Meet the man who wants to convince you that there’s a lot more to Quantum Of Solace than it’s generally given credit for.
While the internet is abuzz about Tom Hardy’s alleged taking over the roll of James Bond, right now Andrew Ellard still clinging tight to the Daniel Craig era. Obsessively, you might say. Hence his VideoNotes Kickstarter campaign.
“It’s a spin-off from the #tweetnotes I’ve been doing for a decade on Twitter. Analysis of how films work, and why they don’t.” Film fans on the social network might have seen Andrew tackling the MCU and Doctor Who, and he’s done a firm defence of Short Circuit 2 as well.
“But VideoNotes gets me to this in a bigger, and yet more precise, way. Where you can join one moment directly to another and excitedly point out the connections. Three car boot scenes in Quantum Of Solace and they’re all story-changers!”
Andrew’s been an in-demand story expert for years in British TV, working on the likes of Detectorists, Red Dwarf, Chewing Gum and the recent Welsh BAFTA-winner In My Skin. VideoNotes began life as a test video that started to make a case he’s been dying to make for years:
“I’ve got, I think, a strong case to make that Quantum Of Solace is a much better film than its reputation deserves. And if you gimme some time with the movie, a mic and an editor, I think I can at least sway you on some of its less-noticed strengths — in some cases by making sense of its weaknesses. People is take it for a revenge movie, but Bond never takes any, and only spends 90 seconds of the film ‘going rogue’.”
The Kickstarter will, if successful, fund a series of five videos — the entire Daniel Craig boxset, including the hopefully-not-delayed-again No Time To Die. “There’s so, so much discussion-worthy stuff going on in all those movies. The strange resurrection themes in Skyfall being followed by the death themes in SPECTRE. The way Casino Royale threads the needle of being a prequel-type without being a literal prequel and so not feeling entirely inevitable.”
You can check out the VideoNotes Kickstarter here, where backer rewards include early access, access to a No Time To Die live-stream discussion, and — for the wannabe screenwriter, one-on-one consultations with the man himself. “I’ve become quite good, I think, at finding the key issues of a pitch, a story or a scene and offering paths to fixing them that match the tastes and goals of the writer. Really, VideoNotes is as much a spin-off of my Zoom calls on TV shows as it is the tweetnotes!”
The Kickstarter runs for just under four more weeks.
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