London Screenwriters' Festival Day #1

In previous years I've made lots of notes and done a blow-by-blow account of this and similar events. I'm afraid that's not going to happen any more - at least not in detail. There are a couple of reasons for this: they are filming almost all the sessions so if you have access to the site you can see most sessions - even ones that conflict; and because once upon a time I was completely ignorant of screenwriting, but now I know a bit so I don't feel the need to make copious notes.

Also, as it happens, I missed most of the first day. I was there but the whole afternoon was taken up with the Advanced Mentoring session with major international TV producer Gub Neal (he has also produced three films but, as he said, that world is just weird).

On the previous night I had been afflicted by a proto-migraine, I don't get migraines (the lie down in a dark room and feel like you're dying kind) any more but if I've not slept properly for a few days I get the beginnings of a migraine, a headache which can get very painful unless I'm careful (chocolate helps).

Anyway I went to the London Screenwriters' Festival pre-launch thingy to get my event registration complete and to deliver some pitches I'd printed out for someone else. I didn't stay. Got back to the flat, watched the final episode of The Fades (quite good); practised my pitch again despite the headache; and then got an early night.

I knew I'd feel better in the morning and I did.

So then came the rushing around ensuring I had everything I needed for the Advanced Mentoring. I did not forget anything, and I remembered set up my computer with a new backdrop - the CGI shot from the Monsters trailer we'd done, created by the Director Chris. As I say that's a CGI shot, we weren't allowed on top of a skyscraper at night, it was actually shot in the cellar of my house.


I wanted it as the backdrop so I could have my computer open and displaying it as I did my pitch. I also download the trailer. I was in two minds about showing the trailer but decided to show it at the end of the pitch. I had all the leave-behinds printed - hey, I was taking this seriously and Gub is one of the biggest TV producers around.

So what was it we were doing? We'd been told it was a kind of Dragon's Den thing, each of us would pitch in turn to the rest of the group who pretended to be producers. Each was allocated five Monopoly money notes (5 x 100 units) which they could decide to invest in the pitched project. If the project got 1000 units of backing it could move ahead.

It's a nice game and worth copying because it's just like the real world - only a certain amount of money to go round and if you commit all your money then even if a better project comes along ,,, it's too late. Very instructional.

I listened to the first two pitches and terror began to set in, it wasn't that those pitches were especially good or not, it was that they weren't anything like what I'd prepared. And I knew some of the people around the table had been to the pitching training the day before, just not which ones. One of those pitches made it to the 1000, so went through. Worse and worse.

What to do? Could I change my pitch on-the-fly into something resembling what these other two had said? I was sweating, what to do? In the end I did the only thing I could do. I decided that, well, this was just a training session and I was here to learn, so I did it the way I prepared it.

I got up, set up my machine with the picture and did the pitch, fluffed it in a couple of places but not seriously. Then played the trailer. Gub's note on the pitch? "Very good pitch, don't use the trailer." Never had my flabber been so ghasted. And then? Everybody round the table just said it was great, that they really got the characters, crazy Dom threw in all his money, and I got the 1000 easily.

Why did Gub say don't use the trailer? In fact he'd said it for the same reason I was in two minds about using it: Because another producer, the inestimable Philip Shelley, had told me once not to direct any potential producers or financiers to the trailer. Not because it's bad, but because when someone reads the script (or gets pitched to) they have created an image in their imagination, if you show them the trailer that replaces what they've imagined and becomes the level of what they expect - I'm paraphrasing but that's essentially it.

Well, now I've been told twice, I won't do it again.

And so it went, another three pitches and one more person through to the final round.

The next round I had not prepared for, at least not directly, but I have to attribute my success to my friend Liz, for whom I had to print out the one page pitches mentioned earlier. I took one look at her pitches and went OMG my written pitches are nothing like this - and she's done an MA in screenwriting. (Are you sensing a pattern here?)

But it had meant that I had created a super-trimmed-down version one page pitch.

Gub announced that now he would pretend to be a TV commissioner for a broadcast company and we had to do a short pitch and then get grilled by him as to why he should help fund this project with a view to putting it into production.

I grabbed my super-new one-pager and used the first few lines with a few amendments, off the top of my head. He asked searching questions - I had answers, so thank you to all those people on the Intertubes who saw my request for difficult questions, they ensured I had an answer for everything.

Ultimately all three of us were sufficiently convincing - bearing in mind that this was make believe I got commissioned for further development for Sky 1, someone else got Channel 4 (for a very "difficult" piece), and the other was ... ITV?

Mind you, as Gub said afterwards, that was the easy version. But it's a game I'd like to play with the big boys :-)

We'd certainly been put through the mill and it was awesomely educational. I learned something: I actually love pitching.

(I did see a couple of sessions today and I would write about them but it's late and I need my sleepy-byes.)

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What's on the turntable? "Life Burns" by Apocalyptica from "Apocalyptica" - you can't go wrong with heavy metal cellos.

London Screenwriters' Festival 2011 - prelude

So much to say, so little time.

I am going to LSF'11, this week. I got onto the speed pitching on Sunday, and miracle of miracles I also got the Advanced Mentoring session (which is going to start with Dragon's Den-style pitching and cross-examination from the floor) with Gub Neal on Friday. This is all good.

I know pitching is a very scary thing, and people will tell you it's all down to preparation. I don;t think that's right really, of course it helps to be prepared - and I'm not going in unprepared. But there is something vastly more important: emotion.

You could be apathetic, imagine what response that would get. You could be tearful. You could plead. You could be plain scared. You could be snide and superior. You could be angry. Antagonistic. You could be anxious. Bored.

Any of those and it would be an utter disaster. You could be a bit interested, a lot interested, cheerful - those would be better.  But there's only emotion that really works: Enthusiasm and it has to be genuine.

If you can't be genuinely enthusiastic about your own work, you're on to a loser. I'd probably argue that you could get away with a minimum of preparation, as long as you're enthusiastic. Your idea still has to have merit, of course.

This year I'm not relocating to a nearby hotel, because my latest contract has me in a room in Kensington, London. So no additional costs incurred - nice. But I won't be heading home at the weekend to see the family which is not so nice.

Last weekend I was intending to get all the pitches and one pagers done. I didn't. So this evening I rushed out after work and bought a nice little Epson printer that takes the same inks as the one I have at home. Excellent.

So what have I been writing? Well the planning on Winter web-series has been going very nicely but I've had to hold fire on that for the LSF'11. I did a tidy up on my feature Rebel set in the same steampunk universe as Winter in fact it happens at almost the same time. I'll be pitching Rebel in the speed-pitching.

For the Advanced Mentoring I'm pitching Monsters (SF action thriller TV series) still my favourite after all this time.

There's also the deadline (the day after the LSF'11) for the Channel 4 screenwriting course which I completely failed to get into last year. For that I'm sending my broadcaster-friendly detective series Mara though I'll give that a brush-up first as well.

And that's it.

I don't know if I'll be supplying a day-to-day rundown on the LSF'11 this year, I'm going to be a lot busier than usual. We'll see how it goes.

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What's on the turntable? "Always somewhere else" by Steve Hackett from "Highly Strung"

London Screenwriters' Festival #1

I am very tired. End of Day #1 at the LSF. I'm going to try and crack through this fairly quickly because I need my sleepy-byes, but once I start writing I tend to just keep going.

Wednesday evening I prepared one-sheets for Monsters and Une Nuit in Paris, because these were most likely to be the things I pitch - oh and my writing CV. It had to be Wednesday because Thursday daytime was the only opportunity to do any printing.

Thursday I got the stuff printed and headed back to my place of residence. Late again because the day job is getting to need "working late" because a deadline is looming.

I packed my gear, as I'm staying in a hotel near the event. Packed all my stuff and realised I had rather a lot to carry - only two bags but really heavy. Normally I book into hotels the evening before an event but London is far too expensive for that.

Then horror hits. I'm entering the Shine Pictures competition which has a deadline on Friday so I'm uploading my entry, and the form refuses to accept that my PDFs are actually PDFs. I get very annoyed. I waste two hours creating PDFs in different ways trying to force the site to recognise my files. Eventually it dawns on me: I change to Internet Explorer and it works. (I am professionally disgusted - it takes work to make a site fail like that.)

Dawn's Friday morning. I'm up at the usual time, well slightly earlier really. Finish packing, dress, breakfast, lift to station, train to Farringdon, Circle Line to Baker Street. And I'm there.

I can't go to the hotel as I can't check-in yet, so I have to lug my bags around.

The event is at Regent's College which is located in Regents Park. And it's very nice in very pleasant surroundings. I encounter a co-attendee of the MetFilm School course, and rescue her from a garrulous member of the College. She is grateful.

So we arrive together. I get registered (Hina registered the previous evening), prove I am me (who else would I be). Make our way to the Refectory and grab some food while the MetFilm Yobs collect around us. And Jez Freedman. I tell everyone who'll listen that Jez is excellent as a script reader and doesn't charge enough. (I always say this, because it's true.) Jez points out that he deliberately keeps his prices low because he wants to offer a service that he didn't have when he was starting out.

Jez is one of the good guys.

It heads towards 9am and the MetFilm Yobs move as an amorphous blob to the introductory session in a large hall and fill up a row.

This is a very well-appointed college, the seats in the main hall are extremely comfortable. It has it's own cinema. Various food shops around the refectory, two bars, a very nice restaurant as well as the various classrooms.

The Introduction has David Chamberlain and Chris Jones doing a double-act. Chris takes a photo of the audience from the stage. There are announcements.

Then we get a long interview with Tim Bevan one of the founders of Working Title. He explained the genesis and working philosophy of the company - so unlike the horrors of Hollywood.

Generally speaking the original author of a script stays with it throughout its development, though other writers may be brought in for their views, a script is not put into production (usually) until it's ready. They want good stories with great characters and emotion.

His description just made me think of Pixar, which operates on a similar philosophy. And both companies produce successful films more often than not.

There was lots more but time is getting on...

The next for me was a chat with Ben Stephenson (Head of BBC commissioning) and Gub Neal who had been commissioner for ITV (during its 90s heyday) and Channel 4, but now runs the Artists Studio.

They said a lot. Too much to go into now. But I suppose the highlights were Ben's response to a question about trying to follow trends: "No, trends are rubbish." And Gub's comment about how successful writers are usually disinterested in what the audience want - they write what they want.

Does foreign money affect the writing? Gub: Yes.

How much UK output is bought by the US? Ben: None. (The only slight exception now being the US-made Torchwood.)

Then I went off to get checked-in at the hotel and missed the beginning of the afternoon sessions. So sat around and chatted to people.

I went to see what Paul Ashton of the BBC's Writersroom had to say for himself - he talked about the imponderable issue of the Writer's Voice. It's very important and people know when a writer's "got it", but nobody knows what it is. It wasn't terribly enlightening and I'm not sure it's a good choice of subject for the many new writers who could disappear up their own confusions trying to think about it.

He also said that 85% of scripts sent to the Writersroom failed the 10 page test and were sent back without comment.

I was seriously beginning to flag by this time. I tried to go to the networking session but it was packed out. I ended up in the cinema watching shorts for a bit. then went to the bar for the 8pm SF writers get together.

The bar was packed.

I gave up. And came back to the hotel.

And now I'm going to sleep. Good night.

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What's on the turntable? Something modern and cool on BBC Radio 3

World Domination - the preliminaries

Oooh, aren't I the bloggy one all of a sudden.

As Chris the Director said, over here, we had a meeting at the weekend. You know, like a business meeting. When I say "like" a business meeting I mean it, because we were sitting in the middle of the Cheshire countryside talking while wives and children were having fun.

This is not to say that we weren't having fun - talking about potential futures is always fun. And in this case we were discussing a new buzzword: transmedia stuff (you can look it up here).

It's all Chris's fault. We first met when he contacted me and asked if I'd read a script of his - he had read my scripts on Shooting People and particularly liked Air because it was possibly the only script on the entire 'verse that represents Live Action Role Playing accurately. Which is not surprising considering my history.

So I gave him some notes on his script and after chatting a bit we decided to film some of my script Monsters, the results of which is here. We got on well so decided we should do a web series and I wrote the first version of Winter. It was okay and would probably have been fine.

Then we talked more. Chris had been working on a Steampunk feature script and we both agreed it would be really cool if I re-wrote Winter in his Steampunk universe. So I did. And this confused a lot of people (including Jez. Hi Jez!). But with this came other problems, apart from the script, we don't have a lot of money and if Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow took $30M (knocking off $10M for distribution and promotion) to make and ours is a third the length but also has a completely digital backlot...

So we kind of hit the doldrums a bit. We knew it was possible to do but could we do it?

Of course we could. We just needed a plan. And that's what we did at the weekend, we made a plan. We started at the end - Winter filmed and released - and worked our way to the beginning. And then I wrote it up so it almost looked like a business plan.

So now we have a plan, and we also now have a name for the whole enterprise - Chris had actually been using the word all through our discussions, and the original conception is his so it seems only fair to use his word.

But I'm not telling you what it is yet. That will have to wait for the official launch of the project. And there are a couple of steps ahead of "official launch" which have to be achieved first.

So what's this got to do with world domination? Well, Winter is only the beginning.

So if you know (or are) an artist or illustrator who might like to do some piccies for a Steampunk project that's going places, get in touch.

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What's on the turntable? "Take a Pebble" by Emerson, Lake and Palmer from "Emerson, Lake & Palmer"

It all started when... How I got into screenwriting

I have been remiss. It was almost two weeks ago that Michelle tagged me for a meme, for "that moment where you decided that this was something you could/should/would do".

I did write a lot about this back here - nearly two years ago. Gosh. (You could also click the inspirations tag to see everything related.)

In those blogs back then I traced my writing career from rubbish SF novels through poetry but didn't quite get to the screenwriting. So here it is, with contributory factors included to add impressive wordage.

When Blake's 7 had it's final episode I wrote a synopsis of a follow-up story that would "wrap it all up", which was the closest I got to writing a script but I didn't really conceive the actual "writing of a script" in that, it was just "writing a proper ending" to me.

It was 1992 (I think) that I started my epic fantasy novel. On and off it took me ten years to finish, I was not slaving over it day in day out. I didn't suffer at all. But that year also saw the birth of The Daughter. At some point in that time she decided that she wanted to be an actress, I think it had something to do with Buffy and the fact she began Jujitsu at age 5 - she wanted to be an action star (and still does).

But somewhere around 2004 (I think) I was feeling pressure to write something - something we could actually shoot, a short Buffy-esque story to suit her talents. I believe I wrote it on a Word processor and studied websites to get the right format.

So I wrote it. We shot, edited and packaged it with the assistance of family (brother-in-law did most of it). It is never seeing the light of day.

And that was the beginning of the beginning, but not the end of the beginning.

That was also the time that Buffy ceased it's UK broadcast, it was over. And I thought to myself, you know, what if I created Buffy for the UK? Which is where Monsters began, initially just a series bible, the basic concepts, I thought that would be enough - like my Blake's 7 synopsis. And I left it at that, wrote no script for a couple of years.

Until one day I realised that it should be written. It was a part the Daughter could play so I researched screenwriting in detail, found Celtx and began in earnest.

If you want to read the first 10 pages of Monsters as it is now, you can here (click "My work and credits"). And the Daughter did get to play the part, at least in the scenes we shot, which you can watch here.

For me becoming a screenwriter was a process that took 30 years, from rubbish novels through successful poetry, magazine writing and editing, and better novel writing.

Now comes the hard part, who to tag for the meme: Piers, Jason, and Phil.

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What's on the turntable? Not a sausage.

Bechdel test - do I pass?

John August has been reminding everybody, who doesn't already know, about the Bechdel test which assesses the presence of women in movies. The questions are simple:

1. Are there two or more female characters with names?
2. Do they talk to each other?
3. If they talk to each other, do they talk about something other than a man?

This is relevant to me because I've just completed the page one rewrite of Winter and popped it over to the Director who is quite enthusiastic - which is nice.

So, does Winter pass (even though it's only about 30 mins long)?

Yes, two female characters with names (40% of the named characters but one of them is the protagonist) . They do talk, albeit briefly, and it's not about men.

Quick run through of other stuff I've written: Monsters passes (TV); Air passes TV); Unit X passes (TV) ; Babel passes (film); Une Nuit a Paris passes? (I think) (film); Tec passes definitely (TV); Running fails (film). So, not too bad.

And Running wouldn't be too hard to fix - several characters could easily be female.

Which leads to the question: why are they male in the first place, if it doesn't matter? Essentially because I was just following stereotypes. If I can manage two females in Unit X which is World War II US Army (okay, one's a doctor and one's a nurse); I'm sure I can manage more women in Running (in fact just thinking about it introduces some interesting possible dynamics).

How do your scripts stand up to the test?

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What's on the turntable? "Soultrane" by John Coltrane. Nice.

Wins and loses

Had an interesting couple of days.

We didn't even make it into the Trailer Festival. Boo hiss. Anyway we'll be revamping the Monsters website with the trailer and additional footage. I'll let you know when we've done that. At which point we'll be making a more concerted (in the proper sense of "concert") efforts to get some interest.

On the other hand...

One of my "secret" projects (codename Traitor) involved delivering a set of briefs to a production company about 6 months ago, decisions to be made in February. I'd heard nothing and the usual approach is, of course, to assume silence = failure. But I hate leaving things in the air like that - no closure - so I popped an email over to the company concerned.

Turns out they haven't decided because they've been too busy. In fact this project is now on hold until next year. So I'm "still in the running".

As I commented to my correspondent (in the proper sense of "correspondent") "rejection I can take, it's the hope that kills you".

In the same wise, I was one of the people who sent a brief to Big Finish (that's the Boots project), again there's been nothing on this though decisions were intended for March - as far as I know nothing on their website either. So I popped an email to them as well. No reply as yet.

Even better news, sort of, is the project that's so secret I can't say anything at all. It doesn't even have a codename, I mean it's that secret (wow). I thought it was dead before even starting, but I find it's not dead at all and still has potential to begin. If it all works out this will be a book adaptation which I will write for the Red Planet competition - assuming it fits the brief, but it should.

So this is all good.

I have been watching...

Dr Who - hm, very poor on the Venetian vampires, plot holes so huge you could drive a bus through them. And they could have been dealt with very simply.

Warehouse 13 - still fun.

The Prisoner - I pity anyone who pre-judged this and decided it could only be bad because the 60s show should never have been re-made. Perhaps not, but this show continues to be scarily, unnervingly, disturbingly excellent. (Sir) Ian McKellen is terrifying. The Teacher asked if I was enjoying it, well "enjoy" is not exactly the right word. Am I being gripped, unnerved, disturbed and terrified? Yes. It embodies the paranoia of 1984 - it's certainly not for everyone, but I want to watch it all.

Ashes to Ashes - getting weirder, also excellent. The performances are all top-grade.

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What's on the turntable? "Once" by Diana Vickers from "Songs from the Tainted Cherry Tree"

Excited much

Director Chris has just bunged over the latest version of the Monsters trailer (for The Trailer Festival) with some of the new footage in place - with the excellent prosthetic make-up by Donna Griffe.

I like it a lot. Goosebumps, in fact. Though it's still missing any of the fight scene, and the big "heroine getting dangled off the top of the skyscraper" CGI moment (filmed in our cellar).

He's working hard on the CGI (using the amazing Blender) and it looks like it's going to work.

Lovely.

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What's on the turntable? "Life on the Road " by Man from "Back into the Future" - 'Man' were a Welsh Prog Rock band of the 70s of which I'd never even heard before Spotify suggested them. A curious mix of Rock, Blues, Progressive Folk Welshness.

One of those moments

I had that feedback from Blue Cat the other day and I was just thinking about it. There was a throwaway comment in it "In general, you have a nice writing style and a good ear for dialogue" which I already knew.

That's not arrogance (honest) I spent 17 years writing for a computer magazine targeted at the general public. This had two effects: I know how to express concepts, and do it concisely. Screenwriting requires extreme conciseness. (That last sentence, for example, started with three times the number of words.)

As for the dialogue ... well ... I hear my characters talking. It's not that I'm taking dictation, I'm the one telling them what to say, but I can hear them.

At which point, in my thought processes, I came to an abrupt halt (good thing I was wearing my seat belt). Monsters was 7th draft when I sent it out (but it was my second script ever), Air was 2nd draft, Running was 2nd draft ... they've all done well. But Tec, Une Nuit a Paris and Unit X were all a bit rubbish (Tec less so, but still...).

It dawned on me: I couldn't hear the characters in those last three or, at best, they were a bit generic.

It makes sense, of course: If a character isn't "real" that's going to come across on the page and ultimately Character is Plot, so if there characters aren't real, the plot won't be either.

This is a good positive step because it tells me what I need to do to fix those three scripts.

I'm currently reworking Running for Blue Cat, there was one particular suggestion which was very good - giving a much tighter plot - but I don't have time to implement it because it requires a complete restructuring of the script. However I'm doing a general brush-up bearing in mind the other suggestions.

That's when I'm not working on my web project.

(Got up early this morning to do all the procrastination tasks - writing this blog wasn't on my Procrastination List.)

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What's on the turntable? "Emerald" by Thin Lizzy from "Live and Dangerous"

Pick-up and shoot!

Come Friday I was worried we'd lost our make-up person and knew we'd definitely lost our DoP which meant we'd also lost a decent camera and associated equipment.

The Director, Chris, and I were frantically sending out messages on all the forums we were connected to (and through personal contacts) hoping to find a replacement. But it was looking fairly hopeless.

On Thursday evening I had, with some trepidation, posted a message on Production Base. The reason for the trepidation is that this a Professional site (needs a capital P) and from reading their message boards they give pretty short shrift to people who want "something for nothing". But they do have a "Collaborations" section on their forum. So I posted. Carefully. Inventively (I thought).

The post got at least 300 readings in 24 hours, but no response. Not even criticism - at least my wording had successfully silenced the critics. (To be fair they do get the odd prat claiming to be a genius and almost demanding support.)

On the evening of Friday I checked the log file of the Monstrous Productions website (as I do occasionally to see if anyone's trying to hack the site) to find that someone had sent a message through the contact pages that I hadn't received - turns out I hadn't set up the email redirects properly. Frantic emailing followed, and I got hold of Jon at Red Lettuce, he was in the pub and had given up on receiving a response, but yes, he'd be happy to help out. Yes!

I also got an email from Donna, the make-up person, apologising for being out of contact but she'd been very busy. She was also prepared, having made prosthetics, and would be arriving at the designated time.

Come 1 o'clock on Saturday we had the whole team assembled and headed out back to the industrial estate where all the externals were to be shot.

I got the stunt team and the Daughter started on devising a fight sequence, working with Chris, while Donna got started applying the prosthetics for the character Jason (to be played by the Boy - he agreed to suffer for my art). This was slightly wrong in retropect as I misjudged how long the external shots would take.

When I say "stunt team" these were members of the local Jujitsu club that the Daughter and the Boy attend. The club Sensai, Nick, wasn't keen on appearing on film but was happy to choreograph the fight - something he does all the time in training. Jujitsu is less stylised than most other martial arts, it's very pragmatic: get the other person out of action as fast as possible by whatever means.

As a result the fight scene is fast and dirty. The guys gave it their best - very enthusiastic. I was taking pictures but the camera died. A lot of the blows contact (far more than in a "proper" fight scene) though they are pulled to reduce the impact. Of course, there was bound to be an accident - the Daughter was required to kick one of them in the face, and he ended up with a dirty mark across his cheek because he didn't move quick enough.

I'm pretty sure this is going to look good: the Daughter is not tall and her assailants are big guys; she's dwarfed but genuinely has the skill to take them down, it looks scarily real. (The Daughter's boyfriend was one of the runners - he's never seen her in action before, the joke about her being a ninja isn't such a joke any more :-)

So, two hours later the fight was in the can. Pretty much on schedule. And the team went off to a rugby match.

In the meantime I'd been spending more and more time indoors - just too cold for me. To be honest the weather had been kind, it was raining lightly at first but that cleared up, and the light was then bright but overcast. This was handy as we had no lights and no reflectors. With the light coming through cloud it meant we had a good ambient light and didn't have to worry about shadows.

Chris then realised he'd missed a reaction shot from the end of the fight. So out we went again with the Daughter and quickly sorted that. We then zipped through scenes with Ralph (a freak dying of the S.I.D. retro-virus) and Dog (one of the bio-engineered teenagers).

Ralph was improvised, we needed to make him "lumpy" and also hide his face since it was the same person who played the news cameraman in our previous shoot. His jeans were too tight, so we found him a wider pair and stuffed it with bits of clothes and kitchen paraphernalia, held in place by cling film and bandages. Then coached him into moving awkwardly and twitching at odd intervals.

The industriual estate proved to be an endless source of interesting views and locations. But the joy of standing around in the cold had to come to an end and the shooting moved indoors.

Meanwhile the Daughter was getting her face and arms made up with lots of cuts and bruises for a little cut-in image filmed in one of our cellar rooms. This represents the lowest point that the character Chloe reaches in the whole story, the point at which she is beaten.

As Chris said, make-up spends hours on doing the best possible effects, then we shoot it in ten minutes and no longer need it.

Finally it became the Boy's turn. He'd spent the better part of the afternoon with gross prosthetics stuck to his face. And all we wanted was for Jason to walk downstairs. About 10 times. Resulting in a rather Kubrick-esque shot.

At this point Jon the Camera had to go - we were overrunning by an hour at this point. But there was only one more scene to shoot: the greenscreen of Chloe being dangled over the edge of a skyscraper.

This scene presented a rather serious problem: How do you show a man holding a girl by her neck, dangling her out over a skyscraper and make it look convincing? Even using greenscreen if her feet are actually on the ground it's just going to look wrong. The only solution is physically suspending her off the ground - but that takes equipment, even if you can attach her to the ceiling you need some sort of harness.

It had been bugging us for weeks.

Halfway through the afternoon I realised how we could do the required effect - easily. We just wouldn't do any dangling at all. Instead (not sure how well I'll explain this) imagine person A standing on the edge of a skyscraper; person B holds them by the collar; person A leans forward, further and further until the only reason they don't fall forward is person B holding on.

That's what we did, and it looked great. This was shot indoors with yours truly creating wind effects with a large brass plate. One of the things I'd missed was casting the bad guy who dangles Chloe over the edge. Chris had brought along a friend from his work to assist, Simon, who by sheer coincidence was dressed perfectly for the part. Simon is also very tall - which was a slight issue with the greenscreen but otherwise made him perfect. So he got the part.

Creating the CG shot is going to be interesting and if it works it's going to be an excellent addition to the trailer.

We'll be building selected shots into the trailer Chris has created so far - this is for the Trailer Festival - and the fight scene will be incorporated back into the mini-pilot. We may also keep the fight as a separate item.

A good time was had by all but I now ache from the unaccustomed exercise.

The trials of the industry.

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What's on the turntable? "Panic in Detroit" by Bowie from "Aladdin Sane" (geddit)

Priorities

This week I have mostly been listening to Icelandic music - somebody's blog (dammit I read so many) mentioned Sigur Ros and, as I use Spotify, I began to listen and diversify - Amiina, Olafur Arnalds, Jónsi & Alex - all brilliant stuff (and I've always liked Bjork). Being a huge Mike Oldfield fan (though not his ambient albums, like Light and Shade) as well as 70s Prog Rock this all fitted very nicely.

Which has nothing to do with priorities.

I have a lot on at the moment: the immediate pressure of the Monsters pick-ups next week, the location is still a bit of an issue though I have some ideas. Trouble is we're shooting on Saturday and most industrial estates, even the lovely run-down ones around here, still have things going on on Saturdays.

Then there's the re-write of the web series Winter, as Chris said on his blog the need to stand out is very important so we're playing to our techie strengths: extravagant imaginations and (hopefully) the technology to fulfill that imagination. One of the comments from the feedback on it was " a bit too Terminator" - the rewrite, which involves a complete change of universe, will kick that into touch.

I'm using one of Bill Martell's approaches on this rewrite: just write out, on cards, all the scenes you can think of that could happen based on those characters (in no particular order). And when you're done, re-arrange them into plot order (discarding those you don't need). I'm at the re-arrangement stage and filling in the gaps. (Although I use the card system built into Celtx rather than actual card cards.)

Then there's the web project. Which has been taking a backseat for the last couple of weeks.

Then there's the other new writing: Tec being the main one. It occurred to me that I haven't finished anything new in a year (except Unit X and Running both of which are in desperate need of re-writing).

So I have to prioritise.

Which is one reason why this blog has been ignored. But I am planning the next Application of Drama (to role-playing games) in my head. The game I was running has now finished and it worked out quite well using the principles of drama.

So the order of play currently:

1. Monsters picks-up (script and location, plus no dropping balls in other departments)
2. Web project
3. Winter re-write
4. Tec

Oh, and we're going to see Avatar tomorrow, it's unfair on the Boy not to, and it has to be seen on the big screen in 3D otherwise there's really no point. The Teacher and I could let it pass but we'll do it for him.

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What's on the turntable? "Lori" by Amiina from "Kurr"

Pre-awareness

"Pre-awareness" is the movie industry buzzword it's fashionable for writers to hate. It's the word that gives us endless sequels, remakes ("re-imaginings") and adaptations, and an apparent fear of original ideas.

There is an ordinary word that covers the concept: familiarity.

The movie industry (and to a lesser extent the TV industry) likes product that comes with a built-in audience. This is not really surprising, movies cost a lot to make and familiarity with the material means the audience is potentially bigger and the investors have a better chance of a return on their investment.

If you're expecting a rant against pre-awareness on this blog, you won't find it.

I can see it from the viewpoint of the money-men, they are in it to at least make a profit, and they want as much assurance as they can get before they part with their cash. (The fact that A-list actors plus A-list director plus a known product can still fail horribly is not the subject of this blog.)

The thing is that "pre-awareness" is not a new idea.

Shakespeare wrote plays that had pre-awareness - the fact that he wrote them very well is not the point. The Greek plays were all based on known stories - that's pre-awareness.

It's not a new thing.

At the Screenwriters festival I attended the seminars by Phil Parker. Phil's new emphasis is on "Dynamic Universes" which is his label for multi-platform, multi-creator settings.

Say what?

Instead of simply writing a screenplay, you create a setting in which you can have a movie (or many movies), TV series, web series, novels, online games, comic books - in fact anything you can think of. The more the merrier. It's a complete creation, and the idea is that you as the author/creator hold the intellectual rights to your creation and you never let go of them - you just let other people play in your world. (Or not, it's your choice.)

Does this have anything to do with pre-awareness?

I think so.

Right now the chances of anybody making my Monsters TV series are pretty slim. It's expensive and it's new - no pre-awareness.

However, we made a few scenes, and now I have found an illustrator to work on a comic book version (long time readers will know that I have found and lost two illustrators so far, but this one looks more solid). If I build up an online following based on a comic book then I'm building pre-awareness and increasing the probability it will get made.

And that's the sort of thing we, as writers, must consider.

Pre-awareness is not necessarily a bad thing - all you have to do is create it yourself, and the Web gives you that power. You just have to think big.

What are you waiting for?

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What's on the turntable? "Demon Lover" by Steeleye Span from "Commoner's Crown"

New blogger on the ... block

(That title really doesn't work very well.)

Please give a warm welcome, ladles and jellyspoons, to Chris Payne who has entered the scribosphere, or is that the directosphere?

Chris was the Director on Monsters, so I have good reason to give him space here. He took my words and turned them into pictures - moving pictures at that. Clever bloke.

On the writing front, (fairly sure I haven't mentioned this) I have finally restarted work on Tec my UK private investigator series. And the first thing I did was look over the notes I'd been making for improving characters - written three months ago.

There was one character, who would be the lead's side-kick, and my notes were a bit thin on the ground. I didn't really know what to do with this character.

So I killed him.

Ripped bodily from the story - which now looks cleaner and less cluttered. I did this with Monsters, there was a love interest who had little other value, he appeared in about six scenes. He and his scenes were cut. It was so much better afterwards.

You remove dialogue that's unnecessary, remove actions that are unnecessary, remove scenes that are unnecessary, remove sequences that are unnecessary, remove unnecessary characters, unnecessary sub-plots, unnecessary gimmicks - and sometimes the entire script is unnecessary. Dump it.

Oh, Chris and I are discussing a new project, it has a code-name you will have seen before on this blog: Winter. This story was one of the first I ever worked on in detail though I think I only ever wrote one draft of a script (lost on the hard drive of another computer).

Then it became the basis for a pitch for a BBC web project last year - it was unusual, and was something that had never been attempted before. But although it was claimed the BBC was looking for something original and different (and it was agreed that this was indeed original and different), the truth was they really only wanted something like that if it was the same as everything else.

(Or the pitch was complete rubbish as an idea, this is possible.)

Anyway Winter is the new project and, unlike Monsters, will be a complete entity. Very early stages, so I'll say no more than that.

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What's on the turntable? "Die Mensch Machine" by Kraftwerk from "Minimum-Maximum"

Fiesta - Day #4

It's too long. Four days is just too long but then if it hadn't been four days perhaps certain things wouldn't have happened...

I made no notes today. None. Nada. Zilch.

Why?

Not exactly because no one said anything interesting, more because the first session was about "Classic" Dr Who, the second session was New Who, the third session was the second part of Phil Parker's "Dynamic Universes" and nothing new was said.

The evening was Stephen Moffat talking about being in charge of Dr Who.

Much was said but nothing of major significance. But things happened on a more personal level.

I had my meeting with the "important development person from Kudos". It was a very good meeting, she loved Monsters, the whole world creation thing that I do automatically and really without a lot of thought (things are like "obvious" you know?) well apparently this is a rare skill. I know at least half a dozen other people who do universe creation without batting an eyelid - is it really that rare?

The detail was the thing that impressed her (apparently).

So will I be writing for Spooks, Hustle or MI High? Not in the near future. Why? Because I have written series and not serial. Neither Monsters nor Air demonstrate the ability to write story-of-the-week so she cannot judge whether I can pace something like that correctly. So can I submit a script that does? I asked.

No.

Kudos have a strict "no representation = no sendee scriptee" so even that personal contact with a script that demonstrates an ability to write well is not enough. They're a tough audience.

Curiously she seemed surprised that I had no representation when Monsters was such a brilliant demonstration of writing skill (ahem). I said "catch 22": can't get an agent without a credit ... can't get a credit without an agent. She didn't think that was really true, and we parted on reasonable terms - though it felt a little "awkward".

Later I spoke to Jon Peacey who had seen two (or was it three) agents as part of his speed dating, and every single one of them told him they wouldn't consider anyone unless they had a credit. (Jon had a better time later with producers.)

Hm. I think I believe the horse's mouth.

This next bit takes some explaining: Among the "Classic" Who line-up was Bob Baker who (among other things) invented K9 and, it was mentioned, wrote the incredible kids TV series Sky, back in the 70s. I have mentioned Sky before, it was weird and it was scary and apparently called "Kafka for kids" - but I hadn't known Bob wrote it. And there he was.

During one of the informal "Scriptbites" I had a word with him and told him what an influence it had had on me. And that my script Air was inspired by Sky (the name similarity is not a coincidence).

Anyway the Daughter had agreed to spread my business card among the guest speakers she came into contact with (she's a good girl). It just so happened that Bob was presenting a session about his new "K9 and Friends" series - in the venue the Daughter was responsible for. Not many people were there and it was very informal and chatty - and it turned out that they were looking for British writers for the series. So she got an email address for me to contact them.

When she told me, I grabbed one of the computers in the Internet cafe and popped an email over to them asking if they had guidelines for story idea submissions, and attached the one appropriate script I had been carrying around on a memory stick: Air.

Serendipity is cool.

After Stephen Moffat's presentation we went to the wrap party and chatted, then I returned to the hotel and here I am.

I'm going to bed.

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What's on the turntable? "Show Biz Kids" by Steely Dan from "Countdown to Ecstasy"

Fiesta - Day #3

Shall I start by saying I'm tired? Seems a bit obvious and repetitive - this time I was woken by someone in the room above me stomping in at 2:00am and I came completely awake - even thought it might be time to get up.

It wasn't.

I tried really really hard not to be the first person in this morning and I think I wasn't. I was still the first person to pay for a coffee ... the nice coffee-serving person knows what I like now. (Fat double-shot mochachino with plain chocolate and no chocolate dusting.)

As the noble Piers has already mentioned we were into TV territory today in a big way with lots of bigwigs from the BBC plus Life on Mars/Ashes to Ashes co-creator Ashley Pharoah.

(Ohmigod, the cursor has disappeared, that's rather disconcerting. Ah, sorted it.)

My first stop was the Web Thriller session with the mighty, and self-effacing, James Moran (Severance, Dr Who, Torchwood:Children of Earth) with his director Dan Turner. Together (and with some other quite talented people) they have produced Girl No. 9 which is a 6 x 5min cop thriller. They showed us episode #1 (yes folks, we've seen it twice - they showed it again at the end) and then answered questions from the floor.

They told us that they did not know what the cost of production was - because they refused to listen whenever the Producer wanted to tell them - however they also pointed out that it was an expenses-only production. They also explained how liberating it was to produce something for the web, completely free from the constraints of the established distribution channels. This, interestingly, tied in with Simon Beaufoy's comments yesterday that smaller budgets increased creative freedom.

They do intend to monetize the product but the first showing, and for a period, it will be free - which follows Joss Whedon's Dr Horrible. You can watch it online for a fee or buy the DVD.

They are also using other platforms for distribution - like Twitter where the characters have their own accounts. There is already a fan base and the characters talk to the fans.

Interesting.

I went to the talk with Christine Langan, Creative Director of BBC Films. It was mildly interesting inasmuch as we learnt that if the BBC invests in a film they want some editorial control which reflects the BBC's purpose. And they don't accept unsolicited material from mere writers (well, you can't blame them for that) but will look at stuff submitted from agents or from production companies.

We had lunch and the bloggers indulged in enormous silliness and raucous laughter in the cafe.

I just could not bring myself to listen to Ben Stephenson, Controller of Drama Commissioning at the BBC. Why? I was tired and I'd probably heard it all before.

However I thought I'd try Kate Harwood, Head of Series and Serials at the BBC, on the subject of solving the problems of TV drama under the current climate. Can't say I was enormously impressed with that either. She compared the current situation with TV in the 70s when no money was being spent yet we had fantastic TV like Boys from the Blackstuff and Pennies from Heaven. And pointed out that it was just quality writing, and that's what we need now.

Yeah, I think we can all agree that quality writing is a good thing.

Finally there was Ashley Pharoah and Stephen Volk, in a session chaired by the same Kate Harwood, on the subject of Writin' USA.

Essentially it was about covering the differences, why the US are always trying to grab UK TV formats (although they also plunder Australia and anywhere else they can find stuff). Why those formats don't always work - and what it's like to work in the US compared to the UK, as a writer.

Life on Mars USA was cancelled after 17 episodes. Ashley thought that if they had been willing to listen to some of his suggestions it could have lasted longer. But he was not allowed to make suggestions even though, technically, he was a consultant.

On the other hand, The American Office has gone from strength to strength, but Ricky Gervais is Executive Producer on it.

The question arose: Are the Americans better at writing than the British? The consensus was that, at the top end, they are about the same but at the low end the US are slicker but not necessarily better.

In the US, a series must get to 100 episodes in order to break even (once they get to 100 they can syndicate and the money pours in) until then a series is always produced at a loss. This means that the pressure demands a certain formulaic (or perhaps stylistic) writing in order to keep up the ratings. The scripts are polished but, except in rare cases, unemotional.

Which means that the financial restrictions in the UK, limiting series to around 6 episodes, is actually a bonus to the quality of writing (cf, Simon Beaufoy and James Moran on budgets and creativity). However it means that a powerful 6-part UK drama which has a beginning, a middle, and an end, translates poorly to the US 100+ going-on-forever episode structure. (But comedy always operates under different rules.)

All three panellists agreed that they had heard US writers complaining that the US broadcasters look to the UK first for new ideas.

One of those is Being Human , the powers-that-are in LA cannot stop talking about it, one company got the format, the others are grinding their teeth and wishing they'd offered more. And that is a format that will work for long running series. (Though it'll be like Friends meets Buffy, I imagine.)

On a personal note I finally found out who I'm meeting for the ScriptMarket prize - tomorrow, I get half an hour with an important development person from Kudos. Exactly what I wanted. (Also, Monsters does fit the 100+ episode model, as well as the UK 6-episode model, I'm just so clever. Air doesn't, Tec does, Clones does.)

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What's on the turntable? "Bambele" by Santanna

Fiesta - Day #1

I'm tired. The bed is really bad here and I woke every hour last night, or so it seemed. Though perhaps it was the excitement - or maybe the coffee.

I don't usually drink coffee after 3 in the afternoon (caffeine stays in the body for 10-12 hours, so if you drink it too late, you sleep badly, then the next day you need coffee to stay alert but then... etc) but I only had a mouthful. It wasn't the actual coffee, it was the taste - it was foul. Disgusting.

I hadn't rinsed out the kettle before boiling water and I think either the tap had rancid water, or the kettle did. Maybe it was that.

Anyway, I didn't sleep well. And then woke early.

Had breakfast with the Daughter though she had to rush out to be on site by 7:30. I followed a little later and located the entrance at about 7:45. I hadn't actually meant to be that early but I wasn't entirely sure how long it would take to walk. Not very long, is the answer.

So, not only did I buy ticket #1, I arrived first (I think) got given the first delegate's pass (they spelt my name wrong, they always do that), picked up a pack and got the first coat-check ticket. It's true, I am Numero Uno.

So there I was, 8:00am with people beginning to trickle in and no coffee. (This is not a criticism of the catering company, they'd been on the road since 5:00am.) First rule of conferences, dump all extraneous material - well, I didn't actually dump it, I put it in my backpack. All you really need is a map and a schedule. And a trusty notepad, then the map and schedule can be folded and put into the notepad. Lovely.

What can I say about Cheltenham Ladies College? It's a conglomeration of buildings through the ages, some very old, some disgustingly 70s. And it has a main theatre to die for (the Daughter drooled) and apparently they're having a new theatre built over the road. Gosh.

The main buildings almost completely surround two central quads - a sort of digital figure of eight - but our access is extemely limited and the individual rooms for the various seminars, lectures and events are spread out all over the place. This does detract from the event somewhat, all the events I wanted to see took place in a single room, away from everything else.

Not to say I didn't move around but it was a bit weird.

More ScriptMarket winners turned up and several of them did not know who they were going to be meeting and almost all didn't know when. I felt slightly happier about than previously but it's very awkward - makes planning tricky and how are they going to find us when they do know?

First up was the keynote speech from Chris Jones who delivered a mini-version of his two-day seminar but was essentially a "you are brilliant, do it" speech. Good stuff.

Something he said that is very important, well, I think it is because I absolutely 100% agree: The first thing you have to do is decide that you're going to make your film (short or whatever), because it is after you've decided that things will happen and finance will arrive. If you just "wait for the right time" it will never happen.

Hard on the heels of that was Doug Chamberlin, (successful) US movie writer now living in the UK (the mad fool) and his explanation of how to get into Hollywood who spent his allotted period explaining how the myths about Hollywood are unhelpful and replacing them with his own rules and the explanation that if you imagine Hollywood is just High School where image is everything it all makes sense.

Interestingly he also expressed the opinion that everyone in Hollywood is terrified which also helps to explain things - a concept I first heard last year from Kraitt and Leys, more on that later.

He did say that Hollywood is about who you know, and not your script - talent won't get you in to Hollywood, but it will keep you in. What you need are champions; people who will say "this guy/gal is great" and then everyone will agree with them, and so that's what you are. You work your way up like this getting newer and bigger champions.

He ended with a quote from someone who I forgot to note the name of but it goes like this: The road to Hollywood is littered with dead bodies - and they're all suicides.

In other words, don't quit.

Next up I went to Phil Parker's Dynamic Universes talk. Phil is one of the most powerful script consultants in the world, I jest not, and he's been at it for 20 years. His new project is to start with the writer (and other creatives) who create a universe from which multi-platform products can be derived - but with the original author keeping IP (intellectual property) rights. Unlike the traditional model.

We became guinea pigs for his experimenting and were arranged into groups for creating universes. I ended up with Liz Halliday which came as no surprise since we both write SF and Fantasy. We were temporarily also teamed up with another couple writers but decided to split with them because our imaginings were too disparate.

We now have until Thursday to come up with a coherent universe and some key characters. Excellent, it's what SF/F writers (and role-players which we both are) do for fun.

As a rider on this it occurred to me later that the Monsters universe also fits this new model perfectly as well so I tracked down Phil and his business partner Richard in the evening and we discussed it, they were interested, we exchanged cards and I left them with a Monsters DVD. Lovely.

I had lunch - I like to try to space out the seminars as much as possible - and then went to Rob Kraitt and Kate Leys follow-up to last year's "How to be Good", this time "How to be Better". I had been recommending them to anyone who'd listen and the room didn't even have standing room (not that I think it was all me doing that).

They covered much of the same ground as last year, but they make a great double act so it's worth it. Important things they covered were the "everyone is scared" factor, and it's actually up to you, as the writer, to help them and make them feel comfortable and confident. Otherwise they say stupid things and do stupid things - it's because they're scared of failing.

They also briefly commented on networking which they suggested is not schmoozing people you despise and who are all talk and no trousers - it's finding people you can talk to, people who like the same stuff you like.

I took another break. I could have gone to see Armando Ianucci, but decided not to, I had suddenly flaked out and couldn't face it.

When I got my Scriptmarket script report I knew immediately that the reader had not really read the script. Yes, I know, that's what writers say when they're rubbish and don't want to admit it. But there were giveaways like the description of the length of the work being incorrect (some of his criticisms would have been right if Monsters was 2 hours long - but not if it was 6 hours, which it is).

Plus the fact that Monsters had been through people with far more TV drama experience than this reader. The report was just wrong. (And it seems mine wasn't the only one.)

Then I got an interview with two industry peeps - honestly, the wrong two, I got the film people and not the TV people. It wasn't a good interview really, I disagreed with them, a lot, but then their comments were based on the reader's report (though even they had noted the timing error).

It was these two who gave the "Spec Scriptmarket" talk that I, and a lot of the Scriptmarket entrants, attended. They remembered me. The idea was to go through the typical flaws found in the Scriptmarket entries, and really they were just the same as the flaws found in most scripts: bad pitch documents, characters without purpose, genre confusion, etc.

To be honest things were said in this seminar that made me seethe with anger. It's just as well that Liz wasn't there because she's more volatile than I am - I was recording it for her and I'm sure I heard an explosion a few minutes ago.

I detest people who express their personal opinions and bias as if they are incontrovertible facts. It's a display of ignorance and arrogance. (As you can tell, I'm getting worked up just thinking about it.)

I commented on this to one of the other attendees on the way out, he said: "They all do it." He was commenting on one of his screenwriting lecturers. Well, that certainly doesn't make it right.

Anyway one good ting had come out of that interview I had back in July at the BBC with the Scriptmarket people - I decided to do something about Monsters, and then our Director Chris contacted me. (Which is a perfect example of what Chris Jones was talking about: the decision comes first.)

After that I hung around a bit, met Phil Parker, wandered in the direction of the hotel, stopped of at Pizza Hut and had a nice meal.

Got back to the Hotel about 8 and I've been doing email and writing this blog ever since - apart from an hour watching Flashforward - my word, they are really burning plot. Brilliant.

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What's on the turntable? "Touch to Remember" by Jean-Michel Jarre from "Téo & Téa"

Pre-Fiesta Bash and other bananas

It's 10pm and I have returned from the official pre-SWF get together. Partly because I am very tired (my body thinks it's 11pm and I've had a long day), partly to write this blog and partly because the website was demonstrating the same symptoms as yesterday despite being completely rewritten.

Which is odd. Apparently the block of servers that host my site are unwell, which means it might not actually be my fault. So I shall reveal the website, because it is functional (having said that the hosting company are taking them offline sometime in the next 24 hours to see if they can fix them).

Monstrous Productions

However you still can't watch the Monsters segment because it's not there yet. Soon I hope.

Addendum: Sooner than I expected - the video is there, not currently DV but it will be.

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What can I say? I went to the bash (with the Daughter) at The Queen's Hotel and it was very jolly and quite official, we had our own room set aside, and a SWF'09 sign outside.

The Queen's Hotel is quite large but we managed to not find it at first and circumnavigated the centre of Cheltenham a couple of times before locating it.

I met people who I met at last years event, and people I met at the ScriptMarket event back in July (Liz, Lee, Darren, Robin, to name a few - and the Piers and the Jason, of course). Slightly worryingly most of the ScriptMarket peeps knew who they were talking to as their "prize" but both myself and Maria had not heard. I'm glad it wasn't just me.

Of course I took some pictures, but they were really rubbish because I had the camera set to macro. Oh well. Mostly it was lots of people drinking.

Tomorrow things will be more exciting.

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What's on the turntable? "Souvenir of China" by Jean-Michel Jarre from the same

Countdown

So, a couple of hours before I start travelling down to Cheltenham for the Fest (the Daughter has been there for the last couple of days as she's a runner).

I have burned a bunch of Monsters DVDs and printed out DVD labels and stuck them on. I have business cards. I have a copy of the Monsters scenes on a memory stick so people with a computer can watch directly.

I spent all yesterday on the website and then tried to get it up on to the server.

At which point everything went terribly wrong. It wouldn't work and then, in an effort to fix it, I managed to mess up my local version. Ten hours work wasted. Well, not entirely wasted, just mostly wasted. I shall have to rebuild it, better than it was before. I have the train journey for that and the hotel has WiFi so uploading shouldn't be an issue.

Now I have to pack which I appear to have forgotten how to do after all those weeks of weekly commutes. Strange.

See you the other side of the journey.

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What's on the turntable? "Evacuee" by Enya from "Shepherd's Moon"

Final cut (not the software)

My preparations for the Cheltenham Screenwriters Festival hit a climax this evening.

The new business cards arrived, they look really good, and match the website perfectly (no, that's not a coincidence). And that was nice.

But then I began to download the two parts of the DVD image of the final cut of the Monsters scenes. This took some time, partly because the two parts are both rather large, but mostly because the free file service (filefactory.com) has download restrictions.

Now I don't blame them, they are in it to make money and kept pointing out that if I paid them money I'd be able to download right now, very fast. However I wasn't going to and as a result had to wait an hour before I could download the second part.

Various other things had to happen including moving to the Teacher's computer which has the Burn DVD capability and fetching some other specialised software. This all went smoothly.

So I burned the DVD.

Then I watched the DVD.

You know, it's not perfect ... but I thought it was bloody brilliant.

And that, I can tell you, was a huge relief. I knew it wasn't totally awful, the previous cut had been "OK". But I hadn't been overly excited about handing out copies or pointing people at it on the website. It would have been just "OK".

But the final work the team did, down in Coventry, pulled all the loose ends together, sorted all the little things that needed sorting and they came back with something that's really good.

Now I have no qualms whatsoever about handing out copies or having it playable from the website.

I am thrilled. Honestly I wanted to watch the rest of the story, I wanted to know what was going to happen. (Okay, I know what's going to happen but that's not the same as seeing it.)

I showed it to the Teacher, yes, I know she was never going to say anything bad, but she did say "Is that all? I was just settling in." Which I think is a good sign.

The Daughter tried not to watch the bits with her in - which is most of it. But even she admitted it was okay, at least the bits without her in. (She's one of those who doesn't like to watch themselves.)

It took 10 weeks and less than £500.

Not bad.

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What's on the turntable? "Airborne, Part I" by Mike Oldfield from "Platinum"

Good idea, Piers

The great Piers Beckley has referenced his 2008 posts about last year's Screenwriters Festival. I posted quite a lot too, so click to fetch it all to your screen.

Things are moving along, we have a final cut of Monsters so it will be available at Cheltenham - which is a bit scary, since I have to put the production where my pen is.

Or something.

Website is coming along, should wrap that up tomorrow.

Haven't seen hide nor hair of the business cards, I hope I don't have to use my old ones.

For those going along to the pre-event get together at the Queen's Hotel, I will be there, but I think so will about ten million screenwriters. We may have to just wave across the room.

Excited? Oh yes.

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What's on the turntable? "Down South Camp Meetin'" by The Manhattan Transfer