Attending the U2 Conference in Raleigh on October 2 - 4 2009 was simulaneously one of the best and worst experiences of my life.

10 days before the conference was due to start, I had to make the gut-wrenching decision to tell Scott Calhoun, the Conference Director, that 'Meet Me In The Sound' was finished, but stuck on a computer in Melbourne, Australia. That all the best and brighest computer geeks in the world couldn't tell me or my editor, how to extract it from the computer and burn it to disk. That I had let him down. That I had failed.

Scott was gracious, generous, supportive and understanding. He talked me in to going to the conference anyway. Which I did.

I'm so glad that I went. There were a group of ten women at the conference with whom I quickly bonded. I'm proud to call those women my friends. Because of their support, I was able to make the most of the weekend and enjoy the experience for what it was. Because of them, I hardly thought about the documentary failure at all. Which given the circumstances, meant everything to me.

For now, I am stepping back from the documentary to fulfil my obligations as a high school English and History Teacher.

My only plan, my only commitment, is to have the documentary ready for the 2010 Melbourne International Film Festival submission process.

After that, I intend to enter the documentary in film festivals around the world, and depending on interest, possibly sell the documentary online via my website. Because I still think that the story of us U2 fans is worth telling and I'm committed to seeing this project through to whatever end is in sight.

Thank you to everyone for your support - the emails, the calls, the forum posts, the messages of encouragement - it means more to me than you could ever imagine. I have had support, literally, from all around the world with this project, and none more so than in the past month.

I'm a lucky girl in every way that matters.

Apparently referring to my editor as a 'God' in real-life isn't enough.

He needs validation through my barely-read blog.

By the grace of God, I was fortunate enough to stumble on Terry Munch when I was struggling to figure out how I was going to have the doco ready for the U2 Conference in Raleigh in October. I work together with his wife, and without him I'm quite sure that this project would have stalled a long time ago. He works for ABC Melbourne and has many great contacts.

I got lucky. Very lucky.

I got double lucky when Scott Cleaver, from Sky Television NZ agreed to be my narrator. Scott is a great guy. Friendly, personable, with a sex-voice. It beats listening to my voice on and off for over an hour. He's also been very supportive of my project, sharing his enthusiasm.

So, I'm feeling pretty blessed right now.

Still a long way to go... but hoping that we'll have something for the Conference that reflects the quality of the stories shared.

Every now and then something happens with the doco and I just go...wow. Lucky me. Aren't people the BEST.

Well, the U2 Conference in Raleigh is getting closer and closer...and I get more and more nervous.

Just a quick note to let people know that I've started working with a professional editor on the documentary.

It's interesting to watch how the story changes as you receive the material.

I'm still hoping to have something ready for the U2 Conference in Raleigh in October (www.u2conference.com) even if it is a rough cut.

October is creeping up rather fast..so I'm back to work on finalising the script!

Thanks, everyone.

I've had the comment that title doesn't really work.

It's been a while since I've blogged so I thought I'd take a few minutes to let people know where things stand with the documentary at the moment.

At the end of March, the U2 Conference, which was due to be held in in May in New York, was postponed.

I had mixed emotions - disappointment, because I was really looking forward to it, and relief, because the documentary was no where near finished.

After the news came through I went through a period where I lost my doco mojo - I'd worked so hard for 18 months getting interviews and preparing the storyboard and writing the script and writing for sponsorship and creating a website and getting a business going and...and...and... it was good to step back.

It made me realise that I cannot do everything. I consider this to be a positive realisation! I'm seeking a film editor to help me with the process.

With the recent news that the conference might be going ahead in September to coincide with U2's North American tour, it seemed like a good time to get the mojo back.

I have all the footage that I need now, I have graphics coming from a graphic artist, and things are looking good for a September screening.

Thanks for the ongoing support.

Natalie

My ties to the Yarra Valley go back to the 1850’s when my mother’s ancestors, the Bell family, arrived from Scotland. Their farm, Gulf Station, is now one of the oldest surviving farming complexes in Australia and is maintained by the National Trust.  It was nearly destroyed by the Black Saturday fires that surrounded Yarra Glen and again by grass fire the following week.

My great grandfather was the original caretaker and gardener of the Maroondah Dam in Healesville.  The stories of my great uncles and great aunts growing up a the Dam are an important and much loved part of my family heritage.

My much adored grandfather, who grew up at the Maroondah Dam, was the butcher in Yarra Glen for over 20 years and his shop, which is now the Ruby Cat Boutique, still stands. 

Growing up in this region, surrounded by dairy farms and wineries, in the middle of a beautiful valley, you know that you are lucky. It is beautiful beyond belief.

But you also grow up always aware of the possibility of bushfires, and over the past month the heat has sucked the life out of Valley, leaving it tinder try.  

Nobody could imagine, predict or prevent the horrors of Black Saturday.

I had an afternoon nap, trying to escape the 47.5C heat, and awoke to 12 missed calls from my family and friends who had been caught in the bushfires.

My parents were evacuated – temporarily - with my father (an experienced firey who really should have known better!) driving through fires on the Melba Highway on the outskirts of Yarra Glen, to get home to my mother.

My sister had seen the whole drama unfold from her property on top of a hill overlooking the Valley. Her photos from Black Saturday are a reminder of the total destruction of these fires, and how lucky I personally am that nobody I know was lost in the fires.

But driving around the Valley for the first time on the weekend, I didn’t feel lucky.  Driving down roads that should be familiar was disorientating.  There were no houses, no hay sheds, no fences, no trees, to offer the usual bearings. Familiar places that were unfamiliar, eerie, creepy bewildering and that looked like Hell on Earth.

 The quiet was eerie and unnatural. No birds, no animals, no cicadas. Nothing but the wind.

It’s easy to think that the worst is over. It isn’t. The recovery is going to be slow and painful and time consuming. 

Please continue to be generous to the Australian Red Cross Appeal and support the Fire Victims. They’re going to need our help for a long time to come.

The U2 Conference that was scheduled to take place in New York City in May 2009, has been indefinitely postponed. (www.u2conference.com).

I'm currently looking for 2D/3D Film Animators who would be willing to do some animating for the film, preferably at a significantly discounted rate!

If you're interested, or if you know somebody who might be interested, please let me know.

Thanks

Natalie.

The last time that my mother asked me if I'd 'watched Oprah today', I was lying on the couch with frozen peas on my knee in pain because of an injury.

Apparently, because I was closing in on 30 at the time, and because Oprah said so, I needed to get some of my eggs frozen because the good eggs were dying. My fertility, or possible lack there of, was not really something that I wanted to contemplate right at that moment in time.

Hence, the term 'Did you watch Oprah today' usually fills me with dread. Oh, here we go with the old fertility caper again.

Today, though, I was proved wrong.

Oprah's show was (apparently) about how if you go after something, and you're passionate about it, somehow the planets align to make things just happen for you. It's an intriguing possibility, and it is certainly how I've felt lately - showered with good will. Good things DO happen.

It's hard to believe that we are already mid-way through January, and that my 34th birthday is fast approaching.

Every year, at this time, I have what I call the 'white picket fence' experience - where I start to think that by this age, I should have a mortgage, a partner and a family - and start to have a bit of a melancholic retrospective.

This year, though, I haven't had (as much) time to dwell on these things, because I'm up to my eye balls in documentary stuff.

After a brief break to Canberra and then Sydney for the New Year celebrations ( a long day in the 31C sun, but what a spectacular fireworks display!) I'm now back to work, trying to put something together.

The learning curve is steep. I naively thought that Final Cut Express would be easy to pick up. It hasn't been.

I naively thought that I had received all the interviews that I would need. I haven't.

I naively thought that the school holidays would give me enough time to get through a lot of this stuff. They haven't.

The U2 Conference is still a while off yet, but the tremors are fast approaching.

I hope that everyone had a happy and safe new year, and thank you for the support and generosity that was shown during 2008.

Today I had the opportunity to interview a high profile Australian humanitarian, Reverend Tim Costello.

He was an absolute gentleman, and remained so despite my obvious technological incompetencies.

I was incredibly nervous during the interview - with Tim being the highest profile person that I have interviewed to date - and it was incredibly generous of him to give me some of his time, when he is such a busy and in demand person.

Quite incredible to watch someone like that in action - and I was able to learn alot about interview technique, how to be gracious to people, and the need to really come much better prepared than what I was.

It's not every day that you get to meet one of your heroes. Someone that you have grown up idolising, watching and learning from.

Last Saturday, while at the local shopping centre, I had that opportunity.

Kevin Sheedy, the former coach of the Essendon Football Club, was signing copies of his new book.

During his time as coach, Essendon won four premierships, had one almost perfect season, and enjoyed a great deal of success. When you compare that run with the results of other clubs, in other sports, Essendon fans were treated to a display of first class coaching.

During the late 1990's, I had a long term illness.  While it wasn't serious, Essendon's success was one of 5 things that improved my state of mind during that time.

 One of the other things is chocolate, and I'm convinced that it deserves to be recognised as food group all on it's own. A healthy love of chocolate is a healthy love of life.

In addition there were the multiple viewings of the original Star Wars trilogy. There is something remarkably endearing about these movies, and it isn't the script!

Discovering Harry Potter while on a trip to Canberra was also important. I'd tried to avoid the phenomonon for a long time, and when I finally gave in, I became so heavily addicted that I nearly missed the Impressionists exhibition that was on in Camberra at that time, and my sole reason for being there.

The other was Pop and the Popmart tour. I still adore both.

Apart from the chocolate, these four very different loves have similiarities.

Essendon has not always been a successful football club. Before the 1984 grand final, it had been almost 20 years since the red and the black army had tasted premiership success. Kevin Sheedy saw the game differently. His quirky, unique approach is very endearing. He is a character who is thoughtful, knowledgeable and has had to overcome many difficulties to achieve the success he has.

Star Was was rejected by most Hollywood studios in the late 1970's. Even when it was being filmed, it was so riddled with problems that it nearly didn't get made. Unique in it's scope and story, studio executives were concerned about the budget and the fact that they just didn't get it. I wonder how my rainy day weekends would have been spent if studio executives had had their way?! Despite health problems brought on by stress, George Lucas persevered.

J K Rowling's script for Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone was rejected by every book publisher in the mid 1990's, except one. Bloomsbury. It has gone on to sell over 120 million copies. Reading these books is like a mental fitness challenge. There are so many twists and turns and details, you need to have your wits about you to understand what is going on.

Then there is Popmart. The tour that shouldn't have been from the album that almost wasn't. A contradiction of dark themes and bright lights, of pop art and dark matter. I think that I adore this album because it isn't perfect, it isn't polished, and for those reasons it sounds real.

The similarities that these 4 things have, apart from soothing a sore mind, is that they are the stories of perserverance, of how nothing is great without hard work, commitment and belief in what you are doing. That you have to look at things differently and approach things differently if you want what you do to succeed.

Thanks to everyone who has contacted Gypsy Heart Films about participating in the documentary.

Applications for submission have now closed.

It takes a great deal of courage to film yourself and put your trust in an unknown stranger based in Melbourne, and to those who have volunteered...thank you, I am grateful.

Each of the main U2 fan sites offer something different.

The official U2 site, www.u2.com, has those fabulous Adam video diaries at the moment. Ecelectic, eccentric, and endearing, I eagerly await each new film.

Interference has the fabulous forums and the sense of community, particularly the P.L.E.B.I.A.N.'s who are a quirky lot.

U2 Station has a simple, funky and user-friendly layout, and it doesn't go for overkill with the content, sticking with the essentials and keeping things uncluttered. It looks fabulous, the most datable of the non-official websites.

@U2 is classy and celebrates the creative spirit, the avant-garde artistic element of U2 and is possibly more comprehensive than the official site. I would love access to Matt McGee's little black book for the doco, but he's proving to be elusive. The classy element of Matt's website is what I aspire to the most for the doco, someone he has that balance right.

You see, when you're making a documentary about the fans of the world's biggest rock band, it would be foolish not to have a look online about what these fans respond to.

But what a challenge? How can one 1 1/2 hour documentary be endearing, ecelectic, eccentric, fabulous, quirky, funky, user-friendly, classy, creative and avante-garde at the same time?

It was so much easier in the Wire days of the early nineties. Clean lines and content. Bliss.

I'm currently putting together a segment on Wire, the Wire Banner and Wire tags in the documentary, and I'm looking for jpeg images of PopMart ticket stubs, photos of people wearing Wire Tags or meeting Wirelings during that tour, or of people signing the Wire Banner.

If you are able to help me at all with this, please contact me at this website.

Because most of the interviews are being recorded by participants and not by me, I haven't really done many face to face, formal interviews.

And, it turns out, it isn't as easy as it looks.

A good interview is like any performance - it has its highs and lows, its peaks and troughs, and it is a skill that you need to learn.

And it is a skill that I had better get better at sooner rather than later!

I tend to talk too fast, ask big rambling questions, and not really have a focus. If I focus on the questions I have written, I lose momentum, when I want the 'interview' just to be a casual chat.

It's quite surprising how differently you act and respond when the camera is on you.

If anyone has any suggestions about how to overcome this, obviously I would be grateful!

There have been a few highlights making this documentary to date.

I have really enjoyed doing the research and finding out information about specific songs and people that I really wasn't aware of before I started this journey.

I have enjoyed meeting and conversing with people from all around the world about our shared love of U2's music. It's always a nice feeling to feel like you belong somewhere, and I haven't had that feeling a lot in my lifetime.

And it is a great privilege for people to trust you with their U2 stories, especially given the very personal nature of some of them. We should never become complacent when people put their trust in us, especially when they are doing it in such a public way.

The most beautiful story to date has come from Latin America.

As a boy, this U2 fan received Rattle and Hum from his friends for his birthday. They decided - together - to collect all their albums. They couldn't afford to each own the albums, so they shared ownership, a merry go round of songs. This fan believes that he has a deeper appreciation of the music and its spirit because of this experience.

In the Western World we tend to look too much to celebrity to inspire us and touch us. And it is complete crappola. The best stories come from the most ordinary of situations.

This story about a young boy and his first U2 album, I have found incredibly moving. It has left me with a sunshine smile since I got the email.

As I type this, I have finally completed a draft storyboard for my film funding application to Screen Australia.

It's not a straightforward process and it's taken me almost 6 months to do the research and writing and make the necessary contacts and obtain the necessary interviews.

It is notoriously difficult to get film funding in Australia and I imagine it is highly unlikely that I will get funding on my first go.

But it doesn't hurt to try so we'll see what happens. I'll keep you all posted.

One of the most interesting things about doing the U2 documentary isn't in the interviews that I have received, it has been in the interviews that I haven't received.

In our airbrushed world, where perfection and and people with seemingly 'no flaws' are presented as realistic ideals which we can all aspire towards, it shouldn't have come as a surprise that people have all sorts of hang ups about their bodies, voices and faces. But it did.

When children as young as six are being admitted to hospitals with eating disorders, when botox is seen as the 'norm', when mental health issues are increasing and youth suicide rates are rising around the world, you have to wonder where this pursuit of 'perfection' is leading us.

I think I already have an idea for a follow up documentary.

Due to popular demand, I've finally got a webpage up and running for the U2 Documentary, which I hope is to be the first but not last film to come out of Gypsy Heart Films.

Thank you to everyone who has shown their support and/or contributed to date, I am grateful.