For those of you following the progress of my film, well, I mentioned last week that I had made a creative breakthrough – and now it’s starting to cascade.

The thoughts and images are coming.

This is a film which will be made in post production. Editing. I’ve always known that. But now I’m starting to realise to what extent that will be true.

I’m not talking about cutting interviews. That’s the easy part. (Well, we’re into our 4th week now and we’re still cutting those interviews!) But I’m talking about the way the story is told. What I call the delivery system. The aesthetic of the film – the underlying intellectual DNA of the film. That’s what I’ve been searching for. That’s what I’ve been struggling with.

But now it’s finally coming together. I have allowed the film to speak to me, to tell me how best it should be made, and finally it’s begun to have a dialogue with me. And that dialogue excites the hell out of me.

I’m staying with my daughter and her fella in the city part of Sydney, and each day I walk 7kms to the editing room. And after work of an evening I walk 7kms back. I do this to prepare for the Portuguese Camino coming up, but also it gives me time to think.

I’ve found myself listening to podcasts – and I began listening to a series called Serial, podcast by This American Life. I know I’m very late to the party on this one – that it’s been around for a while, and I’ve been aware that when it began it created a cultural furore – huge excitement about the story, but also about the way the story was told.

I have now listened to both Season One and Season Two – and I’ve been fascinated by the mechanics of storytelling within the two seasons. Yes, audio allows you certain liberties not available in film – but I’m talking about an approach to non-fiction storytelling that conventional visual documentary has yet to embrace.

This to me has been the biggest breakthrough in my approach to my film – finding a way to impart information in a way that breaks down the formalism of non-fiction storytelling.

Also –

For quite some time now I’ve been writing a journal of the process of making this film. A whole lot of seriously weird stuff has happened and continues to happen – and I’ve felt that it’s important to keep a running diary.

On one hand it will be an interesting account of the process of putting such a unique film together – but it will also be a wonderful account of how to use your intuition to create something… and the fears and obstacles that present themselves.Because in making the film intuitively, I’ve opened myself up to the vagaries of the Universe, and at times it’s been terrifying, and at other times incredibly liberating.

Anyway, I thought I might now post my entry this morning, which I began writing at 4am after an hour of thinking through my film…

I should also add that I have put REDACTED over certain sections where I talk about the craft techniques I’ll be using in the film. It’s like what the CIA does with transcripts of terrorists at Guantanamo Bay, when they don’t want the world to know they’ve been waterboarding them. Obviously I want to keep this craft stuff private until the film comes out…

APRIL 6

It’s 4 am and I’ve been awake about an hour. My head has been spinning with visual possibilities. And I think I’ve settled on something – something that I’ve been grappling with for some time now, and that is to find a way to impart information in a casual and personal way, without diminishing the veracity of what I’m saying – and yet in a way that enables me to summarise and precis, and comment upon and explain.

Most importantly though, I’ve been trying to find a way of imparting information which enables me to express how I feel, and how I’m feeling about things at certain parts of the story. And that’s what I think I’ve found just now. 

It comes back to Serial, and the way Sarah Koenig and her team were able to “jump dots” in their storytelling. What does “jump dots” mean? It means you don’t have to connect all the dots. You can jump dots. You can do the heavy lifting for the audience, and they will not only accept that, they will welcome that because they trust you. That’s the key to it – they trust you. They trust that you’ve done your homework, that you’ve stuck to journalistic principals and truths, and that when you deviate into personal conjecture, which I must in this film, then it’s clear that I’m doing so, and when I’m doing it, and there’s no confusion between objective and subjective. 

That I guess is the key to this – what I’ve been trying to do is find a narrative delivery system whereby I’m able to shift between the objective and subjective. And indeed, even embracing the subjective from a personal perspective in a film like this will be bold. And really scary for me too because I’m really putting myself out there. 

But it comes down to the ….REDACTED…. with the film, and with me. And what I think and what I feel. I can use this device to comment upon what we’ve just seen and heard, and also to prep the audience for what’s coming up. I can also though use this device to make personal observations, and to do so in a very casual and “street” like manner. A bit like a political commentator. 

I’m also thinking about REDACTED use of graphics REDACTED, and also having shifting information REDACTED that’s germane to what I’m talking about. 

The audience now has a whole new grammar which they’re using in their ingestion of visual information – a grammar that didn’t exist even five years ago. That’s thanks to social media, and a technology which allows a multitude of different informational streams. Both software and hardware. 

And yet conventional documentary non-fiction filmmaking hasn’t adjusted. They’re still speaking in Olde English. There seems to be a belief that in maintaining a certain formality in nonfiction filmmaking, that this imbues the film and the filmmaker (perhaps more importantly) with credibility. And in some cases it does – but it’s old speak. It’s old grammar and language and syntax. The world has turned. There are new and more exciting ways of imparting information. 

Particularly with such a complex story as the one I’m telling, I have to find a clear and accessible way to impart information which isn’t alienating, which isn’t confusing, which isn’t soap-box, which is engaging. And real and personal and emotional and revealing. 

I’ve learned so much from listening to Serial, and analysing how they’ve told that story. Really examining the very subtle ways they’ve broken the conventions of nonfiction storytelling. I found a New Yorker podcast of an interview with Sarah Koenig, and on my walk to the editing room last week I listened to it – and it was fascinating to hear her talk about her process.

Thing is – we don’t have to do what what’s been done before. That’s the key to it as far as I’m concerned. Listening to a podcast of Lee Carroll yesterday on my walk, (Lee Carroll channels Kryon, and he’s featured in my film) – he said: “You have to get to the point where you trust what you don’t see.”

That stayed with me all day. You have to trust what you don’t see. There’s huge wisdom in that short statement. He also talked about the dirty windscreen, and wiping a patch clean and being able to see out – and the more you clean, the more you can see. That’s what’s now happening with this film – I’m starting to clean larger patches, and I can see more clearly. 

Anyway I need now to get back to sleep otherwise I’ll be a wreck in the editing room today.

I’ve been editing my intuition film now for three weeks, going through the interviews and pulling the best bits.

It’s an intense process.

I’ve shot more than 50 interviews and after 3 weeks, we’ve only cut 20 interviews – that’s how painstaking the process is.

It’s a wonderful opportunity though for me to take in the wisdom of what these people are saying – to truly absorb it – because I have to go over the interviews many times in the process of selection.

I’m making the film intuitively, and so I haven’t gone into the editing room with a fixed idea of how to approach the film stylistically. I’ve wanted the material to speak to me.

For nearly three weeks it didn’t speak to me.
And I was starting to panic.
In fact I was really starting to freak out.

Then on Thursday night it finally did speak to me. Something one of the interviewees said clicked with me, and I made a creative breakthrough that has truly excited me. I can’t tell you what that is – only that I’m hoping that this will be unlike any film you’ve ever seen.

If I wanted to make a regular documentary, I would have cut all the interviews by now, and I’d be heading towards a locked off cut in two to three weeks. That’s the usual schedule for a documentary.

Not this one. Not the way I’m making it. As it is, I can’t see myself being out of the editing room before maybe August, at the earliest.

But – when I am finally finished, I think the film will be amazing. And it will be something that a lot of people will want to see.

I have more to shoot, and some interesting things to do in post production – and I need more money. I really need more money. Availability of funds will also dictate my timing.

That aside –

I wanted to tell you about a parable told to me by one of the interviewees – the wonderful lady who runs the Bombay Yoga Institute, which is said to be the oldest yoga centre in the world. Her name is Smt. Hansaji Jayadeva Yogendra, and she’s one of the leaders of the Hindu community in India – and a very wise lady.

This is the story she told me:

A man was climbing a mountain. It was snowing, and getting late. He was nearly at the top of the mountain, but night was falling, He wanted to get to the top before it got dark. 

As he got to the top, he slipped and fell. 

He fell and he fell – and as he was falling down the side of the mountain he was quite convinced that he would die. There was no way he could not die. But then he was jerked up – and he remembered – he was wearing a safety rope!

He finally came to rest dangling on the end of the safety rope, swaying in the wind.

It was night now, completely dark, and it was freezing. He knew that he would not survive the night in the cold. He would freeze to death. 

And so in his mind he asked for help – and a “voice” came to him. He believed this to be the Voice of God. The voice said to him: If you want to live, then cut the rope.

The climber said: No, I can’t cut the rope. I’ll die. Please give me another way so I can live. 

Cut the rope, the voice said again. 

Again the climber said he couldn’t. He pleaded with God to give him another way, but he was not answered. 

In the morning, rescuers came, and they found his body.

He had frozen to death.

As they cut him free of the rope, one of the rescuers said to another: What a shame he didn’t realise – he was only ten feet off a ledge. If he’d cut himself free of the rope and fallen onto that soft snow on the ledge, he then could have made his way down off the mountain, and he would have lived. 

Hansaji told me, her eyes sparkling as she finished this story, that so many times we believe we know better than our intuitive wisdom.

But we actually don’t.

We can’t see what our guidance sees…

I was channel surfing last night.

I’d watched the most recent episode of BETTER CALL SAUL (fabulous), I’d watched the final episode of Season 3 of the Scandinavian noir series THE BRIDGE, (heart-wrenching and so so smart), and I’d endured another episode of THE PEOPLE vs OJ SIMPSON (horrible writing, horrible performances, but the car chase down the 405 is still mesmerising, even if fictionalised.)

I flipped channels and came into a programme half way through, called WORLD’S BEST RESTAURANTS. 

I’m always intrigued by the best of anything – excellence in all its forms fascinates me, and I always like to try and learn from those who are the best at whatever they do.

And so I began watching this show.

It was about a restaurant in New York called ELEVEN MADISON PARK. It’s regarded as one of the most expensive restaurants in America, but also one of the best.

Someone was being interviewed – it must have been the Chef, Daniel Humm – because he described how when they first started out, they were given a review by a famous food critic. The review was largely positive, but the review finished by saying that the only thing wrong with the restaurant was that it “needed a bit more Miles Davis.”

Humm was confused by that statement.
What did the reviewer mean?

Instead of dismissing it, or rejecting it as being too obscure, Humm and his team over the following months tried to determine exactly what that reviewer meant by that statement: They needed to be a bit more Miles Davis. 

So they compiled a list of commonly used keywords associated with Miles Davis, and they came up with the following:

• Cool.
• Endless Reinvention.
• Inspired.
• Forward-Moving.
• Fresh.
• Collaborative.
• Spontaneous.
• Vibrant.
• Adventurous.
• Light.
• Innovative.

Eleven words for ELEVEN MADISON PARK. 

This became the restaurant’s mission statement. They put this list up a board and hung it in the kitchen. And they decided that they would become “a bit more Miles Davis.”

It propelled them into the stratosphere. They became one of the top restaurants not only in the US, but in the world.

Their cuisine became renowned for being all those things on that list –

Why do I put this story up on this blog?

Because it’s a wonderful lesson in how to deal with negativity. You can dismiss it, or allow it to consume you, or you can use it to your benefit.

You can examine it,  learn from it, and you can grow.

That’s what those guys did…

We’ve been editing four five days now, and last night I invited two people in to look at some early cut footage.

Geoff Michels and I go back to 1976, when he was my Executive Producer at the ABC, while I was working as a current affairs reporter on THIS DAY TONIGHT. Geoff later left the ABC and built a very successful career in corporate public relations.

Over the intervening years we have remained friends, and many years ago now I told him that I wanted to make a film on intuition, and he thought it was a great idea. Geoff put in some early seed money, and he has since brought in several investors. He’s now an Executive Producer on this film.

Last night he brought along one of the investors and I showed him some cut interviews, and some visual footage. The interviews were:

Dr. Dean Radin – the Chief Research scientist at the Noetic Sciences Institute in Northern California, and one of the world’d leading research scientists studying human consciousness.

John Geiger, academic and former editor for the Toronto Globe & Mail, now CEO of the Canadian Geographical Society. Most famous for his best selling book, THE THIRD MAN FACTOR, which documents the phenomenon of a “sensed presence” that appears to some people when they’re under extreme duress, and when their life is in peril. It’s a term that was coined by Sir Ernest Shackleton on his infamous trek through the Antarctic.

Dr. Norm Shealy, one of the world’s leading research neuroscientists, and an expert on pain management. He’s regarded as being a pioneer in holistic medicine in the west.

James Van Praagh – a celebrated American psychic and author of many best selling books.

So I showed Geoff and the other investor some of these cut interviews, and some footage, and Geoff sent me this email this morning, which he wants me to disseminate to the other investors…

(And, I have to say, Geoff comes to intuition from a rationalist viewpoint. With his journalistic background, he has a healthy scepticism of all things “spiritual,” and leans heavily towards science and a belief in only what can be proven…)

There’s something that I’ve learned.

This might sound simplistic, and self evident, however it’s hit me just now with a profound wallop.

Life is full of choices.
And there are only two choices you can make:

You can choose to act out of love.
Or you can choose to act out of fear.

Most of us, most of the time, choose to act out of fear.
Usually, it’s fear of loss, or fear of lack.

And so we live according to the choices we make.
We live in fear.

Next time you’re faced with a choice, ask yourself:
Am I making this choice out of fear? 

To do this, you have to be aware.
You have to be awake.

Most of us aren’t.

So the first step to making choices out of love is to wake up.

How do you wake up?

Become mindful.
Pay attention.
Be here now.

Make choices consciously, with awareness, and learn to ask yourself:
Am I making this choice out of fear? 

If so, then ask yourself:

Is this really what I want?
Or do I want to trust… 

Today we started editing my film on intuition – called INTUITION IS YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM. 

The editor is Rishi Shukla, who edited the sizzle reels that have helped get the film such early notice.

By saying we started editing though, that doesn’t mean the shooting has stopped.

I estimate we still have at least a third of the film yet to shoot, and possibly more. But by commencing editing now, I can see exactly what I’ve got, where it fits into the structure, and what I need to get to complete the storytelling.

I’ll be shooting and editing side by side for many months to come.

We are making the film for cinema – for a theatrical release, with a VOD release to follow – and so the technical side of things has to be exact.

Josh Pomeranz, head of Spectrum Films, has come on board as an investor in the film – as have Wayne and Libby Pashley, from Big Bang Sound Design.

We are editing out of Big Bang Sound, but using Spectrum’s gear.

Josh and Wayne and Libby have been long term supporters of me, and of this film. I am incredibly grateful to them.

Jennifer is producing alongside of me. She’s produced my last six movies, and so she comes to this film with a vast and sophisticated knowledge and understanding of story, and cinema.

With this film though her input will be invaluable, because of her knowledge of the subject and the arena. She’s been studying the esoteric principles of spirituality for some 25 years.

The film will be more than just a spiritual interpretation of intuition though – it will explore intuition from a religious and scientific perspective as well.

Rishi and Jennifer and I started the day in a coffee shop, talking about the film – going through the underlying principals of the story.

I have to say – and I say this unreservedly: this is the hardest film I’ve ever attempted to make. I’ve made films in very difficult locations, with very difficult actors, in snow, in searing heat, with technical breakdowns and interfering studios – but nothing compares to this film in it’s degree of difficulty.

Because the difficulties here aren’t exterior, they lie within the very nature of the story.

But that’s what excites me.
That’s what gets my juices flowing.

I have to find a stillness, and allow the film to guide me. If I try to “make” this film, I’ll botch it. I have to allow it to make itself.

It will speak to me.
It already has, many times.
That’s what’s got me to where I am right now.

Going forward, into the edit, I just have to listen to its voice,
and trust,
and follow.

I got a wonderful five star review for my book this morning –

This book really spoke to me. I am finally going on the Camino this June and feel energized yet a bit daunted about what I’ve committed myself to. Will I be able to complete the Camino? Bill Bennet’s narrative has awed and inspired me to take the leap of faith. Thanks, mate!

One of the things that knocks me out about how the book has fared is that it’s encouraged others to walk the Camino. That gives me great pleasure.

The book has been out in the marketplace now about two and a half years, and it has far exceeded my expectations. It seems like each year it finds new readerships – perhaps as more folk consider doing the Camino.

I have now finished a screenplay based loosely on the book – and have initial interest from Universal. The film will be humorous in tone, like the book.

It takes a long time to get a film made – so don’t expect it in the cinemas any time soon – and I have two other films to make in the interim – PGS and DEFIANT.

I am constantly amazed at how social media works.

This blog goes out on Facebook and Twitter.

And just a short while ago I got notification that Fatburger liked my tweet – which was my “Religion is a Fatburger” post, which I put up yesterday.

Isn’t that cool?

Meditation is the key to any spiritual practice.

Twice a day, twenty minutes a time, and new worlds can open to you.

But how do you meditate?

I’ve been asked this by a lot of people.

Here is a section from Alice Bailey’s book, FROM INTELLECT TO INTUITION. It was written in 1932, and it’s a classic, as are many of Alice Bailey’s books.

Here’s her step by step guide to beginning a meditation practice…

MEDITATION FORM To Develop Concentration Stages

1. The attainment of physical comfort and control.

2. The breathing is noted as rhythmic and regular.

3. Visualization of the threefold lower self (physical, emotional and mental) as a. In contact with the soul. b. As a channel for soul energy, through the medium of the mind, direct to the brain. From thence the physical mechanism can be controlled.

4. Then a definite act of concentration, calling in the will. This involves an endeavor to keep the mind unmoving upon a certain form of words, so that their meaning is clear in our consciousness, and not the words themselves, or the fact that we are attempting to meditate.

5. Then say, with focussed attention —“More radiant than the sun, purer than the snow, subtler than the ether is the Self, The spirit within me. I am that Self. That Self am I.”

6. Concentrate now upon the words: “Thou God seest me.” The mind is not permitted to falter in its concentration on their significance, meaning, and implications.

7. Then, with deliberation bring the concentration work to a close, and say —again with the mind re-focussed on the underlying ideas —the following concluding statement: “There is a peace that passeth understanding; it abides in the hearts of those who live in the Eternal. There is a power that maketh all things new; it lives and moves in those who know the Self as one.”

Jennifer uses another more advanced practice, and I will post that at another time.

We have different types of hamburgers.

We have McDonalds

We have Hungry Jacks.

We have In ‘n Out Burgers.

We have Fatburgers.

They’re all hamburgers, but they’re different.

They appeal to different tastes, they sit at different price points, they come with different sides.

Some appeal to the young, some to Baby Boomers, some spend a lot on marketing, some are popular through word of mouth.

But still, they’re all just hamburgers.

They’re all essentially the same, selling the same thing – meat in a bun.

They’re like religions.

Religions are all different. They appeal to different cultures. To different beliefs. To different nationalities and historical predelictions.

But they’re all selling the same thing, which is God.

You don’t need to go to Maccas, or Hungry Jacks, or Fatburger, to eat a hamburger.

You can make one yourself.

And you can make it just the way you like it, not the way a fast food joint makes it.

The fast food joint makes it for the masses, to appeal to a broad based clientele. The more generic it is, the more popular it’s likely to be.

The fast food joints want to appeal to the masses, because that’s how they make money. They don’t mind that their hamburgers are generic.

But you might not like your hamburger generic.

You might like it different, to your particular taste – with those special things that make it appealing to you.

Chilli sauce, Turkish bread, avocado spread instead of butter, pineapple…

Whatever.

It’s still a hamburger. But it’s the way you like it.

That’s spirituality.

Versus religion,

Which is a Fatburger.

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