Weekly Meander #4: Fake it till you make it

On fossils, fonts and unpaid invoices

Each week I'm documenting what I've been up to in my working life. This is mainly for my own benefit – I seem to get to the end of most weeks feeling I've barely achieved anything so it'll be nice to start to build up a record of what I have done in any given 7 days. But hopefully some of it’ll be fun & interesting for everyone else too. I'll also be highlighting some great Substack posts I’ve read in the past week. Thoughts, comments etc always happily received – you can hit reply if you're getting this in your inbox or leave a comment at the end if you're reading online or in the Substack app (recommended).

And in case you're new here and wondering who on earth I am, do check out my hero post. TLDR: I'm a documentary filmmaker currently exploring/expanding into new professional avenues whilst also navigating parenting & perimenopause. Some balls may be dropped!

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Photo by MChe Lee on Unsplash

I had a cold – again – this week. The weather has been largely rubbish and my other half was away with work again too (the third week out of four he's had to travel away from home, though he thinks this will be the last of his trips for a few months at least – am keeping my fingers crossed!)

Even as I'm typing this, I'm looking out the window at a thick blanket of sea mist that's sunk on top of our hilltop and stubbornly refused to lift all day. And yet, I feel surprisingly chipper about the week just gone.

I've cracked on with various work things that are quite speculative and/or embryonic right now. I don't yet know if or how they'll play out. But it feels good to be getting on with stuff in spite of the uncertainty.

Stay with me for this analogy, but I took some encouragement in this regard from a rather random source on my Friday 'mummy day' with my pre-schooler. I'd taken her up to London to visit my sister-in-law in Crystal Palace and before stopping for a delicious lunch in the park cafe, we braved the drizzle and puddles to wander around looking at the famous dinosaurs of Crystal Palace Park.

Photos: Nadia Yegorova-Johnstone, Peter Reed on Flickr, Objectif

If you're not familiar with these, they're a series of sculptures dotted through a specially designed landscape in the parkland, dating back to the 1850s - the first Dinosaur Park in the world. Many of them aren't terribly faithful to what we now know about how dinosaurs would have actually looked – unsurprising really given how new the field of palaeontology then was.

Yet they were just as delightful as I remembered from visiting them when I was young – and my daughter was quite enchanted too. I loved the sign explaining that being based on such scant fossil evidence, much had been left to the sculptor's imagination.

Not knowing enough or having all the information in place hadn't stopped this wonderful Victorian endeavour marrying art, science and civic recreation from taking flight. And thank goodness for that.

As Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, the charity set up to promote their conservation, proudly state on their website:

“The 30+ Grade-1 listed sculptures that make up the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are absolutely vital objects in the history of science. They were the first ever attempt to model full-scale replicas of extinct animals, especially dinosaurs, and one of the first examples of natural history-based ‘edu-tainment’. Perhaps (unfairly) best known for their inaccuracies now, they were in fact pioneering reconstructions for the mid-nineteenth century, reflecting the latest scientific knowledge and skilled artistry, as well as being visual spectacles.”

So imagine me, if you will, as a slightly harried, menopausal lady version of Victorian dinosaur sculptor, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, boldly stepping forth as an experienced mid-level film producer and go-getting start-up online business owner, like she actually knows what she's doing. This girl can etc!

OK, I'll stop with the analogy now (fun though, wasn't it) and get on with the post. Here's some stuff I ticked off the to do list in the past seven days.

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WORK WINS THIS WEEK

1. First interview for forthcoming Substack series

I have a tentative idea for an interview series I'm hoping to start posting to Substack, to go alongside these weekly posts, and anything else that takes my fancy. I don't want to say too much about it till it's taken on a slightly firmer outline, but I've started sending out my first approaches to possible interviewees. And this week I did my first interview over Zoom.

I'm not sure yet whether I'll actually post video or just keep to written questions and answers (in the manner of the

Oldster Magazine

questionnaire or

Keris Fox

and her money conversations on

The Ladybird Purse • Opening up about money

. We'll see. Either way, this was a great chat – and I look forward to sharing it in due course.

2. DocMums meeting

About 18 months ago, I applied to an amazing scheme run by Film in Mind, a company working to promote better mental health practices and support for independent documentary. It was to train up a small number of peer group facilitators who could then go back out into the industry and set up and run peer support groups for various different cohorts.

I was thrilled to be accepted to create a group for mothers working as documentary producers, directors and editors – and DocMums, as I called it, started meeting about a year ago, mostly online as we're based in different parts of the country, but with physical meet ups once or twice a year.

We're only a small group – we didn't get a huge number of applicants in the first place and then two of our original members decided it just felt like one more thing on their plate they weren't in a position to manage (it's ironic that one of the very reasons a group like this is needed – that women juggling working in docs and looking after kids feel so overwhelmed – is also a reason they may not feel able to join).

I've found it a really supportive space to process some of my own experiences from the past and help work through where I'm going in the present and into the future. And it’s a privilege to hold a similar space for the other mums in the group too. We meet (mostly) once a month so expect to see this as a regular weekly meander item.

3. Applied for feature documentary producer training

A new training programme run by ScreenSkills, the industry-led skills body for film, TV, visual effects, animation and games, has opened to applications from feature doc producers in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and the English regions outside London. Specifically it's for “‘experienced’ mid-level producers (completed at minimum one feature length film as the lead producer)”.

I am one of these, although for some reason I felt the icy tentacles of imposter syndrome wrapping themselves around me when I saw the email announcing it. Nonetheless, I have applied. Keep your fingers crossed for me eh!

4. Brand Magic masterclass

I've been making slow to no progress on my new life stories business but inspired by the Female Entrepreneur Association's CEO Power Hour I attended a couple of weeks ago (see Weekly Meander #2), I finally made a start on their branding course.

It was actually quite fun and also super practical, with loads of useful info on things like brand colours, fonts, logos etc. And it has really inspired me to pull my finger out and finally decide on a name for the business. This has been a real sticking point for me but I know that so many things will start to flow and unfold once I've got this one seemingly small thing done. Watch this space...

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WHAT I'M LOVING ON SUBSTACK THIS WEEK

When Japanese Animation Cracked the Oscars

With a grateful hat tip to Jess

Loadofolbobbins

for recommending this excellent Substack, I gulped down this piece. My brother lived in Japan for 20 years, only returning to the UK last year to study for his phD. His wife is Japanese and their two kids had lived their whole lives in Tokyo until a year ago. I've visited twice now and found it completely fascinating.

So I'm sure it's no surprise that I'm a huge fan of Studio Ghibli. My son and I went to see Miyazaki's 'The Boy and the Heron' in the cinema and I was thrilled to see it win at this year's Oscars. And of course I remember 'Spirited Away', which won Best Animated Feature in 2003, the year my brother moved to Japan.

But 'Mt Head', the Japanese animated short nominated that same year that this piece delves into in depth, completely passed me by. It's an amazing story (and one I can personally relate to as someone who also got frustrated with mainstream commercial TV and went off to do my own thing). If you love Miyazaki and Japanese animation in general, you should definitely check this one out.

The 8 Stages of Perseverance

I had the first glimmerings of the idea that subsequently grew into my film on the history of nuclear power in 2006. The finished film was finally released in 2020. So yeah, this piece on perseverance REALLY spoke to me (it also made a nice companion to the story of Koji Yamamura's 6 year odyssey to make 'Mt Head'). I really love what

Remy Bazerque

is doing with his Substack. Come for the film stuff and thoughtful mental health reflections. Stay for the bizzare French expressions 😄

My Top 5 Freelancer / Solopreneur Hacks

I saved this cos I've been having such a nightmare of a time with invoices being paid extremely late. I knew most of the excellent tips here already – I now mention up front that I will be invoking my right to statutory interest and late payment compensation. But it STILL hasn't stopped the late payments – I've got one invoice outstanding from 5^th December!! (I'm mostly dealing with large clients like universities or government agencies who are licencing my film for screenings).

But there's one nugget here I haven't tried. Clearly... I need to get myself a Brenda.

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