Big Plans

Life is what happens while you're making plans...a classic saying and it holds true. Recent events have shown the fragility of life, the floods, cyclones, the earthquakes in New Zealand and the death of my Grandfather recently.

But it's these events and the life led by my Grandfather that put these things in perspective for me. Poppa was 90, and had lived a full life and we talked about the decisions he had made and what life had thrown his way.

My Grandfather was a Medic in the Royal Army Medical Corps, and had entered France with the British Expeditionary Force that was forced to evacuate from Dunkirk. What a lot of people don't realise is that there was a second evacuation point at Cherbourg, and every boat that could get across the English channel helped ferry men out. Poppa had been listed as MIA in the chaos, but was evacuated in a coal boat. He turned up at the church back home and sat down beside his parents who thought he had been killed.

Later he was sent to the desert in Northern Africa, where Montgomery and Rommel fought massive tank battles back and forth. There was an incident where Poppa was in a vehicle with his driver looking for his unit that had moved while he was deployed on another job. They fell in with another convoy of trucks who knew where they were, driving second from the front.

Poppa made the decision that the convoy didn't know where they were going and pulled out from the convoy and drove to a rise to look for his unit with binoculars. At that moment, Stukas dive bombed and destroyed several of the trucks, including the one that had taken the 2nd from front spot.
That decision saved his life.

He survived the desert, he survived the beach landings at Anzio and Salerno in Italy while being shelled by Big Bertha, firing from Rome. He survived to bring his family to Australia, he survived and I exist because of it.

So here I am, making plans, big plans for my future in film, and as with most things in this life, I can only try and see. I've lived a lot of my life by asking questions of everyone I can and not being afraid to hear no. Of course by making sure my questions are backed up with a bit of life experience and minimising naivety (don't ask stupid questions) then people will take me seriously.

I'm lucky that my film plans dont have to contend with a war, and we've dodged the effects of most of the natrual disasters, and I will continue to plan, and put those plans into effect whilst learning all I can, talking to film professionals and maybe even having the gall to ask for their help. Because once upon a time, those pro's were making plans when they were learning, and possibly they asked the right questions of the pro's they talked to.

The first person who handed me a camera was my Grandfather when I was fifteen, and I asked everything I could of him, and now I'm a camera op/editor in the TV industry. I love my Grandfather very much, and I hope he's proud of me. If I'm to become the film maker I plan to be, I'll be asking a lot of questions, and planning big...because I might just make it happen. Ex Pertinacia, Victoria.