John Hall

I’ve written a four short film scripts. Call them comedy pieces with a common theme. Each looks at how things can go wrong and how we sometimes, would love to find a way to go back and fix things up - make it right.

I have given the project an overall title of Spring Quartet. The writing is along the lines of Love Actually except that each of the stories is separate, but dealing with similar themes - how life keeps dealing a joker when you least expect it.

So why have four stories? Wouldn't one do? Possibly. Probably. What we have here is a stepping through time. Pick One looks at how one casual choice can blow you away. Midnight Whispers takes us into the past and a story of star crossed lovers. Wake deals with memories of a dead lover and the coping with loss. And finally, there is Feeding Time. Sometime in the future could there be a hunger which breaks the barriers of time - and could that be a discomfort linked to the present?

From an audience point of view there is a piquancy of mood which is shared through the common thread of these four stories. We plan we hope. We dream. But sometimes life, has the final word.

I am looking for a producer to raise the funds and collaborate to develop, shoot promote and market the project.

Let me know if you have any questions - or you want to take an active part.

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Completed:

Script Assessment Course AWG/AFTRS 2011
Master of Film Studies University of Sydney 2007
Certificate IV Assessment and Workplace Training ITC Australia 2004
Film and TV Production Course North Sydney Technical College 1978
Bachelor of Arts (Drama) University of NSW 1975-1977
Teacher's Certificate Claremont Teachers' College WA
Business English Perth Technical College

Presently completing Certificate IV Assessment and Workplace Training (Film) at MetroScreen Sydney - final submission made waiting assessment.

Been a radio announcer and copywriter at 6 GE Geraldton, WA, 8 DN Darwin NT, TCN 9 and 2GB Sydney
Written scripts and technical documents for IT, Franchising and Human Resources/Recruiting.

I am familiar with curricular design from my experience in teaching, from my experience as a Learning Centre Manager in IT, from my VET and HR
experience and from Technical Writing and related disciplines.

I have designed Reporting and Organisation procedures including OH&S.

PS In 1980 we started Moebius Productions - Model Making and Special Effects:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sObNjL6l8qg
Links:
The Loop: http://www.theloop.com.au/jobs/Spring-Quartet/Sydney/3853
The Melting Pot: http://www.meltingpot.spaa.org.au/projects/spring-quartet
StarNow: http://www.starnow.com.au/Casting-Calls/Crew-wanted/Production/ListingDetail.aspx?l_id=287148

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I always wanted to tell stories – make films. BA Drama Uni NSW - Film and TV Production Course North Sydney - Master of Film Studies at UniSyd in 2007. You keep knocking on doors, trying, pleading - sweating at it – looking for an opening – persistence pays! Or so they say. Please sir, could I have some more?
I have chosen a different path to many, not to be perverse, but rather in the hope of finding what is inside – driving me – encouraging me to follow my own particular muse.

First they make you love it – then they take it away from you. John Cassavetes.

In my early days, even before school – my father used to read to me. Blinky Bill, the May Gibb Gumnut stories: Say the words! She stood at the door of the fish sauce shop – welcoming him in. And we listened to radio serials together. Superman, The Shadow and of course: Journey into Space our BBC special delivery.

Poets talk of life as a vale of tears. But it ain’t so. It’s too glib - almost a callow use of language. It has no context. No particular reference. It’s yada yada - stick language - no flesh - just desiccated skin and bone.

We are apprenticed to separation from an early age. When I was six my dog died. Smudge, my friend and companion - with me for as long as I lived - through every waking moment - was taken to the vet and I never saw him again. Haemorrhage of the brain, they said. I cried for a week. Mum got a replacement puppy - Judy – but she had not been immunised against distemper - got sick and died. I was inconsolable.

Then there was Polly the smartest - and dumbest parrot - who ever lived. She was my bird - my cockatoo. She’d climb up the sheets of Dad's bed and nibble his toes - all the while having a conversation with herself. Then Dad let her out without clipping one of her wings and she found she could fly. Up she went screeching her surprise. But then the dumb bitch tried to land on the water and drowned. We found out the next day.

I shared a close relationship with Bill, the crippled parrot. No one else could get near him. I‘d put him on my shoulder, but one day he lost his balance and grabbed my ear with his beak to try to stay. He didn't mean to hurt me - but I bled like a stuck pig. Weeks later I found him covered in ants - stiff and cold in the bottom of the cage. He was the dead parrot of Monty Python fame - deceased - an ex-parrot. Crying time.

Memories are there. With Mum and Dad on holiday - down at Meelup WA. Camping out. A tent, green with mosquito netting - camp stretchers. Scouting around was my dog, my guardian Smudge. I was three.

Another time Mum started to feed the Kookas (Kookaburras to the uninitiated). She would place small pieces of meat in a row along the wall of the verandah. One of the Kookas would cock his head and watch what she was doing. After a while a number of the jackasses would line up on the telegraph wire and watch the show. Then one would swoop in grab a piece of meat and off again. After a while they got closer and closer literally eating out of her hand. One time one of them got a bit carried away and grabbed a bit of Mum's hand as well. At which time she abused him - savage beast. One day during the feeding process one Kooka brought his own lunch - a half dead snake. The Kooka was shaking and shaking the snake to stop it wriggling. Then it would fly up into the air and drop the snake from a height. Down would come the snake with a terrific wallop closely followed by the Kooka sweeping it up for another chew. After a while the snake stopped wriggling. At this stage the Kooka decided to eat the snake, which was quite an undertaking being as the snake was at least as long as the bird. Still it all went down although I do think that if the snake had waken up down below then things might have been awkward for the Kooka. Eventually he flew away although he did look a little heavy for the take off. Never underestimate the powers of Mother Nature. She continues to expound.

Teaching, radio, theatre as an actor, stage manager, striving, IT trainer, model maker, frustration. Marriage kids, the whole schlemiel. With my kids I had various success with pets. One cat, Miff was as thick as two broad planks – but a lovely disposition - What is it Miff? (Silent meow in response) - Lots of conversations like that. Of course the second time she got hit by a car it killed her - on my birthday - so there I was bawling my eyes out - digging a hole in the garden to bury the cat. Happy birthday to meeee - eee. Sometimes cats in the city don't seem to fit. Memories, shadows - fragments of my past.

Then there is the hooman side of the equation. People disappear. You lose track. Sometimes it's the tyranny of distance. Sometimes they up and die on you. My Uncle Joe - who I loved almost as much as my Dad - had a heart attack and died in front of me. I was 19 - he was 47. Shattering.

Then one early morning, I was woken by my (foster) brother Geoff. He was wearing women's clothing (including boots) and dread locks. Told us he was hiding out from the CIA (or the FBI) Details were little hazy. He had been a victim of substance abuse for quite some little time. His reality was a little fractured. Then some later day Mum told me that Geoff had been killed by a truck at a service station.

Then sometimes things happen that just don't make sense - like Naomi – my daughter that was - the pain and surprise you can't hide from - it even hurts to breathe.

So here I am - writer, actor, announcer, poet, general factotum, special effects guy and teller of tales. Son, lover, father and widower. An abiding passion for film: I remember the tree outside the open-air cinema. Deck chairs and mosquitoes inside. Me halfway up a gum tree absorbed – entranced – lost in a dream.