Talking to walls

Do me a favour, do it right now. Come on, don’t be shy, no one’s watching you. Unless you’re on a bus or in the library or something, in which case everyone’s watching you, you fucking freak – but hey, fuck ‘em.

What I want you to do is sit on a slightly uncomfortable chair about six feet from the nearest wall.

Are you sitting comfortably?

Well fucking knock it off. Sit upright, no slouching. Face the wall, take a deep breath and talk about your latest project.

To the wall. Out loud. Imagine it’s interested and you have to be interesting. See how long you can talk about one of the characters or the plot or the writing process before you dry up, repeat yourself or completely forget what you’re talking about while you’re talking about it.

Don’t just do it in your head, that’s cheating and you can trick yourself into thinking you’re doing alright. Actually talking out loud is far more difficult – in exactly the same way you can think about a scene and know you’ve got every detail nailed down … only to start writing it and realise you haven’t got the faintest idea what it’s about.

Now imagine there’s someone just to the right of the spot you’re looking at, just out of your eye-line. They’re listening intently and judging you. Oh and they’re recording everything you say with the intent of broadcasting it to the whole fucking world.

Try it. It’s not fun. Well not much fun, anyway. It’s quite funny if you enjoy embarrassing yourself. It’s also how I spent Thursday afternoon – staring at a wall (it was green) and babbling about spaceships, explosions, aliens and, for reasons I can’t quite remember at the moment, bananas.

Actually, I have to admit I loved every minute of it – my first proper ‘Behind the Scenes’ interview. I say proper because I have done one before, but it was by accident. I’d stupidly wandered on set to have a mosey around and found myself chatting to one of the actors – who was armed with a camcorder and was asking a lot of questions. Halfway through our chat I realised he was recording it for the EPK and I suddenly lost the ability to form coherent sentences.

At least I’m mostly positive that particular tape will never see the light of day. It’s possible my disjointed ramblings this time can be edited into a couple of lines which make sense – but I don’t hold out much hope.

My favourite technique appears to be to forget what I was going to say and sit quietly trying to remember. After a while I realise I’ve also forgotten what I was talking about … and then I realise I’ve been sitting silently for the best part of a minute before asking if I can start again.

I can’t begin to imagine how difficult press junkets are, although I guess with journalist after journalist being wheeled in to ask you the exact same questions you either eventually start getting it right or you lapse into a kind of automatic pilot where it doesn’t matter what questions people ask you, you talk about how great it was working with ‘x’. Where ‘x’ is any one of a dozen people you threatened to kill on a daily basis.

Just not to their face.

I implore you, have a go. Talk to your wall today. If you’re feeling adventurous, why not film it and post it on your blog? Then we can all have a good fucking laugh at your ineptitude.

Unless, of course, you’re all really good at it and it’s just me who’s incapable of talking in complete …

…

???

Fuck, what was I talking about?

Writing for your target audience

When you’re writing a script, it’s absolutely vital to keep your target audience in mind. There really is no point writing something they don’t want to see.

Of course, frequently, your target audience doesn’t know what they want to see and it’s up to us to try and persuade them; but the maxim remains true – you’re not writing to please yourself, you’re writing to please them.

And by target audience, I of course mean the director and/or producer – they are the initial target audience for your script. You may think the target audience is 16-24 year olds (whatever the fuck that actually means) but in reality you’re writing what the producer or director thinks 16-24 year olds will like.

If you’re writing comedy it’s not about what you find funny, it’s about what they find funny. If it’s a drama, it’s what they find dramatic. If they think the dialogue’s stilted because they don’t believe people talk like that, there’s no point playing them the recording of your friends’ conversation you’ve lifted verbatim …

Well, actually, that might work. Or they might just think you’ve got freakish friends and fire you by association.

Anyway, the point is: you’re writing to please the people who have hired you.

Obviously, in an ideal world you can pick and choose your projects and collaborators so carefully you will never write something you’re only half interested in and you will all instantly agree on the best way to make the film.

In the real world, you occasionally have to bow to the will of someone who you fundamentally disagree with. The real skill, of course, is to find the middle ground where everyone is happy. Which is tricky.

Particularly since producers and directors tend (and I stress tend since there are no absolutes here) to think very differently.

Hopefully, you’ll all be focussed on telling the best story at the script stage – but best is an ambiguous term and everyone will have different ideas about what it actually means.

For a writer, that tends to mean the most coherent, emotionally moving story. Whether that emotion makes you cry or makes you hang on the edge of your seat as giant robots knock the fuck out of each other – writers tend to be all about making sure the characters’ actions and the plot make sense.

Producers tend to think in terms of selling the movie and what elements they can beg, borrow or steal. If they can film in Puerto Rico for free – one of the scenes needs to be set in Puerto Rico. It adds production value. If they know four female and three male actors who are interested in working for next to nothing – then that’s who has to be in the story. If the producer bumps into Brad Pitt and he says he loves the project, wants to work for free, invest in it and let you have his house as a location – then guess what? The best way to tell the story is for the 19 year old female protagonist to become a middle aged bloke living in LA. Or wherever else Brad Pitt may have a house.

Possibly the only time this isn’t true is when it’s an adaptation – I can imagine a producer turning down Julia Roberts in those exact same circumstances if she wanted to play Batman (then again …) but if it’s a completely new project – the producer (hopefully) understands what it takes to actually get the film financed, made and sold.

The director, on the other hand, tends to think in terms of images and will give you instructions like:

“I don’t care where it’s set, who’s in it or what happens, but I really, really want a dog with a fridge for a head. I think that’s a great image and really opens up dramatic possibilities.”

It doesn’t open up dramatic possibilities at all – it just makes life really fucking complicated; but they have this image in their head and they want to see it in the film. They think in pictures, whereas producers think in numbers.

And please don’t get me wrong – neither of these things is a bad thing and I’m not saying either side has no interest in any other element because if they’re good at their job they will be interested in everything which goes into making a script great from characters to plot to motivations to arena and whatever; but there frequently can be a bias towards a certain type of thinking.

And this is why it’s really important to keep your target audience in mind. By all means talk about why a character is doing something or how this smoothes the weird transition from act one to act two; but remember to frame at least part of your ramblings in a way your target audience can understand.

If you want to tell a story about a depressed sofa who’s fed up with people sitting on it all day – then tell the director what it could look like and how certain images really leap out at you, while you’re telling the producer how many people love sofas, associate with sofas and what kind of merchandising deals you could do with DFS.

This stuff isn’t that difficult but it’s taken me a while to work it out. Sometimes it’s easier to get your idea across than others and I think when someone’s struggling to see the beauty in the idea it’s because you’re using words which don’t make sense to them.

Telling a writer he has to have a talking sofa in the film because you can get a great merchandising tie-in is unlikely to fly. Telling the same writer about the characterisation of the sofa and how it fits into the plot will get him salivating.

Well, probably not; but you get the idea.

Now, can anyone think of a title for a talking sofa movie? I’ve got this great contact at Habitat …

Anything but

One of the things no one tells you about script writing (or perhaps they told you, I was either asleep or mitching off that day) is you don’t spend much time actually writing scripts.

And I’m not talking about the hours wasted on Internet porn, Simpsons marathons and just generally sitting around scratching your arse waiting for inspiration – I’m talking about the time you spend doing proper work with your fingers (of both hands) pushing buttons on the keyboard in order to produce words on the screen. In the last three or four months, the percentage of actual work time I’ve spent actually writing (or re-writing) actual scripts is roughly zero.

0%*

That’s shit in anyone’s book.

‘How can this be?’, you doubtlessly don’t care enough to ask. ‘What the hell have you been doing with your time?’

Well. all the other stuff:

Loglines, synopses, treatments, pitches, writer’s visions, character breakdowns, index cards, email ping pong, ADR lists, web content, this blog and other promotional stuff, commenting on various aspects of various productions, CVs, applying for new jobs, funding applications, updating my website … etc.

Then there’s all the other stuff, the stuff which winkles me away from my keyboard and forces me to confront the real (and reel) world:

Meetings, conference calls, the SWF, general networking, watching edits, watching web content, reading books for potential adaptations, watching films for potential remakes. watching referenced films so I know what the fuck the director/producer actually wants … etc.

Add onto that travelling time between various meetings, putting time aside to watch current films/TV so you know what everyone else is doing (or was doing a year ago) and the general thinking time needed to actually come up with all this shit and there’s very little time left for writing.

Not that lack of time’s really the issue since currently none of the six-million projects I’m working on are at the script stage. It just frustrates me sometimes that I write because I love it, yet writing is the smallest part of the process. It’s probably the most difficult, but the sheer weight of material you have to get through in order to sit down and start a new script is mind-boggling.

To be honest, I’ve kind of forgotten how to write one anyway – it’s been that fucking long.

That’s not to say I’m not doing any creative writing – I’ve just finished three weeks (interrupted by other stuff) of combing through an ADR list. This basically consists of sitting there with the rough edit of the film and staring intently at a scene trying to work out how long the actor’s face is out of shot then trying to sum up in one line everything which happened in the previous three scenes which (because of lack of time, money or competence) are no longer in the edit.

What the fuck does that mean? Why isn’t he wearing any trousers? Didn’t he just get shot in the head?

Sometimes scenes are lost, sometimes they get moved around, sometimes new scenes are added late in the day – the ADR list has to cover all of this.

On top of this, there’s the odd moment where either a line got improvised and makes no fucking sense, or perhaps it references something or someone who’s no longer in the film, or just plain doesn’t work – all those have to be replaced by something better of the same length.

Then there’s the pure effects shots, or long shots where you can’t see the actors, or scenes dipping in and out of cars – all of the voice over dialogue can be changed. Not necessarily because it doesn’t make sense – but there’s always that thought: can it be funnier? The car one is quite interesting – you can change any of the conversation you hear when the camera’s outside the car, but it has to match up with what they’re saying when the camera’s inside the car. Sometimes that switch has to occur in the middle of a sentence. This entails writing a line then reading it back in the character’s voice at the same pace and tone as the actor to see if it fits.

Oh and here’s a free piece of advice – if you do this on the train, people will stare.

And point.

But mostly stare.

It’s quite an interesting experiment which shows you how many choices there are with each single piece of dialogue. Frequently I find myself writing ten or so choices for each line because I can’t decide which one I like best. When I’m writing a full scene it all flows and a specific word or phrase choice seems more obvious than the others – when you’re looking at each line individually there are thousands of potential options, of which you have to select the one which is the most concise, the most informative and the most funny.

It’s quite fun.

As a specific example, one of the ADR notes required a term similar to ‘desk jockey’. Now I don’t want to use ‘desk jockey’ because I’ve heard it before and it’s already been used a few times in this film – I want a new term which I’ve never heard before … from a 1974 NYPD officer.

I managed 15 options† before I gave up and moved on – which I thought was perhaps a little overkill, but it’s kind of fun and I got lost in the possibilities.

Anyway, enough of this jibber-jabber – I’ve got to get back to work … not actually writing a script, of course; but I’m sure I’ve got some index cards to shuffle.

Unless there’s anything good on the telly?

————————————————————————————————

* I have a sneaking suspicion this isn’t true – please feel free to comb through the last few months of blog posts and call me a liar.

† Made up number, I didn’t count them.

Dear writers,

we’ve known each other a fair while now and I have some vitally important news for us. I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell us this, but it really is rather important and once we’ve gone through the denial, the outrage, the pleading and the depression and finally moved into a state of benign acceptance, we’ll be a lot happier and a lot better off.

Not financially, obviously; but mentally and spiritually, which is a close second. If we can accept this truth then writing scripts will be a lot more enjoyable … or at least, slightly less frustrating.

Are we ready? Here it comes:

SCRIPT WRITERS DO NOT WRITE FILMS, WE WRITE FILM SCRIPTS.

There, I’ve said it. Are we shocked? Upset? Maybe a little confused?

Let me explain.

A feature film is two hours of footage distilled from a process which takes several years to complete (roughly seven, if Hollywood gurus are to be believed). It involves a small army of people working excruciatingly long hours, doing all sorts of clever things with lights and costumes and sets and gripping their foleys and other filthy stuff.

Each department depends wholly on all the other departments in order to make a good film. Only when absolutely everyone is working at their best will the end product be of the desired standard. Okay, yeah, maybe one department can slip slightly and the sheer wonderfulness of the rest will compensate – but in the main, it takes everyone firing on all cylinders to come good.

A film script, on the other hand, is 90-120 pieces of paper with some ink on them.

Paper and ink which tells a wonderfully complex story, perhaps (or something about masturbating monkeys, if you’re me) but it’s just paper and ink all the same.

Can we see the difference?

When we sit down to write, no matter what software or computer we’re using, a feature film does not appear on the monitor. Nor does it appear from the printer when we push ‘print’. No. What we get appearing before our very eyes, commanded by our very own tippy-tapping fingers, is a film SCRIPT.

Film script, not feature film – can we see the difference now?

Our product, the thing we’re trying to sell, is the script. That’s the thing we have to try and make as good as possible – because we have no control over the feature film. It literally has nothing to do with us.

I know, I know, it’s very nice to be able to point at a film and say to the girls we’re trying to impress:

“That’s my film, that is.”

By the way, if there are any girls reading – does that work? Would anyone be impressed by that? Because the ones I try it on tend to fall asleep before I’ve finished my sentence.

“That’s my film.”

No it isn’t. It’s a film LOOSELY based on our script. The best we can hope to say is:

“I wrote the script for that.”

Because, and once again I draw our attention to this important distinction:

SCRIPT WRITERS DON’T WRITE FILMS, WE WRITE FILM SCRIPTS.

I know some of us want to be recognised as the author of a film, or the creator, or get that ‘A film by’ credit; but really, why? Why do any of us feel we deserve that credit when we’ve had absolutely nothing to do with:

Casting
Acting
Cinematography
Direction
Producing
Editing
Lighting
Set design
Props
Stunts
Visual Effects
Sound Effects
Music
Catering
And pretty much everything else we can possibly imagine?

I mean really, come on – fair’s fair. I even think the ‘Written by’ credit is a little misleading. In reality it should always say ‘Script by’ and even that’s not usually true after the fucking directors have stuck their oar in and everyone from the producer to the tea-boy has given us notes.

Please don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying we don’t deserve credit for writing incredibly beautiful, thrilling, action-packed or moving words (about masturbating monkeys); but by the time the actors have improvised all over the script – how many of those words actually make it into the finished film?

We’re very quick to claim the director, the producer or whoever ruined our scripts; but we’re very slow to realise the resulting feature film really has nothing to do with us. It’s just not ours – it’s theirs.

We did not write that feature film, we wrote the script.

The script is our end goal, it’s the thing we have to perfect – or at least make as good as possible. We should hold our scripts up as an example of our ability and pin our self-worth on their quality, rather than wasting tears on a feature film which makes no fucking sense and looks like it was filmed by two chimps fighting on a trampoline. They didn’t ruin your script, it still exists as an individual work of art(ish) – they just made a shit movie out of it.

I met a visual effects designer once who was working on a high budget Hollywood movie. One he thought was a complete pile of shit. Apparently everyone involved (apart from the producer, writer and director) knew it was going to be a pile of shit. Why then, I asked, did he get involved? Because he knew the effects, the ones designed by him, would be fucking awesome and seen by a lot of people who would happily hire him for the next project.

His work, the product he was selling, was going to be good no matter how shit the film was.

Personally I think we should all adopt that attitude. We can’t control the final film, we can barely even influence it – going round telling people it’s ours when it’s a pile of shit doesn’t really help.

If we tell people we wrote the script for ‘Pile of Shit 2: Revenge of the Shit’ and they point out it was a pile of shit, we can agree. The film has nothing to do with us, once the script leaves our hands it’s … well, out of our hands. It doesn’t matter how good the script is, if every other department is incompetent (or follows incompetent direction) then it will be a shit film.

Then kicker, of course, is when the film is superb, it’s really nothing to do with us either. True, we have contributed a major part to its success; but it’s still not really our film.

We should always do our job to the best of our ability – and that job is to write a script, not a film. Once again:

FILMS ARE NOT WRITTEN, THEY ARE MADE … AND NOT BY US.

Unless we produced and/or directed it – in which case we should be fucking ashamed of ourselves.

Hope this finds us well and doesn’t upset us too much, just read, digest, absorb and get back to doing what we do so well (or so mediocrely, if you’re me) – writing scripts.

Love

Phill

Grubby furniture

I love it when I’ve finished a script for the first time, not necessarily the point when I type THE END for the first time; but that point when the first draft is properly finished. The point when it’s beautiful and it’s pristine. It’s something I’ve crafted, like an exquisite piece of furniture … only one about killer elves or something.

I love that first draft, the one I’ve taken extra special care to make sure all the joints fit and the drawers and secret compartments open smoothly, the one where it all just works and feels like one seamless piece of art.

Not all first drafts, obviously. Some of them are appalling piles of poo which aren’t fit to line even an Argos chest of drawers. Some of them I look at in rising panic as I realise I’ve just created the perfect evidence to prove the theory ‘I can’t fucking write’. Random bits of wood which are badly cobbled together to form hideously ugly furniture with no apparent use or function. The kind of thing you have no choice but to burn lest anyone lays eyes upon its mangled nastiness and is immediately struck blind and brain numb.

I apologise, by the way, I’ve no idea why I’ve started using furniture metaphors. I guess that’s just the kind of thing which happens at midnight on a Sunday.

The first draft (which may well be the eighth time I’ve gone from page 1 to page 110), the pure draft, the one which is MY idea. Mine. This is what I meant, this is what I wanted to write. This is the genius which has been bubbling in my brain for quite possibly days … the pristine draft before the notes arrive.

The notes which point out it makes no fucking sense.

Actually, those notes I don’t really mind. The kind where people point out the main character disappears on page 50 and finally turns up on the last page, having spent the intervening time stuck in the express lane queue at Tesco. Those are good notes.

Then there are the bad notes. The ones which revolve around expanding someone’s part because someone else wants to sleep with them. Or the nonsensical ones like:

“What if the protagonist is a kettle?”

“A talking kettle? Bit weird, but I suppose it could be a metaphor for–”

“No, not a talking kettle. What the fuck are you on about? There’s no such thing as a talking kettle. Just a kettle. Make the hero a kettle”

“Right.”

“Don’t look at me like that. Mother used to look at me like that.”

“Yeah. I’ve got to go and … I’ve just got to go.”

At which point you just make the changes requested until he loses interest, sacks you or gets arrested for trying to rape hamsters.

But the notes I really hate, the ones which make my heart sink, are the ones which are perfectly reasonable but just different. They don’t make the script better, they don’t make it worse, they just make it different. The ones where you realise the director and/or producer isn’t really imagining the same project as you.

“Ah, so when I said I wanted to write a biopic of Muhammad Ali; you thought we were making a heist film set in Vietnam?”

These notes upset me, I hate having to take the chainsaw to my chest of drawers, hack out the bits people just don’t like and replace them with new bits. No matter how much I smooth the edges down or patch the gaps … I can still see the join. When I read the fourth or the fifth draft (which may well be a thousand times better than the first) I can still see all the joins, all the bits which are no longer there.

To me, my script now looks grubby – as if I’ve written it in pencil, continuously rubbed it out and started over and over again. There’s no white space any more, it’s all grey.

Or gray.

Helpfully, my spellchecker thinks both of those spellings are right. OH TECHNOLOGY, YOU FECKLESS WHORE; TELL ME HOW TO SPELL LIKE A SIX YEAR OLD, GOD DAMN IT!

You know, I’m pretty certain I had a point when I started this.

Maybe it was that I prefer my first drafts to my final drafts, even when the final drafts are manifestly better – they just seem so … dirty.

It’s not much of a point, but I’ve been working for 17 hours and it’s all you’re going to get.

Oh leave me alone.

Unspoken dialogue

Every now and then I imagine I’m Steve McQueen.

Not in a ’stealing a motorbike, out-running the Nazis and failing to jump over barb wire fences’ kind of way … although, put me in a fast car with a long bonnet and I inevitably hum the theme tune to ‘Bullitt’ … but no, every now then when I’m re-writing a script I remember a story I once heard about Steve McQueen – apparently, so the story goes, the first thing he did when looking through a script was to cross out all the dialogue he felt was unnecessary.

A wise move I feel. Frequently, on a first draft, I include loads of dialogue which could easily be conveyed by a look or a glance. People, particularly friends, often communicate without actually saying anything and it’s a great way to reduce the length of your script without actually cutting anything.

The problem is, how do you convey the exact meaning of the removed line with a few words which describe the expression on an unseen person’s face?

For example. If you take this random shit scene:

COLIN
Stuart!

STEVE
You what?

COLIN
No, not Stuart ... Simon?

STEVE
Are you fucking kidding me?

COLIN
Shit, sorry. Erm ... Sam? Sanjay? Sarah? Steve!
Steve McQueen! Hey!

STEVE
What the fuck do you want?

COLIN
Can I have an autograph?

STEVE
No. Fuck off.

COLIN
Right.

And you cross out all of Steve’s dialogue, you get:

COLIN
Stuart!

COLIN
No, not Stuart ... Simon?

COLIN
Shit, sorry. Erm ... Sam? Sanjay? Sarah? Steve!
Steve McQueen! Hey!

COLIN
Can I have an autograph?

COLIN
Right.

Which makes no fucking sense. Adding in action lines to describe Steve’s expressions gives you:

COLIN
Stuart!

Steve frowns.

COLIN
No, not Stuart ... Simon?

Incredulous, Steve stares at Colin.

COLIN
Shit, sorry. Erm ... Sam? Sanjay? Sarah? Steve!
Steve McQueen! Hey!

STEVE
What the fuck do you want?

COLIN
Can I have an autograph?

Steve scowls.

COLIN
Right.

Hmm … which actually works quite well. Damn, this is a pretty poor example. Although, ‘Steve scowls.’ is a fairly ambiguous statement; you can scowl in anger, scowl in confusion, scowl in something else I can’t think of with everyone fucking talking at me and the TV on.

Seriously, why am I writing this fucking post in the lounge?

Anyway … maybe, for some completely unknown reason, it’s vitally important to get across the specific meaning of a scowl. Don’t ask me why, I’ve no fucking idea. It just is, okay? Obviously the whole film hinges on this one scowl.

On a more serious note, I have had actors ask what their characters are thinking during a particular scene and it’s handy to be able to specify what a particular reaction means without loading your dialogue up with exposition.

STEVE
I really am rather miffed at your inability to remember my name,
because I'm rather famous and should be instantly recognisable.
You cunt.

I also remember Aardman saying they wrote dialogue for Gromit in all the Wallace and Gromit films so the animators could get the expressions right. I think it’s a good idea to specify exactly what the unspoken dialogue is since it helps with the read, the audience will be able to decipher the actor’s expression and body language and it steers the actors towards getting the right meaning across. But how best to go about it?

Personally, I’ve opted for just writing the dialogue in the action lines:

Steve scowls - no. Fuck off.

Again, this is a particularly bad example, but there you go. I’m tired.

I have no idea whether or not this is considered correct or incorrect format; but I do know no one’s ever complained. An actor may choose to express the words in a different manner, that’s up to them. The point is the meaning should be clear in the script.

Some people will tell you putting dialogue like this in the action lines is an unfilmable. Those people are of course completely fucking wrong. Describing the intent behind an expression is not unfilmable since actors can pull faces and cameras can be pointed at them. It only becomes an unfilmable when there’s absolutely no fucking way to deduce the words from specific face movements:

Steve scowls - maybe Maria had a point back in 1979 when she set
fire to Elton John's wig? Although the thing with the alpaca
was just wrong.

But that’s another post for another time when I’m feeling less likely to kick a hole in my computer at the memory of random fuckwits telling me it’s unfilmable when I describe an actress as angry or scared as if people are incapable of conveying such complex emotions.

And don’t get me started on the mongo-fuck-loons who bandy ’show don’t tell’ around as if they actually know what it means.

Fuck this shit, I’m going to bed.

I’m all annoyed now.

Gutted

So I’m working on this treatment at the moment and it’s all going well, I know what I want to write and am making good progress … but there’s little nagging thought: I’m missing a couple of scenes.

Basically, there are scenes I want to include between a guy and a girl which I haven’t found space for yet; and every time I look for space I can’t find it because each scene moves logically and seamlessly onto the next one. I could randomly stick them in, but that’s not screen writing – that’s just a fucking mess and my number seven complaint about bad scripts: if the scenes don’t flow into each other, it’s not a movie – it’s just a random collection of scenes.

So there’s no space for these scenes, which I assume means they’re not important because it’s not a romance and the girl is neither protagonist, antagonist nor love interest. As eminent brain care specialist, Gag Halfrunt might say: she’s just this girl, you know?

I leave out the scenes and I carry on, ploughing steadily through the treatment towards the end of act two when … oh shit.

I’ve reached the point in the treatment where I need to end act two (somewhere on page 8, if you’re interested – this is based on 1 page of treatment = 10 pages of script or screentime) and there is no way to hit the planned end of act two.

Did I say ‘Oh shit?’

I did?

Marvellous.

But hang on, maybe this isn’t a bad thing? Maybe there’s a whole new way to end the second act which either still leads into the planned third act or, even better, leads to a completely new third act which trumps the old one and immeasurably improves the story?

No.

Bugger.

As far as I can tell, the best that can happen from here until the end is it will ramble on for a bit and then stop. Not exactly thrilling.

So what’s gone wrong? Why have I come out of the dense thicket of act two in the wrong place? Why can’t I see the finish line, the prize, the treasure … the end?

Obviously, it must have something to do with those scenes between the girl and the guy – something about the things I wanted them to say to each other must steer the guy towards the correct end of act two. But if that’s true, which I suspect it is since it’s beginning to dawn on me the girl embodies the reasons the guy is making the wrong decisions, then why don’t they fit anywhere in the story? Why is the sequence of scenes seamless without the vital scenes needed to keep it on course?

And there’s the answer.

The girl keeps the guy on course, and therefore the story too. Without her input, he’s making the wrong decisions and will continue to make the wrong decisions until the film runs out of time and just stops. Now I know this, I can trace the story back to the point where it goes wrong. Now I can see half of the seamless scenes are actually seamless in the wrong direction.

Bugger.

Oh, I said that did I?

Fuck-toggle?

I’m pretty sure I’ve never said that before.

So where does that leave me? It leaves me leaning on the delete key and rushing perilously back towards page 4 and the point the story began to meander. It does still cross the mid-point at the bottom of page 5 and for a moment I think I maybe able to stop the word-slaughter there, but then I realise it crosses it in the wrong direction so all that has to go too.

Back to page 4.

Arse-phlegm.

I, like the treatment, am gutted.

Screenwriters’ Festival Launch (again)

So last night I went to the second launch night for this year’s SWF and I’ve got to say the evening was a bit of blur … not because it involved any kind of great rampage on my behalf  (it’s kind of hard to get that effect with a cup of tea and a diet coke)nor was it bewildering, star-strucking (which I know isn’t a real word – but it should be) or fast moving … no. Last night ws a bit of a blur because I forgot to take my glasses.

I’m new to the whole glasses wearing game and rarely remember to take them anywhere. In fact, I wear them so infrequently I often forget I actually wear glasses at all and sometimes spend weeks at a time wondering why the world is out of focus. So even though we (me, Piers, Michelle, Jason, Helen and Elena) were sitting on the second row (which Piers complained about) the people on stage were a little fuzzy.

I could give you a blow by blow account of who said what and when, but I’m fairly certain since journalist extraordinaire Arnopp was sitting not four seats away – he’ll be covering all that. Instead, I thought I’d give you my impressions of the underlying message and the the reality of screenwriting in the UK.

Just so you know roughly what happened while we’re waiting for Jason to pull his finger out …

Some drinks.

David Pearson (Festival Director) and Kevin Loader (Chairman) introduced the evening.

Two writers who are finalists in the ScriptMarket initiative talked about how difficult it is to break into the industry.

Two agents, Rob Kraitt (A P Watt) and Matthew Bates (Sayle Screen), talked about how hard it was for writers to break into the industry and how there actually isn’t really an industry as such to break into.

Christopher Hampton talked about how difficult it was to get a film made after you’d broken into the industry and then given up and gone to America (he’s written 42 scripts – 14 have been produced, the other 28 vanished up their own arses).

And then we had some more drinks.

A lot of what was said is interesting but the basic message I kept getting from everyone on stage and everyone asking questions in the audience was scriptwriting in the UK looks something like this:

There are only a couple of companies with money and thousands of people jumping through increasingly smaller hoops to compete for a minuscule amount of money which has almost no chance of making you rich but might, just might, if you’re very, very lucky make you a modest living.

Getting a film made under these conditions is nigh on impossible but it does happen so although it’s mostly fruitless, it has to happen to someone so don’t give up. Even though most of you aren’t good enough and haven’t got a hope in hell.

Hmm … inspiring stuff.

But hang on, I can’t help thinking this is only half the picture.

While all these people were talking about it being virtually impossible to get a project off the ground … I’ve had seven feature films produced and haven’t had to jump through a single hoop.

One of the the writer/finalists mentioned the Microwave Feature Fund – where 90 odd projects were competing for 2 lots of funding. Funding which, if memory serves (and it probably doesn’t), is a maximum of £100,000 … so nobody’s doing that for the money. Getting that kind of funding means you can make a feature film for almost nothing as a calling card and hope it will lead onto better things, whilst basking in the satisfaction of having achieved what should be your real goal – getting the script right.

I firmly believe the script should be the writer’s ultimate goal – getting it to the point when you’re proud of it and other people think it’s good enough to get made. The feature film is the bonus at the end and belongs to the cast and crew – they made the film, you wrote the script – the two things are different.

The script is your work, your product and I think should be your ultimate goal. The produced feature film is the advert someone else makes to promote your product – your next script.

So if you’re resigned to not making much money at first and just want to get some adverts for you as a writer into the market place, then why spend all your time and attention competing for the one egg? There is another way and I’ve had seven feature films made to prove it.

True, only one of them has actually been finished so far, so it’s an experiment with no proper conclusion and may turn out to be hopelessly inaccurate – but it seems to me the full picture of screenwriting in the UK is this:

You may need to clicky clicky make biggy biggy in order to see it properly.

Or you may not. Maybe you don’t need glasses or actually wear the ones you have?

There are a lot of very rich people in this country who are happy to hand over a £100,000 in return for telling their mates (and the people they want to sleep with) they’re in the film business.

There is a lot less competition in this sector of the industry and no hoops to jump through, hence mediocre writers like me can easily get films produced … so why aren’t more people doing it?

Or maybe they are and I’m just not paying attention?

Touchy feely

Just back from my hols and feeling a bit … well, a bit like Scotty.

Original, James Doohan Scotty, that is – not that there’s anything wrong with Simon Pegg’s version, I thought he was great, but he’s just different and … no. I’m really fighting the urge here to post a four hour rant on the new Star Trek film – which, despite the odds, I enjoyed. Seriously, don’t get me started … would it really have been so difficult, as well as making it action packed and visually stunning,  to get it to make sense? I don’t even mean making sense from one end of the film to another – it’s a long film and that’s quite difficult – but couldn’t at least one scene have made sense from beginning to end? Just one? It was everything Star Trek should be: bright colours, short skirts and fist fights but … surely, just one scene where I didn’t think ‘Hang on, didn’t he just say they couldn’t do that?’ wouldn’t be that difficult, would it?

Sorry. I’ll shut up now.

As an aside, how gutted would you be if someone rang you up and offered you the role of Scotty in the new Star Trek? I mean, yes, on one hand Scotty was a great character and probably one of my favourites on the crew, but come on! We all secretly want to be Kirk, don’t we? I think my first thought upon being offered the role would be “So I’m not the charismatic, ladies’ man with natural leadership oozing from every pore? Are you sure? I’m fat, ginger and balding, that’s got to count for something, surely?” It would be a bit like Stephen Moffat ringing you and asking you to be in the new series of Doctor Who … as Sergeant Benton. Nice to be asked, but a bit of a slap in the ego.

Anyway, I’m back from hols and feeling a bit Scotty:

                           SCOTTY
I had me a wee bout, sir – but, uh, Doctor McCoy pulled me through.

                           KIRK
A wee bout of what?

Uncomfortable, Scotty exchanges a glance with Bones.

                           BONES
Shore leave, Admiral.

Yes it was great to relax and spend time with my family. I had a great time, it was relaxing. And fun. But I want to get back to work, I’m itching to get back to work. I have contracts to sign, treatments to write, scripts to plan and … oh fuck, I’ve just remembered: my laptop power supply exploded the day before I went away.

Bugger.

And yes, before you say it, I know I should have bought a Mac, because Mac power supplies never explode; but how fucking boring is that? What’s the point of life if occasionally bits of it don’t go POP, FIZZLE or BANG and make a spirited attempt to set fire to the curtains?

You know, I think my attitude to technology is skewed by my love for the Millennium Falcon and the TARDIS – both are a bit unreliable, a bit dated and have a nasty habit of exploding at inopportune moments … but they’re all the cooler because of it. Reliable technology? Who wants it?

Oh shit.

My laptop’s not working.

My laptop’s not working!

Shit!

Argh! Panic! Fuck! Argh!

What am I going to do? What if I want to go and hide in the Caribbean? In fact … I do want to go and hide in the Caribbean. I want to go tomorrow, but I can’t, not without a laptop. What the fuck am I going to do?

Okay, calm down, it’s just the power supply (the second power supply, since you’re not asking – the first one maliciously went ‘fizzle’ some months back) I can order a new one.

But it won’t arrive by tomorrow.

No, wait! I have a variable laptop power supply from an old laptop whose power supply went POP one day!

Is there a pattern here?

Where is it? Where is it? Not in the shed, or the other shed, or the thing under the stairs outside which is kind of like a shed.

Ah! I know!

I sent it to the insurance company when they didn’t believe my original laptop refused to work anymore.

Bugger.

Hmm … now I come to think of it, my laptop does have a sticky ‘d’, the ‘a’ is beginning to get a bit suspicious and the wifi adapter doesn’t always find a network. And it’s always been a bit on the pink side for me … I think there’s only one sensible course of action here …

A new laptop! With Touch Screen! A touch screen laptop!

I have it now.

It’s mine.

I can relax.

Phew.

Ooh, pretty. I’m off to stroke it … and maybe pretend I’m Captain Kirk.

Last post

Yeah … sorry about that last post.

I had one of those days on Friday when I completely failed to achieve anything useful whatsoever. It’s not that I had nothing to do, it’s more I just did nothing.

All day.

Most people produce shit until you put them under pressure, and then they produce a diamond. Me, I produce nothing until you put me under pressure and then I produce shit. It’s not an ideal situation, but there you go.

At the moment I’m just waiting for people to get back to me. Every project I’m working on is inbetween drafts (or currently shooting, or being edited or … other technical stuff which has nothing to do with me) and I can’t really do anything until people start getting back to me.

True, I have a long list of spec projects I could start … but … I didn’t.

And probably won’t.

Well, I will one day; but that day wasn’t Friday.

So I did nothing all day, then tried to write a blog post and failed.

Sorry.

Still, ‘Just for the Record’ started shooting yesterday … is it still Monday back home? No? Oh. It’s still Monday here because, yes, as usual I’m hiding in the Caribbean until the shoot is over.

No, that’s a lie – I’m here for the first week, then I’m going to see my folks in France for the second week. Either way, I’ll be avoiding the shoot and the UK until it’s all over.

Actually, that’s a lie too. I might go to Nuneaton on Thursday.

Or I might not.

Regardless of this drivel, ‘Just for the Record’ has started, it’s being filmed now and I can heartily recommend - without shame, reservation or doubt – if you’re going to avoid the filming of your script by hiding in the Caribbean, make sure you travel First Class … they’re very accommodating:

 

 

THERE USED TO BE A VIDEO HERE …

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IT ISN’T HERE ANY MORE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

JUST IN CASE YOU WERE WONDERING

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

MOVE ALONG