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So last week we were in Portugal shooting for the new Inntravel campaign. The concept is Slow: Slow as in the state of mind, rather than a physical notion of speed (though we are talking walking and cycling holidays so there is some degree of travelling slowly)... I have to say I think it was one of the most enjoyable and productive shoots I've ever done. I can think of only one that comes close -- for Martell cognac a decade ago now, which was similar in spirit and substance perhaps. 

I'm a big fan of spontaneity on shoots. As much as I appreciate the need for forward-planning, contingency, and having a shot-list etc etc, I do like having the freedom to stop the car and shoot as and when it feels right to do so. It's a shadow (see what I'm doing here?) of the old Cliff Richard thing -- a "hey let's do the show here!" (prize for the first person who knows which film that came from -- I don't think it's Summer Holiday?) -- (and just to clarify: no, I am no fan of Surcliff at all! but I do remember watching said sad films on supposedly balmy, er, summer holidays...) (displacement theory: watching a film about upright youths having virginal fun in the sun and singing about it in cardigans (perhaps The Housemartins watched these films at the same time in Hull?) whilst I was slouched on a corduroy sofa in front of a telly in a nondescript house on an anywhere housing estate outside York)...where was I? Being spontaneous, yes. That sense of turning left instead of right, seeing what's there. 

Case in point I guess, this shoot in Portugal. We were fortunate (actually I planned it that way: planned spontaneity) to have a small team (four of us) and a clear brief -- to capture the moments of delight, those instances when Stuff Makes Sense. 

Wow. From somewhere I am reminded just now of a poem by, I think it was, Robert Browning that we studied at school --- about seeing things anew. Never much cared for Browning to be honest but will try and find it.

What is interesting about the idea of advertising photography is that most of it is completely false of course. There was a hoo-hah about (I think) L'Oreal airbrushing the cheeks of such and such an A-lister to make the product look more effective. I think you'll find most of advertising is based on trying to make the product look more effective than the next. Shinier. Happier. Whiter. Faster. Clearer. Bigger. Better.

Well I like to step away from that kind of thing -- I like to find out the truth about something and make it the hero, the focus of the idea, rather than a claim. Call me old fashioned.

The truth in Inntravel's case was the authentic experience -- which sounds a clumsy way of referring to that moment which makes something a memory as against any one of the millions of moments that pass us by and are forgotten. 

Why does some stuff in life "stick" and some not?

It's a theme I keep coming back to: the moment after the shutter went click. We take photographs (too many I think sometimes: do all those tourists snapping away at EVERYTHING and NOTHING really ever take the time to look at their shots? Does all that home video in the clearest most vivid HD ever truly ever get watched?), but why? As a keepsake. A proof of Being There? Being Here? Being?

We took an awful lot of photographs in Portugal. And shot an awful lot of clearest most vivid HD video too. I've just spent the past hour reviewing the shots -- some of them at any rate -- and already it feels like an age ago.

A different time. A different place.

But there I am. Camera in hand, striding across the wastelands of some olive grove in some place I shall never in all likelihood ever return to, footprints left in the sand/dirt. A photograph proof I was there. Me and my shadow. Walking slowly looking for the next shot. The next memory. After the shutter went click.

 

I have a line for the beginning of the book I am writing, I say a line rather than the line because these things are forever changing in the process of creation until they fix in a shape that feels comfortable, which is "We all of us have our totems. Hers was the windmill." The windmill in question is not far from the village of Appleton Roebuck (Lat: 53:52:31.59N, Long: 1:10:33.36W)  which sits just off the A64 between Tadcaster and York. It's the area I grew up in: a wide flat plain of agricultural land, the kind Millet painted, with only the taller groups of beech, birch and lime trees and church spires breaking the skyline under such immense rolling clouds. Grey roads line across the fields in straight directions linking farm to village, and looping strings of telegraph poles seem to bind the place together loosely.

You can, if you're quick enough and know when to look, see the windmill from the window of a train, to the right hand side in the direction of York. It rises from a field, above a small pond, beside the road that leads to Appleton. Blink and you'd miss it. It's a derelict brick built windmill in a wheatfield. But it is a point of gravity around which the story I am writing slowly swirls, the events and characters unaware of its magnetic pull, its position at the centre of the loosely bound events that occur over a number of years.

I say the windmill was her totem, in truth I suppose, it is mine also. Not having lived in the Vale of York for something like 30 years, it has been a peculiar mix of nostalgia and objectivity to be a relatively frequent visitor to those parts once more. We have a client based near Castle Howard, and meetings usually necessitate an overnight stay in York. OK, they probably don't actually, but I will seize the opportunity to be in the place I called home while I was between the ages of seven and 18.

The view of the windmill from the train carriage is a sign I am back. A marker. The fact that it has remained unchanged over the years while I have aged disproportinately against it provides a rule -- a measure -- of invisible change, against which the past seems, as with the characters in the long-promsied book, to be among the present. 

This was brought home in a rather alarming way last year when I stopped off at the windmill on my way back down from a shoot up in Newcastle. 

I had my iPhone with me and, as I tend to these days, snapped off a series of shots using the wonderful Hipstamatic app. Here are a few of them:

 

I love the way the Hipsta filters replicate the instamatic camera I used ot carry round with me as a boy, as I cycled the back lanes of the Vale of York mapping out the village forms for my Geography A level assignment.

We're using the Hipsta thing for the shoot in Portugal next week -- amazing how one used to have to hire photographers and expenisve cameras, now we can travel with nothing more than an iPhone and an HD GoPro and will be able to get good enough quality imagery for the entire campaign (in theory). But I shall save my rant on the pros and cons of the democratisation of technology for another post sometime. Bet you can't wait.

Back to the windmill. I moved house last February. Decided to have a clear out of boxes that had been in the loft for years. Boxes that had been in numerous lofts over numerous years and never once opened or explored. What could possibly be in them that I felt I must drag around with me all my life? Nothing that important or needed as I hadn't used or looked at these things for something like 20 years.

In one such box I found a pile of old letters to friends, girlfriends and bad sixthform poetry, news clippings that must have meant something at the time. And a plastic bag full of photo-wallets -- from the days when you had to send your films away for two to three weeks to get them developed. Among these wallets I found pictures taken on the old instamtic of the Geography field trip to Kettlewell, shots of Castle Howard, friends who have long since lost their names... and these: from 1981.

The fact that I took the exact same photographs, unknowingly, un-selfconsciously, magnetically, yet 30 years apart is quite startling. Or proof that one's sense of aesthetic never changes. We all have our totems.

 

Perhaps it was, truly (if I am to be honest with myself), more of the case that I would continue to have lessons with a certain girl who shall remain nameless, rather than any academic prowess, but Geography was always my favourite class: through both O (yes, that dates me) and A levels. And always, the lure of The Field Trip.

From odd afternoons scrutinising the local landscapes of North Yorkshire -- oh! the hanging valleys, glacial erratics, and alluvial flood plains -- to tracing the people and maths mash-up of Christaller's Central Place Theory in and around the Leeds conurbation... the sneaky pint at a back-street pub and potted-meat sandwiches eaten out of tin foil on Brimham Rocks... there was nothing quite like the Geography Field Trip. The expectation and anticipation. The butterflies.

The reward for several terms worth of map-referencing and endless study of the Australian coal industry was the week-long trip to Kettlewell, which took place -- for me -- in March 1982. For many of us it was the first full week away from our parents, and if you add in the heady cocktail of hormones and cheap cider, it's not too much of a push to recognise it as one of defining moments of my adolescence. Aside form all the bum-fluff stuff about Growing Up however, some other, equally important, memories remain which, over the rather rambling course of the past thirty years, have wound themselves into my DNA to the extent I cannot now recall a time when these truths which I hold to be self-evident, were not "me".

Kettlewell sits plum in the Yorkshire Dales. I haven't been there since, so I have no idea if it has changed much -- probably a few more coffee shops and outdoorsy/bike rentals places I'd guess -- but I assume it hasn't. We were camped in the Outward Bounds centre -- "the out of bounds" we oh so amusingly labelled it -- and were ferried hither and thither by mini-bus. Up a hill to study the watershed one day, following the old lime industry's boom and decay the next. We were taken pot-holing -- which has left an indelible mark upon my soul -- and were allowed to swim in the river on one surprisingly warm afternoon, it was March don't forget. Even thinking about that now it feels, sounds, like a different life. 

But there is one photograph I have -- mentally and physically -- that left its mark in more ways than one. It's nothing spectacular, but somehow quite important to me. We were on a mountain-side, I cannot recall eactly why now, digging down a small cross-section of earth... through the moss and sod, mud and scree... until we found the remains of some trees which couldn't, shouldn't, possibly have existed on that desolate hillside. But the suggestion was clear: there was a time when the landscape, the environment and climate, were very different froom that we were experiencing in our present. I think it was the first time I ever had a sense of vertigo -- in the sense of Time, rather than physical.

This little experience led me into studying archaeology at university (until I realised the cool kids did English, and changed) -- and that sense of vertigo has never left me. It's a feeling I get from time to time from the smallest things. That Proustian madeleine moment. Old watches and coins. Worn steps. Hand-rails. The unseen witnesses of time, memory and people. Rooms.

But back to the field trip. That thrill and excitement continues, too. No more so than when I am preparing for a shoot, as I am now. Next week, our Art Director and myself are flying out to Portugal (surprise, surprise it's the Alentejo) to shoot material for our new campaign for Inntravel. It's a consciously lo-fi shoot. A bit old school you could say. We're shooting on film using a Holga, and yesterday I had to re-learn how to load a camera), but in these HD times we're also taking a GoPro Hero and an Olympus PEN, as well as using our iPhones for Hispstamatics...

We have an itinerary. We have a fixer. We have our potted-meat sandwiches.

And I have those little butterflies. 

The other thing I remember very clearly about that field trip to Kettlewell: we were on our way back to Tadcaster when the news came on the radio that the Argentinian army had invaded somewhere called The Falklands. 

That's in Scotland isn't it? said the girl who shall remain nameless.

 

 

 

So I confess: I have no idea where ideas come from.

 

But is this altogether really so strange?

 

If you happened to watch the excellent Professor Jim Al-Khalili pair of programmes Everything & Nothing on BBC4 a month or so ago he rather brilliantly conveyed the notion that the universe -- long thought to be a vast vacuum called Space -- is in fact teeming with minute particles of matter and anti-matter (no, stay with me) that spark into existence for a fraction of time (literally) and then disappear again. Matter is cancelled out by anti-matter. 

 

You can read more about this in this week’s brilliant New Scientist magazine -- the existential issue, dated 23 July 2011.

 

I find this kind of thing mind blowing. Or rather mind expanding.

 

The follow-on suggestion of matter popping into and out of existence is that such a spark of matter and anti-matter popping into existence could possibly have ignited the Big Bang. 

 

And as the universe seems to like the idea of symmetry (atoms… planets.. universes), and is basically all made of the same stuff I can’t help but think there’s a beautiful analogy here.

 

I can’t help but find the whole idea of things popping into and out of existence across the universe a neat mirror of our own fates here on earth. The thought being that there is no reason for these particles to come into being. They appear and disappear within the blink of an eye. 

 

As Samuel Beckett says in Waiting for Godot “We give birth astride a grave. the light gleams an instant, then it is night once more.” 

 

And I also can’t help but find a neat mirror with the creation, formulation and existence of ideas.

 

Ideas are nothing more than chemical and electrical charges in the brain chasing one another around, causing other charges to react. A series of mini explosions and pulses of blood and electrons that flow and connect and expand.

 

In Everything & Nothing some very clever people at the BBC illustrated the Big Bang with CGI: a huge fireball explosion, from “no thing” came “every thing” (life, the universe, everything as Douglas Adams says). And after the initial explosion, ... after a short lull of milliseconds, there came a second, more powerful blast. The energy created by the first bang fed on itself and created something even bigger. Even better.

 

It created. It was creative. It developed. It expanded. It existed.

 

So the next time anyone says “let’s expand on that idea”, you think on.

It's as classic as coq au vin at a dinner party this one: smartish well paid person with expensive hair finally drifts over and asks, so what do you do then?

I'm in advertising. That's the stock answer.

Then, if they show a glimmer of interest I elaborate:

I'm the Creative Director of an ad agency called Orchestra.

If, unbeilievably their eyes haven't misted over, or they haven't spotted a long-lost friend over my shoulder, we may get to the next question:

What, exactly, do you do?

I come up with ideas, I would say.

At which point they nod and bite on a cheese straw, realise their glass is empty and drift off.

So. I come up with ideas. Yes. But how? Why? And where?

More's the point: where do ideas come from?

Right now I am -- other than writing this blog as a means of diversion -- looking at a creative brief for a client of ours.

It's not a bad brief.

It tells me a lot things I didn't already know about the client and their business, but it's still a two-dimensional thing. I'm forever banging on to our newbies that a creative brief is not a job-ticket: it's the moment of inspiration. That a good creative idea starts with the brief. Sometimes even before the brief has been written. But even so: where do these ideas come from? Not form the piece of paper, obviously.

But from the words on the paper? Or rather the thoughts that go into putting those words on that piece of paper? Insight?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

It seems to me -- and at the risk of sounding like an old fart -- having been in the ad business twenty-odd years now, I still don't know where ideas come from.

And that makes me quite happy.

If I knew, if I knew the location of the Ideas Bank where I could jog along to and raid and which oracle-like would throw up the answer when I needed it there'd be no creative moment of realisation. Creative is of creation. Sometimes a big bang. Sometimes a slow dawn of evolution. But ask any creative (and if they don't agree they're not truly a creative): there is nothing quite like that moment of realisation.

Like when you suddenly know the answer to the cryptic crossword clue.

Like when you suddenly see the magic eye image come into sharp focus.

Like when you suddenly see the person you love.

An idea just happens.

And sometimes it disappears if you don't hold on to it.

One final word. I saw Philip Pullman speak at the Oxford Literary Festival a little while ago. He said: "People always ask me where my ideas come from. I say I have no idea. But I do know where they go to. My desk. And if I'm not there they go away again."

Here's a short little film I made a few years ago. It's about an idea.

 

 

Well.. tonight's the night... should be fun. 

The new Paris

 

Tempted as I am to keep an entire city exclusively to myself, I must -- as a matter of record -- talk about Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.

 

I was there this last weekend for the AITO conference, and like most I suppose, had no real idea of what I was flying into: a drab, Eastern bloc capital maybe? 

 

Actually, it's a very pretty little city -- yes, yes there are still some ugly buildings from the Soviet years, and some ugly buildiings from the post-Soviet years too -- but the Old Town has a whiff of Paris about it somehow: narrow cobbled streets, bars, restaurants, boutiques, street-art and monuments at every turn it seems...

They say it is a Northern city with Southern way of life and I can see what they mean: the people were very friendly, the culture and joie de vivre very much in evidence over the Solstice celebrations. And Jeremy Irons loves the place too, which is a tick in my book. Just hope the stags and hens don't find it.

Of wine, eggs and castles

I was fortunate enough to be invited on a FAM trip by one of our travel clients the other week. Sunvil have opened up a new route to Portugal's relatively unexplored region of the Alentejo (no, I hadn't heard of it either): north of the Algarve and south of Lisbon, the Alentejo -- literally "the land beyond the river Tejo" -- is approximately one third of the entire land-mass of Portugal with something as silly as only six per cent of the country's population. The result is wide open countryside. A land of vinyards, olive groves, sunflower vistas and one of the most beautiful and beautifully empty coastlines in Europe.

Sunvil are the only UK tour operator to fly into the new airport of Beja, in the heart of the Alentejo. A perfect base for exploring, and explore one must: to the north, the landscape becomes more mountainous and rugged, with hill-top castles and craggy villages; further south the land opens to wide panaramas of vinyards and it's possible -- nay, you are encouraged -- to stop off and visit one of the many superb wineries the area has to offer. Most are small scale, boutique affairs, family owned and run. You can do the tour, taste the wine, and often dine overlooking the very vines and grapes of the wine you are drinking. At one winery you can even help with the harvest and the grape-treading, if you wish.

The food is good, solid and rustic, although there is a predeliction towards meat (a lot of pork) and sweet desserts. You will make close and intimate friends of egg desserts. The old convents must take responisbilty for these delights -- I guess there was little else to do? -- so expect to eat many variations of egg and sugar -- including one that was a kind of marzipan with the secret ingredient of rabbit (and yes I did try it and no, you couldn't taste it). The most famous and exported egg delight is the lovely little Natas custard tart. You can find them in the UK sure, but they're never quite the same as the ones in Portugal -- and especially as those from the home of the Natas: the Belem bakery in Lisbon, where the queues often stretch out of the door and the old ladies and gents sit happily sifting icing sugar and cinnamon upon the confectionary like there is no tomorrow. 

If you can,take my word and hunt down an Alentejo wine. I found one label at my local Tesco. It had dust on it. A bit like the region itself really: overlooked for years no doubt in favour of its louder and more obvious neighbours.

Go. Stay at one of the brilliant converted convents/castles from the Pousada people -- but it's our little secret, right?

 Every now and again you see them. The sallowy torso ascending, slowly, carefully. Then the legs. The hair flicked back behind ears. Eyes watchful of where feet in heels are put. Do not fall through the gap. Stand against the pillar. Put your hands behind your back. Look left. Head up. Chin down. Right. Snap. SIt. Snap. Pout. Snap. Look longingly at the creatives through the window. Snap.

No, not our beloved media team, nor - incredibly - our Race for Life team.

We are fortunate enough, here at Orchestra Towers, to live above Next Models. They and we are both fortunate to have a wonderful New Yawk style fire escape attached to the building we inhabit: the wonderful Morelands Building, just off Old Street, London. It is, let's be honest, one of the reasons we moved here - the fire escape, I add hastily, not the model agency. The kind of stairway Audrey Hepburn should be sat strumming Moon River. Well, on sunny days, it's also the kind of stairway that leads into Orchestra.