HEART OF NEON is...
Wanting my film to be taken seriously by the mainstream media brings a lot of associated baggage. Accurate documentation of the contents of the film, a clear legal chain of title that unambiguously shows intellectual property ownership, assigned rights & permissions, not to mention paying for proper legal counsel and paying for Errors & Omissions insurance, without which there is simply no chance of acquiring mainstream distribution for this film in any form.
Did I mention that I hate paperwork?
It’s attention to detail that separates talented amateurs from professionals. And that’s not a dig at amateurs. It’s the part of professionalism that requires the artist to be held to the standards of others, standards that require knowledge, skill and consistency, and requiring the artist being able to deliver on terms they would never have set for themselves and still exceeding expectations. Any kind of contemporary mainstream media content requires thorough vetting of legal, technical and artistic execution of a work. In mainstream media, if something looks half-assed, it’s a safe bet that’s a specific artistic choice. You don’t have to agree with me, that’s just an observation from somebody who has worked at different budget levels of the media creation industry.
It all reminds me of something Gary Penn pointed out during his interview for HEART OF NEON. He pointed out that Jeff is a polisher, someone who sweats the details so to speak and refines the work to a natural conclusion. Jeff has an astute perspective on the craft of game development and a diligence in preparing a game for his audience. It’s a practice he’s learned over time, an education that this film attempts to chart, an artistic feedback loop that’s rare for any artist practicing in any medium. I have a lot to live up to. I don’t want to let Jeff down.
Gary compared what Jeff does to dorodango, the Japanese art of molding balls of mud into perfect, shining spheres. I’d never heard of the practice before Gary mentioned it to me, and it was one of the ideas I wanted to keep in the movie but ultimately had to let go because I’m not entirely sure it applies. Video games aren’t tactile like dorodango, nor fragile. Gamedev doesn’t require a similar skillset, so in the end it was a hard concept to sell, even though I know what Gary was saying. He wasn’t saying gamedev is like dorodango. He was saying the care and precision and focus over long periods of time that Jeff puts into polishing his gameplay experiences reflect similar characteristics required to execute these extraordinary, highly polished artifacts.
And all of this is not to say that Jeff is in any way unique in this regard. There are a lot of people who exercise precision and care in creating video game experiences. What Gary alludes to in this metaphor is that Jeff “gets his hands dirty”. Jeff writes his own code, and only Jeff is responsible for the resultant actions and reactions created by that code. Jeff has skills honed over decades, no question, but what really sets Jeff apart is the accountability for the entirety of the work that rests squarely on his shoulders, every time. Giles is Jeff’s right-hand man, deploying Jeff’s code across myriad platforms via the Neon Engine Jeff & Giles created together (and, as Giles rightly reminds me, creates the documentation for the distributors just as I am, making sure every i is dotted and every t is crossed with excruciating exactitude). The creative accountability of the gameplay, however, rests largely on Jeff’s shoulders, because Giles shields Jeff from all the bureaucracy so he can focus exclusively on games
For myself, I recognize my impatience with craft. It has let me down in the past… too many examples to articulate here... and I’m keen not to let that flaw get in the way of making the best movie I can with HEART OF NEON. This last decade has been a lot of cable TV grind in my life, editing jobs I’ve taken to help supplement my income during the development of the film. These jobs are not the kind of gigs where you can give in to the urge to be impatient with work, and you have to stick with it until the showrunner AND the producers AND the studio execs feel the work is right. There’s no room for ego in there, you just do it until it’s done, quickly and on budget. That’s the discipline.
Applying that to my own work has been enlightening, though there’s always that imposter syndrome voice nagging in the back of my head. At public screenings of this film, it’s there, in the background, questioning my motives: Am I really looking for feedback from audiences? Or am I just looking for an excuse to spin my wheels for a bit longer? Every time I thought I was done with the edit I’d get a new set of audience feedback with which to refine the cut. Every time, that is, until the screening in Kenilworth August of this year. The notes from that screening were almost across the board reflecting a single aspect that needed my serious attention (text cards were too small and too fast), and a couple of other minor things that I’m still considering. But the major takeaway from that is that the waves of feedback have subsided. The film is close to finished.
Now I just have to do the paperwork : )
[Edited to acknowledge Giles, because he deserves all the credit for what he does!]