The Year I Became Angelic

Traditions are for fulfilling so here's my look back at 2011.

In many ways it's not been a great year. Nor has it been a bad year.

There have been bad things though not on the screenwriting front. I've had two bad contracts this year - one of which cost me money. I could take time going to court over it but frankly it's not worth the effort. I went down that round years ago when I ran a design agency and we were ripped off by someone who said to our faces "If I can get out of paying you, I will".

Here's a tip: If you choose to take legal action against someone to get money you're owed: Get the biggest legal firm you can - even if it means that you'll lose most of your money in fees. Why? Because you'll win, and that's more important than the money.

But here's another tip: Think long and hard about taking legal action. It's very stressful, very expensive and seldom really worth it.

Mmm. Cheerful. Let's move on.

Agents

Early in the year I met with an agent. They liked what I could do but it just wasn't quite ... enough. Later in the year I made the Talent Connector through Industrial Scripts and had two bites from other agencies. They read my stuff but it wasn't quite ... enough.

As mentioned in a previous blog I am competent. But nothing I currently have has sufficient spark.

Not writing

I spent a lot of time not writing this year. Partly because of the contracts I was working on and partly because of the travel time to and from work. And partly because of a web site I've been working on for a while now, though it's finally coming together. Part of my plan is to make myself less reliant on the day job but since I have a family, mortgage and credit cards to support I can't dedicate myself 100% to the writing, which would be what I'd like to do.

Events

But I did go to the BBC's writing festival in Leeds which was very good indeed. And where I made a contact with a major US TV writer and producer (a legend in the TV SF world) currently working on something for the BBC. I have his email address and he's reading my stuff :-)

I almost didn't go to the London Screenwriters Festival. But I did and what happened? I got onto the advanced mentoring session with Gub Neal. Awesome.

But curiously that leads into something else which will be in my "Next Year" post coming up tomorrow.

The LSF also taught me something very very important: Rehearse pitches. I pitched at Gub Neal's session, the speed-pitching and, on the spur of the moment, the Pitch Factor. For Gub I had rehearsed the pitch and narrowed it down to a set of reminder cards that just kept me on track, though I barely used them. The speed-pitching was hastily written and only slightly rehearsed, while the Pitch Factor wasn't planned at all.

Result: From Gub "Good pitch" and from the others no kind words at all, and some critical ones. This also becomes relevant for the future (in the obvious way but also a less than obvious way).

ScriptFrenzy

I always do ScriptFrenzy and write a feature script in April. And this year was no different. Except I wrote a Steampunk story in the same universe as the Winter project.

ScriptFrenzy has been going five years which means I have five feature scripts I wouldn't otherwise have. Of course they need work but they're out in the real world.

Winter

This web project has been in development for three years now - you can read the potted history of that developing on the Voidships blog and if you're a Google+ person you can circle the Voidships page (and please don't believe the anti-hype about G+ being quieter than the grave - that is truly bollocks).

Two months ago the pressure I'd been building up internally to rewrite Winter suddenly kicked in and the story poured out. I zoomed it off to various readers and a month later I had all the feedback - which wasn't too bad and the areas that need work were agreed on by all readers which is a clear sign of what's needed.

Angels One Five

When we make the Winter project happen a lot of it is going to be crowd-funded. I could take the attitude that, well, we'll find the people and they'll pay. But that's not fair, really, is it? How can I justify asking people to pay money towards my projects if I take no notice of anyone else's? There are other filmmakers (and other creatives) who are trying to get their projects made.

What goes around comes around. As ye sow so shall ye reap. Treat others the way you'd like them to treat you. Stuff like that.

So I started funding projects - short films and book. Those on a personal basis.

Then, as my business, I became an investor in Piers Beckley's Red Table stage productions.

Let me say this: If you're in it for the money, or the rewards, forget it. That's not what it's about. What it's about is supporting creative people because they are the ones who make the real difference in the world. (Not that I want to give the impression that Piers' Red Table does not give ROI, but that's not the reason why.)

Summing up

It wasn't a bad year, much of it felt like treading water. There were a few good things and a few bad things, but the coming year is shaping up to be totally awesome and I will speak on that anon.

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What's on the turntable? "Tubular Bells" by Mike Oldfield

When I say "Oh dear"...

I realise my empty last posting needs some explanation. I mean I could delete it but where would the fun be in that?

Fun? Not feeling very fun-ny today I must admit. This is not because anything bad is happening in my life, it isn't. Just had a bad night a combination of the weather suddenly turning hot and humid (just for a couple of hours), people just down the way having friends round and making just enough noise to prevent sleep, cats deciding to take objection to other cats, and our dog taking exception to the cats taking exception to each other.

Very sad. So I'm tired, hence the unfunny feeling.

The "Oh dear" was because I was going to make a comment about how I had completely failed to make any further posting about the London Screenwriters Festival. But the inter-tubes in the place I'm staying decided to behave badly and that was as far as I got. Except I managed to post it.

Not very exciting at all.

London Screenwriters Festival

I went to others of the sessions of course, nothing truly major stuck in my mind. Ellin Stein's session on editing down scripts was interesting enough; and the one on a new way of analysing scripts was passingly interesting, though the speaker was primarily selling his products - and his clientele is directors rather than writers.

I can sum up what he said: The key moments of a script are when a character perceives something different in their environment.

I think, on the whole, it's a valid tool for directors, is it a valid tool for writers? No idea. I'll have to try it out.

I had a go at the Pitch Factor on Saturday evening. It was fun and I was rubbish - but considering I wrote the pitch on the back a cigarette packet half a  minute before speaking that comes as no surprise. (I'm lying professionally here. It was a note pad, and I wrote it half an hour before.)

I also had a Speed Pitch session booked, which was also a bit poo. But I was similarly unprepared. No surprise there then.

I went to the Writing Fantastical TV session which had a good panel and the overwhelming advice was - smuggle it in. Of course, as I read elsewhere, it's ludicrous if TV commissioners say "oh that last SF TV series really bombed we won't do any more of those". After all, do they, when a cop show bombs, say "We won't do any more cop shows?" No, they don't.

There was also the Writing for Comics, another good panel and something I knew nothing about, so I was suitably enlightened. Interesting.

And, of course, I met new people and generally had a good time. So I'll no doubt do it again.

Family Drama

So, the Boy has been doing exams (his school push them through early GCSEs) so it's been a bit a stressful time for him. But he has come out the other side safely.

For the drama exam (part of English Language) they had to write their own 5min script based on Saving Private Ryan. Scripts is something we know something about so he got the job in his groups. (Actually it makes no sense, this is a drama exam so he gets nothing for the writing - surely they should just give them a script?)

Anyway, without going into detail, there was much to-ing and fro-ing with this script. He wasn't sure what to do, so we discussed conflict in scenes. His first version barely made 90 seconds. Then he got something sorted that was long enough. Then he found that his part was too short so had to add a completely new sequence into the scene, but we discussed what could be done and came up with something he liked and he wrote it.

I'm currently working away from home during the week so the Teacher (okay, that's potentially confusing - when I say "the Teacher" I mean my wife, not his schoolteacher) helped him clean up the spelling and grammar. And then she wanted to put some additional instructions into the action lines and the Boy says "No, mum, you can't do that, that's director stuff."

There humour. (For the sake of completeness, yes, I know, in stage work the writer is god, so "director stuff" would be fine - but that wouldn't be funny.)

Anyway it all went off well and he got the equivalent of an A grade for the drama part - I'd have given him the same for the writing, but I'm a bit biased.

Winter Blog

I am also instigating yet another blog - just a sucker for punishment - this one is specifically about writing the web series Winter which is going very nicely and I have some observations to make (well, I think they're interesting - others may differ.)

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What's on the turntable? "The Third Hoorah" by Jethro Tull from "Warchild"

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"