In November 2022, Shaping the Shadows: A Picture Maker’s Story – my autobiography – was published. I’ve been asked why I decided to write it …
Well, through my filmmaking career I had the opportunity to do many wonderful things, see many wonderful things and meet many wonderful people; I wanted to share that. I also needed to put into words what I’d been learning to see since childhood: over a lifetime of searching for the best pictures I believe I developed a certain visual literacy at the expense of any understanding of the written word. Also, in my day there was no career structure, college, or university courses, so I wanted to encourage today’s budding filmmakers who may be struggling, as I did, to build a career from scratch. It’s a story of hope, and of never giving up. But I hadn’t a clue how to express my experiences in a readable form. My brain seemed to prioritise my eyes and missed out my mouth altogether, thereby limiting my ability to communicate with words. English was my worst subject at school, and it didn’t get any better after I left. So how did I come to actually write the book?
The book developed from a conversation I had with the curator of the National Library of Scotland’s Moving Image Archive, Kay Foubister, in 2014. I was helping her catalogue some of my past films and we were talking about our mutual love of Orkney. Kay was born and bred there, later becoming assistant archivist at the fabulous Orkney Archive, and I had often visited. Orkney has a remarkable history, of which her dad was a font of knowledge and during our conversation she told me that she had been trying to persuade him to write his autobiography for years. She then turned her attention to me and pointed out that the archive had a vast collection of my work, going back to the 1960s.
Anyway, Kay thought the archive’s collection of my films, along with extracts from my filmmaking life, would make a fascinating and unique memoir. Unique, because it would be the only account of the Scottish film industry written by someone who had worked within it consistently from 1965 to the present day, and who had formed their own film company (I set up Pelicula Films Ltd with fellow filmmaker Mike Alexander in 1971 and it’s still in business today). Funnily enough, FILM BANG – a kind of trade directory of film people working in Scotland – was published for the first time in 1976 (the year the film archive was founded), and I am the only person to appear in both the 1976 edition and the 2023 edition. So, Kay got me started and has been a supportive influence from day one. She sowed the seed in 2014 and a few months later, I put pen to paper.
However, as I began to write about my early life, I realised, rather spookily, that remnants of the fear and distress I experienced back then remained trapped inside me; somehow, I’d learnt to control them, apart from the homesickness which made the travelling life of a filmmaker exceptionally painful. George Orwell (about whom I made one film) said: ‘When it comes to the pinch human beings are heroic.’ I wish I’d known that during my earlier years. As a rather frail child, I was apprehensive, nervous and terrified of the outside world; my elder sister even had to lead me by the hand to children’s parties. I hated change and wanted to stay rooted to the things I knew about.
As I grew older, change became inevitable. I was often guided by Orwell’s ‘heroic humans’ and began to control my fear of being scared. I discovered that insecurity is one of life’s greatest motivators and can lead us to the places we most want to be.
Filmmaking’s like that: a scary business. We need to build up our stamina, resolve and ability to cope with this, including a strong resilience to rejection letters. I also discovered that the harder I worked, the luckier I became.
In a precarious world, I learned that the best way to cope with an unpredictable future was to invent it. But I knew this couldn’t be done without a comprehensive knowledge of the past. So, to the past I returned, my interest spurred on by the film archive. Although the Scottish Screen Archive was formed in 1976, Janet McBain (the first curator) had been collecting my work since 1966, with my self-funded apprentice film, Beneath the Skyline: Edinburgh to Music. In 1972, that film – already a Kodak award winner – was further honoured by being chosen by the BBC to open the Eurovision Song Contest when it was broadcast from Edinburgh. As the years passed, I maintained a close association with the archive and was delighted when I was asked to become a patron, along with actor Ewan McGregor and producer Iain Smith OBE.
The gestation period of learning to write my memoir was agony. I had to learn how words work. I had no idea what I was doing, or where I was going. At the beginning it was really just a jumble of letters, still to be arranged in a meaningful order. So, my first drafts of a lifetime’s experience were chaotic, to say the least – just an unordered catalogue of happenings. Then I met Helen Bleck, a professional editor. She must have been a great conjuror in a previous life because she managed to balance all the confusion and chaos I had created and help me craft it into what became Shaping the Shadows: A Picture Maker’s Story. Helen’s contribution was invaluable and I remain indebted to her patience and fabulous editing skills. Not only that, she’s also a very pleasant person to work with, although a bit strict sometimes.
The filmmaking time covered in my book has now become the subject of an academic study, with the highly motivated Nelson Correia making it the focus of his PhD. I’ve been delighted to support that, not only with my autobiography, but with my films and personal recollections. It goes without saying that Nelson’s academic study is of the highest order, but my book is also written with the intention to inspire newcomers to film – students and people with a general interest in the media with a can-do attitude, not necessarily based on academic achievement.
There are two contradictory quotations that describe my attitude to life and filmmaking:
‘Don’t always go where the pathway leads. Go where there is no pathway and leave a trail’ – Ralph Waldo Emerson
Charles Darwin said the opposite: ‘It is the long history of humankind […] that those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.’
The first quote talks about a strong independent mind, whilst the second believes that working together as a team produces better results.
In my view they’re both correct, and I’ve explored their meaning all my life. Working in film requires strong creative individuals and an inclusive and responsive crew, each offering their own contributions towards the success of the production. Nothing is conceived or comes to fruition by the actions of one person alone – it’s the wonder of collaboration.
In my book I quote Jane Eyre from Zeffirelli’s film: ‘Remember, the shadows are as important as the light’ My hope is that we can all share a little of the independence and love that Charlotte Bronte created for Jane Eyre and that ‘Shaping the Shadows: A Picture Maker’s Story’ helps us to understand that the dark areas of our life can sometimes be the most creative.
