and I have so much to say that I just don't know where to start - the end result is that this is probably going to be quite disjointed.
Currently I'm having fan-girl squees all over TV writer Howard Overman - which sounds as disgusting as something he might write for Nathan in Misfits; now in its second season and as brilliant as ever (he created and writes the series - it's not for the easily offended). Plus he wrote the new Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency adaptation - on BBC4 no less, not known for its fictional drama.
Since the London Screenwriters' Festival I have been waiting on the results of certain activities. I foolishly failed to take my own advice and had high hopes of the Channel 4 mentoring scheme. My usual advice to anyone is "enter and forget", I didn't do this and was seriously disappointed when I failed to get in. Very silly me.
On the other hand the Shine Pictures competition I did indeed enter and forget- just as well.
There is one more thing I entered which I was expecting the results of before Christmas but I suspect I won't hear anything until afterwards now. Which is fine.
(Note to self: reprogram computer keyboard driver so that when I type ';' with a 't' immediately after it it changes the ';' to an apostrophe - because that is the most common typo I make and it's really annoying.)
(Note about note to self: learn how to reprogram computer keyboard driver.)
The site I was working relaunched pretty successfully - and rather better than the US version of the site which had problems every time they did a relaunch of each of its eight sections (which they did by stages). We received a personal congratulatory email from the person at the top. Very nice.
As previously mentioned I do my "I am a rock" impression during these difficult periods (though not with the bad connotations of the Simon and Garfunkel song of the same name). And today one of the staff referred to me as a "saint" - I think she was going for a Saint Peter comparison but didn't quite make it. Being a rock is all very well but, you know, sometimes even rocks need to cry. (See what I did there? No? Check the lyrics, man!)
It's Christmas. And we have rail network problems. This does not bother me. I ignore them. And travel long distances by train and arrive as required. It's been said that if someone comes back with the instant quip, he's a comedian. But if he comes back half an hour later with the quip, he's a writer.
Well, I was standing on a busy station with 500 commuters who were waiting for a train that was going to be packed, and two people decided to take out their frustration on a network rail employee. I will not stand for that sort of thing so I told them to leave him alone, in my extreme writerly cleverness I said "Why don't you leave him alone?" so then they tried to take it out on me, I gave them my best condescending smile and just turned away as in "I am not listening to your nonsense."
Of course, half an hour later, after replaying the episode many many times I realised that a much better line - played loudly to the entire audience - would have been "Do you understand the meaning of the word bully?" which would have left them speechless. Then I could have turned away without the condescending smile to thunderous applause.
Might have got a punch in the mouth though. But it would have been in the cause of art, and there is no better cause than that.
Speaking of writing (brilliant segway) I am in the middle of a rewrite of the feature script Running. Thing is this: I had two chunks of feedback from the Blue Cat competition this year and both readers liked aspects of it but there were things to work on.
I began by completely re-working the opening - not the first few scenes because they are cool - but after that. And then I got stuck. Took me a whole 24 hours to realise that I was making a huge blunder: the readers liked the story, and here I was changing the story. Major ooops.
So I threw those changes away and put back what I had before.
However I do have a slight problem: the original version of the script was set in a generic US city, so cops with guns is perfectly normal. The new setting is Edinburgh (because I have someone who wants to read it and it needs to be set in Scotland - and Edinburgh is perfect for the premise). So guns suddenly cease to be common. Bit awkward, still, I'll manage.
And then I realised the first few scenes, though very exciting and jolly good action, don't actually make much sense if you examine the logic. Ooops again. Now this is the second time this has happened to me in the last three months (I had also realised the premise of Winter made no sense either - yes, Jez, you did say that. What can I say? I can be thick as a brick.)
So, as I crunched through snow this evening I figured out how to make it make sense, which then allowed me to have the original scenes and the new scenes. Script writing can be very satisfying.
Which brings me to my last point, for now.
Writers often say that they must write. It's a curious thing to me, as if it's some obsession, because I look at myself and I think "I'm not like that". I have no compulsion to write, I enjoy it but I don't mind stopping. Failing to write does not hurt.
But my recent failure in the Channel 4 mentoring scheme made me wonder whether I should bother writing at all. I fell to imagining not writing - thing is, I couldn't. I am incapable of imagining myself not writing. So while I have less compulsion - the creativity is there and it just isn't going away any time soon whether my work gets picked up by a film or TV company or not.
Funny that.
What's on the turntable? "All I want" by Joni Mitchell from "Blue"
Showing posts with label blue cat. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blue cat. Show all posts
Monday, December 20, 2010
Friday, June 04, 2010
In case you hadn't heard...
Red Planet prize is go...
Two months to the deadline - which is good for focussing the mind, I'll need to zap through a page 1 rewrite of Tec which was my original plan.
Got my second set of feedback on Running from BlueCat which was interesting. If you resubmit you can choose whether to use the same or a different reader, I chose a different one - the more viewpoints the better in my opinion.
The differences in emphasis are worth mentioning: The first reader commented a lot more on structure and balance of characters; while the second, who's clearly an action movie fan, was more about balance of action (comparing it to District 13 which is good since that's the target market) - though mentioned the lack of character development, which was fair comment.
Anyway it gives me something to work with - I doubt very much I'll make even the semis for this BlueCat competition, Running needs a lot of work.
In other news...
The Daughter has arrived in New Zealand, and in another day she'll have reached the place where she'll be doing volunteer work - still no idea what she's actually doing. We received regular text updates as she crossed the world. We're planning on making an Earth sandwich at some point.
The Boy took part in the Saddleworth Whit Friday Band Contest last Friday - being (almost) a teenager he expressed a complete lack of enthusiasm but had a great time. Even had a taste of beer apparently.
What's on the turntable? "Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. Quality.
Two months to the deadline - which is good for focussing the mind, I'll need to zap through a page 1 rewrite of Tec which was my original plan.
Got my second set of feedback on Running from BlueCat which was interesting. If you resubmit you can choose whether to use the same or a different reader, I chose a different one - the more viewpoints the better in my opinion.
The differences in emphasis are worth mentioning: The first reader commented a lot more on structure and balance of characters; while the second, who's clearly an action movie fan, was more about balance of action (comparing it to District 13 which is good since that's the target market) - though mentioned the lack of character development, which was fair comment.
Anyway it gives me something to work with - I doubt very much I'll make even the semis for this BlueCat competition, Running needs a lot of work.
In other news...
The Daughter has arrived in New Zealand, and in another day she'll have reached the place where she'll be doing volunteer work - still no idea what she's actually doing. We received regular text updates as she crossed the world. We're planning on making an Earth sandwich at some point.
The Boy took part in the Saddleworth Whit Friday Band Contest last Friday - being (almost) a teenager he expressed a complete lack of enthusiasm but had a great time. Even had a taste of beer apparently.
What's on the turntable? "Sound of Silence" by Simon and Garfunkel. Quality.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Update
After my feedback from Blue Cat I've gone through the script of Running doing a general clean-up and trimming of dialogue and scenes. Doesn't really seem to have shortened it much.
Mind you I am now slightly embarrassed: As I mentioned this was a second draft and, as it turns out, it was packed with errors. Okay, in my universe a grammatical error every couple of pages = "packed" - but honestly there were so many adverbs plus continuous and passive tenses it was painful.
To think I sent them that ... and I've had it up on Inktip for the last few months as well. It even got downloaded a few times. Oh dear. Basically I just completely forgot that it had had no feedback at all, and no rewrites.
Anyway it's all shiny now. So I'll pop it back for the competition.
I originally wrote Running during a ScriptFrenzy a couple of years ago. And I've just decided I'm going to do it again (4th time). I find the deadline of 100 pages in 30 days to be very helpful in forcing page writing. I also have a script I've wanted to write for a few years, so I'll be doing that. We will give it the codename of Babel.
In fact this is a genuine secret project, it's an adaptation of a novel by a very famous author that made a huge impression on me, I know the option is available and I've been talking to the author's agent for several years. I spoke to Kate Leys about the project at the last Screenwriters Festival and she told me I should definitely write the script and not worry about the option for now - because I'm already in a good position.
So I will.
(There's another secret project which I'll call Beijing, another adaptation for which I have consent from the author but I won't be getting to that for a while.)
Next up is Winter in it's new guise as a period piece. Although the script isn't finished we now have a producer on board - and this project is very "serious". The producer is already asking very serious questions so we can nail down a budget because this one is going to involve money and everything.
As mentioned by Director Chris we need to find our niche in this world - play to our strengths. We both love SF and Fantasy - but those don't generally come cheap when it comes to production, so we shall be experimenting with the CG route. And if you want a clue to our plans I refer you to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
It's very interesting and very exciting.
What's on the turntable? "Lerandis" by Cluster from "Qua"
Mind you I am now slightly embarrassed: As I mentioned this was a second draft and, as it turns out, it was packed with errors. Okay, in my universe a grammatical error every couple of pages = "packed" - but honestly there were so many adverbs plus continuous and passive tenses it was painful.
To think I sent them that ... and I've had it up on Inktip for the last few months as well. It even got downloaded a few times. Oh dear. Basically I just completely forgot that it had had no feedback at all, and no rewrites.
Anyway it's all shiny now. So I'll pop it back for the competition.
I originally wrote Running during a ScriptFrenzy a couple of years ago. And I've just decided I'm going to do it again (4th time). I find the deadline of 100 pages in 30 days to be very helpful in forcing page writing. I also have a script I've wanted to write for a few years, so I'll be doing that. We will give it the codename of Babel.
In fact this is a genuine secret project, it's an adaptation of a novel by a very famous author that made a huge impression on me, I know the option is available and I've been talking to the author's agent for several years. I spoke to Kate Leys about the project at the last Screenwriters Festival and she told me I should definitely write the script and not worry about the option for now - because I'm already in a good position.
So I will.
(There's another secret project which I'll call Beijing, another adaptation for which I have consent from the author but I won't be getting to that for a while.)
Next up is Winter in it's new guise as a period piece. Although the script isn't finished we now have a producer on board - and this project is very "serious". The producer is already asking very serious questions so we can nail down a budget because this one is going to involve money and everything.
As mentioned by Director Chris we need to find our niche in this world - play to our strengths. We both love SF and Fantasy - but those don't generally come cheap when it comes to production, so we shall be experimenting with the CG route. And if you want a clue to our plans I refer you to Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.
It's very interesting and very exciting.
What's on the turntable? "Lerandis" by Cluster from "Qua"
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