In Conversation With.. Angela Slaven
Following the screening of Big Gold Dream for our launch of DMC 2020, we chat with Angela Slaven - editor of the film. She talks us through her role as editor of the film, how Big Gold Dream was brought to life and how the film became a love poem to the DIY punk aesthetic.
By the way of an introduction, please explain your role as editor and how it brought “Big Gold Dream” to life?
I came to edit Big Gold Dream when Grant McPhee had already been filming for about 10 years. Mutual friends who knew I was a huge music fan put us in touch. (Little did they know they were the catalyst for something that would take over my life for the next few years!) Grant and I met up for a coffee and a chat in Mono in Glasgow, appropriately, and it sounded like a dream project to me as I was a fan of so many of the bands covered by the scope of the film. I then embarked on the edit, like Grant fitting it round the day job over the course of the next year or so.
It was a huge project given the amount of material - I think over what became two films (Big Gold Dream plus Teenage Superstars which covers the early-mid 80s Glasgow/Bellshill scene) in the end there were over 70 interviewees! Someone Grant was interviewing would put him in touch with someone else, then someone else and someone else...it was a bit worrying envisaging this might go on indefinitely, that someone who played the triangle on an obscure limited edition b-side would suddenly pop up from nowhere and unleash another load of contacts. It would have been difficult for someone to take on the film that had no knowledge of the bands whatsoever, at least I had a bit of a head start there.
What was the catalyst for such an extensive project - what did you do to keep it fresh and how did you subvert the process to keep it original?
I think the key to subverting the process was simply that we didn’t have a budget! Although we had fantastic material with the actual interviews, we had very limited access to archive material, either moving or Stills. So we had to play to our strengths, which were the great stories told by our amazing contributors. What makes this film and the follow-up interesting is that both feature members of bands who weren’t necessarily the lead singer or main focal point, or bands who hadn’t been interviewed much, and their stories hadn’t been told before, so that kept it very fresh. I’m thinking particularly of the likes of Paul and John Mackie from the Scars and Tam Dean Burn from the Dirty Reds, who so articulately and evocatively set the scene for Edinburgh at the time. The late great Ian Stoddart who was absolutely hilarious and lovely, Russell Burn and Murray Slade from the Fire Engines who told some brilliant anecdotes between them, the completely irrepressible Alan Rankine, and of course Bob Last and Hilary Morrison who guided us behind the scenes into the world of Fast Product.
Was it hard to get started or to keep going? What was the particular thing that you had to conquer to do either?
It was occasionally hard to keep going just because we were all balancing the film with day jobs in the industry, so sometimes, particularly towards the end, I would be working from 7 pm till 2 or 3 in the morning to get things finished. I think we all had a few nervous moments as the project grew in scale, but to have it Première at the Edinburgh International Film Festival and then win the Audience Award was an amazing experience that I don’t think we’d really anticipated, and the fact that so many of the contributors came along to the Edinburgh screenings and loved it was just the best thing ever.
Orange Juice at Regent's Canal, near Camden, London | Photo by David Corio / Redferns
The editor is in the privilege position to affect the flow of the feature. Were you allowed that creative license and did that impact on the version we see today?
I had a lot of creative license in terms of the style and content, and as the heart of the film is a kind of love poem to the DIY punk aesthetic which inspired the musicians who appear, that seemed like the right approach to inform the look and feel of the film. But at the same time the punky aesthetic would be quite aggressively paced which would make 90 minutes quite an exhausting watch, and the stories merited being played out in a more thoughtful way, so it was a case of balancing eye and ear catching techniques with a more classic documentary storytelling approach. Of course we were also making the film for ourselves as much as for anyone - it wasn’t a commission. It shines a light on elements of the Scottish (and UK) music scene that hadn’t garnered headlines at the time but deserved to be examined, and we had the luxury of exploring those in our own idiosyncratic way. Certainly there are a lot of anecdotes that are in the film that would never have seen the light of day if we’d been under the usual constraints!
Generally speaking, whenever we want to learn about a film, we want to talk to the director. However, those that make films know that they are really collaborations. What makes a fruitful collaboration and what do you do to enhance the collaboration process?
Grant is a very collaborative person and welcomes enthusiasm. We would chat and I made notes on the major points he wanted to address - a good example of a storyline which Grant was keen to highlight from the word go was the influence of Hilary Morrison in the story of Fast and the Edinburgh scene in general, which hadn’t previously been acknowledged to that extent. After that I’d sift through the material on my own and construct the story from the interviews. When I got to the end of a complete pass I’d send Grant a QuickTime of the film and then integrate any notes from that into the next pass. So I had free reign over what to use from the material and how to put it together. However we were both in agreement about two main things: one, we wanted this to be a film for folk who were already fans of that scene but also open the music up to a new audience, so it should be quite specific in its reference while at the same time not be so cliquey as to alienate people who didn’t know much of the context. And two, we wanted this to be a very positive film and not full of the backbiting and point scoring that can be associated with the music industry. As it turned out however, all of the contributors were genuinely lovely, thoughtful and funny throughout and very quick to give credit to each other. I honestly don’t think there were any salacious or skeleton-in-closet stories left on the Big Gold Dream cutting room floor!
Did you ever encounter serendipity in your work and do you think there is anything that you can do to bring more of it into your creative process?
I think Grant encountered serendipity fairly early on in the path to making the film, when he was working alongside Mani (who had been in Edinburgh band Win) and mentioned he’d love to make a film about Postcard Records, and Mani put him in touch with Malcolm Ross who, apart from being a great interviewee himself, opened many doors. I think genuine enthusiasm and a certain amount of tenacity are key for this, because people respond to that and are keen to help, and that certainly drew a small team of dedicated (or slightly deranged depending on how you look at it) people to work together on the film including myself, Wendy Griffin the producer, and co-producers Erik Sandberg and Innes Reekie. Later this led to Bill Drummond very kindly making a few of his 60 second films in our support when we were looking for crowd funding. I don’t think any of this is purely luck, its likeminded people recognising each other and helping out, which is what the film was about.
Postcard Records of Scotland
We get noticed because of our successes, but we create them on the back of our failures. What challenges did you encounter and were able to learn from? How did they change you and your process?
There were a number of challenges we encountered in the making of the film - as mentioned before, the wealth of material made it a bit of a monster to edit. Lack of a budget for archive was problematic as we had to cut our cloth accordingly (pardon the pun) - this came to a head with the part of the film featuring artists on Postcard Records as the archive was prohibitively expensive, so we had to drop quite a few sections of the film. And when Big Gold Dream was acquired for television we had to cut the duration to 90 minutes, which sadly meant losing some really great sequences. A positive challenge was the fact that I had to write the voiceover for the film - there just wasn’t anyone else to do it and so I kept it very brief and matter of fact as I’m not a natural writer. But I was delighted when Grant managed to enlist the golden voice of Robert Forster from one of my favourite bands the brilliant Go-Betweens (who had at one time been on Postcard) to record it. Robert Forster is not renowned as a VO artist and it’s quite a difficult thing to do, but as it happened he struck the perfect tone, and having him in the film added such a lot for fans of the music scene.
Generally speaking, “Big Gold Dream” tells the story of the raging post-punk scene in Scotland from 1977 to 1985. Were you around? And did you play part in that scene - or did you have to research it carefully?
Yes I was around, which is why I was so keen to cut it. I was a massive fan particularly of the Associates, Aztec Camera, Orange Juice, the Fire Engines, Josef K etc, so it was like a dream come true to be handed this goldmine of full length interviews with the likes of Alan Rankine, Davy Henderson, Malcolm Ross, Campbell Owen to name but a few. I’d already cut a documentary about Edwyn Collins - ‘Home Again’ - following his stroke, (directed by Paul Tucker). I was a regular at Splash One (featured in Teenage Superstars) back in the day and knew a few folk involved in that scene. I’d seen the Associates, and a brilliant gig at Cardinal Folly in ‘86 featuring Billy Mackenzie and Paul Haig. I had never been lucky enough to see Josef K live but remember hoofing it through to Edinburgh one day to a record fair with my earnings from Virgin records where I worked on a Saturday to buy The Only Fun in Town. I’d seen Win many times, and Nectarine No 9 and The Sexual Objects. And so I remember the first day I sat down to start sifting through the material which was quite a daunting prospect...thinking which one to start with....and I thought, well, Davy Henderson should be good. And I was just blown away. And I knew immediately he would be what you might call the star of the film, the one we’d keep coming back to - he does in the end bookend the film. Then I watched Malcolm, and Campbell, and I though ‘oh shit we’re in trouble here. They’re all too good!’ And it just went on like that really. Spoiled for choice.
All-girl punk trio, The Ettes, from Edinburgh, formed in April 1979 and feature in Big Gold Dream (Photo: Hilary Morrison)
What are your own thoughts on the future of Scottish subculture film?
I think it will always thrive as long as there are creative, interested and inquisitive folk around. Scotland is never short of those sorts of folk! It’s so much easier now to film, edit and produce your own work, and the vernacular of filmmaking is just a lot more accessible now. My 15 year old nephew Noah makes his own short films and uploads them to YouTube, which I think is pretty amazing, just to have that confidence and the expectation that it’s a normal thing to do. In terms of financial success, and getting the work out there - hmmm that’s a different story. It seems to me that access to funding isn’t a very democratic process, and even if you are determined enough to complete a film, entering that film into festivals is a very labour intensive and expensive process. And quite dispiriting when each festival charges what can be quite a substantial amount of money for entry, and you realise when you check that they haven’t even had the courtesy to watch the Vimeo link when you receive a rejection. Are film collectives are the way forward, pop up cinema festival events where people can pool resources and expertise?
Please leave us with your top three go-to Scottish music-documentary films?
Well, there’s a good film around called ‘Teenage Superstars’ which I’d definitely recommend. And I have to admit a vested interest in ‘It’s Not All Rock’n’Roll’ which I recently cut with Director Jim Burns (of the excellent ‘Serious Drugs’ film fame) - about the singer of American indie band Swearing at Motorists, who lives in Hamburg and goes on a road trip through small town America. It’s not set in Scotland but made by a (tiny) Scottish crew and informed by those sensibilities of originality and enthusiasm we’ve been discussing. It’s just premiered at the Reeperbahn Film Festival in Hamburg, and will be coming to a cinema near us all soon I hope. Shameless bit of self promotion there. I did really like ‘Where You’re Meant to Be’ by Paul Fegan, about Aidan Moffat’s search for folk singer Sheila Stewart, and ‘From Scotland With Love’ as Kenny Creosote is a genius. But I’m still waiting on the seminal behind the scenes doc on Boards of Canada and if anyone is up for filming that please let me know... or Pilot. Pilot would be good too.