"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?
What's on the turntable? "Demon Lover" by Steeleye Span from "Commoner's Crown"
Showing posts with label monsters ogn. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monsters ogn. Show all posts
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
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.)
What's on the turntable? "Truck on, Tyke" by T.Rex
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.)
What's on the turntable? "Truck on, Tyke" by T.Rex
Friday, June 19, 2009
Good news, bad news
Mostly I've been working on the website for a friend (as part of the keeping my CV up-to-date procedure), when it's finished I'll tell you where it is. It is screenwriting-related.
However yesterday evening I didn't work on it, I got excited instead.
Why did I get excited? I read a page of text which represented 30 seconds of on-screen time. And I went "Ooooooo, that's good, I want to watch that TV show."
There was minimal description - in fact minimal wordage - but I could picture it (and hear it) perfectly.
It was the Director's take on what the Monsters trailer should consist of, and it really conjured up the first episode for me - of course, I could see it and hear it because it's my universe, built with these very digits that are typing for you now. But it's thrilling to realise the Director has bought into that universe too.
The bad news is that my illustrator for the Monsters: The Graphic Novel has become involved in an activity that means he won't be able to do the work. Pooh. I can't really criticise 'cos he's doing something truly worthwhile (in a social sense) but he apologised and had to bow out.
So that's a bit buggered until I can find someone new.
In other news...
The Daughter finished her last A-Level exams yesterday, and that's it for school. Done. Finished. She's a free agent - now she has to get out there and earn some pennies so she can go to Borneo next year.
What's on the turntable? "Soil Festivities (1st Movement)" by Vangelis. A new purchase to replace the Teacher's tape that we lost many years ago. Love Vangelis.
However yesterday evening I didn't work on it, I got excited instead.
Why did I get excited? I read a page of text which represented 30 seconds of on-screen time. And I went "Ooooooo, that's good, I want to watch that TV show."
There was minimal description - in fact minimal wordage - but I could picture it (and hear it) perfectly.
It was the Director's take on what the Monsters trailer should consist of, and it really conjured up the first episode for me - of course, I could see it and hear it because it's my universe, built with these very digits that are typing for you now. But it's thrilling to realise the Director has bought into that universe too.
The bad news is that my illustrator for the Monsters: The Graphic Novel has become involved in an activity that means he won't be able to do the work. Pooh. I can't really criticise 'cos he's doing something truly worthwhile (in a social sense) but he apologised and had to bow out.
So that's a bit buggered until I can find someone new.
In other news...
The Daughter finished her last A-Level exams yesterday, and that's it for school. Done. Finished. She's a free agent - now she has to get out there and earn some pennies so she can go to Borneo next year.
What's on the turntable? "Soil Festivities (1st Movement)" by Vangelis. A new purchase to replace the Teacher's tape that we lost many years ago. Love Vangelis.
Saturday, May 30, 2009
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.
What's on the turntable? (The daughter is talking about The Odyssey.)
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.
What's on the turntable? (The daughter is talking about The Odyssey.)
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Off again
There you go, 10 days of nothing (well, other things - like the Monsters OGN), then I actually figure out what the problem is with the script of Unit X and away we go again. Went from 66% complete to 80% complete - that's about 7 pages.
I suppose some people would call that writer's block. I suppose technically I was "blocked from writing that specific script" but usually people describe it like a disease that needs "curing".
But I just done wrote the script wrong. Huh-huh. Only need another 9 pages or so to finish. Cool.
What's on the turntable? "Incantations, Part Two" by Mike Oldfield from "Incantations" (Another huge surprise.)
I suppose some people would call that writer's block. I suppose technically I was "blocked from writing that specific script" but usually people describe it like a disease that needs "curing".
But I just done wrote the script wrong. Huh-huh. Only need another 9 pages or so to finish. Cool.
What's on the turntable? "Incantations, Part Two" by Mike Oldfield from "Incantations" (Another huge surprise.)
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