Boy on TV

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00pkyq6/BAMZOOKi_Series_Four_Episode_8/ (as of this posting it's not on the site yet, but should be soon).

It was just on, he's the team leader for Skorper Tank 225.

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What's on the turntable? "Taschenrechner" by Kraftwerk from "Minimum-Maximum"

Boy on TV

Yesterday the new series of Bamzooki started - the show that the Boy is in, having auditioned over a period of a year. He wasn't on yesterday's show, we're not sure when he's going to be on.

Apart from being hosted by Barney - who is much better on TV than he ever was on radio (Radio 4's "Go For It" kids show) but that's not saying a lot. It's not too bad, though they've even managed to dumb this down in comparison to the original series. (The original Zook Doctor was the commentator giving genuine advice on how to make zooks better, now it's just stupid "humour".)

On the other hand, it's technically very clever.

If you want to (and are in the UK) you can force yourself to watch it on iPlayer, but don't expect too much.

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What's on the turntable? "Idolizing" - Bix Biederbecke's Greatest hits

Mayhem mayhap

Things are rocketing ahead on the filming for the scenes of Monsters. I'm being a good little writer and modifying the script to make it shoot-able on a micro-budget. I reduced the 11 pages of the scenes we'd chosen to 9 pages at the behest of the Producer, was then asked to put back several lines by the Director, and then re-edited to keep the length down to 9 pages. The Director claimed he couldn't see the join - which was nice.

We have auditions scheduled for August 15th, despite the shortness of the section we have a relatively large cast to - um - cast. At least 10 speaking parts and lots of extras. No wonder the readers labelled Monsters "expensive".

Did I mention I may have a new illustrator for the Monsters OGN? Well, I may have. It's a friend of the Director, he introduced us, so we'll see how that goes.

We're just setting up a second meeting between myself and the Clones Producer - he's been busy doing a shoot over the last couple of weeks so we haven't made much progress as yet.

In other news

The Teacher is going to the Edinburgh Festival with the Daughter and the Boy - I can't leave my job so I'm staying behind (again, just like when they went to France a couple of years ago). The Teacher has been desperate to go for years, but this year we could spare some cash and so we sat down and booked everything online. (Except the train which was done at the station to ensure they got the cheapest option.)

It was my 50th birthday last September, the Teacher got me a "Red Letter Day" present which we will be enjoying this coming weekend - we'll be hawking. No, not coughing up phlegm and spitting it out, but flying birds of prey, it's an exciting prospect. Hope the weather's nice.

The Boy got an excited email from CBBC yesterday as they need his team's zook for the Bamzooki show he's going in for. I suspect they'll be organising a seeding system for the new knockout format by pre-testing the competitor zooks, in order to make it nice and exciting. (Please note, I am no privy to any internal information about the new show, this is all supposition.)

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What's on the turntable? "Truck on, Tyke" by T.Rex

Spinning

How about "I have been a finalist in 50% of the screenwriting competitions I've entered?"

I didn't get into the CBBC masterclass, otherwise it would have been 75%.

Of course I'd love to know why ... but we don't get that privilege (understandably).

Anyone got a positive yet?

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What's on the turntable? It's all quiet in the quiet coach - makes a change.

Dry white wine

I finished the first phase of editing Tec yester-eve. As I ate breakfast this morning I realised there were a couple of points that needed clarification in the story - major oops.

This is a British Private Investigator-type series with a main character who's as outlandish, in her own way, as Sherlock Holmes, House or Patrick Jane (the Mentalist). She has her specialisations and there are certain things that are, to her, completely obvious.

In that "doh!" moment I realised that there is no story explanation of those things that are obvious to her. She just says "it's obvious" - now I know why it's obvious to her but I have to indicate, in some easy non-expositional way, why. Without explanation there are major plot points in the solution of the crimes that are glossed over, as far as the audience is concerned.

I also realised that her side-kick, who is actually her boss, (similarities to the Mentalist are striking but I started this before the Mentalist appeared. Damn, Torchwood clashes with the Mentalist tonight - no competition, Torchwood wins.) Where was I, oh yes, there's a bit where she's dealing with money - that's her boss's job.

The next full stage of editing, for me, is to go through and see what can be done about the long talkie scenes. This is a liability with cop and doc drama - loads of talking, little action, limited locations. But I'm not taking it for granted.

This process worked very well for Air, if you read the first ten pages (see the link on this page) the scenes at the top of the tower, first in the room and then on the roof were originally all in the room and it was just talk. I added the action that moved them from the room to the roof which cut the long scene in half and added momentum.

After the night of a thousand red pens, cutting huge swathes of dialogue from Tec, and then the addition of the important extra scene (as mentioned yesterday) I have about 6 minutes of screen time to play with, should be plenty.

This evening I wrote my first creative input into the Clones collaboration, the backstory was a bunch of incoherent ideas (in the sense that they did not stick together, rather than illiterate), curiously enough they became coherent by turning the backstory upside down. I realised I was reading it the wrong way up*.

Tomorrow we should hear about the CBBC/Writersroom. Tense? Moi?

*Yes, that was a joke - so dry that if it were a wine it would be dust in the bottom of the glass.

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What's on the turntable? "It's a Hard Life" by Queen from "Greatest Hits II"

The Editor's Pen

I finished Tec last night after that burst of inspiration courtesy of Torchwood. It really was excellent, I love having my expectations exploded. (Have you ever had yours exploded?)

So I've printed up Tec and I'm hitting it with the red pen - there are two, possibly three (even four), reasons for not waiting a couple of weeks: I've been writing so slowly I've become disconnected from the beginning anyway. I'm still inspired. I feel I need to practice editing stuff more quickly after writing: 17 years as a magazine editor does give me some help in that area. I need to clear the decks for the new stuff and the existing things are beginning to pile up. Red Planet will get announced soon and, assuming the format is the same, this is my entry.

Five reasons.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

By the way, commiserations to those who missed on the Writers Academy.

Only three days to the CBBC/Writersroom announcement.

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What's on the turntable? "Free Man in Paris" by Joni Mitchell from "Hits" compilation

As a final comment on the Ofsted inspection at the Teacher's school - today she was at an Early Years conference for educators in Huddersfield. As it turns out, unsurprisingly, everything she's implemented in the school is 100% right.

Monday saw the CBBC Screenwriting Q&A in London which I didn't attend but many in the local scribosphere did - the list is summarised by Robin in this blog entry (and includes two people I wasn't previously aware of, they are added to my huge number of blogs). Since I sent my entry - Air - three weeks ago I can't change anything but I am very interested to know whether I got it right or not.

So I have analysed each blog to arrive at the definitive list, so thanks to everyone who took the trouble to (a) go; and (b) share:

1. Relentlessly exciting;
2. Expanding the imagination of kids;
3. Show the world differently;
   
4. Educate and inform through entertainment;
5. Don't talk down to them;
   
6. Help children find their place in the world;
7. Provide quality shows that will be remembered into adulthood;
8. Child-driven story - they are the protagonists, they do the problem solving;
   
9. Real characters with depth;
10. Small cast but enough to allow for replacement in case of illness (more common in kids);
    
11. Mix of characters in scenes for both potential illness and allowing for restrictions on performance that kids have;
12. The protagonists must have exciting lives;
13. Be scary as appropriate - but not too scary;
14. Think big, go anywhere;
15. Take risks - if the characters are good you still might get the commission even if it means toning down the risks;
16. Make sure you balance emotion with action;
17. Know your genre and use it;
18. Have a solid/unusual concept;
19. Don't do personal relationships with the kids (target audience is too young);
20. Different cultures;
21. Mental illness (wha?);
22. No less than 28 pages (no more than 32);
23. Do number scenes;
24. Write from a child viewer's perspective;

Credit where credit's due most of this excellent list was stolen from Michelle (whose blog, incomprehensibly, I wasn't following either. Weird.)

Everybody mentioned this as well (wording nicked from Jez though he didn't write it): The drama should be all of these: MAGICAL (like waking up and seeing carpet of snow for the first time) THRILLING (like a ride at Alton Towers) and EXCITING (like Christmas Eve when you're a kid).

As mentioned yesterday this is a selfish blog because I am happy to report that Air meets pretty much all the requirements, except it's 27 pages (they won't shoot me for that will they?) And I did number the scenes because that's what most of my readers want - it makes it easier to discuss points.

I never talk down to kids, and never have - they're human beings who happen to have smaller bodies than adults. (I could never comprehend people who have the idea that they "own" their children. We are given the responsibility of bringing up a child so that he or she can survive successfully in this vicious world we live in: they have to be tough without losing the love.)

Funnily enough, I even have the mental health thing in there - since the main adult character assumes the protagonist has been abused and has created a fantasy world of her own to escape it. Amusing.

Risks? Yes. Conceptually big and unusual? I think so. Scary? Oh yes.

Without really thinking about it I do have a good mix of scenes some not involving the kids. I was well aware of the licensing issue since our children have done professional performances. (We've just received the paperwork for the Boy's licencing for recording Bamzooki.) Mind you the illness thing kind of surprised me, our two are almost never ill - neither of them has seen the inside of a hospital since they were born. The Daughter was personally affronted when she got a cold a couple of months ago, how dare the virus come her way.

No boy-girl (or any other variation) planned in Air. Though, funnily enough, one of my readers suggested there might be something between the protagonist and one other character. Quite surprised me. It's not in the outline.

Most of the other stuff is there too. So I heave a sigh of relief.

If you want to read the first 10 pages of Air you should be able to download it from my Shooting People profile. If you're a member, you can read it all. (Note: as of 9:00pm this evening this page is generating an error for some reason.)

And did they really say that Buffy was about slaying vampires? How silly. It was about being a teenager and how hard it is growing up. Air, on the other hand, is about family.

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What's on the turntable? "Mother Stands for Comfort" by Kate Bush from "The Hounds of Love"

Cutting scenes

I mentioned recently somewhere (might have been this blog, might have been an email to someone - it all becomes a blur) that I like cutting abruptly between scenes. I take the principle of "enter late-exit early" as far as I can. And like to contrast scenes where possible.

This relates to the idea of audience "contribution", which is to say that you have to let the viewer / reader / whatever, fill in the gaps. You make a point of not showing everything. That's what subtext is about - the audience interprets what they hear. Sometimes you leave out entire characters (like "She who must be obeyed" from the Rumpole stories - the main character's wife who never appears). The audience creates the character in their own heads.

By entering late and exiting early you make the audience construct what came before and after in their heads - and that pulls them in tighter to the story. They are no longer a spectator, they are a co-creator. Of course it is a balancing act, and different people can create to different degrees of ability which is why people appreciate different things and different types of storytelling.

Although I've always done the scene-cutting thing fairly naturally, it was this article that showed I was on the right track. I tend to be analytical and try to reduce principles to their fundamentals. So if someone says "subtext" and someone else says "enter late-exit early", I do some thinking and ask questions like "are these things related?" and "what's actually going on here?" and then you get something interesting like the commonalities between those principles.

Thenyou test your theory by applying it to other aspects of screenwriting and say "well, does this principle of leaving stuff out so the audience puts it in apply to any other part?" And you might arbitrarily choose "Sound", are there any examples where sound is deliberately left out and the audience puts it in? Certainly. I've certainly seen one film where the sound of someone screaming was deliberately omitted (cinematically justified by having them behind glass). And I know I put that scream in.

And so on.

Anyway I was reading a posting on the Artful Writer - interesting forums though very firmly Hollywood oriented - where someone was discussing montages and someone else pops explaining that Sergei Eisenstein (Director, Battleship Potemkin) had analysed and categorised montages in the 20s.

One of his fundamental principles was that the cutting between images could be used to create conflict and that, of course, is the essence of drama. And you only need to watch Battleship Potemkin to see that theory in practice. He wasn't wrong. And it's another aspect to how as a writer we should consider how our scenes are cut, individually and one to the next.

One of the posters on Artful Writer didn't think that understanding how to edit sequences for the best emotional response was relevant to a writer - that's the editor's job isn't it?

It's relevant because our scripts have to make an impact on the reader (and ultimately the viewer). If we can achieve an Eisenstienian (as opposed to Einsteinium which is a radioactive transuranic element) quality in our writing then we will have a more powerful emotional effect on the reader, and hence stand a far better chance of going further and doing better.

Which has to be a good thing.

In other news

The Boy will be on Bamzooki! Excellent. Apparently they were very impressed with him. (Most people are.) The new series has a new style which requires them to be better in front of the camera, depending on what happens he could be there for just a day or possibly five days. Filming in September.

The Daughter received her Cosplay that she ordered from Hong Kong. Everyone heaves a sigh of relief. They required detailed measurements and it's really well-made. Of course, HK is where you can get a proper tailored suit in 24 hours so we shouldn't be too surprised but considering we ordered it less than two weeks ago, we're impressed. It looks like this.

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What's on the turntable? "I could give you (a mirror)" by the Eurythmics from "Sweet Dreams"

Miscellany

Yesterday's train was held up for about an hour en route, which meant I got lots more writing done on Tec. Now on 34 pages so I could, theoretically finish by tomorrow - writing 21 pages in two days is feasible - but I suspect it's a bit much with my weekend schedule.

I do sometimes wonder whether I'm justified in travelling First Class, I always use the cheapest option of First Class, but it's still not cheap. (Except when it's cheaper than standard, which does happen.) But then I think: I would be wasting hours of my time if I didn't. And I cannot work in the press of people that is Standard Class. So it's that or do nothing except maybe read.

Reading is fine, except: Because the train was late I missed my Manchester connection and had 50 minutes to kill. So I found myself in WHSmith desperate for something to read. I looked at the magazines: Nothing inspired me. I looked at the books. Nothing. Even though there are writers that I like with books I hadn't read, like Bill Bryson. I just had no enthusiasm for anything on display.

I was just walking out when Astronomy magazine caught my eye. I've always been interested in space, but my knowledge of current cosmological thinking was many years out of date. So I bought that, quite cheap too. Excellent, I could bury myself in some interesting cosmological theories and ideas including how a more accurate measurement of Hubble's Constant (the rate at which the universe is expanding) has ruled out various theories as to the nature of dark matter. Cool.

My Shooting People pitch of Monsters has yielded a communication from someone who hadn't read the script for that yet but had read Air and really liked it. Which was nice. There may be a future in that contact, we shall see.

Regular readers may have noticed that I have not mentioned the comic book version of Monsters for a while. This is because the illustrator has had to go off to Ireland for a while.

The Boy has been at SpaceCamp all week, building rockets that really go up. We had received a phone call from the school saying "don't go you haven't got a place" but the Teacher hadn't picked up the message. Since other kids hadn't turned up anyway the Boy got in. And his team came second out of 22 by the end of the week. (They had to do Dragon's Den-type presentations and all sorts.)

And then he got a call from CBBC saying that he was through to the next round of the Bamzooki TV show, so a good week for him.

The Daughter has been revising for her final A-Level exams starting on Tuesday but went to give blood yesterday (something she's been trying to do for several months). It all went reasonably well although, like the Teacher, she has veins that like to hide. Making it difficult to get the needle in. (I am physically incapable of giving blood - look, I just can't okay? Just writing that previous sentence about the needle made me feel woozy.) However the Daughter almost fainted three times afterwards so the Teacher had to go and collect her. She was advised to drink a lot more water before giving blood next time.

I was underwhelmed by the level of interest on Inktip yesterday and I'm seriously doubting anything else will happen before the end of my free trial.

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What's on the turntable? (The daughter is talking about The Odyssey.)

The Inktip Trial: Day #2

Not much happened today on Inktip. In fact nothing.

Except I got an email telling me that my listing would be removed in 7 days, so the system is quite efficient. It also offered to let me pay some money to have the listing there for 6 months. ($10/month isn't really that bad.) They also offer lots of help in improving your logline.

Now one reason why I didn't get read today is that as more people put in their titles your one goes down the list. However you are allowed to bump it back up to the top every 6 weeks. So it's not a major issue - plus you are not fighting against everybody on Inktip because the listings are accessed by searches so the more details you can put in about your script the better your chances of appearing in searches. (So if someone wanted SF, Martial Arts, Female protagonist, TV - I'd be up against Joss Whedon - I'm cheaper than he is.)

In other news...

Popping Monsters into the Shooting People Script Pitch bulletin boosted the number of people that had read my profile by 11. Which is pretty good considering how few people read it previously. However there is no way of telling how many people have downloaded the scripts to read.

I wrote about 6 pages of Tec last night which brings me up to about 28 pages. I am not, realistically, going to finish by Sunday but I did have the hiatus caused by reworking Air for the Writersroom/CBBC competition. That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it.

The day job has become pressured, the new project requires me to finish something with the power of Google Analytics written from scratch in 10 days. I suggested that their specification was a little ambitious. Still I shall do my best - which is usually quite good - and do have some help.

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What's on the turntable? "Incantations, Part One" by Mike Oldfield from "Incantations"

Opportunity slips a note under the door

Paul got it from Laurence who got it from the Writersroom website - a CBBC writing competition no less ... and they want 30 minute scripts.

Oh frabjous day!

I done got me one of those: Air!

Philip Shelley liked it so much he had only two minor suggestions. David Bull described the first 10 pages with the word: "Wow!". And I asked Jez Freedman to have a look at it just last week.

Of course this is why it's recommended that one has a portfolio of different types of work ready to go at a moment's notice (one of those things recommended by Adrian Mead). Something which I was not entirely enthusiastic about but it paid off this time.

Anyway, if you've got something - brush off the dust and let fly.

(18 pages of Tec now complete but nobody's dead yet. Soon though.)

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What's on the turntable? "Quest" by Gordon Giltrap, the orchestral version from "Perilous Journey"