By Liz Tobin.
We all know Josie Long as the wonderfully funny comedian whose goofy, awkward and honest humor hits the nail on our generations continually adrift head almost every time but, like many stand-ups before her, no one medium is enough to contain her effervescent creative energy.
Which is probably why the humor extraordinaire Josie Long recently spent a month carting her wares around from one UK city to the next in a cramped campervan as she and filmmaker and friend Doug King embarked on a UK-wide film tour.
Hitting many a beloved independent cinema along the way, including Cardiff’s Chapter Arts and Brighton’s Duke of York, the tour aptly titled: Doug & Josie: The Let’s Go Adventure Tour, showcased two short films the creative couple made together in 2012.
The films themselves, Let’s Go Swimming and Romance and Adventure, were penned and performed by Josie Long, directed by Doug King and have since been nominated for a BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award.
Swimming, you say? Romance, you say? What’s it about, you say?
Harry Hill: The Movie, these short films, are not.
Rather than offering up a comic opera of errors, which you might expect from this comedian, you instead receive a soft, honest and semi-autobiographical account of a young women facing significant change after having relocated to Glasgow from London and subsequently beginning a quest for new friends, romance and, of course, adventure.
The two films operate as episodic vignettes on the timeline of this coming of age story which sees Josie’s character settling into her new, exciting and yet lonely existence in Glasgow in Let’s Go Swimming, and eventually finding a friend, roommate and potential love interest in Romance and Adventure.
However, things are never this straight forward and these two films don’t stray away from the authenticity of life. In fact, the overarching sentiment across both films is poignant, funny and potently reminiscent of the constant tragi-com that is growing up.
Back in the room and back at the cinema, the way the films are presented is a lot like a scaled up show and tell where the audience get a nice chat with the makers Josie and Doug at the beginning, in between and at end of the films. The only difference being that in school you took your hamster into class and talked about poo, while in this instance you have an award winning comedian talking about a couple of award nominated films.
Filmmaking D.I.Y Style
Following the growing tendency to crowd fund new projects in order to retain creative control, both films were made possible by donations given on a dedicated Sponsume page as well as the generosity of people within the industry who loaned equipment and professional help to the project. For many this is the future for the creative industry.
A big part of the show and tell format was for the purpose of explaining the creative process they went through to get the films made as well as allowing the creators tan opportunity to justify their choices and qualify their mistakes.
For them this is all still pretty new, which Josie and Doug are brutally honest about from the beginning, stating that this project was a huge learning curve for them and that errors were made. However, this is only seen as a positive, Josie Long adding : “If you want to do something like this then just go for it and learn as you go along … In the age of ‘broadcast yourself’ you can make a film on next to no monetary backing, which means girls can get on film, we just need to make it happen.”
Future Projects
The final part of the evening takes the form of a Q&A at the end which sees an audience member asks whether they plan on making anymore films in the future and without hesitation they both King and Long bound forward with a resounding yes. In fact, they plan on making a feature in April 2014 if their ever limited budget allows. The script of which is intended to be edited by Jesse Armstrong, the legendary writer of Peep Show and The Thick of It.
I would urge you to donate to their upcoming feature film and to keep a keen eye on any future release date. You can visit their donation page at Sponsume for more info and check out Doug’s other short films via @14cstudio & www.14cstudio.com.
