WALTER

Walter 1
Long Shot of the back of a factory

Look at everybody with suspicion.

That's what I do.

I think it's what everyone does to a point..

The boys in Customs and Immigration call it: 'Behavioural Assessment'.

Having access to personal information would make my job a damn sight easier. But I'm glad I don't. Makes the work more interesting. Leaves you something to DETECT...

So I look at everybody with suspicion....

walter 2
Ext. Shot of Modern Municipal Swimming Pool and Leisure facility..Day.

I've not done this before. I just fancied making a bit of film. It could be seen as un-professional using works' equipment – but I'm using my own tapes. The others are all sealed and audited . Quite right so. Rules of evidence. I dare say i'm breaking some other rule, but if I am, I don't know what it is. I've just decided to make a little memoir.. I reckon I've got a few things worth saying. (short pause) .. There he is. Bastard.

walter 3
shot cuts poorly to a slightly different framing of the pool and lesiure facility - slightly more symmetrical this time

Look at that big piece of wood. I wonder what it is. Bloody massive. How'd they get it to bend so much? A great big piece of wood like that... amazing.


I 've got him now. That'll be a benefit saving. Possible prosecution. I'll make an appointment to see the employer now... bam.. another job well done. Bastard.
Camera pans amateurishly back to wood beam of swimming pool
Teak I suppose....

walter 4
repeat of first shot of rear of factory

It's funny looking at places that no one ever really looks at. Like this one. The obvious thing to do is to think nothing of them at all. but then, you do, a bit.. start to think something. you probably shouldn't. But you do - when you spend so much time looking.....and waiting...

pause and remain on shot

walter 5
EXT. - garden ?- Night....

I had a bit of an altercation last year. Road Rage believe it or not. (laughs) Me! Of all people... with my training.. anyway.. shows it can happen to the best of us. I ended up racing this 17 year old. The judge was very understanding – a 200 pound fine - and a 'driver awareness course'.

I went on it last week.
They did this thing. I mean, you don't expect to be impressed by a 'driver awareness course' - but they showed this video...

There were five basket ball players dressed in white and five in black. Each team had a ball and the course leader told you to watch and count how many times one of the teams passed it. At the end he went around the room to see who got it right.

Well, thank God, i got it exactly right - 47 times - me and the two coppers were the only ones - but that's the training - i have to get those things right... so do they.. especially the CID boys..

But that's not the point. The teacher - course leader - then re-ran the video and told us to just watch without counting... just look, you know? WELL YOU WOULDN'T BELIEVE IT! half way through the game, a giant pink rabbit walks into the middle of the pitch, stops, and waves at the camera for about 15 seconds - and then walks off. But get this – NOBODY - not one of us - even noticed. Obviously, I suspected it was a different film. But it was a video. The tape never came out of the TV and the TV got rewound after the first showing...

It made me think-

People often just see what they're looking for.
If I could miss a giant pink rabbit staring at me and waving for 15 seconds - what else could I miss - you know?....

It just made me think...

(long pause) .. I really ought to prune those roses.

pause and fade to black

walter 6
Exterior office block day.

This is where i work.

feels a bit weird taking pictures.. i'm in the queue for the car lift.. the weather's. .. oh christ, this is stupid.... It's not meant to be about ME

walter 7
Ext. shot of boat on river - day

This one's new. Selling boats on a website, but also owns a string of b and b's. It makes sense to diversify. None of them are in his name of course. He's probably far too sussed to get a prosecution.. if only they all knew that admitting nothing is 90% of the answer to getting away with everything... I reckon the 'leisure class' would be twice the size it already is. It was a man called Thorstein Veblen invented the idea of the Leisure Calsses. Not that this leisure class is quite like Mr Veblens'. His idea was that most societies produce a limited number of upper class, superior folk, who would spend most of their time engaged in doing things high in status and pay - but relatively low on use. 

We didn't have a welfare state when Veblen was working... 

Oop - movement - he's in...

Wild goose chase this one.

I've been researching a few things lately... along with looking at the world with a different eye - so to speak - after my pink rabbit incident.

Anyway - the leisure class - there he is.... Bastard.


walter 8
Ext. Rear of a house with garden and empty bottle of wine with glass on table


erm, this is my house.......



walter 9
ext. Front of a Victorian prison. camera pans slowly to reveal children playing in the snow..

I've figured out how to edit sound in...
This is a prison. I'm looking for a guy who is teaching and signing on..which is unusual.. teachers I mean... creative writing with the inmates. The leisure classes.

Anyway, I wrote something:

(clears throat and reads:)

There are 495 schools closed in Norfolk today. Mousehold Heath sits right opposite the prison. A sledging haven. It seems a cruel thing to put a prison on a flat county's most impressive viewing site. You can see the whole of the City from here. With it's banks, churches, estate agents - and pubs.

today, children are playing like they used to when I was a kid. un-supervised, in large groups and not a health and safety man in sight..

puts paper down

never mind that...

i'd like to say it reminds me of when my two were little. We didn't do very much of this kind of thing. It would have had to be sponaneous. We never did anything spontaneous. They're both at University now. I got them a house together with a re-mortgage to help finance them - not sure it was the best time to do it...

I don't think we ever had a sledge...

i've got him, by the way. i have to catch him enter and leave. with all the prison checks, I had to sit there all day...

So.. 

it's sort of beautiful.

it's everything I missed...

Creative Writing - dear oh dear...... mmmmm
End scene on freeze of city panorama (AS SEEN IN 'WALTER 18')

walter 10
(int. Walter's home.)
Graphic: 'later that night...'
empty wine bottle with second bottle opened...

love isnt meant to be measurable. cant buy it... cant quanitify it... but it is a bit moderated, a bit, erm, i mean, it does have a price... its got a lot of different faces. It, you, have it, then you don't.. but it's like a rental word for whatever you're doing at the time.. love is a big excuse.... its definitely not always enough.. its definitely not all you need... but it can be all you have.. it probably is all you have.. but you might be a bit ashamed to admit it. 

Shaky (drunken) change of view pans to shot of Walter's garden..

I don't know how these film makers find the time.

Its very clever.

film making

jacob's creeking

daft bugger

cut...




walter 11
Shaky hand held shot of one of Walter's surveillance tapes shot from a monitor/screen

this guy's always smiling

he looks so happy

walter 12
Ext. Night: The Garden

it's funny since i started doing this

not that roses look like anything this time of year

but they will

look like something

they're old stock

proper sweet smelling roses

leisure class roses

Veblen's rose garden

(I beg your pardon)..
sings drunkenly

walter 13
Ext. Landscape. Day..

The Golden Ratio. Fi-Bo-Na Ki or is that Chi? 'C C I' - i think makes a 'ch'....

I've got this little dictaphone thing now. Fi-Bon-A-chi was a mathematician. I did a google search for 'the look of things' and found out about the golden ratio - which is when things look right. More or less.. It's about 63%. It's meant to be the ratio that things reproduce by and it's all over classical architecture and it pops up in nature everywhere.

You're belly button is 63% of the way from your toes to your head

I was just curious since I started looking back at my pictures - how some just looked right and others didn't - to me that is - and I wondered: was this to just me or other people? and why.? And - why - is because of Fibonachi and the golden ratio.

I don't know. Some things are just right. Right in time, right in proportion, right in every way.

This is right.

(IMAGE STILL)


And this is wrong.

(IMAGE STILL)

What do you think?

Walter 14
Another scene from one of Walter's many surveillance sites..

I've been on 12 training courses in the last two years; used up about three weeks of annual leave; Level 7 'Professionalism In Security'. Refresher courses in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act....Peace/PACE - either way. I did an updated 'Institute of Revenues Rating and Valuation Certificate'
(pause)
I've done a lot of acronymns...
I've put a lot into the job.

Sometimes i think about what other people do - what motivates them - what matters to them. i look at their faces, the way they move, their expressions and I wonder: Are they like me? Are we all more like each other than not? How do we connect? Am I helping? How do I know if I'm helping? and if I was - would they help me back?

I've started writing some of this stuff now. I was in the library the other day. A man sat opposite me left his computer. I was relieved. He seemed to feel it necessary to restate, all beit under his breath, everything he was doing. Me and the three others around the table havd tolerated him and nobody did more than sigh a bit louder than usual. Just as he left, a woman dressed in black with a slight limp took over his seat and then shot up suddenly shouting "excuse me" and went after him with a watch he'd left behind....

Who do I help?

Everyday, millions of un-rewarded minor acts of honesty and help like this go un-noticed or recorded. But maybe if they could be, they would show how we are more connected than we know. Show that we want to help each other... That... we are more alike than not....

I did a quite un-usual thing yesterday...

Walter 15

Ext. Day: Surveillance Site (Riverboats): Actively reflective and 'on the job' again..
I'm here with the boatman again. But I'm thinking about Mr Smiley...
Better not say his name I suppose..
Mr Creative Writing with the inmates

I told you I'd got him. (You? Who are YOU? - why am I talking to YOU?)

well, then I went and told him I'd got him....

and he just kept smiling....

and asked me if I'd like to have lunch... and it was lunchtime... and i said 'yes. ok'.....

and we had lunch.. and we got on.. quite well....

It even turned out he'd done my job .. for a while.

..but he'd got the sack for not forwarding any referrals from 'nosey neighbours' -as he put it....

I liked him. I even told him about this stuff.. about Pink Rabbits....

He was encouraging. he made it seem worthwhile... I mean, it is worthwhile - or I wouldn't be doing it. 

He completely understood that there was nothing I could do about his prosecution - or whether charges were brought - he didn't even seem to want to talk about it. And neither did I. But I didn't want him prosecuted.
I'm not sure what I'm doing...

Walter 16

1st View: Int. Day. Dictaphone/Editing suit/Computer...


2nd View: Ext. day; a succession of classically framed still landscapes..

I had a call from my daughter today - which is a bit out of the ordinary - unless she wants money. She's fallen out with her mother and has no-where to go.. and can she come and stay? I thought I'd better say yes.

I hope this business of filming people in the street isn't going to get me in trouble. It's just very fascinating to catch people on film unawares. And it's so much easier to do that when you have cameras hidden inside traffic cones. 

I've read up on the legalities and I'm not doing anything wrong. I've decided. Okay, Steve has helped me to see - if I'm honest, that what i'm doing is important work. He sees it as important work. He has told me it's important work I do feel a bit of an arsehole... But he says i'm working in a long tradition of the 18th and 19th century Flaneurs - who were mostly French - right up to what they called 'Mass Observation' film makers like Flaherty and some other people in the 1930's when everyone lost their jobs and maybe didn't have better things to do with themselves...

I've thought a lot about what Steve says - we've met up a few more times..

He says what I'm doing is 'reportage'. He says quite a few things in French, which is a bit off putting sometimes... 

She's coming next week, after she's told her husband. She sounded very certain. I felt quite proud of her. I wonder what she's going to do for a job? Is she expecting me to keep her? Wouldn't be un-reasonable if the CSA hadn't already accounted for all my would be disposable income. 

How do I feel? I don't know. What are we going to talk about? I feel nervous. I haven't really had a conversation with her since - Well, i haven't, I just haven't..

History gets made so quickly......
Walter 17
Day. Int. Hand held shot of Yellow Pages, Boiler and DIY mags.

The boiler has broken down.

It will cost me two and a half grand to fix it.

Daughter - Mel - who changed her name - is not happy with anything I've given her - and that wasn't more than a name according to her.

*beep* Flaneurs....

I have my annual review tomorrow... 

This will be the first time I haven't received a performance bonus in six years.

I'm meeting Steve in the pub afterwards. Steve!

If they know anything about him, I'll get the sack.

Oh look at that - it's gravity pumped. Jesus Christ, that's another grandndsworth...

And still I am fiming. Filming my own misfortunes instead of other people's... But I think people enjoy the misfortunes of others. Schadenfreude.

Steve's word. German word this time. Steve should be in prison. What am I doing?

What a Muppet....

I should have filed the report on him...

Bastard.

Walter 18
repeat ext. scene: panorama of city

You would have to say it is beautiful up here.

A picture postcard of a view. (pause)

This suddenly feels like frightening work. (pause)

What have I done?

and what the beep am I going to do next? (pause)

Suspended with full pay for up to three months, then half pay for another three. But the Rep doesn't think it will get that far - and neither do I.

I don't know what to say.

Here's some music...

short passage of appropriate music!


Walter 19

Ext. Day: A succession of still landscapes

graphic: '5 years on...'

I make my living now as a wedding photographer

I went to Art School - steve's suggestion - I spent three years there trying to make a film about God and The Devil meeting up in Starbucks to find out what had gone wrong with the human race. About why the difference between 'good' and 'evil' seemed to have narrowed so much... In the end they decided to amalgamate Heaven and Hell- issuing day passes at first and then giving people open passports to travel freely between - very much like the European Union - It was quite clever. It got a few laughs and has been shown at one or two obscure film festivals.... but, in the end, the need to earn a living re-surfaced as it always does.... but somehow, just looking back at some of these early pictures - especially some of these scenes I shot while still 'on the job' - well, I just think they are interesting - as they are. (pause)

maybe, because I was seeing things for the first time, seeing, as I said at the time - what I was missing - I don't know, it might just be me - but I thought it was worth putting something together. It's not much. Just a Re-presentation if you know what I mean...

I'll finish off with a bit more music.

..fade in of continuation of appropriate music from previous scene...
voice-over:
Don't forget to look at everyone with suspicion.
Continue music and fade to credits.