Assembly Day 6: Questions and Answers

We’re nearing the end of the first week of The Assembly Film/Music Relay. Seven scriptwriting teams have been working since last Saturday to take the short rock opera piece given to them by Stephen Taylor and build 5-10 minute film scripts.

Seems like things are going pretty well so far. I’ve gotten a fairly steady stream of emails each day from participants trying to wrap their heads around what exactly they’re doing and what the boundaries of the project are.

Some queries have been technical and specific, relating mostly to properly downloading Stephen’s piece and uploading edits at the end of each session. These emails are fervent and direct, and are usually followed by a second email written shorty after, once the writer has stumbled on the answer to their own question. My own experience of The Assembly so far has been a similar process of learning by searching through unknown territory and being driven by imperatives of personal creativity and deadlines.

Other questions are more vague and look for a general understanding of the meaning, significance, reasoning behind doing something like The Assembly. These concerns have been best answered with phone conversations and coffee meetups to talk through our ideas and understand where each of us is coming from.

Why are we trying this? Because collaboration is tricky and rewards everyone in unexpected ways. Because testing new routes of creation and communication is scary and exciting. Because it’s February and we’re all depressed. Because we wanna get together with friends and have a good reason to write and film and play music and then experience the glow of that work as something entirely new is built from all our little ideas.

Participants seem excited to understand indyish and this particular project. They end their emails with exclamation points and smileys. Almost all the filmmakers and musicians have already created Celtx accounts and are anxious to have access to the work they’ll be building on. Each group only sees the step directly before them, so a filmmaker will read the script they’re working with, but can’t see the other scripts being filmed during the same week and won’t see the opera piece that inspired their script until the screening on March 10th, where we’ll have The Assembly Zine with the collected writings of all participants.

I’m meeting with filmmakers this Saturday at the Croissanterie downtown at 1pm to kick off the next stage of The Assembly. Stop by for a coffee and say hi.