... I have mostly been devising stories.
Takes about an hour to work through a character and, with the help of the 36 dramatic situations, devise (hopefully) interesting and unusual story plotlines for the Traitor project. Only one more to do for the end of the month deadline.
Shooting for Monsters this weekend. Eeek.
I've booked the accommodation for the Screenwriters festival for self and daughter.
Met with collaborator on the Clones project, mostly happy with the skeletal treatment, just a few modifications required and I'll get that knocked out next week, I think.
Then I can start to think about re-writing Tec.
The Boy went off down south this morning and, as I write, he'll be in the Bamzooki studio, according to the schedule. He's filming this afternoon and tomorrow morning then back in the afternoon. Depending on the outcome he may, or may not, be back there again soon.
What's on the turntable? "Human behaviour" by Bjork from "Debut"
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
Saturday, September 12, 2009
In the cards
Bill Martell, in a recent blog but also in his Script Secrets, talks about one of his writing techniques when it comes to writing features: having got the story idea, setting and main characters sorted out he writes ideas for scenes on index cards.
He doesn't write the ideas in any particular order, he just writes out lots and lots of scene ideas - things that could happen in the story. Doesn't even matter if they are self-contradictory, the key point is to just write out lots of scenes - more than you need.
Having done that he starts to organise them into the film structure. He uses the cards so he can shift them around easily. There will be cards that he doesn't use at all in the end. (As an additional factor he likes to have something cool in each scene - doesn't have to be a big cool thing, it can be a little cool thing - but always something.)
So I thought, for Clones, I would try it. But I used Celtx instead, which has an Index Card facility.
I wrote scene ideas, one in each card and just kept adding. After about 20 minutes I had everything I could think of for the first Clones episode, in no particular order. Then I spent another 20 minutes putting them into an order that felt right. Threw some away, and added some others to link between the ones I had.
Then I read it through and added detail. Finally compiled it into a single text document (manually, there's no feature for that) and I had the skeleton of the treatment for the first episode. In just one hour.
Neat.
What's on the turntable? "Souvenir from China" by Jean Michel Jarre from "Aero" (courtesy of Spotify)
He doesn't write the ideas in any particular order, he just writes out lots and lots of scene ideas - things that could happen in the story. Doesn't even matter if they are self-contradictory, the key point is to just write out lots of scenes - more than you need.
Having done that he starts to organise them into the film structure. He uses the cards so he can shift them around easily. There will be cards that he doesn't use at all in the end. (As an additional factor he likes to have something cool in each scene - doesn't have to be a big cool thing, it can be a little cool thing - but always something.)
So I thought, for Clones, I would try it. But I used Celtx instead, which has an Index Card facility.
I wrote scene ideas, one in each card and just kept adding. After about 20 minutes I had everything I could think of for the first Clones episode, in no particular order. Then I spent another 20 minutes putting them into an order that felt right. Threw some away, and added some others to link between the ones I had.
Then I read it through and added detail. Finally compiled it into a single text document (manually, there's no feature for that) and I had the skeleton of the treatment for the first episode. In just one hour.
Neat.
What's on the turntable? "Souvenir from China" by Jean Michel Jarre from "Aero" (courtesy of Spotify)
Tuesday, September 08, 2009
The Daughter Goes To Cheltenham
The Cheltenham Screenwriters' Festival gets another attendee - sort of.
My daughter is going to be one of the runners at the 2009 event - so now I have to shell out for her accommodation, while she gets the opportunity to get up-close with famous people.
Meanwhile, I got a kick up the posterior on the collaboration Clones: I have to get some form of treatment out by the weekend. The producer chappy has a distributor that's interested in taking a look and we need to hit them before they go cold.
Damn my unprofessionalism of the last few weeks.
Still, there's nothing like a real deadline for motivation.
(I hate writing treatments.)
What's on the turntable? "Shepherd Moons" by Enya from "Shepherd Moons" (courtesy of Spotify)
My daughter is going to be one of the runners at the 2009 event - so now I have to shell out for her accommodation, while she gets the opportunity to get up-close with famous people.
Meanwhile, I got a kick up the posterior on the collaboration Clones: I have to get some form of treatment out by the weekend. The producer chappy has a distributor that's interested in taking a look and we need to hit them before they go cold.
Damn my unprofessionalism of the last few weeks.
Still, there's nothing like a real deadline for motivation.
(I hate writing treatments.)
What's on the turntable? "Shepherd Moons" by Enya from "Shepherd Moons" (courtesy of Spotify)
Dramatic situation
Well, goodness, not even a word of sympathy for my poor thumb?
That's okay, I'm not a fan of sympathy anyway - sympathy is what you do when you can't do anything else for the person, and you can almost always do something more useful.
This is just a quickie really: I did some writing stuff. Yes! Not a lot and it was just getting slightly more solid ideas together for Traitor - the TV-related thing.
The important thing is the use of the 36 Dramatic Situations. I scanned through them and using them as a starting point developed some pretty meaty ideas, and I think quite original too.
I need to do some more of that.
What's on the turntable? "Prelude" by The Decemberists from "Tha Hazards of Love" (courtesy of Spotify)
That's okay, I'm not a fan of sympathy anyway - sympathy is what you do when you can't do anything else for the person, and you can almost always do something more useful.
This is just a quickie really: I did some writing stuff. Yes! Not a lot and it was just getting slightly more solid ideas together for Traitor - the TV-related thing.
The important thing is the use of the 36 Dramatic Situations. I scanned through them and using them as a starting point developed some pretty meaty ideas, and I think quite original too.
I need to do some more of that.
What's on the turntable? "Prelude" by The Decemberists from "Tha Hazards of Love" (courtesy of Spotify)
Sunday, September 06, 2009
Thumbs up
The trouble with stress is that, due to one thing and another, one tends to make mistakes and have accidents. It's the how things are.
And I am in pain.
Last Wednesday I had an argument with our dog. I'm not blaming him, he was confused and upset, and I made the mistake of putting my right hand near a mouthful of a canine's canines.
As a writer I'm always on the look-out for new experiences - for example, exactly how painful is it to have one's hand (and thumb mostly) chewed by a dog?
And now I know the answer. I managed to hold it together while we got the poor puppy sorted out and under control so he didn't disgrace himself again. However I was dripping blood all over the carpet for a while. Then this poor old body of mine went into shock which was quite interesting. The Teacher is a dab hand with the first aid (fully trained and regularly re-certified) so she patched me up.
The thumb came off worst with a 2cm gash crosswise just below the last joint - this has been very inconvenient as I lost the advantage of an opposable digit for a couple of days. It's getting better now but occasional I bend the joint too much and that is quite painful so I end up uttering an "ow" which generally surprises the people around me.
I probably should have had stitches but the prospect of hours in A&E (as a non-urgent case) was not my idea of a good night out. I'll have an interesting scar.
I have finally got around to moving my computer and my nice chair (which I bought when I was working in Reading) to the office so that I can work without interruption. And I need to because I'm falling behind.
Yesterday we auditioned the kids for the Monsters trailer, we needed two girls for important roles, one for a less important role (but a few lines of dialogue), and one boy for three words. The casting call specified 16 or over but we were, of course, deluged with 15 year olds wanting to audition. We couldn't take them, because then we'd have to mess about with licences and that's just horrible.
Did I mention we have a new producer? Unfortunately Kate decided she couldn't do the project justice, but suggested Tiffany who has real TV producer experience, and she's great. We're also having a change of DoP, because the shoot date has been decided (the only weekend all the actors are available) and the current one couldn't do that weekend. We're shooting on the 19th and 20th of this month.
Only two weeks.
And there's so much to do ... and I really don't have to do much, which is hard.
In other news...
The Teacher is now the "Assistant Headteacher" but I'll still call her the Teacher in the blog because it's shorter. The Boy has the dates for going down to shoot Bamzooki for CBBC. No new news for the Daughter as yet, but she's working hard as Production Designer for the Monsters shoot.
What's on the turntable? "Overture" by Bjork from "Vespertine Live" (courtesy of Spotify)
And I am in pain.
Last Wednesday I had an argument with our dog. I'm not blaming him, he was confused and upset, and I made the mistake of putting my right hand near a mouthful of a canine's canines.
As a writer I'm always on the look-out for new experiences - for example, exactly how painful is it to have one's hand (and thumb mostly) chewed by a dog?
And now I know the answer. I managed to hold it together while we got the poor puppy sorted out and under control so he didn't disgrace himself again. However I was dripping blood all over the carpet for a while. Then this poor old body of mine went into shock which was quite interesting. The Teacher is a dab hand with the first aid (fully trained and regularly re-certified) so she patched me up.
The thumb came off worst with a 2cm gash crosswise just below the last joint - this has been very inconvenient as I lost the advantage of an opposable digit for a couple of days. It's getting better now but occasional I bend the joint too much and that is quite painful so I end up uttering an "ow" which generally surprises the people around me.
I probably should have had stitches but the prospect of hours in A&E (as a non-urgent case) was not my idea of a good night out. I'll have an interesting scar.
I have finally got around to moving my computer and my nice chair (which I bought when I was working in Reading) to the office so that I can work without interruption. And I need to because I'm falling behind.
Yesterday we auditioned the kids for the Monsters trailer, we needed two girls for important roles, one for a less important role (but a few lines of dialogue), and one boy for three words. The casting call specified 16 or over but we were, of course, deluged with 15 year olds wanting to audition. We couldn't take them, because then we'd have to mess about with licences and that's just horrible.
Did I mention we have a new producer? Unfortunately Kate decided she couldn't do the project justice, but suggested Tiffany who has real TV producer experience, and she's great. We're also having a change of DoP, because the shoot date has been decided (the only weekend all the actors are available) and the current one couldn't do that weekend. We're shooting on the 19th and 20th of this month.
Only two weeks.
And there's so much to do ... and I really don't have to do much, which is hard.
In other news...
The Teacher is now the "Assistant Headteacher" but I'll still call her the Teacher in the blog because it's shorter. The Boy has the dates for going down to shoot Bamzooki for CBBC. No new news for the Daughter as yet, but she's working hard as Production Designer for the Monsters shoot.
What's on the turntable? "Overture" by Bjork from "Vespertine Live" (courtesy of Spotify)
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