Good heavens! The phenomenal cats at CinéWomen, an annual French Publication have done me the honour of interviewing me about the creation of my feature film Frisky.
While you’re at it, slam those eyeballs of yours on the brand-spanking-new Frisky website here! You’ll find delicious links to the soundtrack and view the trailer, amongst other delightful treats…
Just look at all those gosh darn laurels, would you?!
At long last, I present to you the trailer for Frisky.
For the love of all things holy, go and like the Frisky Facebook page. And for heaven’s sake, share the hell out of this video.
When two twenty-something women move back to San Francisco, where they had met on exchange years earlier, their high career aspirations quickly become sidelined by their sexual interests. While wildly crass and charismatic in their public personas, they are in fact fundamentally at odds on many levels. Their opposing beliefs surrounding responsibility and romance, combined with their close quarters while crashing in an acquaintance’s living room, find them thrust onto a fast track to discovering what their friendship is really made of.
Based on true events, Frisky is an honest, tongue-in-cheek look at what it is to be a woman in the limbo years between college and “the real world”.Written & Directed by Claudia Pickering
Director of Photography Christiana Charalambous
Edited by Julien de Benedictis
Music:
Evils That Never Came – When It Stops
soundcloud.com/evilsthatnevercame/04-when-it-stopsThe Outs – Right Or Wrong
soundcloud.com/theoutsband/the-outs-right-or-wrongEvils That Never Came – Mahmania
soundcloud.com/evilsthatnevercame/mahmania
Talk about Northern exposure… Or NorCal exposure…
Slap your eyeballs all over the poster for my feature film directorial debut, “Frisky” (director/writer/producer).
Frisky is a comedy feature film about two twenty-somethings who move to San Francisco to chase their career, but end up chasing tail instead.
Very high brow stuff, as the poster implies.
The film is a patchwork of my own experiences (or things I witnessed others doing) throughout my move from Sydney to Los Angeles for film school in 2009, then again to shoot a pilot in 2011, then for love from LA to San Francisco in 2013. Only it’s just one story. And it’s heaps good. For serious. And the writing. Also good. Like this paragraph. But seriously, it’s going to be a ripper of a film, so stay tuned for more very shortly.
As for the poster, The finished product holds true to the original concept sketch that I drew on the back of a script to pitch the idea to Christiana, the film’s cinematographer/DP and the poster’s photographer. I then fiddled for more time than what is reasonable with the graphic design in Photoshop to produce this beauty!
We’re hella legit. Even IMDb reckons so... So keep an eye on our Facebook Page for the San Francisco screening in late March 2015.
While joining in my quest to complete the Foxen mural, the effervescent, deeply creatively inclined puppet enthusiast, makeup artist and hair stylist Katie Nash (some might assume she is the grandchild of Madonna, Leonardo Da Vinci, Jim Henson and Elizabeth Arden) took pity upon me; I am, after all, missing out on Halloween in San Francisco which, I gather, is an absolute hoot.
Not one to let timing get in the way, Katie decided to celebrate with me in advance over chicken tacos, some killer makeup and on-point Vogue circa 1985 (a great year) styling:
Please be sympathetic to my post-day-in-the-office, pre-looking-like-an-actual-fox dreariness. The dramatic nature of this transformation has raised concerns that Katie may actually be practicing some kind of voodoo or witchcraft. Highly appropriate for the season.
Theories are surfacing that badgers too, are using similar techniques to glam up after a long day in the woods.
And this is the last fox post. Scout’s honour.
Who seriously does an architecture competition just out of the goodness of their heart without a boss breathing down their neck? Well, despite having 3 landscape designers drop out of our team of 5, Erik Kramer managed to keep me on deck to submit our crack at the San Francisco 280 Freeway comp. Most of our conceptual work was achieved over a bottle of vino and in the company of our replacement 3: my mother (as she visited SF – she offered practical nuggets), Dr Klaus (came for the dinner, stayed for the good times – he offered spurts of inspirational genius), and Casey (came for the dinner, and I think he left after that….?). Then, picture my sorry mug sitting in a Chicago hotel room, alone, at 3am the night before it was due…
Looks like toffee apple land. Anyway, the competition called for:
… concepts … that are made possible through the replacement of the elevated Highway 280 north of 16th Street with a surface boulevard.
So our design is all about re-use of materials and structure, engaging with vistas, and re-energising the community… by turning a freeway into a park and other assorted delicious elements. But I’m not so much the architectural lingo frother, so I’m linking you out here if you want to read more.
Basically, my passion lay in giving it a jazzy name… And as I ABSOLUTELY LOVED the recent Star Trek: Into Darkness flick (admittedly unexpected – Klaus had to bribe me to go see it), I had one of the most satisfying moments of self-entertainment when I came up with this one: Tar Trek: Into Parkness.
Just take a moment to mull that one over.
Yep. Pretty good huh. Especially when put next to my other suggestions (“double double soil and rubble”, “grassy promenade deluxe suite”, “crouching rubble, hidden elevator”, “I can’t get no fenestration”, “banana hammock”, “rocky slice of cheesecake”, “duck crossing”), you’d think I had a winner. However with a crude and blatant disregard of my – I’m going to say it – literary genius, it was submitted under “Bay City Stacks”. How vanilla. Albeit appropriate.
So I vanished from the interwebs for a couple of weeks – and for good reason, well three good reasons. The foremost being: I had no computer. Why? Well this mural above is largely at fault. So am I, but I would certainly prefer to put the blame on something inanimate who will wear it with far more grace than me. Yes – I was painting this mural with Klaus at [freespace] with my car parked out the front (“who parks a car in SOMA?!” – says everyone after the fact.) and my window got smashed, my trunk opened and my laptop and camera gear (among many other things) were flogged.
This is just a symptom of me being a huge noob in San Francisco. Yep, it’s a learning curve. Turns out everyone I mention my tale of woe to has had something stolen from them within the last year in this city. Most of them not lucky enough to have travel insurance and to end up with a faster-than-Usain-Bolt, higher-resolution-than-real-life, brand new macbook pro. Like moi. What a smug little bastard. There it is again. Lemons to lemonade. I do still find myself sans a decent camera, but that will come.
Anyway – the half-finished mural. It’s a collab with Dr Klaus again (although my mum who was in town last week (WHICH WAS EXCELLENT) did have a hand in mixing some colours for us) and there’ll be some ink on top. Perhaps the dripping whitewash will give you a clue…
… Okay the suspense is killing me. I’m thinking of drawing a cow on it.
We also did these posters that will be cut in half, branded and gifted as thank you’s for the good people who donated to the second month of [freespace]. We taped up some poster paper and when choosing colours, I suggested “let’s just do the whole thing gold”. No objections from Klaus.
In retrospect, the Dr Klaus/thedarclaud mural style may have been ominous – looking like smashed glass and all, one might say we predicted the theft from my car, Carlos. Which would make us clairvoyant. So my next post may be just purely tea leaf-based art.
Aaaaaaaand it’s done. Chicken mural – check… en mural.
The Pensive Poultry Collection’s Zen Hen? Glorified. Dr Klaus and thedarclaud? Creatively immortalised until they rent the building out to someone else and repaint the whole place white. Good thing I took some photos.
Massive thanks to [freespace] for giving us a wall to get clucky all over. Last night was the exhibition and fundraising party – the most bohemian of hoots. Full of LED lights, bubble machines, face paints – wow. It’s sounding more like a rave. It really was very bohemian. There was an organic veggie patch and a ‘parkcycle‘.
By the looks of the freespace july indiegogo campaign today, we’re going to have another month of it…. which translates to another mural! STRAP IN, BARNYARD FANS. Probably looking at some bovine related content next time around, so all you beef enthusiasts – brace yourselves.
Pre-party and jazzed:
Good heavens! My hand has disappeared.
Turning lemons into lemonade. Isn’t that just something. I think that I can attribute a good proportion of the successes in my life to exactly this.
The proverbial ‘closing a door and opening a window’.
And this time, it lead me to this mural I’m working on with Klaus.
It was a miserable drizzling day yesterday in San Francisco but we were still endeavouring to get to some free dance classes in Golden Gate Park. After a cascade of events that mounted against the dance class plan, we found ourselves heading to a ‘postcard festival’ in SOMA as advertised on fun & cheap. Turns out there is only one post card in the whole place, but it’s crammed full of artists and they’ve got a wall that they’re wanting us to work on for the [FreeSpace] exhibition on June 26th. HELLO LEMONADE.
So we rode our bikes through the rain today with a backpack full of paint (leftover from prop building for Winning Formula), masking tape and tupperware and laid siege on this wall with only a vague plan in place. And who dropped past while we were working? This suited-and-tied chap with some deep Patrick Bateman vibes. How’s Christian Bale playing Bateman and Batman? Only difference is the ‘e’. Well there are lots of character differences but that’s not where I was going with it. Anyway, the guy who came to visit was the Lieutenant Governor of California and former Mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom (here’s an image comparison just to make this all worthwhile: Newsom vs. Bateman). Nice guy though.
We’re halfway done on this mural and I’m heading back tomorrow for round two. Ding ding.
As a San Francisco sapling trying to figure out what to do next, I thought I’d try doing what I like to do best.
Good heavens, I think that almost rhymed. Time to change the post heading from just ‘Virgin Snow’ to ‘Virgin Snow in SFO’. It’s all coming together now.
As for the virgin snow… the only quote I could find online was:
Blondes make the best victims. They’re like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints.
– Alfred Hitchcock
…. but I thought that was a bit morose. I really wanted to say something more to the poetic effect of San Francisco being my metaphorical blank canvas (like virgin snow) and I’m going to run around in it. The running is likely to be a lanky affair, but the resulting snow promises far less lank and hopefully more interest. I’m quite sure lank is not a word.
What I’m really trying to say here is since I’ve arrived, I’ve found myself making the heck outta stuff. There’ll be more of that. And all the stuff will be catalogued here. Thanks for getting involved.
THEDARCLAUD■ 
