Last night, Julia and I went to our local pub for a celebratory roast. The Virgin Queen is a cosy Tudor style building about thirty seconds walk from our apartment with uneven wooden floors and dim lighting. Quintessentially English, they do a killer Sunday roast.
What were we celebrating? A gigantic career milestone for me.
I had just delivered the final files of our six-episode comedy show to the network.
Camp Be Better is my first ever funded project as a writer/director. I’ve been working on it since 2021 and in the last three years it’s gone through a lot of transformations.
Very soon, it will be released into the world. It will be free to view on New Zealand’s leading streaming service and whoever watches it will have their opinion and, no doubt, make that opinion known.
Are people gonna like it?
Are people gonna hate it?
Will people think I’m lame?
Are Gen Zers gonna talk about how cringe it is?
Will it be considered cool? Uncool?
Will people be indifferent to it?
Bring On the Judgement
To a degree, I really want it to do well. I want eyes on screens. It’d be ideal if NZOnAir doesn’t regret backing us and all the people in it aren’t ashamed of being involved.
But when it comes to an audience’s opinion… something about me glazes over.
It could be a defence mechanism, I suppose — the loud-mouth kid in the class who lashes out at others because he’s terrified of being teased himself. “Say whatever you want about me because I DON’T CARE ANYWAY!”
But I don’t think it’s that. I want people to dig it, and I’m confident that some people will. What I really want is for some people to love it. I want it to be someone’s favourite show of all time.
If that happens, if the show reaches a few true fans, then I don’t care what anyone else says.
How an audience reacts and feels about the show is not within my control. I cannot influence how people view it, no matter how much I post about it and how much marketing we do. The challenge becomes: how do I accept that?
It’s all part of saying goodbye to your work.
The Pain of Goodbye
I ordered a half serving of roast chicken and a Guinness. Julia got the same except traded the Guinness for a Pinot Grigio. We hadn’t dressed up or anything, but Julia looked amazing in a black dress (she’s one of the few people who can pull off the colour black), looking over her glass all proud of me, asking me questions about the show and how I was feeling.
“Have you thought any more about a second season?”
Phoar. The chance to go back and do it all again? I’d LOVE that.
Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t been all smooth sailing and luxury. To my knowledge, we were given a smaller budget than any other show made this year. We got granted ONE THIRD of our compeers who filmed another show at the same time as us.
But despite the fact I have not taken a single full day off since we were greenlit last November, and despite the relentless compromises we had to make which often caused me to wake up in the middle of the night with a raised heart rate, and despite the literal scars I’ve incurred (true story: I gave myself a large cold sore after one particularly stressful battle was lost, which has left a pink scar under my lip), I’d do it again immediately.
This is what a it looks like to review a sound mix on a budget. I had noise-cancelling headphones on but still, I ended up leaving the cafe as soon as I’d finished my coffee because a couple was having audible fight next to me.
It’s been the most satisfying and fulfilling job of my career to date. A huge part of that is the content. We shot in summer, mostly outdoors, and all our cast are good-looking people in their early 20s who had a great time.
But what’s really made the project so damn amazing is the people. My co-director and co-writer Chye-Ling, producer Joyce, colourist (and one of the DOPs) Simeon, sound designer Phil, and composer Tom. I’ve been able to spend so much time with these people in the last few months and it’s honestly made my life.
We’ve become this strange family, constantly sending messages back and forth on Slack, reviewing music and colours and sounds together, and nobody has ever lost their cool.
Most of the time we’ve spent the majority of our meetings laughing and just hanging out. The show has become an excuse to catch up with this great group of creatives and at the end of it, we get the bonus of releasing a kick-arse show.
Saying goodbye to the show is easy. Saying goodbye to the people is the hard part.
Now What?
This is a newsletter about writing and I’ve been banging on about making a show for the last few hundred words.
Truthfully, I’ve done more writing while making this show than ever before. Almost every day, we are rewriting the show. Shepherding the viewer’s eye from this character to this character instead of starting on a close up of this prop, deciding to turn the music up louder, or choose a different sound effect, or change the colours of a scene to give it a different feel? That all feels like writing.
Despite not writing prose, editing this show has made me a better author. Being confronted with story issues and struggling to find my way around them has certainly made me a better storyteller by highlighting the weaknesses in the script.
I’m revved up to take all the lessons I’ve learned and move forward into the next project with vim.
Our flatmate, as luck would have it, has a sound studio, so I was able to do my ADR (Additional Dialogue Recording) here in London.
Julia and I mopped up the remnants of the rich gravy with our Yorkshire puddings and then decided to take a stroll around London Fields to walk off the meal. Conversation moved on to other topics.
When we got home, I felt bereft, as if I’d lost something. Which I kinda had. But at the same time, I felt satisfied. Accomplished. Proud. Grateful.
I’m lucky. I have a bit longer to bask in the feeling of just-finishedness before the series is released. Once it’s out there, I’ll have the excitement of seeing how it stands on its own feet.
So, it’s not really goodbye after all. Not yet…
📖 Seen in Silverbridge Update
By keeping up a strict Writing Hour every morning, I have written 3/5 parts of the latest Seen in Silverbridge book.
A pretty boring screengrab from Scrivener
59,000 words so far. I predict the first draft will level out at around 90,000 words.
I was hoping to have the first draft finished by this next week but now I think it’ll take me another full month.
Then the real fun will start! Rewriting!
📣 Shout Out to: This Time with Alan Partridge
Oh man, I think this is one of the funniest shows I’ve ever seen. Alan Partridge has always been a great satire character who embodies the worst qualities of conservative traditionalists who try to appear like they’re moving with the times, but This Time manages to build a more three-dimensional character without sacrificing any of the gags.
Watch it on YouTube for a couple of bucks: