Yesterday was my first working day of 2008, and what do I find myself doing?
Exactly what I swore I’d never do again.
Okay, so it’s not quite as bad as last time – I’m not writing a feature in five days.
I’m doing it in six.
Which makes it much better.
Why the rush? Why the burning desire to have a script almost immediately?
Because pre-production is just about to start.
I’ve already blogged about the chain of events which led to this position here; but in a nutshell: a chance encounter led to an investor offering to stump up the entire budget. For reasons I’m not entirely clear about, production has to start at the end of February.
Despite me trying to inject a dose of reality into my life and escape the expectation of the stupid precedents I’ve set for myself, no one seems to have any doubt I can deliver the script on time.
The more observant among you may have noticed I’ve had this information since the 20th of December – why in the name of Commander Makara’s left eye did I not start then?
Well, because it was Christmas and I had a load of other stuff to finish off first. I’m a busy guy, you can’t just drop a load of money in my lap and demand a screenplay.
Feel free to try though.
Particularly the dropping money part.
So, in-between France for Christmas and Overseal for New Year, I’ve been frantically scribbling down treatments and TV episodes in a desperate attempt to completely clear the decks for this new project.
Which I have.
And now I have six days left.
Technically, I suppose, you could count yesterday as a day’s work since I filled in the board. I’m pretty certain that was day one last time. Although I also managed 10 pages on that day, so it depends how you’re counting it.
This time, I also have to watch a couple of films before I start. The director wants me to use the style of them as reference points. One I already had, and watched it yesterday; the other doesn’t exist in Eastbourne and had to be Internet-ordered.
I know it doesn’t exist because I’ve been in every fucking DVD shop in town.
Actually, that’s not true: there is one copy. It’s in Blockbuster on the marina. I know they have a copy because I asked them and they checked the inventory. Unfortunately, the best guess they had to its location was “in the shop somewhere”.
Well that’s just great.
I gave up after a couple of hours, some things just aren’t worth it.
In theory, the film should be arriving before one o’clock – so this afternoon is research and this evening will be writing out the character bios.
Tomorrow is day one of the script.
I’ve got until the 9th.
That’s five days of scripting. 90 pages of script, and it WILL be 90 pages this time, means 18 pages a day.
Easy.
Is anyone else having a major case of deja-vu?
The Jobbing Scriptwriter 