Comics and films aren’t so different, you know.
I’ve been interested in what each can learn from the other for some time now, having bounced back and forth between the two in some capacity for a while. As a writer I’ve always been intrigued by different methods of production for both comics and films, but as a maker and producer of films I’ve learnt that strong scripts will only get you so far. In documentaries particularly, other things come into play.
I was asked to talk about this topic at the inaugural 1000 words event, as part of this year’s Thought Bubble Festival a few weeks back.

So, if you’re interested in hearing what I had to say, there’s a video of the talk on the Thought Bubble Festival blog, and a piece on Forbidden Planet too.
There’s lots of other directions I’d like to take this talk in – the way that people perceive documentaries as continually evolving, “fuzzy” experiences and how that maps onto some of the ways we absorb imagery on a daily basis, like Instagram. Truth and integrity are also really important here, Robert Flaherty (one of the pioneers of documentary film) is well known for over sensationalising moments and characters in his films, encouraging them to be more like he thought they should be/were, rather than who they genuinely are. How does that map onto a creators vision for a comic, does it make them over manage a scene, or pursue a vision that jars with the characters and the story they’re creating?
Anyhow, that’s a bit of a brain dump. Not sure if/when I’ll get an opportunity to expand on this but, in the meantime, I’d be fascinated to hear from anyone else with a finger both the comics and film domains to see how this maps onto your experiences. Drop me a line.
Two things from Hemingway.
1. A note to himself when standing and looking out over the roofs of Paris in the early 1920s:
“Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.”
2. On food and labour:
“It is necessary to handle yourself better when you have to cut down on food so you will not get too much hunger-thinking. Hunger is good discipline and you learn from it. And as long as they do not understand it you are ahead of them. Oh sure, I thought, I’m so far ahead of them now that I can’t afford to eat regularly. It would not be bad if they caught up a little.”
Both from A Moveable Feast which, in Hemingway’s own words “if the reader prefers… may be regarded as fiction.”
It’s exactly my kind of book. A confluence of ambient rambling, theory, fiction and human observation.
A couple of months back I filmed James Bridle’s Working Shop. An art installation come coding workshop aiming to display the craft of code as an industrial artisan might.
The detritus of code is obviously much less visually striking than that of furniture production say, so documenting the craft through film was an interesting challenge. It’s almost the same problem that James faced – walking into his space who would know he was coding because what strikes you is the vacancy of the space, not the whirr of machines or the sawdust on the floor.
See for yourself what it’s all about.




