least I) believe that everyone with whom we have spoken for this film has had a few minutes of interesting fun with us. Maybe this is not true in the eyes of others, but thinking that you are offering people something that in fact is, or might be, quite pleasant, makes the out of hand rejection quite disappointing.

Thinking about these rejections, Tom and I discussed whether one of the reasons why various people seem unwilling to talk to us, and many completely unwilling to open up to us if they do, is because we live in a society that is much more media savvy than it used to be. It is safer to give nothing away, even about one’s own happiness, except to speak in vague generalisations, and rarely if ever with specific examples about personal experiences. (Maybe I am a bad interviewer.)

As I have perhaps mentioned before, Circle/Line takes its inspiration from Edgar Morin and Jean Rouch’s Chronicle of a Summer, a 1961 film shot in 1960, and which itself is a movie comprised of vox pops of people in Paris – with Circle/Line also featuring a touch of Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme’s Le joli mai (1963) thrown in for good measure

In the Rouch and Morin film, from what I recall, people seem so willing to talk to the camera. Of course, we don’t know how many people said no, nor how long interviews lasted in order to get to what we see in the film. Nor, indeed, how prepped people were (I refuse to tell my interviewees the first question – ‘are you happy?’ – explaining to them that if they know it in advance, then it will spoil the response).

Nonetheless, in Chronicle of a Summer, it strikes me that when someone turns up with a camera in the street, people wander curiously over and want to know more. Nowadays, however, the camera is treated with suspicion, people are wary, tech savvy, and while some people are curious about what we are doing, most are not.

As Tom and I hang outside Cannon Street, I tell Tom about how it is apparently possible to run from Cannon Street to Mansion House in the time it takes for a Circle Line train to get from one station to the other, meaning that one can get off a train at Cannon Street and get on the same train at Mansion House. I shall have to check where that story comes from and whether it is true or not.

Tom and I continue to be concerned that older people are harder for us to persuade to take part in the film and that, oddly, we have not convinced a family to talk to us all at once so far. Still things to work on…

Day 10: Friday 12 June (Blackfriars)

A pleasant evening and people seemed willing to talk. If only all stations were like Blackfriars (especially because the station has a pub, the Black Friar, right opposite – meaning that finding people with whom to talk is, so Tom says, like shooting fish in a barrel).

We discuss amateur dramatics with Luke, the systemic shortcomings of capitalism with Omar, what it is like being away from one’s family with Julien (he has a brother and a sister in Mexico, with the majority of his family in his native France), and the joys (or, as I believe, the horrors) of shopping on Oxford Street and in the Westfield with Anisha.

I even questioned Anisha about several things, mainly because she is contagiously happy, and I am not sure why. Firstly, Anisha, like Kerry, feels that walking makes her happy. Secondly, Anisha suggested that poor people can and are happy and that in fact rich people are often unhappy. I asked her if she plans on giving away her money in order to be happier. She said that she will not.

I am not sure how much I should ‘challenge’ my subjects, but like Kerry who believes that she wants to be rich and yet is happiest doing something for free, Anisha seemed to say that happiness is inversely proportional to money, while also being unable to give up money for happiness.

This is not to single out Anisha; I feel this myself, and assume many people do (not that poor people are happier, but that one might well be happier if one sacrificed more money, while being unable to sacrifice that money). But it does raise the issue that our happiness, particularly if it is linked to money (as the overwhelming majority of responses would seem to suggest so far), is in fact illusory. As Julien says, perhaps we are all in the Matrix.

A final thought: a few people in these last few days – AJ, Ves, Prash, Anisha – all seem to believe that if you truly want it, then you can bring about happiness in your life. I hesitate to agree with this, mainly because to believe that we are the authors of our own destiny suggests a belief somehow that we are not quite in, or with, the world, but rather that we are separate from it, somewhat. For, we can do what we want, and the rest of the world does not constrain us, since it does not really touch us.

I am delighted that so many people tell us that they are happy. But I am always intrigued when people say both that unhappiness exists, that the unhappiness of others brings them down, but that they don’t let the unhappiness of others affect them too much. For me, this speaks of a lack of being touched by the world; happiness thus today becomes something not to be shared, but something more like a wall, or a womb (a matrix, indeed) that we construct around ourselves in order not to be touched by the rest of the world.

And yet, while it heartens me to know that so many people are happy, with exceptions like Kerry unhappy not because of loss but because she has not yet reached the point in life where she wants to be, I am concerned about the lack of touch, as well as the resort to insular as opposed to common happiness. Is constructing a common happiness what I am really wanting to ask people about here? I do ask questions along these lines. Indeed, Omar this evening suggested pessimism about the possibility for common happiness. Maybe I am making the film in search of how we can achieve it.

As Tom and I head home, we work out whether the Cannon Street to Mansion House dash is feasible. I reckon it is. Tom is a little bit more sceptical. Perhaps we should try it when Circle/Line wraps.

Circle/Line: Filmmaker’s Diary #2

Beg Steal Borrow News, Circle/Line, Interviews, New projects

Day 8: Thursday 28 May (Westminster and St James’ Park)

Today, Tom and I returned to Westminster because we did not feel that we had enough interviews there first time, even though we did speak to an unhappy footballer.

Fortunately for us, we got three interesting interviews. The first was with Faiz, who is a journalism student from Balochistan, and who was outside the Houses of Parliament in order to commemorate the fact that on 28 May 1998, Pakistan detonated six atomic devices in Balochistan and in order to exert pressure on the UK government in order to help bring about independence for Balochistan, where otherwise Balochis are treated as second class citizens, complete with what Faiz describes as unlawful arrests, state-sanctioned torture and worse.

Faiz is generally happy and believes that most Balochis are happy. Nonetheless, he still believes that for general happiness to be brought about, work needs to be done. And perhaps by all of us.

We then had a brief chat a student from Spain who is about to finish after eight long years his degree in aeronautical engineering, and to Mark, a laconic, big white-bearded black man who lives in a hostel nearby and who also claimed to be happy, suggesting that what goes around comes around.

Meanwhile, at St James’ Park, Tom and I had what is for certain our longest interview, talking to two civil servants who may or may not have had a few drinks prior to our arrival. Aggressive in their counter-questions, they put me to the test in terms of why I am doing the film. Clearly very smart, I worried that they also found me a bit dumb, not least because they think that the idea of limiting ourselves to stations on the Circle Line is a silly idea…

However, most interesting of the day were the people who declined to speak to us. Not because the average person who says no is that interesting. But in fact two people, one a woman approaching us from Whitehall at Westminster, and one a man in a blue suit called Sam who walked past us at St James’ Park, both refused to speak with us, not because they did not want to, but because they cannot go on camera and be seen… In other words, it was interesting to see that Westminster in general is home to some people who feel compelled (who need) to keep a low visual profile. I wonder what their Facebook pages are like…

Finally, since it was getting late, Tom and I had a drink in one of the pubs by St James’ Park, where we spoke at some length to Derrin, an ex-army officer who claims to be a ‘patriot’ (although I did suggest to him that if he were such a great patriot, then he might at least pronounce the word in the British (‘pat-tee-ut’), rather than the American (‘pay-tree-ut’) fashion.

He did not declare to be a UKIP supporter, but definitely referenced UKIP as he explained to us his (detailed) knowledge of British history, especially our involvement in various wars, and the difference between terrorism in the UK at the hands of Irish Republican Army and terrorism in the UK at the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. He believes that better a few civil liberties be denied than anti-patriotic sentiment be allowed to bloom.

I may not agree with all of what Derrin says (I don’t agree with much of it), but he was both admirable in many ways and certainly would have made for an interesting voice in this project.

With only one (admittedly long) interview at St James’ Park, we might need to head back at some point.

Circle/Line Shooting Commences: Filmmaker’s Journal #1

Beg Steal Borrow News, Circle/Line, New projects

We are happy to announce that filming has begun for Beg Steal Borrow’s new documentary, Circle/Line.

The premise of the film is to interview people at all of the 26 stops on the ‘regular’ Circle line of the London Underground (this does not include the stations that stretch from Edgware Road to Hammersmith and which now are part of a combined Circle and Hammersmith & City line).

We interview people about life in general, especially regarding whether they are happy, with the idea being to compile a vox pop film along the lines of two of the great documentaries from the 1960s, Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin’s Chronicle of a Summer (Chronique d’un été, France, 1961), and Chris Marker and Pierre Lhomme’s Le Joli Mai (France, 1963).

The rationale behind the film is to see how happy people are in 2015, with a particular emphasis on people in London. The reason for shooting at Circle line stations is because our hypothesis is that this will take in a mix of locations, at least within central London, while at the same time setting a natural limit on the film.

Meanwhile, given that I (this is William Brown writing) am not sure what happiness is, or if it can exist in the way that I think it could (everyone being happy), then I am intrigued by paradox, which ties in with the idea that a circle is somehow supposed also to be a line at the same time.

Tom Maine is shooting the film, but in portrait style. The idea is also, then, to film the architecture around the Circle line stations, and to see how organic and/or symbiotic is the relationship between the people whose portraits we take, and the buildings that surround them.

This post is intended not only to announce that we are making the film, but also to act as a journal of sorts about making the film. There may not be too many entries, but it can function as news about the production nonetheless.

Day One (Friday 1 May 2015 – Liverpool Street)

I am a nervous sort, in that I don’t particularly like approaching strangers to talk to them, and yet this is the basic remit of this project. Having hovered at Liverpool Street for a few minutes – during which time Tom and I bumped into Rosie Frascona, our star from Ur: The End of Civilization in 90 Tableaux – we finally decided to set up by Broadgate Circus.

And who should walk past for our first interview but my old friend Jonathan Stanley? He agrees to take part, and so suddenly talking to strangers feels very easy – if in fact we are only going to have to interview friends whom we bump into randomly on the street.

Buoyed by the luck of bumping into Jonathan, Tom and I then interview various other people for the next couple of hours, including a group of British lads who had been comically walking into the shot of and trying to sabotage the interview that we filmed with a couple of Spanish women. All seems to go well as we rack up several interviews in no time, with only one or two people actually saying no. Clearly filming in decent weather on the Friday evening of a bank holiday weekend is a good strategy. Most people seem happy.

Day Two (Saturday 2 May 2015 – Temple, Embankment, Westminster)

Tom and I meet at Temple and progress from there down to Westminster. Our interviewees include a devout Christian, a Big Issue seller, a couple of musicians who discuss Nietzsche and their baby with us, and more.

More people than not are saying yes to being interviewed, which surprises us still, while more significantly more people than not are saying that they are happy, which also surprises us.

We get our first unhappy person at Westminster, a footballer from Portugal who feels that he has not achieved his life goals. We get a few interviews at Westminster, but Tom and I think we’ll come back at a later point to do some more.

A few preliminary observations: most people talk about their jobs first of all, suggesting that work is the balance between happiness and not. Family comes second. No one has discussed love necessarily. And no one has mentioned politics. I feel that I need to devise some more questions in order to draw out different shades of happiness and how people feel them.

It also strikes Tom and me that perhaps only people who are going to say that they are happy are going to be drawn towards speaking on camera. Anyone who is not happy likely is to be unwilling to talk with us. This is interesting, but also problematic for the film. Can one truly get a cross-section of people to talk to us?

Day 3 (Sunday 3 May – Kings Cross, Euston Square, Baker Street)

Kings Cross is easy pickings, oddly enough. Lots of people waiting around, lots of people happy to talk given the good weather: a Danish-Vietnamese woman discusses leftist politics, we have our second person tell us he’s unhappy, a cheerful group of French tourists, and our first older lady talks to us. Tom and I are happy more or less about the mix of people that we are interviewing, but older people seem in particular wary of us.

At Euston Square we talk to an ethnomusicologist at some length. She is most interesting. As are some young men at school and a student at UCL. It strikes me that many people have wise things to say.

Tom and I skip Great Portland Street. e will be back, but our thinking is that the place is pretty dead at the weekend, and after spending a long time at Euston Square for few interviews, we decide to go straight on to Baker Street.

There we have a long conversation with a couple who talk Tom and I into going to watch an experimental short film in Shoreditch that night.

Day 4 (Wednesday 6 May – Aldgate)

The first of our weekday evening shoots. The time of day makes us think that less tourist-driven stops might work well at around the end of office hours. Aldgate is a relatively tough stop, but Tom and I get some interviews with some interesting people, including an Indian cricket fan and a chap about to get married.

Day 5 (Thursday 7 May – Farringdon, Barbican)

Thursday is the new Friday, it would seem, since Farringdon is busy and lots of people seem happy to talk to us, including an Irish construction worker, two ladies who work in fashion, an ambitious wannabe barrister.

Nearly everyone with whom we speak still seems remarkably to be happy. It being election day, we do ask people about their political happiness. Not many of those to whom we speak profess to care about politics at all.

Tom and I suspect that Circle line stations that are next to pubs work well, because we move along to Barbican – where suddenly it seems very difficult to get people to stop and talk to us. This surprises us, since we think that pre-theatre types going to the visually impressive Barbican might be interested in having a chat on camera – but apparently not. Without a pub, and being a bit of an in-and-out station with nowhere really to loiter, it’s not necessarily that good for interviews.

Day 6 (Friday 8 May – Monument)

Oceans of people wave past us, with barely anyone willing to stop to talk. This despite the fact that an entire office block has had a fire alarm and is loitering just by the station. However, none of them talk to us.

As Tom and I begin to get a few rejections, it is amazing how it knocks the confidence out of you. The suspicious look as the person you approach feels that you are going to sell them something, the head ducking down into the mobile phone, the ‘no’ and walk away before you have even opened your mouth to explain what it is that you’re doing.

Nonetheless, after some struggle – and this on a Friday, thereby scuppering our belief that it would be easier after Liverpool Street – we manage to interview three lads in sales, one of whom professes to have voted UKIP at the election (and who looks me up and down, sees my shabby trainers and hole-marked jumper, and remarks sarcastically that ‘you’re obviously doing all right for yourself’), and a lady who is studying for her accountancy exams and who takes the longest time out of anyone so far to think about how to answer the question.

Day 7 (Tuesday 12 May – Moorgate)

Our first washout. About 75 minutes at Moorgate station, asking maybe 50 to 60 people if they’ll talk to us – and every single one, without exception, says no, including a couple of ‘talk to the hand’ gestures that refuse any eye contact whatsoever.

Finally, we manage to speak to someone, Kai, who refuses to be on camera (or for us even to record his voice). He suggests that Moorgate is a bad place to talk to people because everyone is unhappy with their jobs, it is the end of the financial year, and the weather in May is too changeable for anyone to feel comfortable. It is a good conversation, not the first of the evening that would have been great for the film, but for the fact that the interviewee does not want to be recorded.

For, upon arrival at Moorgate Tom and I start chatting to Lulu, who is working a shift handing out flyers for a homeless charity. Her shift ends at 7.30pm, so jokingly we tell her we’ll collar her then.

Seventy thirty pm rolls around – and since we have had no joy whatsoever, we decide that we will collar Lulu, who packs up her charity stall with two of her colleagues. We’ve told them about the project, but not what our question is, since we like to keep responses unplanned to our first question (‘are you happy?’ – the only person to have heard the question in advance is Jonathan Stanley at Liverpool Street).

However, Lulu and her friends – who have been stopping people in the street to discuss charity – say that they are too busy to talk to us. I ask them what their charity is. Jehovah’s Witnesses, they tell me. ‘Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t have the time to talk to us?!’ I reply, and they laugh.

We then have a great conversation with these and other JWs who join them and in which we explain the project in more detail. Even though we talk for 10-15 minutes or so – easily the time required for an interview – they still don’t agree.

And so Tom and I leave Moorgate empty-handed. We are not sure whether to leave the station blank in the film (a black screen to indicate the lack of willing participants), or whether we shall return back soon to try our luck again, maybe on a weekend or at a lunchtime if we can.