Beautiful Eyes

Winter 2005

Beautiful Eyes wasn't written by me. It was written and directed by Dougal Irvine, a really talented guy who I had worked with previously. My role was purely producer on this one. This was a real challenge for me- locations, car accident, major props etc. not an easy one, but I wanted to experience all sides; writing, acting, directing and producing.

We nearly killed the lead actor and I remember no one wanting to drive the car in the crash so I had to do it and everyone was saying "now you must brake at this line" I remember sitting there revving, getting the signal and driving as fast as I could with the DOP sitting in the back seat and the Camera on my shoulder and I remember thinking "oh my god I'm going to kill her and the guy sitting behind me and have a huge bill for a smashed camera,'' but luckily none of that happened. I think it was a one take wonder, if I remember rightly. I loved that!

So the films were born. I had a screening at BAFTA scheduled for the February. We shot these three films back to back over 6 months, so it was good training for the forthcoming feature. I guess when I was doing them; it was really just a matter of learning, understanding and putting all that into practice.

As far as I was concerned I was walking after 18 months of sitting staring at a ceiling and I now had my mobility back and I could do anything I wanted. I was in control and I had my second chance at life and this time nothing was going to pass me by. I couldn't waste a minute, I couldn't sit in fear like I had all my life, I had lived in fear for 18 months absolutely consumed by it every second of the day and now Hratch had taken away the fear and giving me ME back. I just go do my best, enjoy the journey, meet great people, share something unique and amazing and put it out there. Some people will like it some will hate it but at the end of the day it doesn't matter because it filled something in me at the time that needed to be filled.

I haven't watched the films since the day of the screening back in 2006 and I will probably look back at them now like you do old school photos but they were my first step back out into the unknown, into the new world that was waiting for me. A world that I hadn't experienced before my time with Hratch because I was a completely different person, you probably find that hard to believe but I am a completely, completely different person. The person before lived in fear and pretended all the time, was selfish, self absorbed was basically me me me whereas now I feel fear but I embrace it and I take the step into the unknown because I know whatever is there I will survive.

I will experience many different things and will have the highs and lows of life but I won't ever be saying "I wonder what could have been", I have that awareness that every single human being is capable of whatever they want to achieve in this life if they go with one aim, without halt, with a focused mind and all the passion they possess in their hearts. They will create whatever is the best for them to create at that point in their life and the end of the day I think it's about being the best human being you can be, not the best in the eyes of others but the best in your eyes because you live with you every single second of every single day and if you feel that contentment for brief moments then life gradually begins to become amazing.

So amazing was the word I was thinking at the screening of my films at BAFTA, amazing that 18 months before I thought I would never walk again. I was lost in the unknown but this day I was walking into the unknown but this time it was my choice and completely under my own control. Everything had come together but not in the way I had wished as my Dad passed away three days before the screening date. That probably was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do- stand up and introduce my films when the one person I made them for wasn't seated in the audience in front of me but what I do have is him captured in every little detail in "The Fence" and now that is a huge comfort to my family because he was part of it, he was present when it happened and he lives on.

Now I write every day. Through everything I never really understood when I first went to Hratch when he kept saying to me "Write it down, Write it down". I was thinking the last thing I want to do is write everything that's in my head down. I have to live with it all the time, I don't want to read it again, but he was right. The minute I put it onto paper it became something different, it became real. I could look at it objectively, with reason, without intrusion, without cluttered thoughts. It was clear and it has helped me find so many resolutions in so many situations.

A thought has just popped into my head whilst writing this, the funny thing is the screening of my films at BAFTA is around the time I met Anne. I told her I was having the film screenings and she had this amazing book of photographs entitled What is God? and I said to her you can show them at the Screening if you want, I remember her being really excited and it was this night that she said to me "one day we are going to do something together" and three years later here we are.