Monday, April 20, 2009

Scriptfrenzy 10 days to go

Another seven pages today, this is a good average which I shall certainly try to maintain. You might think I have lots of time as I'm not currently working but, of course, I haven't. I have ajob interview on Thursday in Bristol (again!) but that means seven hours on trains which should make for plentiful writing. Excellent.

I did this evening's writing in two chunks, one chunk before "Ashes to Ashes" and one chunk after.

Did I like Ashes To Ashes? Well yes, I believe I did. I knew from an interview I read that Kudos weren't entirely happy with the first season - that they hadn't made the story enough "itself" it was more a pastiche on "Life on Mars". They've made a huge effort to get away from that this time and add new elements. Which they have.

What I didn't like was the insanity of putting "Ashes to Ashes" against "Heroes" ... which, by the way, is improving again. They are fixing it, but as Tim Kring said "it's like trying to turn an ocean liner" (or something like that) it takes a while.

As aforementioned I have been concerned about the pages on my ScriptFrenzy script Running it will comfortably make an 80-90 minute script which is good for an independent production. But for ScriptFrenzy it needs to be 100 pages to qualify as completed.

However I passed the midpoint of the story at roughly page 50 (although that's without taking out the scene that needs to go elsewhere). But that's not bad on the whole.

Thing is, while I'm not keen on slavish adherence to structure, it is a fact that the so-called three act structure delivers films that people can watch comfortably. And I am a fan of Aristotle's analysis of story (him being a scientist and all) so for this particular script it needs to have that discipline applied to it.

Anyway, more tomorrow.



What's on the turntable? Guitar & Piano version of "Perilous Journey" by Gordon Giltrap (he's jolly good you know)

2 comments:

Scaramanga said...

I was an absolute fan of the first season of heroes but was dissapointed by many elements of the second, I tried to watch the third but just switched off completely.

Can I tell a secret?? I havent watched all of life on mars. Only a couple of episodes.

And I have only seen 2 or 3 of Ashes to Ashes!

Good luck with scriptfrenzy.

Charles

Sofluid said...

Don't worry Scaramanga, you're not the only one! But then that's the beauty of BBC iPlayer :) We can watch Life on Mars and Ashes to Ashes at our leasure. I certainly want to watch more - they're great shows :)

Good luck bulking up the Scriptfrenzy screenplay, Aladdinsane!