Watching the Republicans

Another Republican Debate is coming up on Tuesday night – this one hosted on the Fox Business channel. Last economic debate I was a bit out of my depth… so this week I’m trying to prepare a bit more. The focus for Tuesday is going to be on jobs, taxes, the general state of the economy, and domestic and international policy issues. 

Yay policy! I think (hope?) this means they will actually talk about what they plan on doing as president; rather than what their philosophies and ‘strong beliefs’ are. We shall see about that. I’m particularly interested in women’s and civil issues. Here’s some things I’ll be keeping in mind – and trying to look out for related polices, when the candidates get quizzed:

1. Republicans want to abolish the Affordable Care Act (also known as Obama Care), because some have dubbed it “pure socialism”. They will do this either by trying to repeal it (under the guise of ‘healthcare reform’) or they will just plain old sabotage it. They also want to pass legislation to make it basically impossible for millions of Americans to have access to affordable healthcare.

2. Republicans will try to rig votes, by making it harder of democratic-swaying voters to vote. In America, it is illegal to charge a poll tax (i.e make people pay to vote). However, republicans want to deter African Americans, newly registered voters and young people from voting (because they will vote Democrat) – so instead of making a poll tax to curb their voting – they instead making tougher voter ID laws. They are already doing this in 17 republican-controlled states. They say they are doing this to combat voter fraud – but really; they are just trying to make it harder for people to vote. This means that for people to be able to exercise their right to vote – they need to pay money and jump through administrative hurdles. The ID they need is a drivers license, but if they don’t have that, they first need to acquire a birth certificate. These new state laws make it harder to cast votes at the ballot box, eroding voter turnout. 

3. They will try to deny women their constitutional rights. Marco Rubio – who is looking like a republican favorite – has stated that he is in favor of denying all forms of abortion – even in the case of rape or incest. This is despite the landmark Supreme Court ruling of Roe V Wade in 1973, which legalized all abortions in the first trimester.

There is lots more things I need to research, as unfortunately – I know this list is far from exhaustive… but it’s a good start.

5 months ago  /  0 notes

Thinking about what to say, or rather – how to say it.

Jayde and I have been thinking a lot about what our channel (ScIQ) is actually about. It’s now been around (in one incarnation or another) for more than a year. At it’s most basic – it’s a science channel. But it’s swung between being science explainers, to science opinion, to science comedy – to where it is now, which is more along the lines of policy. Well, using humor as a wedge (or ‘scalpel’) as Bill Maher has once called it – to try and advocate for better policy on key issues where scientific facts or data are being ignored or misappropriated.

I think that originally, when we came to America (in 2014) – we were amazed by divisiveness of American politics – how the Republican party seemed so counter-logical, unreasonable and unscientific. At how firmly it was steeped in religion. At how polarised it was. Australia has a secular, centrist government – it’s very moderate and middle-ground. And it’s people are, dare I say, fairly homogenous embrace of egalitarianism. So the extreme ideology of the right blew our minds. Republicans are an easy target for entertainment… and that’s what you see on a lot of late-night TV shows - that mocking, jock-humor. It’s this absurd brand of theatre – you couldn’t make this stuff up. 

And we’ve been having fun with it – in some ways – as opinion is a very good vehicle for telling stories and dishing out facts. But we still are experimenting with our voice.

One thing I think what we are steering towards, or rather – away from – is being mean… or angry. I’m not really sure if meanness really helps anyone – because if you are doing that – you are defining your audience and you are essentially preaching to the converted. And anger often only serves to alienate people, I think. It turns them away. Well, that’s how I often feel… I don’t like confrontation so I will often just tune out.

But what I think you can do, is to try to highlight the issue with jest or humor, and then try to reframe it to where you want it to go – or how you hope people would see the issue. Sounds easy, but is really hard. Tonight I read this Rolling Stone article on political pundit/TV host, Rachel Maddow – and it highlighted one of her tactics, which I really liked:

“What Maddow is trying to build is a different channel for liberal anger, an outsider’s channel, one that steers the viewer’s attention away from the theater of politics and toward the exercise of power, which is to say toward policy. On-air, like Beck, she is almost relentlessly cheerful. “Anger is like sugar in a cocktail,” Maddow tells me. “I’d rather have none at all than a grain too much.”

The article said that a huge part of her success is that she doesn’t come out as angry, and that if one of her main schtick’s is being a defender of rights. She said in the interview: “I liked being the person who made good sense on the air explaining that news. I liked the responsibility of providing information.”

5 months ago  /  0 notes

Living and breathing science communication

Living with a professional science communicator means my life is a constant struggle against the unsolicited dispersion of strange and bizarre factoids. Example #347:

Jayde: (signalling me to take out my earphones) hey bec, guess what?

Bec: What?

Jayde: At least half of all personal bankruptcies in the US -

Bec: Ugh, i thought it was going to be something interesting

Jayde: …at least half of the personal bankruptcies in the US – are caused by medical bills.

Bec: That’s great jayde, thanks. can i go back to my work now?

Jayde: Yes.

1 year ago  /  1 note

Editing my web series – finally

It’s taken me a long time to be creatively ready to do this, but after more than 6 months of sitting on the raw footage, last night I finally started editing the web series I wrote and shot in London.

The reason why it’s taken me so long has been a mix of fear (of having to face my own work that fell below my usual technical standards), laziness (at overcoming these feelings of self-doubt), being busy with paid client work and then also being focussed on building our YouTube channel. 

But I guess my heart just wasn’t in it. I had, for a while, given up on wanting to be a filmmaker. I did not want to have to bear witness to what I viewed as my substandard framing, my overwritten dialogue, and I had especially not wanted to go in and try and sync all the audio files from multiple sources, and wade through all the takes and re-takes, and see all the mistakes I made as a director. Lack of clear direction, continuity issues – tsch – the list is endless. And yet, what did I expect – when, for the most part, I was my own DOP, director, sound person, script supervisor and showrunner? 

I also felt shitty about the project, purely just for the reason of having left it unattended for so long. You know when you neglect a task for so long, that this sick ball of knotted up fear develops in the pit of your stomach whenever you think about picking it up again? 

On top of that, I’m pretty sure all the (super talented and lovely) actors in it had given up waiting for me to release it – and I felt guilty about that too – a bit like a failure. But not quite a failure, because I hadn’t actually tried. I’d only gone 2/3 steps (pre-production, production… but had critically missed the most important part… the part where you stitch it all together and actually bring something into life.

Well, that was me then. But over the last few weeks things have changed. Well, 3 things have changed, and this has provided the impetus:

- I’ve seen some of the first attempts my other friends (also creators) are making here in NYC and LA, and I realise that what I shot actually looks fine for a first attempt at scripted narrative. I shouldn’t be ashamed. It’s no HBO-quality production, but it was shot on £100 budget.

- I’m starting to write another web series – one where the content feels more organic and like it’s coming from an honest place – but I feel like I can’t move any further than early development until I have actually finished and shipped the first attempt. Right now, it’s there plaguing me in the back of my head – saying “what’s the point of writing this? – you’ve already done a web series, and you didn’t finish it, so what’s the point of doing this one?” I need to prove to myself, and to Jayde (my new web series co-creator) that I can do this.

- I think that hanging out, solidly, for about half a year in the US – with people who I greatly respect creatively, and who have won all manner of very cool accolades, has really helped me work through this uncomfortable truth: that you have to just put in that really long, sucky editing time, and you’re going to come out with something at the end of it that most likely won’t line up to your original vision, but that is what’s supposed to happen. It’s the only way all the other people you admire learned, and it’s the only way I will develop as a writer.

And now I’ve started editing, it’s not even that bad. I’m actually not as ashamed as it as I thought I was. The actors did a really, really excellent job and bringing life and attitude to the characters, and they all look beautiful on camera. I did a commendable job at picking picturesque backdrops, even though a lot of what I shot is overexposed (damn you LCD screens and full sunlight). And while the dialogue feels contrived at times, and my direction lacked in a confident vision, there’s some very cool moments where things came together perfectly (this was usually thanks to the actors natural on-screen chemistry). I feel like I can still show some funny and awkward dating situations (which was my original intent), without having to strictly adhere to the entire narrative that was originally scripted.

Here’s some stills, from one of the episodes (there are four). Technically, this will the most difficult to edit, because it has so many scenes and flashbacks!

1 year ago  /  1 note

Bec Gill needs to write in her diary, otherwise Bec Gill gets sad, and that’s not good for anyone.

Since I was in primary school I’ve written in a diary. Which isn’t so strange for schoolgirls, but for a 33-year-old woman, it seems to me to be fairy uncommon. None of my friends tell me they write in diaries. I should note that when I say “diary”, I don’t actually mean a physical handwritten one (ha!), I mean a Word file that I save to Dropbox. And when I say “none of my friends”, that’s probably not a very good barometer of what women do in general, as I don’t really have all that many female friends. 

The past few months I’ve been struggling – it’s hard to articulate exactly how – but I guess I could say that the source of my struggle has been with a) not being able to collect any meaning or actionable points from the wishy washy thoughts that loll about in my head, with feeling like I have anything of substance to say, with feeling like I have no real thoughts or opinions of my own, with generally just feeling a bit lost and like I am on a path to somewhere, but I keep forgetting where I am headed and why. Sometimes I feel like this. Sometimes I feel like I have everything worked out.

Secondly, I feel vaguely sapped of all my creative energy and intuition. Like, I don’t know what to invest my time in, because I worry that I’ll go down a dead end, or that I’ll fail. I think it’s while I’ve been in LA, I’ve met so many people who are bonafide filmmakers, working on real projects, and I feel like tourist, one of those people who think they want to be a writer or a filmmaker or a director, but never manages to get off their arse and make something happen.

In the past few days, I’ve pin-pointed that it’s probably because I haven’t been writing for myself. Okay, I’ve known that all along, but I guess I’ve only just started to own up to it, because I didn’t have the mental energy to try and recify the situation with the logical solution – which is, of course, writing about it.

When I’m doing good in life, I’m usually writing in my diary a couple of times weekly. Often, it’s nothing groundbreaking or profound, it’s usually just me picking apart the happenings of my day, sometimes recording them for archival purposes (the potential of forgetting funny things worries me), sometimes for me to try and work through problems.

But lately, because of lots of life factors, moving around between different cities/countries, I’ve neglected writing. And I’m pretty certain this the root cause of me sometimes feeling like I’ve forgotten who I am. 

Over the last few weeks (okay, years), I’ve always wanted to commit to a daily practice of writing something for myself once a day. And in the last few months, I’ve been toying with the idea of publishing that onto social media. Both because I want to be held accountable, and I have a teensy bit of exhibitionist in me. But I’m held back by debilitating narratives, like these: 

The myths of writing online that hold me back:

Myth #1: If I write something and post it online for all to see, it must be perfectly constructed Haiku, otherwise people will think I’m a shit writer.

Truth: Wrong. Seth Godin has actually spoken about this: the arrogance of people who think they are such talented writers, that it is utterly below them to publish anything that is less than perfect. Newsflash to self: I’m not Victor Hugo, and my writing has never been, and will most likely never be, perfect. I need to get past this and publish anyway. 

Myth #2: People will see me fail online and will think I’m a failure,

Truth: In all reality, I know that most people in my social media networks will not a) know that I am committing to publishing everyday, or b) care. If they do, for some reason, come to the conclusion that I am a loser because of my (slightly irrational and somewhat non-conventional) writing aspirations, then they’re probably not the kind of people I usually seek approval from anyway, thus the point is moot. 

Myth #3: People will think I’m a self-delusional attention-seeker, who thinks people actually care about what I think and feel about random things.

Truth: See above. In life, I’ve generally learned that this quote, by Neil Gaiman, is actually very true: “The moment that you feel that, just possibly, you’re walking down the street naked, exposing too much of your heart and your mind and what exists on the inside, showing too much of yourself. That’s the moment you may be starting to get it right.”

At least two times this week, where I have bitten my lip and pushed send/publish – the universe gave back more than what I had hoped for. I wouldn’t have got that if I didn’t put myself out there.  

Myth #4: I shouldn’t spend time writing now, because there’s a million other things that I should be doing now, and I can write when I’ve finished doing those things I’m supposed to do.

Truth: I am never going to have time. No one ever has time. Everyone has unanswered emails and things that should have been done last week. If I want to be a writer, then I need to grow some balls and learn how to at least once daily, push everything else aside and focus on my writing. If women can have full time jobs and still raise kids, if John Howard can be prime minister and never miss a daily walk, then I can find time within each 24 hour cycle to sit at my computer and type something true to myself. 

For today at least, I can.

The struggle continues.

1 year ago  /  1 note

I was born in a small town. I can’t breathe in a small town.

I’ve been in my (very picturesque and lovely) hometown, Adelaide, for precisely the amount of days it takes me to reach critical mass. It’s that time when I stop thinking everything is wonderful and dappled in glorious sunlight, and snap into a bitter, jaded, all-round, not very nice/fun person.

This is when I start to announce horrible things like “Adelaide is bereft of culture!” “Adelaide is an intellectual ghetto!" 

I don’t know where I picked up turns of phrases like this; probably from reading the NY Times Online, which is precisely what I did for 3 hours after returning home from a 3 hour "family drive” (to where, I am not exactly sure). I think I was trying to cure myself of the spiritual wasteland that is hundreds of package home plots and giant car parks and bunnings stores and a giant acquatic centre the size of Williamsburg. I don’t even understand the concept of a scenic drive. Why cram yourself into a box and use up petrol and contribute to climate change to see the scenic sights when we already live in a beautiful seaside suburb with gum trees and sand and water and no giant bunnings sheds? It’s so boring! And I have to listen to horrible radio stations that play terrible songs like Taylor Swift hosted by terrible souls that shorten all their words so they can sound more bogan and blue collar. Why??? These are the horrible things I say to my perennially patient and awesome parents, from the backseat, and hate myself for it, because I sound exactly like the ungrateful cantankerous teenager I was many moons ago.

This point in time usually coincides with the official end of ‘Christmas’, once the Gills have already completed their Christmas hosting duties, as well as their annual pilgrimage to the Botanic Gardens and the Art Gallery. Mrs Gill has tired of Henley Beach walks as a form of family recreational activity, and she is tired of looking at her husband and first born staring at computer screens all day and tired of their discussions on the superior merits of Helvetica and the Adobe Creative Suite. She wants to go out and have some fun. Reading glasses on, perched at the breakfast bar with her iPad, she reads through a list of potential activities we can enjoy “as a family”. These involve: Adelaide Zoo, Monarto Zoo, Kayaking at Linear Park, a bike ride at Linear Park, Cleveland National Park or a Trek up the hill at Nourlunga.

After having lived in Adelaide for 25 years of my life, none of these options are neither new or even vaguely compelling in a nostalgic sense. My mind darts to the easiest option (in terms of time-investment and physical energy exherted), which for sure is the walk up at Nourlunga. It’s what we did last year, and the year before that, I think – and now I understand why. I am incredibly bored of this walk though.

The path of least resistance, of course, would be to tell mum: “whatever you want to do mum!” (without any hint of irony). That is what good daughters, like my best friend Jayde would say. But I am not a good daughter. And also, I know that if my mother is given free reign on our daily post-christmas holiday schedule, she will chose not one option but two, and before we know it we will be packing leftovers and sunscreen and “proper walking shoes” and we won’t be back until tea time. 

“What about a movie, are there any movies you want to see?” I ask, knowing they have vouchers for Marion megaplex, which I find out is now tastefully referred to as 'Event Cinemas’.

“There’s only one film on there that’s not a children’s film, The Water Diviner, with Russell Crowe.”

“What’s it about?”

Mum tells me the plot. Something about some outback dude who hunts for water and his sons go off to Galipoli and snoooooooooooze. I hate wartime films, especially wartime films all about men, told from a male perspective.

“We should go.” I say. It’s better than the boring walk, and I resolve that I’ll be more engaged once I watch the trailer. Trailers are always better than the film, and they never fail to get me all jazzed up, even when I know it is an act of self-delusion.

I watch the trailer. Even the trailer is boring. The most redeeming feature is the ambient lighting in the Turkey scenes and that it has Megan Gale in it (Megan Gale once touched my thigh and looked into my eyes whilst blatantly lying to me). She is hot and it was hot and I only wish I could be that good a liar. This is not the reason why I want to see Megan Gale on the big screen. I want to see Megan Gale on the big screen because I am obsessed with watching how beautiful women who are older than me age because it makes me feel better about my own gradual, but very tediously analysed, decaying process.  

As we cruised the highways of Christies Beach and Nourlunga, I became increasingly agitated, and realised that I was spiralling into a shallow but discernable melancholy. It soon grew into mild panic. I had had enough of our scenic drive.

“Are we there yet?” I asked. 

We stopped off at the Seacliff pub and I very briskly walked up to the bar to order a white wine of any variety. Why do I hate my hometown so much? I don’t even hate it. I love it. It’s beautiful. It’s where I had a ridiculously happy childhood full of love and in-camera edited home movies and backyard sprinkler dancing, and it’s where all the people who I love the most live. So, why does my hometown make me feel so frustrated and anxious and pensive? Why does it make me swing so forcefully from person full of delight/inspiration/appreciation to judgy, vitriolic teenager? Why does the sight of a giant carpark and bunnings in Adelaide make my heart sink, and the sight of homeless people, idle youth, junk-food franchises, dilapidated train lines and sidewalks full of trash-bags in NYC make my heart sing? 

I don’t think it is anything specific about my hometown. It’s just that my hometown is a small town. And that I am, at what feels to be a completely cellular level, a big city person. And I think that any negative feelings I had/have about my small town, come from the fact that I was a big city person who, for a long time, didn’t have the balls to leave my small town.  

My bad, Radelaide. My bad.

1 year ago  /  1 note

Friday, December 26, 2014

“The definition of insanity is to continue to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.” - Albert Einstein

Well, I must be insane, because I have this scab on the inside of my nose and I keep picking it until it bleeds and then it scabs over again and then I pick it again and it bleeds and so on and so forth. I must have done this at least 40 times now. I am worried the scab might turn cancerous. I’m not sure if this is even possible, but I feel like I may have read somewhere that if you keep damaging scar tissue, it becomes cancerous. It hurts now. Hopefully not because I have cancer. I have picked it quite a few times. Probably about 40. I hope it’s because of that.

In any case, I am writing about this very personal and embarrasing triviality, because I feel like this nose scab incident is teaching me a very important lesson about my own inescapable shortcomings as a flawed and illogical human being.

I know that I shouldn’t pick the scab, and that if I do, it will bleed. And yet I can’t help myself. I am compelled by some unknown force that is beyond rational thought or reasoning. This force tells me “don’t think about it, just do it, it feels good.” And so I do it, and it feels good. I get satisfaction for a job completed. And then the blood comes and I feel bad. And I think, “this is what men feel when they have affairs”. And then I think, “why do I keep doing this?” “What is wrong with me?” “If I can’t stop picking my nose, as a 33-year-old adult, what hope is there for me to ever achieve anything of higher artistic merit, like write a book or a screenplay?” “Will I ever learn how to poach an egg?" 

This evening for dinner we had left over seafood. Dad had made an executive decision to buy unpeeled cooked prawns this year, which I originally thought was a terrible move, but have since changed my mind, as I now understand that it means more leftover prawns for us. Still, who wants to peel a prawn? I just don’t understand why anyone would want to do that? What upshot is there, to peeling your own prawns? There are people in much poorer countries who will do this and I don’t even think that this actually costs anymore than unpeeled prawns. So why are unpeeled prawns even a thing? Are we all just masochists?

Another thing which I found myself complaining about today, was that "there is not enough sun” on our park walk, and that the backdrop, when interrupted by a glimpse of industry and main road, was “not very scenic”.

I’ve been having bad dreams lately. This may be because of excess food. Or may be because I am not in my usual bed. Although I don’t have one of those. So it must be the whole “I’m so full I have to sleep on my back in the starfish position” thing. One bad dream was that I had mysteriously gained possession of a bassinet full of newborn babies, and I let them swim in water, and then forgot about them, but by the time I came back, they had all drowned. I’m sorry if this dream disturbs you – just think how much it disturbed me.

The night before, I dreamt that I left all of my camera equipment and laptop at a work event, then someone stole it, so I had no way to make an income, and then I realized I would have to go and get a real job with a real boss. Then last night I dreamt that I snapped my front tooth, and went around the whole day with it dangling from my mouth, terrorised.  

I’m not entirely sure what it all means.

Actually. Maybe I am worried that I will be bereft of maternal instinct for my entire life. Maybe I should really insure all my work equipment. And maybe I should go to the dentist, because my wisdom teeth hurt.

But who wants to go to the dentist? Last time he tried to sell me on having my wisdom teeth out, he told me there was a 99% chance that my lip nerves would remain in tact.

What I want to know is, who is it who willingly goes into this procedure, when there is a 1% chance of having a permanent droopy lip? 1% may not sound that ominous, but improbable things happen all the time.  

1 year ago  /  0 notes

Today was Christmas. The day of cherries, grapes, prawns, seafood ‘highlighter’, christmas patty cakes, dips, iced biscuits, gingerbread, cheese. And wine. I drunk lots of that. The day where there’s so much delicious plentifulness, you turn your nose up at ham on the bone. That’s what my dad says. This year mum said she was “just doing platters”. Ha! Every year we seem to have more food, and more food left over.

The last few years at Christmas we’ve gone to see my Pa in the nursing home. Despite his 86 years, the famous Gill sarcasm remains alive and kicking. “Your mumbling!” is what he accuses us of every time he can’t hear us, which is all the time, because he refuses to get a hearing aid.

He turns to my brother; whose on a brief visit from his adopted home in Melbourne, and donning a full black hipster beard. It’s Ned Kelly meets muslim extremist.

“Did you lose your razor?”

“Why would you want to live in Victoria!? It’s full of Victorians!”

He turns to my mother:

“What’s that around you neck Christine, it looks like a dog collar.”

“It’s a necklace, Milton.”

“How much does it cost to register you every year?”

HAHAHAHA oh dear. He turns to me. 

“Where have you been, Beccy, in Japan?”

“No Pa, in New York." 

"New York – and what would you want to do there? It’s full of Yanks!" 

I struggle to think of how to explain to him that NYC is my spiritual, intellectual and artistic home – a place full of creators, makers and risk-takers.

"What do you do there?”

“I make videos.”

He looks at me, at a total loss.

“For the internet. I make videos for the internet.”

He squishes his face up and moves backwards, closer to the wall. 

“The internet?”

My brother interjects:

“She makes short films, Pa. Short films.”

Pa seems at peace with this.

And the visit continues on like this, until it’s time to go home.

1 year ago  /  0 notes