Chart Wars - may the hits be with you

Last month in Manchester, the Dr and I stumbled across what might be the most 80s piece of vinyl ever pressed. Duran Duran. Bauhaus and Renee and Renato - together at last. And you thought Yoda flogging Vodaphone was a terrible cash-in*.



Yoda flogging Vodaphone is a terrible cash-in.

The sign of 'the penguins'

A fun afternoon in Greenwich, first to be grilled for a forthcoming podcast about some things what I have writ, and then to a special preview of the newly reopened Caird library at the Maritime Museum.

Whereas once the museum's vast wealth of records on the history of ships, pirates, migration and cool space stuff was housed down the road in Kidbrooke, it's now neatly packed into 9 kilometres of shelves at the museum, which I got to poke my nose round. The chief appeal will be to maritime researchers and those tracking family history (and there's a digitisation project going on at the moment).

But for the casual, nerdy passerby there was plenty to excite, if you have the sense and sophistication to be excited by weird old books. There's volume after velum-wrapped volume of old maps, complete with dragons and monsters, and a sailcloth bound edition (1779) of William Buchan's Domestic medicine: or, a treatise on the prevention and cure of diseases by regimen and simple medicines with an appendix containing a dispensatory for the use of private practitioners - this copy as used on the Bounty under Bligh.

Of the greatest excitement to me was a copy of Aurora Australis, the book written and published by the British Antarctic Expedition of 1907 over the winter (April to July) of 1908. It's full of drawings, poems and short accounts of the trip by members of the crew such as "Interview with an emperor" (i.e. an emperor penguin). Dork that I am, I thrilled to see ice-berg hyphenated. But the book, the physical object, is a thing of wonder.

The front matter explains that it was "Printed at the sign of 'the penguins'" - beside a neat, square logo - "by Joyce and Wild. Latitude 77°..32' South, Longitude 166°..12' East Antarctica". One of the librarians helpfully told me that this was one of maybe 100 copies produced (the museum holds two copies). That's the print run of some of the small-press stuff I've worked on or reviewed. And they don't compare.

The cover is hard wood - made from a packing case, as the stamp on the inside clearly shows. But it's the quality of the book that's really impressive: good quality lay-out and editing, printed beautifully on a good stock of paper.

So we get an impression of the kind of man that expedition leader Ernest Shackleton might have been in his need to add a second, "Additional preface" with the following caveat:

"But the reader will understand better the difficulty of producing such a book quite up to the mark when he is told that, owing to the low temperature in the hut, the only way to keep the printing ink in a fit state to use was to have a candle burning under the inking plate; so if some pages are printed more lightly than others it is due to the difficulty of regulating the heat, and consequently the thinning or thickening of the ink. Again the printing office was only six feet by seven and had to accommodate a large sewing machine and bunks for two men, so the lack of room was a disadvantage; but I feel that those who see this book will not be captious critics".

Shackleton would later be a member of Captain Scott's ill-fated expedition, while his amazing, old-skool heroism in getting his crew - every one of them - safely back from the Antarctic is featured in this week's Corpse Talk comic strip by Adam Murphy in issue 3 of the Phoenix comic. The books I've mentioned - and a whole bunch more cool stuff - is available on request at the Caird library - subject to the terms and conditions on the website.

AAAGH! in the air!

An action-packed AAAGH! from issue #251 of Doctor Who Adventures, available until yesterday. It might owe a little to the opening sequence of The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe. Script by me, art by Brian Williamson and edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes who gave kind permission to post it here. You can also read all my AAAGH!s.

The new issue out today has a splendid AAAGH! by Paul Lang, and also photographs of the Whomobile, Meglos and Quatermass.

The Masters of Luxor

The Dr has already blogged about our trip to Luxor in Egypt over new year. I've been writing what follows in fits and starts.

We stayed for a week and packed in as much as possible. Our hotel was a short walk from Luxor temple, the Luxor and mummification museums and a longer walk from Karnak – we arrived there at half eight in the morning and pretty much had the place to ourselves.

We hired a guide and driver to take us to the Valley of the Kings where we poked our noses in the tombs of Ramsees IX, III and IV (but sadly not Thutmoses III which is mentioned in the Doctor Who story Pyramids of Mars). We went to Deir al-Madina (the village of the workers who built the kings' tombs) and the Ramesseum – where we saw the vast, fallen statue that inspired Shelley's poem Ozymandias (which is more than Shelley did, as he based it on a visit to the British Museum). We got to see the Al-deir Al-bahari temple, the Valley of the Queens, Medinet Habu temple and took a cruise up the Nile to Dandara, where the Dr was delighted that opposite a rare carved portrait of Cleopatra and Caesareon is a temple (and the equivalent of two fingers) built on the orders of Caesar Augustus. Having admired the pale blue ceiling that showed an ancient zodiac, we spent the four-hour trip back down the river gazing up at the stars.

We also took a four-hour drive to Abydos, a vast, impressive place still with its original ceiling, where I snapped the following two short videos on my wireless phone:

We saw so much, the Dr took 400-odd photos and pages and pages of notes. The ancient building are covered all over, often with huge Pharaohs smiting people from different countries. Flinders Petrie collected casts of the people’s faces as part of his study of race – something the Dr is writing a book about. And while she gathered evidence, I was struck by how often we saw the same posture, one Pharaoh or other stood with feet apart, one arm raised and the other pointing out, while wearing a kilt with a hanging belt. Here are two examples:

Surely, I thought, that’s Orion.

There were relatively few other tourists: the hotel was only 40% full and was a bit desperate in asking us to come to its gala new year's eve dinner. The local people were keen to tell us that Luxor is safe for tourists – horrified that the Arab Spring and ongoing events in Cairo might have scared people off.

Since so much of the economy is based on tourism, that's a real problem. We'd been warned before we went, but the constant hassle was a bit of a shock at first and then a wearying nuisance. Wherever we stepped, people hurried over to offer taxis, boats or horse-drawn rides – some of the horses barely skin and bone. They wanted to know where we came from, where we were staying, where we were walking to. They wished us happy new year or called out “Lucky man” and “Why not smile?” – and if they got any hint of an answer they'd then offer us taxis, boats or horse-drawn rides. If they couldn't get a reaction from me they'd run round to the Dr. “Madam”, they'd say, and the try exactly the same tack.

One man followed us down the road telling us which hotel we were staying in and for how long – the creepiest sales pitch ever. Another promised us “no hassle” and then continued the pitching in a whisper as if we weren't meant to hear.

In every temple and museum there seemed to be someone keen to point out something in plain sight or to offer to take us past roped-off sections, if we’d only pay out some small change. At the airport, the man loading our bags through the scanner expected something. The guide books advised us to keep a separate pocket of this grubby baksheesh.

It was exhausting at first, but within a couple of days we'd developed thick skins. Sadly, some people did just want to say happy new year – but even saying thank you to them brought more people hurrying over. I managed to offend a man working in a bar by blanking his polite inquiries about where we were from. I apologised, said I'd thought he would only try to sell us something. And without missing a beat he pointed over to his stall of souvenirs and invited us to browse. There’d be something for free if we did. We finished our drinks and escaped.

The worst part was if you did actually want to buy something. You couldn't browse – the people in shops would flap around beside you making suggestions, or trying to put items in your hand. We tried to buy a bottle of water and the man in the shop kept repeating, “Only one?” and then offering to drive us to a place out of town where we could buy souvenirs at a bargain price. Trying to buy a guidebook, we were surrounded by people offering advice, eager to fetch us the same books in French or Italian, a constant, desperate witter that just made us want to give up and walk away. This hustling sometimes just confused us, so we bought more than you wanted or paid a silly price.

“It’s a different culture,” explained the tour rep, before offering to sell us day-trips. We had to buy them from her then and there, and soon found other guests who’d turned her down only to buy much cheaper tickets for the same trips just by asking at reception. Ho hum.

But it is a different culture, one where sharing wealth is a sign of virtue. We have our own strange ways. In crowded London, giving people space (such as by not talking on the Tube) is a mark of respect – though that’s not how it often appears to people visiting the city. But also, baksheesh isn’t so foreign an idea. Watching old films since I’ve been home – The Hound of the Baskervilles from 1939, Doctor No from 1962 – I’ve been struck by the number of times Holmes and Bond hand out money to people who offer them help. Those they patronise seem grateful, and it’s used to show our heroes’ impeccable manners.

Once the Dr met up with a local archaeologist and he organised a driver to take us round, the bothering changed gear. There were still people eager to sell us souvenirs, but they didn’t trail after or crowd us. And it was oddly reassuring to see Egyptian tourists visiting from Cairo treated exactly as we were. (The Dr was thrilled by the numbers of Egyptian tourists visiting their own heritage sites – she thinks it bodes well for the future.)

Generally everyone we met – even the people trying to flog us vastly inflated old tat – were welcoming and friendly. We went to a brilliant new year’s eve party on the roof of a hostel where there was live music and a dancing girl, though (having been shoved forward by the Dr) I felt too awkward and sober to dance with her for very long.

We'd planned to mix the sightseeing with days by the pool, but there was so much we wanted to see that we didn't exactly stop. Most days we were up with or before the sun, having breakfast as the hot air balloons rose slowly over the Valley of the Kings. When we weren't touring, I wrote pages of spec script and read Claire Tomalin's biography of Dickens - which I might blog about if there's ever a spare moment. But don't expect much: Egypt was my last break for some time...

AAAGH! visits Doctor Who Adventures

An especially indulgent edition of AAAGH! to celebrate issue #250 of Doctor Who Adventures. Script by me, art by Brian Williamson and edited by Natalie Barnes and Paul Lang - who, as always, gave kind permission for me to post it here.

New year, new product

Happy new year! I'm back from a week in Luxor, touring ancient sites and drinking a beer called Sakara. Will try to blog something about what I saw, and also about the various good books I've been reading. But first, these important messages:

There are lots of screenings next week of my short film, Cleaning Up.

• Tuesday 10 January: London Short Film Festival in Hammersmith, London
  
• Friday 13 January: "British Shorts" festival, Berlin
• Saturday 14 January: Blue Box convention in Tunbridge Wells
• Sunday 15 January: Shortwave in Bermondsey, London
  

I'll be at all but the Berlin screening. Do come along and say hello. I'll also be showing the film at the Gallifreyone convention in Los Angeles next month.

I've also written a superhero comic, The 100% Awesomes for the Autism Education Trust. With art by William Potter, it's designed for use in school lessons to teach kids about autism and difference.

My short story "Last Rites" features in The Hammer Out Book Of Ghost Stories 2012, published this month to raise money for brain tumour charities.

Also out this month is my Doctor Who audio adventure, The Anachronauts, starring Jean Marsh and Peter Purves.

Happy Christmas from AAAGH!

A merry Christmas to all of you at home from AAAGH! Excitingly, Doctor Who Adventures #248 is still in shops until next week, but my bosses thought we'd share this with you now. Script by me, art by Brian Williamson and edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes, who gave kind permission to post it here. You can also read all my AAAGH!s.

One man and his dog

Been a little busy, but on Friday I got two trips out. First, Scott Andrews took me to see Sherlock Holmes 2, which was whizzy and silly and fun. Then I made the epic trek to Chiswick to review Hogarth's house for something out next year (which I shall post about when it happens). What follows is stuff I didn't say in that.

Hogarth lived in Chiswick between 1749 and his death in 1764. Chiswick seems quite proud of the connection. His house was opened to the public in 1904, but re-opened in November after a fire in 2009. In 2001, a statue by Jim Mathieson of Hogarth and his pug-dog Trump was unveiled on Chiswick High Street. It was unveiled by Ian Hislop and David Hockney - I assume symbolic of his status as satirist and artist.


A picture by Hogarth shows the house surrounded by fields, but now it's right next to a busy road and roundabout (both named after Hogarth). You can see and hear the traffic grumping past as you poke round the displays. (I did not put in my review that Donna Noble realises her taxi driver is a robot on this very road.)


The house was built in what was once an orchard, and the mulberry tree that apparently still blossoms each year is thought to be older than the building. You can just about make out the tree in this picture.

AAAGH! and the carol singers

Another festive AAAGH!, this one from Doctor Who Adventures #246 and owing a little to last year's Christmas special, A Christmas Carol, but with added monsters and tomfoolery. As ever, it's written by be, illustrated by Brian Williamson and edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes - who also gave kind permission to post it here. You can read all my AAAGH!s.

As an added treat, here's what Abigail is singing.

Hundred year-old cat

The builder currently rebuilding our house made a cool discovery:
The house is at least 100 years old, possibly late 19th century. And there in the original brickwork are the paw prints of a cat. We're going to leave them on show.

AAAGH! and the Advent calendar

Another AAAGH!, this one marking the start of Advent. There's all sorts of Christmas festivities coming in Doctor Who Adventures in the next few weeks, as we approach the Christmas episode. As ever, the script for this silliness is by me, the art by Brian Williamson, and the strip was edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes - who gave kind permission to post it here. You can also read all my AAAGH!s.

First Wave interview

Daniel Tostevin interviewed me about my Doctor Who story The First Wave for the latest issue of Doctor Who Magazine. But I wittered on so much that he had bits of what I said left over. He has published my additional wittering on the official Daniel Tostevin website.

Happy birthday Doctor Who, love AAAGH!

AAAGH! celebrate's Doctor Who's 48th birthday today in a bit of silliness written by me and illustrated by Brian Williamson. Doctor Who Adventures #244 is still in shops for another day, and includes a whole bunch of old-skool stuff, including mention of Koquillion.

As always, this AAAGH! was edited by Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes and posted here with their kind permission. You can also read all my AAAGH!s.

Blake box

For your delight and delectation, here is Anthony Lamb's cover for Blake's 7: The Liberator Chronicles, which includes The Turing Test - written by me and starring Paul Darrow as Avon and Michael Keating as Vila. It's out in February 2012.

Ritzkrieg

Finished my chum Matthew Sweet's The West End Front this morning. It's a magnificent, funny and strange collection of stories about London's posh hotels during the Second World War (though he freely extends the scope when it means another good story). It was Book of the Week on Radio 4 last week - you've still a chance to hear Kenneth Cranham reading choice cuts on iPlayer.

Matthew has interviewed more than 100 people - those who were there at the time, or the families of those who have since died. The result is a gleefully gossipy account of some often shocking incidents, carefully backed up with solid documentary research.

The book undermines the sentimental view of the Second World War, the idea of a nation steadfastly keeping calm and carrying on, all stiff-upper lips and good humour. There's scandal and skulduggery, scoundrels, sex and death. Some of the events make for very uncomfortable reading. But really this is a testament to the strangeness of real life - in an extraordinary period of history and anyway. Matthew's got a good eye for the incongruous detail, the grotesque detail, that conjures the period vividly.

There's a wealth of top facts, too. Captain Leonard Plugge, Conservative MP for Chatham, gave his name to any "brazen commercialism in the media". Crooner Al Bowlly (whose work I adore) was killed by his own bedroom door. There's the extraordinary image of Winston Churchill, no longer Prime Minister and so no longer living at Downing Street, installed in the penthouse at Claridges because, his wife said, "We have nowhere to go". It is there, on a borrowed wireless, that he heard the news of Japanese surrender.

"'Then he went out into the rain and there were three old ladies under an umbrella who had heard he was there and gave him a cheer.'"

Philip Murphy, Alan Lennox-Boyd: A Biography (1999), quoted in Matthew Sweet, The West End Front, p. 286.

Many of the lively characters Matthew speaks of - and spoke to - have died, and as he argues the Second World War is now passing out of living memory. This chance to capture and record these fleeting ghosts before they are fully gone is utterly compelling.

Dream the myth onwards

Here's the introduction I wrote to the book of academic papers, The Mythological Dimensions of Doctor Who (2010) - available as a paperback and on Kindle and things.

Dream the myth onwards
Simon Guerrier

Do stories matter if we know they're not true?

That seems to be central to the idea of myth. They are stories that matter. Ken Dowden, in his book The Uses of Greek Mythology, argues that “myths are believed, but not in the same way that history is”(1). If they were true they would be history. But stories still illuminate the truth.

The father of psychoanalysis certainly thought so. Sigmund Freud used the stories of ancient mythology to illuminate aspects of the human condition. Most famously, he named a group of unconscious and repressed desires after the mythical king of Thebes, Oedipus.

The story of Oedipus has been retold since at least the 5th Century BC. By linking to it, Freud suggested that the desires he'd uncovered were not new or localised. They were universal.

Freud was clearly fascinated by myth. His former home in London – now a museum – contains nearly 2,000 antiquities illustrating myths from the Near East, Egypt, Greece, Rome and China, many lined up on the desk where he worked. He argued that psychoanalysis could be applied to more than just a patient's dreams, but to “products of ethnic imagination such as myths and fairy tales” (2).

But, as Dowden points out, you can only psychoanalyse where there is a psyche. Who are we analysing when we probe ancient myths – which have been retold for thousands of years? Do we examine a myth as the dream of an original, single author, or of the culture that author belonged to? Dowden argues that “psychoanalytic interpretation of myth can only work if it reveals prevalent, or even universal, deep concerns of a larger cultural group”(3).

He also quotes Carl Jung, who developed the idea of the “collective unconscious”, a series of archetypal images that we all share in the preconscious psyche and which, as a result, appear regularly in our myths. Jung warned against efforts to interpret the meanings of these images: “the most we can do is dream the myth onwards and give it a modern dress”(4).

That seems to me what Doctor Who does, retelling old stories in new ways, surprising us with the familiar. The archetypes of Doctor Who – the invasion, the base under siege, the person taken over by an alien force, regeneration – have been embedded for decades. Yet the series keeps finding new ways to present them, and new perspectives and insights along the way.

That's also true of this book, probing the Doctor's adventures for new perspectives and insights. The essays contained here don't take Doctor Who as the dream of one single author whose unconscious desires can now be exposed. Instead, it probes our shared mythology as Doctor Who fans – of which the TV show is just a part – to explore our own cultural unconscious.

“Myth” means many things in this book. It's any fiction with a ring of truth. It's any story with cultural of psychological value. It's any work with staying power, whose themes and ideas are still relevant generations after the first telling. It's the established, fictional history of characters and worlds, the “continuity” so often complex and contradictory. It's the moment at which a character becomes a hero or even a god. It's anything we want it to be.

And that is why it's so revealing.

(1) Dowden, Ken, The Uses of Greek Mythology, London: Routledge 2000 [1992], p. 3.
(2) Freud, Sigmund, Totem and Taboo, Leipzig and Vienna: 1913, English translation ed. J Strachey London 1955. Cited in Dowden, p. 30.
(3) Dowden, p. 31
(4) Jung, Carl and Kerényi, C, Science of Mythology: Essays on the myth of the divine child and the mysteries of Eleusis, 1949, English translation, cited in Dowden, p. 32

Thanks to editor Anthony S Burdge and Anne Petty at Kitsune Books for permission to post it here. I landed the Doctor in ancient Greece in my book, The Slitheen Excursion - where he met what might be the real people who inspired the myths of Athena, Noah and the Medusa, amongst others.

Re: Re: The First Wave

[SPOILER WARNING!]


[SPOILER WARNING!]


[Whopping great spoilers for my recently released Doctor Who story, The First Wave, follow.]


[End of spoiler warning.]


Hello Rose

First I should thank you. Your post is full of nice things about my writing generally. You call me “educated and intelligent”, which is not something I hear a lot. So thanks for those bits.

You clearly don't like The First Wave, and I don't intend to try to persuade you otherwise. But you make a number of claims that I don't think are fair. So I'll address those.

You make a lot of comments about Big Finish generally. I don't speak for Big Finish – what follows are my own opinions – and I'm not going to guess what producers or writers were thinking or trying to do. But there are openly gay and bisexual characters in several Big Finish Doctor Who stories, as well as in related ranges such as Bernice Summerfield and Graceless.

My own experience is that it's tricky writing an openly gay character in a Doctor Who audio story. There's already a lot to set up in a Doctor Who audio: a new location in time and space, created entirely from what characters tell us about it; a plot that hasn't been done before in all the hundreds of TV episodes, books, comics and other audios; an exciting monster and lots of jeopardy. Into that must go the Doctor and TV companion – and under the terms of Big Finish's licence with the BBC, they must be as they appeared on TV.

That doesn't leave a great deal of room for anyone else, so other characters tend to be sketched in lightly – character types that the listener can quickly visualise. I'd argue that we're rarely told the sexuality of any of the characters, heterosexual or otherwise.

Oliver Harper gets more depth than most because I created him as a new companion who'd appear in three stories. But his life and background are still quickly and lightly established. And that means it's tricky to avoid tokenism and cliché, to make him a character rather than a label or manifesto. You kindly praise my efforts in Oliver's previous two stories. Thank you.

But you don't like The First Wave specifically because I “stereotypically, pointlessly, offensively” killed off Oliver, who is gay. I'm sorry for causing any offence. You direct me to the TV tropes page on the “bury your gays” cliché. It's a good, fun piece that makes important points. But look again at what that page says:

“Please note that sometimes gay characters die in fiction because in fiction sometimes people die (this is particularly true of soldiers at war, where Sitch Sexuality and Anyone Can Die are both common tropes); this isn't an if-then correlation, and it's not always meant to "teach us something" or indicative of some prejudice on the part of the creator - particularly if it was written after 1960. The problem isn't when gay characters are killed off: the problem is when gay characters are killed off far more often than straight characters, or when they're killed off because they are gay. This trope therefore won't apply to a series where anyone can die (and does).”

“Anyone can die (and does)” is a good summary of the era of Doctor Who in which The First Wave is set. By “era”, I mean Season Three – not, as you argue, the First Doctor's adventures as a whole. In that season, Katarina and Sara die, Anne Chaplet (a sort-of companion in The Massacre) is apparently killed, Vicki is written out during a bloody battle that leaves Steven badly wounded, and Dodo vanishes off-screen having had her brain scrambled.

Actor Peter Purves discusses how abruptly the cast were let go in this period on DVD documentaries on The Ark and The Gunfighters – both of which I worked on. The production team even tried to write out William Hartnell as the Doctor in The Celestial Toymaker, before doing so a few months later in The Tenth Planet. There's a sense in this season that no one is safe and no one gets a happy ending. Steven's own exit from the series in The Savages could have been happy – he goes off to be a king – but that's not how it's played. So what happens to Oliver is perfectly in keeping with the series at the time (something the terms of our licence with the BBC requires).

What's more, a new companion gives us a lot of freedom. Not only can I make him a stockbroker and gay, but I also don't have to return him safely at the end of a story to where he was at the start. That's something we have to do with the TV characters under the terms of our licence. So part of the appeal of creating a new companion is that the listener doesn't know how things will end – or if he will survive.

That's the central point of the three plays featuring Oliver: anyone can die, and the longer they stay with the Doctor, the more they're on borrowed time. The phrase “borrowed time” appears in all the stories, and The First Wave would have been called Borrowed Time had there not already been an Eleventh Doctor novel called that. From that starting point, I tried to write an adventure that was exciting and also moving. You're meant to like Oliver, and not like him dying.

You object to Oliver's “noble self-sacrificing death to save the main [i.e., heterosexual] characters”*. I don't think you're arguing that he should have died ignobly – perhaps screaming for mercy or siding with the villains. And I don't think you're arguing that I've killed him off because he's gay. I think you're arguing that because he's gay I should treat him differently from any other character. You want me to discriminate.

You praise my previous story, The Cold Equations, because Oliver's “sexuality wasn’t constantly brought up, it was just a fact about him.” But I'd argue that you've made his death – and the scene where he helps Steven dress up in The Perpetual Bond – all about his being gay.

I don't expect any of this to change your mind. But remember that I brought Sara Kingdom back from the dead. The return of Oliver Harper would be a cinch.

All the best,

Simon

(* I could also point out, pedantically, that the show offers little evidence that the Doctor or Steven are specially heterosexual. But anyway.)

AAAGH! at the gym

Another AAAGH! from Doctor Who Adventures #243 - in shops till yesterday. This one features Jabe the tree from The End of the World and the Minotaur from The God Complex. (Sadly excised to make it all fit was the First Doctor in vest and shorts on a treadmill muttering that "*Puff!* This old body's wearing a bit thin. *Pant!*")

As ever, the script is by me, the art by Brian Williamson, and the editing my Paul Lang and Natalie Barnes - who also gave kind permission for me to post it here. A special birthday AAAGH! next week. You can also read all the AAAGH!s I've written.

Two covers

Some forthcoming things by me:

Doctor Who: The Anachronauts stars Jean Marsh and Peter Purves, directed by Ken Bentley. Cover by Iain Robertson.


Graceless 2 stars Ciara Janson, Laura Doddington, Fraser James and Derek Griffiths, directed by Lisa Bowerman. Cover and design by Alex Mallinson.

Loads of things we learned about making short films

Cleaning Up won Best Thriller at the Aesthetica Short Film Festival this weekend. Brother Tom and I had an amazing time in York, seeing loads of the 150 short films shown, comparing notes with lots of spectacularly talented film-makers and wannabe film-makers, and generally larking about.

As a result of all the nattering, we've realised how much we've learned by making our film – and stolen from all the clever people we've worked with.

Calling card
Short films are a way to get noticed, to get more – or different – work, and to prove that your idea for a TV series or film really works. Make your short representative of the things you want to do next.

Volunteer
We spent a day as runners on Danny Stack's Origin and two days as coppers on James Moran and Dan Turner's Girl Number Nine. That gave us a good sense of what to expect, plus we learned loads of practical things that helped us set up our film and make the shoot run smoothly. We also nicked Danny's producer, one of James and Dan's stars, and loads of crew from both.

Research
Watch all the short films you can. Go to the festivals. Buy the DVDs of award-winning shorts. If you've got a particular genre or audience in mind, research it and find out what other people are doing. Most festivals will put your film in a group with a similar theme (we've been shown as a thriller, a comedy, and as part of a group called “wrong place, wrong time”).

No matter how much of a film buff you are, the festival programmers will have seen more films than you. A festival can easily receive 1,000 to 7,000 submissions. What makes your comedy, horror, fantasy any different from the hundreds of others? What are you doing that's better? Watching lots of film, you’ll see they usually all very well made. And then one makes you sit up and take notice. How can you make your film do that?

Genre
Are you making a genre piece – comedy, horror, thriller? That can help you place your film with the festivals, sell it to an audience, build a following. Having watched a huge number of shorts now, comedy is clearly the hardest to get right – and there's nothing worse than an audience sitting stony-faced waiting for a comedy to end. But when it's right, when it works, you can be the talk of the festival.

Good script
We watched a lot of short films before making ours. A lot of people will tell you that it's easier to make films now – you can even get mobile phones that record in HD. But that makes it all the harder to stand out from the rest. A lot of short films look beautiful and are stylishly played and edited. But the thing that makes the best ones stand out is that they have good scripts. Commission a writer, as Tom did, to write something an audience will remember.

• James Moran recently blogged a whole, free seminar on writing.

It also helped that we had a professional TV writer as our script editor. Joseph Lidster made me work very hard: the script for Cleaning Up went through more than 20 drafts.

Why should anyone care?
You need to ask this a lot. Will the basic idea of your film grab people? Will the tag line? Will the names of the actors help sell the film? Are the roles they're playing not what they normally do? Or is the point that you're using people who aren't so well known? Your film needs to fight to gain attention.

Make a film on your own
Before you start assembling a big cast and crew, make a small film first, perhaps on a mobile. That way, you understand the process from start to finish, can see where your weaknesses are and can make a lot of mistakes – without a whole huge crew watching. It doesn't have to be any good; you don't have to show it to anyone. But edit it, put music on it, make sure you complete it.

Make it count
The standard of shorts is high, so make sure your money shows on screen. Every shot and line of dialogue has to count. Good locations, good production design and music all help sell your film. (A heck of a lot of short films include sunsets, which look amazing and are cheap.)

What do you offer the star?
I'm presuming you don't have much of a budget. So the only thing you can offer an established, “name” actor is a good script, with a good role for them – and something they don't normally play. And you've no comeback if they turn you down. Nobody owes you this.

Also, every actor should play a character with a name. They've given their time and skill for free, so the least you can offer them is a credit as “Keith”, not “Guard number 5”. It looks better on their CVs.

What do you offer the crew?
You're (probably) not paying people, so you have to treat them well. Don't tell them it's a great opportunity for their careers (klaxons go off, there are axes and bazookas). Define the working hours – and stick to them. Make sure there's a good lunch provided for everyone, tea and snacks and supplies.

You're the one who'll benefit from the film, not them. So you need these people more than they need you. And a good, experienced crew is essential. Ideally, you'll be the least experienced person on set.

Scheduling
Your cast and crew will – and should – drop you in an instant if they get another good, paid gig. You also find you can't work the schedule to get your dream cast and crew together in the same same place at the same time. So you have to work out who is the most important.

Say what you don't know
I made a stupid blunder on Origin by not letting on that I didn't know how to work the walkie-talkies. Don't bluff your way through. Ask advice. Listen and learn. There's a lot of bullshit in films – you have to big a project up just to get it made and seen. But people, especially the crew, will be much happier when you're honest.

Prepare
Do as much groundwork as you can yourself. Your producer and crew may only be there for the shoot itself. Make people's lives easy, and have as much prepared in advance as possible.

Tone
You set the tone of the shoot. So be cool, decisive and fun. As director, everyone will want your opinion all the time, so know what you want from every aspect of the film – and don't dither when they ask you. A happy crew works 10 times harder.

Adapt
As much as you might plan, all shoots run on luck, short films even more so because there is no money. So you'll have to adapt and improvise. Roll with it.

Gratitude
Say thank you. Buy drinks. Have a cast and crew screening. Keep everyone informed of what's happening. Return the favours people have done you. Let them know to call the favours in.

Edit
When you finish filming, you're halfway through the process. Keep your film short and relevant. Cut every frame you can. Cleaning Up lost a whole scenes and at least one of my favourite lines. Be ruthless. Audiences sitting through lots of shorts in one go will thank you.

Trailer
More people will see the trailer than the film. The cut of the trailer is potentially more important than the cut of the film.

Website
Don’t just watch lots of short films – look at how they’ve marketed themselves, too. Some do fancy websites and loads of PR, others don’t. We based our efforts on the Academy Award-winning short The New Tenants.

Don't waste people's time. You want a simple, good-looking website where people can quickly – no, immediately – find your trailer, a list of cast and crew, the tag lines and blurbs, a press release and how to contact you. Make it easy for people to see where it's playing and what awards you've won.

We'll write about sending your finished short out into the world later, when we've a better idea of how what we've done has worked.