Recently I had begun writing reviews for a film publication called The Sound View. The latest review I finished was one I was proud of, despite the fact that I was worried due to the film being political. Politics is not one of my topics of interest, in film or otherwise.

After writing my review I questioned my rating, but only for a brief second. This was not because I didn't like the film – story wise it was strong – but I thought the cinematography and the set-up of some shots could have been more creative. Personally, I know how hard it is to make your first feature film on a budget, so I try to be fair. Unless a film is off-putting visually, I won't comment on the visual aesthetic.

I hit 'send' on my email, letting my review go out to Dan, the CEO, so he could forward it to the editors.

A few hours later a reply came back from Dan. The review was excellently written, but he wondered why I rated the film 'recommended' instead of 'highly recommended’, since my review was so positive. Honestly, I thought some of the shots were a bit boring, the sets bland – I wrote this in my reply email. In my opinion, the filmmakers could have experimented with more interesting shots, and dressed the white walls and improved the lighting. But in the review I wrote nothing about the filmmaking technicalities, I focused only on the story.

Our email thread grew. In the end, I saw things from his point of view. We came to an agreement – the story is much more important than the visual elements. If you have a badly written character or a story that is not engaging, it's more inexcusable than having a badly dressed set or a boring shot.

Novelist confesses: It’s probably all about me.

One of my early readers – let’s call him Dave…although his real name is Dave – made an astute comment about the novel I have just had published. Having known me for several years it was plain to him that the fictional world of the book was a stylised and more narratively concise version of the somewhat messier realm I normally inhabit.

“I also smiled at the many conversations that echoed discussions we have shared about your life observations and philosophies, and of course the colourful mix of autobiographical traits scattered across various characters.”

There are many artists who cringe when asked if their work is autobiographical but, as a novelist, I feel compelled to confess that my fiction feeds directly, sometimes brutally, on the plot points and psychodramas of self. But it doesn’t end there. I also feast on the blood and gore of friends, family and random strangers. In fact, anyone and everyone who veers too close.

Write about what you know. Isn’t that what they say? Little wonder The Last Summer of Hair is suffused with detail drawn from my own experience, and from my observations of those unlucky enough to fall within the cannibalising orbit of my literary appetite. Dave will not be the only one of my friends to detect unerringly familiar motifs in the book’s 292 self-referential pages. Indeed, some of those closest to me will wonder if it’s them I was writing about. (Truth is, it often was.)

In February this year, Sarah Jayne wrote an article about self-distributing our feature In Corpore. She talked about screening the film in a cinema in New York, one of the settings of the film, perhaps doing a tour of the country à la The Joyful Vampire Tour of America, and then doing cinema screenings in the remaining countries we filmed in: Australia, Germany, and Malta.

Well, none of that went ahead. The world changed, as we all know; a global pandemic brought everything to a standstill. And still we aren’t clear of the spectre of this virus, with different parts of Europe facing another lockdown, America still out of control, and Australia suffering too. The way films are distributed changed, perhaps irrevocably. Cinemas shut like so much else. The traditional release windowing model was scrapped, blockbuster films like Mulan streaming for free on Disney+ as a $200 million dollar experiment, while Tenet by Christopher Nolan stuck to its guns and became the first Hollywood tent-pole to launch in theaters following their prolonged shutdown, the bold move hailed by executives and media as the saviour of cinema.

It bombed. Studios were spooked. Cinema wasn’t saved.

Just last week, on August 26th, we wrapped principal photography on Machination, our fifth feature film shot in the last four years. This was very much a film inspired by this new Covid-19 reality we live in, a story about a highly anxious woman named Maria who struggles to cope in isolation as a pandemic sweeps the world. Maria is forced to confront the monsters in her head, in the media, and in her past.

Maria in her bedroom, Machination Behind the scenes. Credit: Monika Kopčilová

We had the initial idea for the film during our own lockdown in April in Malta and spent a few days at the end of the month writing the first draft outline. May was spent redrafting and refining the outline. In June we approached cast, researched the equipment we would need as well as the VFX we wanted, and worked to fill gaps in knowledge for the story as well as the production, such as the specific mental health issues Maria was suffering from or how we could pull off a particular shot – a period that was a mix of development and pre-pre production. One month of official pre-production and rehearsal began from July 13th. Finally, in August, we went into a 10-day production period split into two halves – August 12th to 16th and August 22nd to 26th.

This was all done between Sarah working a full-time job and myself working on other projects, including still shooting our Cats of Malta documentary and planning a short film called Crossing Paths for the end of June. So until production, and perhaps the last couple of weeks of pre-production, we never dropped everything to simply focus on Machination, and Sarah didn’t stop working her day job until the first shooting day. That makes Machination a feature film done from first draft to wrap in four months, mostly part-time, during an uncertain time in the world where many productions shut down completely. And the budget was only €6000. And we still paid everyone.

This is how we did it.

To begin I would like to inform readers that my words and thoughts flow solely from an inner place of reflection. This piece is written by me, a privileged white, approaching forty female with European ancestry. I am a writer and filmmaker who is currently working on a personal journey towards educating myself on African American history and the representation of minorities in film. Some of the topics I have been reading, watching and listening to over the last month have included police brutality against minorities in America, how American history is built on a foundation of oppressed black slaves, and how white feminism has and continues to exclude women of colour.

I felt compelled to write this article during the beginning of recent protests occurring around various states in and around the USA, after countless unjust deaths of black men and women at the hands of white American police officers. I can’t identify to my core with the African American community as I have not lived my life as a person of colour. I will never understand how it feels to have to make calculated daily choices based around my safety due to the colour of my skin, but it doesn't mean that I don't feel angry, sad and frustrated when hearing of the unwarranted deaths of George Floyd and the many who have come before and likely will follow.

For me, though far removed, the protests brought up a lot of memories of my past and made me think about how much American Black culture I consumed as a child and a teenager through watching American movies and music performed and written by African American artists. It also made me realise that despite all that consuming in my youth, as an adult I did not know much at all what a truthful representation of African American culture was, what the culture was built on or what it stemmed from.

With this miseducation and ignorance in mind, I want to talk about how I personally consumed and then perceived African American culture as a white woman growing up in Australia. Also, I want to share with fellow white artists reading this ways in which we can take responsibility for what perceptions are put out there and how we can change the narrative through storytelling.

Personally, my introduction to African American culture started through music. Growing up in my pre-teens I listened to my parent’s record collection religiously, and that is when I fell in love with the sounds of Motown. I would listen to Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Tina Turner, The Supremes, and more. Jimi Hendrix was my favourite.

I'm a godmother to an incredibly smart, knowledgeable, funny and caring four year old boy named Atticus, who, since his kindergarten days, has the ability to hold a conversation and out-talk the most talkative television presenter. He also has a knack for asking 'why' constantly and genuinely seeking a response for his knowledge tank. Atticus has a two year old sister, and when she was born I held her twice before boarding a plane to Europe to chase my dream of being a filmmaker.

Now I label myself the Invisible Godmother. The role of a Godmother is to be in the godchild's life to mould and shape their decisions through wisdom and moral guidance. Being on the other side of the world makes that near impossible, and Skype doesn't cut it. Hence, most days I feel guilty that I am not able to be there for my family.

Not only did we shoot a feature in a single night. And not only was it entirely improvised (without a script, without a shot list, without regrets), but we decided to do it on the craziest and most chaotic night of the year... New Year’s Eve.

The film is called Friends, Foes & Fireworks and it explores relationships, love, friendship, and the truths we try but fail to keep to ourselves.

We have been asked one question numerous times: “How did you actually manage to shoot this in a single night without a script?”

The second question, often unspoken, but lingering on lips nonetheless is “…and have a story and structure that actually makes sense without a script?”