"Collateral" is now in pre production.

Recently I received comments on social media from a former colleague who was interested in how I was funding production for Collateral. I had intended to shoot it with iPhone, very barebones, and save the heavy production costs for post editing with special effects for the finale.

As I shared with him, even though I'm using the #shotoniphone tag, this is a completely independent vision, and is much about an intention statement to focus on while I push through my own trauma recovery largely alone, and a sounding post for others in my situaiton who might want to contribute to the project. As time has gone on there has been very little engagement, very little interest and zero care for my own lived testimony, so I've decided to turn it into a book instead. This gives me 100% creative control and the flexibilty to not have to worry about others interests for it to become a successful venture, no matter how long it might take.

Dear Ian. Thanks for your comments, how are the legs? Due to cluster headaches and and seizure related pain these last few years I have committed to this writing take in bursts and stems and in visions and largely need to piece it all together for it to be of entertainment value.

The folders are full of dialog snippets, scratch notes, something like a napkin with a location and a persons name on it, seeds for the writer in me. I'll often wake up with improv dialog for it at home alone, and use the notes as the leading edge for those experiences. In time it will all come together. Right now it's just a concept, a story, a tragedy and a drama all thrown into one.

Using the notes app and the application interface to inform the viewer is something I hope to continue. Each chapter / episode or stanza is to contain an element of veteran or character testimony. subtitles for testimony like in the old school emergency 911 callout videos. flashes, constrained frames of vision. Confusion in the furore. There's a lot there. Because of trauma and its isolation effect to the senses during recall, lots of blackouts will be used to interleave the character arc to the audience.

It's set in rural Australia by the sea, and thus can report on the whole gamut of issues that society faces. I often meditate on the life of the people in this town in my head. The more I ponder the more that seems to come to me.

The sides are preliminaries with stage and production directions for sound; to drive the audience viscera. I am completely unfunded, I'm only taking these fragments and aligning them to character arcs now.

The vision of it keeps me going, and the character sides will be used to attract local talent, welcome their input, draw out character arc through improvisation and collaboration. I have the intention to go to Screenwest when I've got the third draft ready and if it's considered viable then I go to the Minister for Veterans in Australia, Matt Keogh for Strat. approval to invite veterans into therapeutic cohorts to tell their stories in safe ways that obfuscate history, identity and sequence of events. It's a total dream. But it's mine and if I can ever find a way to fund it, I will need a whole world of talent around me. It's designed to put veterans as artists first if a successful venture. None of this has anything to do with my desire to support charities, but unfortunately the impact of being targeted by at least 40 accounts now that have tried to compromise me via request and inbox for PII to hack me as a potential fraud target means I've had to envision technical solutions for that problem too.

It's been a long road since 2022. I'll be sharing more about that here too.