{ London Film Fest 2011: Miranda July Masterclass. }

[delga]

Miranda July Masterclass

"I find time for all forms of procrastination."

It was a shame that I had to leave Miranda July's masterclass before it has ended because I was enjoying it immensely. Whilst her nerves presented as continual self-deprecation, and her speech was littered with "you know, I don't know", she gained confidence as the session went on, and I found I was very interested in her vision, if not also her process.

I found that July did not have too much to add to what we learned at her Q&A, but that the additional details were illuminating. She again explained the process of creating The Future, which started life as a performance piece that involved audience participation. July had always known it would end up on film - she confessed to referring to her performance work as 'live film', and saw both these and her previous short film work as a precursor to the long form - but had envisioned it being somewhat more avant garde, perhaps a art installation which again involved audience interaction. That it eventually became a feature film surprised her. Yet it seemed appropriate, too, as film is a form in which she has worked for a long time.

July spoke of writing being extremely like performance - that she would have ideas that she would then act onto the page. Rhythm was also crucial; she often knew how a thing would sound before she knew what it would say. This became a driving part of her short stories (No One Belongs Here More Than You, which I now cannot read without hearing July's intonation) and also of The Future, not only in terms of dialogue, but also the soundtrack. July had also spoken of this in the Q&A, describing the notes she would send to the composer, and way in which she and the sound editor painstakingly pieced the soundtrack together, the two of them locked in a room, with July obsessively tracking the beats of each scene.

July seems an obsessive personality, something she readily admits to. There is very little improvisation in her work, especially in the films, where I suspect her direction (from what she revealed) was extremely pedantic. She had intended Me and You and Everyone We Know to be a solo project, but after receiving funding from the Sundance Lab (a workshop run by that festival which was instrumental to making that film happen) she was faced with having to deal with producers who had funding for the film. She told a wonderful anecdote about 'testing' prospective producers and investors in their pitch meetings by setting up the room with cut-out animal figurines which she would then fail to reference throughout the meeting, despite people clearly expecting her to. July is aware that her work is relentlessly off-beat, and wanted the films' distributors to take that on without stifling her voice. This aggression and need to retain control over her work helped her to maintain her autonomy during Me and You and Everyone We Know.

The backbone of that film was established during a subway ride in which she plotted out the characters, knowing innately that the story would involve multiple unlikely relationships. I was surprised to learn that she wanted The Future to be a much darker film that her debut (capturing the weight of feeling that comes as the result of a break-up), even though - on the surface - it is. I was extremely moved by Jason's loss of Sophie in The Future, but I felt those characters had enduring optimism right up until the moment they lost it. The characters in Me and You and Everyone We Know seemed to me to be fuelled by their loneliness, and their interactions seemed fragile, easy to break. So it was surprising to me that she views her work the opposite way around.

The driving impetus in July's work is procrastination, which amused me because Abi Morgan has said something similar only seven days previous, that she ran towards whichever deadline wasn't screaming at her. July is much the same, working on her short stories when she should have been finishing You and Me and Everyone We Know; working on You and Me and Everyone We Know when she couldn't face her performance any more. It's this extremely relatable human quality that makes July so likeable, and is part of the beauty of The Future; the fantasy elements of the film as so natural because they meet the emotional expectations the narrative sets. It's odd to me that July should be characterised as part of the hipster art scene because though her work excels at the absurd and the surreal, it is so earnest and lacking in irony. When the moon speaks, it is really the moon speaking. And I think meeting July, hearing her speak about how the lines blur between the various media she uses, it is only fitting that the lines blur between fact and fiction in her work. There is great heart there, and it is in the details which she fastidiously labours over.

So. Confession: it turns out that I didn't finish writing this in my notebook. If it seems particularly scrappy it's because I realised I'd have to write it again, from scratch, today, and then type it up (as opposed to writing it half an hour after I was there, which has been my usual practice). I would be a terrible writer. In my defence, this is what I was working from today.