The Supersize of Me of Black Magic...the Making of 'A Cursed Man' with director Liam Le Guillou

Black magic is not something I ever expected to explore deeply, but when filmmaker Liam Le Guillou approached the DocFix with his idea, I was delighted to help. His premise - could he persuade practitioners of Black Magic to curse him, to see what it could teach him about the true nature of magic?

On today's episode, we discuss the process Liam went through to create his documentary, "A Cursed Man."  This episode is not just about magic; it's about the hard work needed to craft a narrative that resonates with authenticity and emotional depth.

Filmmaking, especially the documentary kind, is not for the faint-hearted. Liam shares some intense behind-the-scenes moments that shaped his creative journey, whether it was filming in a bat-infested cave in Mexico or encountering a mysterious black magic practitioner in India. We navigate through the trials of keeping him and his team safe while ensuring the story's integrity and explore the fine balance between the two. 

Liam's dedication to reaching a Netflix-level standard reveals the challenges of independent filmmaking, from financial hurdles to the rigours of the edit. It's a testament to pushing creative boundaries while staying true to one's vision, no matter how unpredictable the journey.

And for those interested in a program like The DocFix, Liam talks about the impact of the support he had in crafting a compelling narrative, and the importance of collaboration and community in filmmaking. 

You can watch in now, on Amazon and Apple TV

Are you interested in joining the DocFix program and working with Nigel?

Get started with our complimentary case study that shows you how the method is used in high-profile documentaries and to see if you are a good fit for what we do and how we work.

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Incidental music composed by Birger Clausen

Transcript

0:00:01 - Nigel

Hi, this is Nigel Levy. Welcome to the DocFix Documentary Storytelling Podcast. What do you think of this idea for a documentary? “A cursed man, a filmmaker travelling around the world to find a practitioner of black magic who'd put a curse on him”. 

(A Cursed Man Trailer)

0:00:19 - Liam

I felt that maybe it wouldn't affect me if I personally didn't believe in that. 

So would you still get cursed? 

0:00:30 - Liam

How do you feel after doing this Evil? That must be quite seductive. That's the power. You're calling on the devil right, Quite seductive. 

Y'all better not call me at 2 o'clock in the morning talking about this man's death. A curse could end your life. 

—------

0:00:55 - Nigel

The polite if slightly nervous English accent in that trailer was the voice of Liam Le Guillou, the director of A Cursed man, who I worked with in the DocFix programme to help him create this very documentary. This podcast is a conversation with Liam, as well as stories from the shoot. We will, of course, discuss the process of taking his idea the supersized me of black magic and turning it into a compelling 90-minute feature-length documentary. It was a complex, unnerving and sometimes dangerous shoot. 

We spoke just before its release on Amazon and other streaming platforms. If you'd like to find out more about the process he went through in the DocFix program, there are details in the show notes and you can find out more at apply.thedocfix.com. There are details in the show notes and you can find out more at apply.thedocfix.com. As a spoiler, he did make it back alive, and here's my conversation with Liam. So, Liam, it's fantastic to see you and to speak to you, and it's an incredibly exciting time for you. It must be to have your film being premiered. 

0:02:02 - Liam

Yeah, nigel, thank you. Yeah, it's very exciting actually. I mean, it's such a huge process to make a movie that you get to this point and everyone says you're like, how excited are you right now? And there's an element of being hugely excited. There's also an element of thinking gosh, I'm just so beat from this long process of getting here. But I'm sure once we have the premiere in LA and then we actually will have the digital release to the world, I'm going to like really take it all in. It's going to feel like, oh, it's finally done. 

0:02:32 - Nigel

Your wife is in it as well and she put up with a lot, not only you making this film, but you deciding to go and get cursed, which was very good of her. 

0:02:40 - Liam

I'm the one who's more open to spiritual ideas. I call myself a very open-minded skeptic. My wife has no belief in anything spiritual whatsoever. She's a mental health therapist. She believes in mental health but not in anything spiritual. So when I told her about this project, I said I'm thinking about doing this thing. She said, fine, I don't believe in it, I don't think it's going to have any effect on you. She was open to it and also she knows me. I like to go on these adventures. I think what she wasn't expecting and I certainly wasn't expecting was this did have an effect on me and in turn that always has an effect on your home life, in the sense that all of this stuff did start to get to me. I was starting to have very real effects from the curse. Now, whether that's spiritual or psychological, we can dive into that a bit more, but I was having effects. Life was getting tough. 

0:03:36 - Nigel

I remember you came to me with the idea and I looked back, because you joined the DocFix a couple of years ago, almost with the idea of a film that you wanted to make. Why did you feel the need to reach out to us to help you make it? 

0:03:56 - Liam

Right. So that's important. I realized one of the best ways to craft a film if you have low budget is to be the editor, because you're in control of the story. If, if I, only have x amount of dollars to pay an editor, that constrains your story to a certain amount of time and you don't get to explore the story. So I knew I, as I was going to be director, I was going to be in the film and I was going to be editor. And that's a huge problem because you have no objectivity. A huge problem because you have no objectivity. 

So I knew at that point I needed somebody else. If I couldn't have an editor on full time, I needed somebody else to help me be objective about the story, to have someone to push ideas with and against and test. And am I going crazy? Have I just forgotten something? 

I was looking for someone like yourself to come on board with the project, and what I loved about that was not only are you an experienced exec producer, story producer, but you also have your DocFix system. So it was an opportunity for me to learn a new system, and I have read other stuff in the past about story structure. I got to learn a new system and, at the same time, have that relationship where I can push and test and get that objectivity that it would have totally been lost if I hadn't done that. So I knew that was the one crucial element, and I think any storyteller needs to be honest that no matter how good your ideas are, you have to test them, you have to push them against people, we have to shape it with somebody else. And so, yeah, that was a crucial thing for me. 

0:05:31 - Nigel

You've made a documentary before a feature film. You've got a background in the industry as a DOP. What did you feel was missing from your skill set? 

0:05:41 - Liam

When you know a story in your head, you forget that you've edited things out of the story and the audience doesn't know that. You need some fresh eyes, that continually saying to you hey, why have you done that? Why are you doing this? Because you forget stuff that the audience doesn't know. That came out a lot in our discussions, but in terms of my skill set, that was missing. I was trained in the UK. I worked for ITV in the UK. I was trained as a camera guy, I was trained as an editor, I trained to do sound and I worked in a newsroom. So I was trained to tell two-minute stories. Every day. We would edit these two-minute stories. So I'd work with journalists. So I was taught a bit about journalism how to tell a story and those elements but for news stories, the six o'clock news but I didn't have this idea of how to tell a story over an hour and a half, although I have done it before. We all have our gut instinct, we all have our skills, but I'd never done any training in this. I'd never actually discussed how I do this with anyone else. I'd never seen anybody else's process in doing this. I realized there was a big gap there and so, again, that was why it was important for me to have this relationship. 

My previous film, which was a feature documentary, that came out. That was reasonably successful. I knew there was something missing from the story and it was a good story but it wasn't great in places. I knew there were gaps and I didn't know what the questions were. I needed to ask to fix it. I knew I needed somebody else on board at that point. I was always planning on having someone to help guide me and shape me and challenge my thinking. I mean it's really helped me shape my story. It's a far better story. It also helped me bring out elements of the story that I might have glossed over or didn't want to put in when you challenged me to keep those ideas in or go deeper into them. If you're editing the film yourself, you will get stuck on certain ideas that you have and I think you do need that objectivity. This is one of the biggest things I got from the doc fix was to have that input and that objectivity that helped me create a better story. 

0:07:51 - Nigel

I remember a big issue very early on, when I saw an early cut of it Towards the end of our process, when you'd come back and put it together, you weren't in it. You'd have started the film and you hadn't said hi, my name's Liam and this is a story I want to tell. 

0:08:07 - Liam

I mean that's interesting. That comes from a point of my last film. When it came out there was a lot of comments. I mean you shouldn't read comments on the internet, right, that's going to destroy you. But I did. 

And the film was about nine Russian hikers who went missing and people were saying, why is he telling us all about himself when it's about these hikers? And so I felt really just be in it, just go with the flow and let people find out what they find out. But this film was very different. This was a cursed man. It's about me going out and putting a curse on me to see what would happen. And so this film was about me and as much as I was trying to hold back from that, it was. And you kept reminding me you're the one getting cursed. We need to find out who you are like. Why does it matter if you get cursed if we don't even know who you are or anything about you? So, yeah, that was really important and without that it would have been a weaker story, because you have to be invested in this character and, yeah, it was hard for me to see that and think about that. 

0:09:11 - Nigel

I think that's the big difficulty. When people make a film and then they are in the film, they can't quite see themselves as a character because the audience, I knew, would be identifying with you. So they want to see how you cope. So a huge part of the satisfaction of the film for them is identifying with you. 

I remember when we were editing it I said have more shots of you reacting, because you were showing someone doing a curse on you, but you weren't showing your face reacting to being cursed, and I could tell as a viewer. What I wanted to see was how you were responding to being cursed, and I could tell as a viewer. What I wanted to see was how you were responding to being the subject of a curse. You've asked to be cursed. This is what it's like. Let me see your eyes. So it was a really interesting process of making you the centre of the film Because, as you said, this is a film about you and being objective about yourself is very hard. I remember very strongly as well when I watched a rough cut at home with my wife. The reaction she was her main reaction you might've had this from other people is like why? 

0:10:17 - Liam

It's the number one question and people keep asking me. I've done a couple of press interviews already. The very first question everyone asks why would you do this? I do answer it in the film, but to kind of hit the nail on the head why would I do this? 

I'm just deeply fascinated, honestly. I'm deeply fascinated in this subject and I believe in testing ideas. I always have been, and my wife jokes that I was born 150 years too late because I would have loved to have been an international adventurer traveling the globe, the new world, looking for secrets and mysteries. I think the world has been discovered, but there is still a new realm, new world of the power of the mind. That to me is sort of an uncharted territory, and so that's what I'm looking at and what I'm interested in. I often joke if I'd won the lottery and had endless amounts of money, what would I do? I would do exactly this. I want to tell these stories. This is exactly what I would do, and I would just go off on these adventures and maybe I'd pay an editor. But apart from that, this is what I want to do and I feel like it's just a part of who I am. 

0:11:27 - Nigel

So the answer why it's just who I am, I think what was the part of the process that you most enjoyed, of the work that we did on the storytelling behind this project? 

0:11:35 - Liam

Editing for me is difficult. I'm actually pretty. I've been editing for 20 plus years. I know how to get around edit systems, so at the end the process of editing isn't hard. But editing for me plus years, so I know how to get around edit system. So at the end the process of editing isn't hard. 

But editing for me is hard, and when I say editing I mean editing the story, crafting the story. It is hard because you have so many choices and directions you can go in. I find the process hard because I hate to kill off avenues and ideas, but you have to. You've got to tell a story in 90 minutes. What I enjoyed the most was having someone have that conversation with and helping me feel good about the choices I'm making, because it's hard. It's hard to cut off these avenues and directions that you might've wanted to go in at your outset of research. But when you have the conversations with you about this, I got excited about the idea. Okay, I'm on the right direction. This is resonating Nigel's feeling it. He can see the story's going in the right way, and so that charged me up and gave me the energy to carry on. Let's get the next scene done. Let's get the next section done, so that was important for me. 

0:12:39 - Nigel

I remember I was speaking to your executive producer and he was telling me he's had a conversation with you and you said Nigel has given me 200 notes, because I remember at one point you said you thought it was done. The first cut you gave him was two and a half hours or something, or two, yeah. And then we said, okay, this is a 90 minute film. So I went through the story with you. He got it down to like one an hour and three quarters or something, and then you thought this is pretty close and then you got 200 notes for me and the implication from me was right, we just started. Now we're just really going to refine this. 

0:13:17 - Liam

I remember that moment. I remember the first long cut. The notes were quite broad and so I thought, okay, great, I'm in pretty good shape, this is great. So the next cut I figured it was pretty much done. I would do a polish edit after this. And that was. I remember you saying, okay, great, we're getting started now. And I had like 13 or 14  pages of notes. And I was like, this is almost as long as my script. Um, I was, I was slightly crushed in that moment, to be fair. Um, briefly for that, that very moment, because Essentially, I'm self funding myself to be in the edit.

That was the biggest challenge. So it's not about doing the work, and this is the problem with independent filmmaker is I I looked at my calendar then and thought, okay, great.

 So it's a huge challenge for me. But, that said, when I read through the notes, I was nodding my head, thinking, yep, this makes sense. So they were great nodes and that's what I wanted. 

I wanted to for my last film, which was okay from a story point of view. I wanted to elevate myself. How do I be to be at that Netflix level? Because that's where I want to be, and I'd love to get a Netflix commission in my future. So that's what I want to try and aspire to. So you have to find a way to get future. So that's what I want to try and aspire to. So you have to find a way to get there. So, yeah, that challenged me. I had a few dark moments and had to look at my savings account, figure out how I was going to manage all of this and that's just the problems of an indie filmmaker. So, yeah, it was a long process but such a better story for it. So I get it and I wanted to be pushed that way. I wanted to know if I'm working at that level, what are those challenges going to be? 

0:14:46 - Nigel

Well, it's the truth, isn't it? I mean, you have to deliver things in the nicest possible way, but you joined because you wanted the rigor. This is the approach that you need to take if you want to get close to making world class documentary stories. And then if you see it in black and white and it makes sense, then you just have a choice. It's not about not knowing what to do anymore. 

I think the big fear that people have is they don't know what to do. It feels like a mystery. It feels beyond them. They've watched thousands of hours of YouTube videos and read the books and they still don't know what to do. This is different. This is what you have to do. Do you want to do this? That's your choice. You don't have to. You could have decided it's good enough for me and you'll just let it go. Or you can say actually, let's try and make it as extraordinary as it can be. Everything was there. It absolutely existed in what you'd shot. You actually did shoot it beautifully, but you also shot the right things as well. Um, when you were filming, was there any time when you actually felt nervous about what was going on in front of you? 

0:15:54 - Liam

can you remember yeah, that's a good question quite a bit. I mean, there were a couple of occasions going into a cave in mexico to do a, to open up a pact with Satan, whether or not you believe in that stuff. It's scary because the people we were working with they're relatively unknown. We only just found them a couple of days ago. They obviously have this belief system and you shouldn't assume that it's a negative thing. Necessarily you don't know what to expect. So we're going into this cave and actually we had an issue where the crew were quite concerned about going into this cave because when we arrived it was streaming with thousands of bats just bats from bats just streaming out of this cave. And not necessarily that everyone was scared of bats, exactly, but potential disease. They carry rabies and stuff. There's a real issue Are we going to get bitten and caught by diseased bats? So that was a concern. Luckily, we all decided to try and ignore that as best as possible and head on in there. 

Probably the scariest moment actually was in India. In India we found this person who had practice black magic for us up in the mountains, but when we found him he seemed quite agitated and annoyed about us to even request looking for a dark magic spirit in India, and so he was quite angry. When we first met him, a lot of people around us, other magical practitioners, had told us not to go up in the hill with this guy. They said we don't know who he is and we don't know what to be aware of. My crew were very concerned, in fact, they know me and they know that I'm pretty up for a challenge, and so they tried to talk me out of it. Actually. So that night, the day before we went up the hill, the two camera guys basically said to me hey, liam, we don't think this is safe and we don't. We know you, but we don't want you to go up there because we think you might get into trouble. It'd be two miles into the jungle, out of cell phone reach, out of any communication, and it had to be done at night. So there it was. 

It was a moment, but I said I felt comfortable that I could find my way out of this situation if I had to, and so the next morning I told the camera guys look, I'm going to go up on my own and I'll just take a GoPro and one camera and I'll make the best of it, but I will not ask you to go into a position that you are uncomfortable with. As it happened, one of them had already decided that he wanted to come up, and the other one, who was a little on the fence but open to it, we needed him to get some Broll elsewhere in the city, so that worked out well for both of us and so, yeah, that was a concern. It turned out that it was a wonderful experience and there was no drama and no one was threatened or injured in any way. But as a filmmaker and certainly as a director, there are things that I will do but I would not pressure to get involved in if they didn't want to. 

0:18:41 - Nigel

So yeah there's some scary moments we'll be back with Liam in a moment, but I just wanted to jump in and remind you about the doc fix storytelling program, which is the reason I'm recording these interviews with documentary storytellers such as Liam, who went through the program himself. If you want to find out more about the doc fix, which is there to help anyone who's struggling to turn an idea into a great story, you can go to applythedocfixcom. I'll send you a case study where I go over exactly the system we teach and which I used when working as a producer, director and story fixer on feature films, including for academy award winners, and series such as netflix's f1 drive to survive and script writing for sir David Attenborough. Of course, if you have any questions, get in touch and I'd be glad to help. 

Now back to Liam, where we talk about how the knowledge of storytelling is so important to keep your documentary on track. When you're filming and the unexpected happens, as it always will, I'll ask the documentary making experience or the directing experiences be able to deal with the unexpected in your storytelling? We worked on that often when we were talking about the preparation for it what you're planning to get from the scene and what you actually do get from the scene. How did you find that on location, compared to when you were back in the edit trying to make those scenes and sequences work within the construction of a big story that you're making? 

0:20:08 - Liam

Yeah, you have this. You have an idea and you plan for as much of an idea as you can, but on location everything changes. You know, we went to see one chap in New Orleans and the interview. He got furiously angry asking me asking him, would he put a curse on me? He said that's not what our practice is about and you're being ridiculous, you know. He got up and walked off of the interview. 

Those moments happen. It works out. That's actually a fantastic moment in the film and that was great. But in the moment I personally felt really upset. I didn't want to offend this person. 

I went into this whole subject trying not to offend anyone. So it's hard. You have this personal thing but at the same time, these are questions that the audience will ask and so you need to be challenged in the moment so that the audience can understand the challenges we're facing, to tell the story. So, yeah, there were lots of things that were happening in the moment. 

Many of the people we found in Mexico and India we did not know before we went to those countries. So that's a brave decision to fly into a country hoping you're going to find something like this, but asking for someone to put a curse on you over an email is just not going to work. I tried it initially and I found that people wouldn't reply or people just said you're crazy and then wouldn't reply again. So I found that the best way to go, looking to try and convince people that I'm making an honest investigation a personal kind of experience in this meant the only way to do that was to sit down, look people in the eye and let them judge whether or not they felt I was authentic or not, and so it was a brave decision to go into these countries and hope I would get the material I was after. I couldn't guarantee that, and that was a that's a risk. You've only got so much budget and luckily we pulled it off and we you know I managed to convince people to to take part in the film. 

0:22:07 - Nigel

I think one of the key things to think about is, when you're a storyteller, you're absolutely right. The word authentic. You're out there to try and find the truth, what really happens. If you've got the skills of a storyteller, then you can take what really happens and make a story of it. It doesn't destroy your story. 

I think the problem that many people have is that they would go on a project like this and think this fails if I don't get cursed or if this thing doesn't happen. 

I haven't got a film, but I actually think A much better way to think about it is if I've got the skills of a storyteller, then if this doesn't happen, what does that mean for the story? If someone's not willing to take me up into a mountain because they're too scared, that says something about the fear that magic provides. Or if this person walks out, as you used in the film, that says something about why you're being cursed. Within the story I remember the guy said I'm a black guy, we're cursed our whole lives and you're coming and asking me to be cursed. And I remember you spoke to your wife on the phone and you found it upsetting, but you folded that into the meaning of the story that you were telling. So that's how I think storytelling skills are just so essential to the documentary maker, especially because you have to tell every kind of story based on the reality that presents itself. 

0:23:31 - Liam

And I think that there's some real going into the project. I actually my notes. My plan for what the film might have looked like was very different to what it finally looked like, because you know we said before that I didn't really want to be the main focus of the story. I wanted to find out about magic, and is magic real and what would that look like? I wanted the subject of the story to be magic, and it is, but it's also about how did magic affect me? So the story becomes about what happens to me, and that's obvious in hindsight hindsight, but at the time I was resistant to that and so my notes, I had some sticky board notes and my sort of rough idea notes. 

We talked about where the story might go before I went out to film. I actually felt like probably there would be no magic that we could really show on camera. It'd probably be not much happening there. And then I was going to default to this idea and in my research that the big thing about this magic, or people who practice this magic, is the community that they share, and I thought my film would end up being more about a celebration of people who practice magic, their shared community. That's something I felt like. That was possibly where the direction of the film would go, because I could see before I'd started filming that could be an ending, that could be a a moment. The film went in a totally different direction, that this, this putting a curse on me, was having an effect on me and on my life. So, straight away, the film then had a new direction, and it was an obvious direction, and it was one where the story was taking us I remember those early notes. 

0:25:08 - Nigel

I went back to look at them before we had this conversation and you were making a film about magic and in fact I remember the early version of the film had you going into a library and having a conversation with someone saying what is magic? Can you explain? It can explain the history. And we cut that out completely. I know that was a bit upsetting, because he's a very nice guy and he spent a lot of time talking to him about wanting to be in the film and just all that went. 

0:25:33 - Liam

Yeah, I love that scene because for me personally I learned a lot about the history, the philosophy of where all the different types of magic actually will have this very similar origin of their belief systems. So for me it was fascinating and I wanted to put that in there. So there comes a thing again coming back to are we making a long read of a Wikipedia page or are we telling a story? And it became clear that actually this isn't just a factual story. Somebody else could go and buy the, the complete history of the occult and read that themselves if they wanted, but that's not the story and so so yeah, quickly, that library scene, which was really informative for me and it comes out in other parts of the film because of my experience of it, but unfortunately the scene itself didn't make it into the film because it was just a factual lesson on the occult and just didn't really fit in. I think there's two really important things that I realized. 

The first thing I realized about the DocFix, and I've noticed this as a director of commercials and short-form documentaries and a cinematographer. I've also worked with lots of other directors who sometimes are inexperienced and they come into projects and they don't have the skills yet to actually do what they want to do and they rely heavily on the cinematographer which actually happens a lot to tell the story because they don't have the craft for that. And I sometimes think there's a big difference between liking movies and liking stories and knowing how to create them. And I think lots of people, because they happen to have really good taste, they like really excellent movies. That doesn't mean you know how to tell that story or to tell that, and I think that I've seen that a lot. 

And coming back to your earlier point, to do that it's hard work. You have to just sit down and do the work. When you challenged me on all of those notes, that's what I wanted and I realized that I'm actually quite a proficient technical editor and I said I've been editing since Avid's early days in 2001. I think I jumped on an Avid system, so it's quite a while ago. 

Technically, I'm quite proficient as an editor. What I learned from you when we were telling the story was that I learned editing the story. It's not about which buttons to push and which fancy effects to use. It's editing stories To your point. I was telling things in a very linear fashion. Here's a moment, and here's some words that explains that moment. Here's another moment. Here's some words that explains that moment. That's very news journalism and that's kind of where I came from. It's like tell the story. You know what are the price of eggs? Show a picture of the eggs. It's a very new story. 

There was a more creative way to edit and by that I don't mean technical editing, I mean story editing and so I got a lot from that. So my editing improved not the technical edit, but my editing of a story improved. That was really interesting. There was a big light bulb moment for me. I realized that being a technical editor doesn't mean you're a story editor. That was huge. That was all part of what I was looking for and so I was very pleased to get that. 

But that, but also in community. So in la there's a couple of other filmmakers that are on the doc fix in la, one of whom, james. I've met with several times for coffees. We've talked about our ideas. We've wrestled out our like, our frustrations of what it takes to be a self-editing a project, because it's tough. I joke that I went to hell looking for a curse on this film, but the real hell's in the edit and I've wrestled that out with other Doc Fix filmmakers and it's nice to have that. We send each other encouraging messages, sometimes like hey, keep going, buddy, you're almost there. And also I didn't test much of my film with the group on a broader level because you and I were having that dialogue and I didn't really have the time to do that. But a couple of the people from the doc fix did see my second to last cut. So it's good to get that safety check from a broader audience and always do that sort of safety check at the end. 

0:29:41 - Nigel

Are you pleased with your film now that it's finished? I? 

0:29:45 - Liam

think everyone wants to say I'm so happy with this film. I think if you're honest as a filmmaker, are you ever happy? I don't know. Look the honest answer. There's two answers to that. 

Being objective, I am incredibly proud of this film. It's a bigger film. It's a better film than I'd ever hoped for. It's visually a very rich film. I come from a cinematography background so as a director, I wanted a visually stunning, rich film. So I am very happy with lots of things in the story and of this film. As a filmmaker, I think if you want to be a great filmmaker, you're gonna feel like there's still a couple of things I wish I could have put in there. But there were other story elements. They weren't problems with the structure or the story necessarily, but there are other avenues I would have liked to have chased up and added into the film. Um, there, as much as you can challenge yourself, there are realistic time and budget constraints. I could push myself in the edit. We had no more money to go out and shoot new scenes. So there are some limitations there and that's just an honest fact. I don't know you're ever 100% happy. Films are hard. 

0:30:57 - Nigel

I think what I hope, that what you have now is a confidence in your abilities, because a big thing for me is it's not about me telling you what to do although that was a part of the doc fix that you were involved with that kind of executive support but also to give you the skills so that you have the self-confidence in the skill. It's not, it's actually you know what to do in order to make it good. 

0:31:24 - Liam

Yeah, I mean, and there's two things to that. There's one in that I've learned some new skills. I've learned new skills in how to tell elements of a story in a better way that engages with the audience better. So I've learned new skills, but not just that. I've learned the skills that I did have that were working, and they're working fine. I have confidence in those. Some of those ideas worked really well and I would always second guess myself my previous film. I second guessed everything. I had no idea what was good and what wasn't. And there are some really good things in that previous film. It's given me confidence on what I do well already and it's given me new skills and that obviously brings confidence. 

0:32:01 - Nigel

So that's an exciting part of the doc fix program and now, hopefully, you can just enjoy the benefits of having made it. It's your legacy, it it'll always exist, this film, and I'm confident that people will recognize it as a, as a really good, really strong piece of work. So it's going to be exciting to see where it leads for you. 

0:32:23 - Liam

Yeah, thank you so much. Yeah, it's been a hell of a journey and you're absolutely right, I feel much more confident, much more accomplished as a filmmaker, and that's given me a huge amount of confidence Moving into the next project, whichever crazy adventure I send myself into next. 

0:32:40 - Nigel

Lovely talking to you, liam, and I look forward to seeing you soon. Thanks so much Fantastic. Thanks so much Fantastic. Thanks very much. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with Liam and found it useful. 

If you're interested in working with me at the DocFix, all the links you need are in the notes below. There's a case study you can sign up for at apply.thedocfix.com that goes into some detail on how the system has been used in some of the tv shows and documentaries I've been involved with. There's lots of information there you'll find useful. And if you want to get in touch, you can send me an email to nigel@thedocfix.com and I'd be happy to hear from you. 

And as a last thing, if you're enjoying this podcast and you want to support the show and help keep it free and the conversations coming, you could do a number of things. One is just to share it with someone you think would benefit from it. And number two, take some time to leave a review. If you leave a review for the show on iTunes or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts, it just helps the algorithm to get it in front of the people who could benefit from it the most. So that's all I've got for you on today's episode. Have a good rest of the day I. 

Transcribed by https://podium.page