The Zygon Incursion

Continuing on from the last post about the TARDISshorts my daughter and I have been making (each themed around whatever episode Emily Cook is hosting on Twitter) I thought I’d document a little about how each short was made.

Just to be clear, this isn’t a ‘how to’ post because (as will become apparent, if it already isn’t) I have no idea what I’m doing.

The filmmakers among you will already know how to do all this stuff. Most of you will easily spot the mistakes I’ve made and know how to solve them. I don’t. I’m literally figuring this stuff out as I go along.

I guess that makes this blog post a catalogue of errors. Or stupidity.

So without further ado, here’s this week’s short themed around Peter Harness‘ The Zygon Invasion/The Zygon Inversion.

 

The idea

I’ll happily admit this one was made in a state of mild panic. We only found out on Wednesday night that these episodes would be rewatched on Sunday. Thursday I couldn’t do any filming (because reasons) which left me with Friday to shoot and Saturday to edit.

Editing takes me ages because, as with everything else, I have no idea what I’m doing.

A day to think, a day to shoot and a day to edit sounds fine though.

Although it wasn’t a day to shoot because we only had the afternoon (the morning given over to shooting a Crossfit video for my wife). Nor was it a day to edit because I can’t just do this at the expense of all other aspects of family life.

Also, I had no idea what to do for this episode. I have a few vague ideas for episodes I think might come up. Next week’s, for example, I’ve had a vague plan of what to do for a month or so now. I didn’t know when, or even if, The Fires of Pompeii would pop up, but it had crossed my mind.

Zygons hadn’t.

So that stumped me for a bit. Initially I thought my daughter might want to play the two zygon/human parts and that it would be some kind of cheeky secret twin type fool your parents romp.

That sent me down a weird cul-de-sac for most of Thursday. We had loads of ideas, but no story. Especially one which could be told in 140 seconds, the limit for Twitter.

Eventually we decided to flip it because in this series I’m the idiot and my daughter has all the smarts.

Pretty much like real life.

The idea came together pretty quickly after that. The Zygon is trying to steal the TARDIS, my daughter figures it out. I ruin her plan, she comes up with a new solution on the fly.

 

The shoot

Here’s where the wheels came off a bit.

I thought split screen would be easy: fix the camera, shoot one half, cross the centre line and shoot the other half.

Sounds easy.

Except apparently it’s not so simple. I’ll come back to that in a bit.

Then there’s the haphazard nature of our unscripted approach. There’s no script, we just have a vague idea of what the scenes will be, talk through what we might say and we start shooting. Occasionally I’ll stop the recording and ask for a specific line, but other than that it’s all improvised.

Which is great until you’re trying to say the same thing at the same time as the other you who isn’t actually standing there.

My solution was to record it on a second phone …

I did mention all this is shot and edited on one phone, didn’t I?

Well it is.

Anyway, I thought I’d record the scene audio on my daughter’s phone and play it back while I crossed the centre line and shot the other half of the conversation. Simple solution, one I managed to mess up … but I wouldn’t find that out until the edit.

The bigger problem was how to punch myself in the face.

We don’t really have a green screen. We have green towels, which work fine so long as we have a wall to pin them to. What we can’t do is have them freestanding across the upstairs landing.

Me running upstairs could be done splitscreen and I (wrongly) assumed I could punch myself in the face in the edit. Somehow. Eh, I could figure it out tomorrow.

The only green screen work we did was the reveal of the real me in the cupboard:

With this shot dropped in afterwards:

And we pinned the bathmat to the walls to simulate the hole teleported out of it.

All in all we shot for about an hour and a half and thought that was that.

Another thing I was wrong about.

 

The edit and reshoots

That night I managed to find a few hours to make a rough assembly and cobble together some of the not-so-special effects … and it became apparent a lot of what we’d shot wouldn’t work.

Leaving the camera shooting while I performed both halves of the shot didn’t work as well as I’d hoped for two reasons:

1. The light (because we’re using natural light) seems to vary enormously in the course of 30 seconds. Possibly because I block out different amounts depending on where I’m standing?
2. The phone refocuses as I move which (somehow) means the captured video is larger for one half of the scene than the other.

The second thing isn’t a huge problem, it just means I have to resize the image each time … which is tricky to get exact when pinching and zooming on a phone.

The first was a bigger problem. Practically what this means is the walls changed colour when the shot was split down the middle. Even the door frames change from bright white to dull orange depending on which half of the scene I’m shooting.

I worked round this as best I could by brightening or darkening half the screen and applying a colour filter. Not ideal, but I console myself with remembering no one expects Avengers-level effects.

The bigger problem was you could clearly hear the version of the scene we’d recorded as a dialogue guide. In other words you could hear three versions of me talking and two of my daughter. I could have rerecorded the dialogue, but matching that up would be too difficult on my phone, so I decided to reshoot it the next day.

Annoyingly the light was streaming through the bathroom window much more strongly on Saturday so matching the halves of the screen looked even worse.

But at least you could hear what we were saying.

The punch was a pain in the arse to get even vaguely right. I can’t draw custom masks to blot out sections of the screen, I certainly can’t draw round my arm and fist in every frame so I can hit myself properly. All I can do is apply a series of predetermined shapes,speed it up and hope it happens too fast for anyone to notice.

Spot the disappearing shadows here:

What made this harder is my daughter moved between the two sides of the same take. Not her fault, it didn’t occur to me either! But it meant I had to be careful where I put the join.

And again, hope no one noticed.

Then there was the problem of my arm disappearing up to the elbow. I got round that by shooting my forearm against a towel …

… and snipping bits of it out until I had a full arm. Which was a different colour (lighting again!) and needed adjusting until it was vaguely acceptable.

In individual frames you can see it’s completely misaligned, but hopefully it works okay in the film.

The next thing I wasn’t happy with was what you could see through the teleported wall. Initially I thought it would disappear the outside wall behind it too so you’d be able to see the house behind us, but it doesn’t look like a house, it looks like a pyramid.

Oh look, I cropped the shot so it was harder to see the join. Wish I’d thought of that the second time around.

It’s not clear there’s a hole in the wall either, it looks like the gun made a photo of a pyramid appear. The angle’s wrong too and when the zygon me gets shot the wall behind him doesn’t disappear, so why does the external bathroom wall?

I decided to redo the effect with a shot of the bathroom beyond and then reinforce the fact it was a hole by having me wiggle my fingers behind it.

Initially I just wiggled my hand on both sides of the bathroom wall, but the wiggle on the hall side (in front of the circular green bathmat) was much larger than it should be because, apparently, things get bigger the nearer they are to the camera.

I also decided to add the end scene of where the zygon had been teleported to to ensure it was clear my daughter hadn’t murdered him.

I added the Blake’s Seven teleport sound and then tried to work out on the fly how to film myself dropping out of the sky and into the lake.

Green towels to the rescue.

As with all these things, the devil is in the detail:

My wife stood on a stepladder on Saturday morning and patiently waited for me to get the shot lined up. This took a lot longer than the brief clip above.

The long shot of the zygon hitting the loch was harder to do, but in the end I decided no one could tell the difference between a distant me and a tiny Ron Weasley doll.

And there you go, that’s the behind the scenes idiocy.

This post turned out a lot longer than expected and I’ve no idea if it’s of any interest to anyone, but if it helps stop anyone else from making the same mistakes then I feel it’s been worth the effort.

Anyway, enough of this. On to the next one, The Fires of Pompeii … has anyone got a volcano I can borrow?

Don’t pitch the twist

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If there’s one mantra I have to keep repeating to myself in the hope of it eventually sinking in, it’s this: don’t pitch the twist.

I don’t know why it’s so hard to remember … actually, I do know why, it’s because the twist is usually either the most insanely exciting piece of the project or the spark of imagination which drew me to it in the first place. Often both.

The script I’m currently selling has two twists: the second is right near the end and is completely hidden until you realise it was right in front of you all along; but the first twist is the problem. The first twist comes about an hour into the film, kicking it from a coming of age/time-travel story with comedic and horror elements into a primarily horror story.

It’s not a complete left turn because the horror elements were always there, just subtle and not the main focus, but it is a sudden shift of gear … followed, I guess, by a second gear shift at the beginning of the third act when the whole thing goes fucking mental, full on demonic slasher.*

The second twist is easy to not pitch because it’s akin to revealing who the murderer is in a murder-mystery. I think we all know not to give that away. Unless it’s Columbo.^ The first twist though … it just keeps slipping out. I find myself adding it in to the one-pager or in conversation and I really, really shouldn’t.

Why?

I’m glad you asked, or this post is just one long ramble about stuff we all know.~

The problem with pitching a twist is it’s no longer a twist. It’s now an expectation, something the reader is waiting for. Potentially they’re even getting bored because they perceive everything which comes before that twist as just a red herring or useless information.

That’s not the experience I want the readers to have.

It’s definitely not the experience I want the viewers to have. They won’t be told the twist before seeing the film (hopefully) and I want the reader to have exactly the same experience as the viewer. I want them shocked, or surprised or … just going “ooh”!

“Ah, I hear you say,# but what if the twist is the thing which makes people buy the project? If it’s the most exciting thing to you writing it then it’s the most exciting thing to them reading it. Didn’t think of that, did you?”

Well, I did, actually, but thanks for joining in.

The twist will not be in or on any of the marketing material for the film because we hope it will catch the viewer off guard. If we can’t sell the film to the audience using the twist then we have to be able to sell it to them using the other elements. In other words the non-twisty bits have to be equally as exciting to our target audience as the twist and its fallout. The Prestige, The Sixth Sense, The Usual Suspects$ … these are all interesting and pitchable without their respective twists. Duelling magicians at the turn of the Century, a boy who sees dead people, six criminals, five of them are dead, guess who the murderer is … at least two of these sound interesting without mentioning the twist.

If the story isn’t interesting without the twist then, guess what? The story isn’t interesting, try harder. It’s remarkably difficult to sell an uninteresting story without some serious attachments or track record.

So I try not to pitch the twist. I try to make sure the story is interesting in and of itself so the twist adds to the excitement rather than creating it.

I try … but I often fail. It’s something I need to get better at, hence you can often find me chanting my mantra to myself, over and over whilst rocking back and forth and drooling:

Don’t pitch the twist, don’t pitch the twist, don’t pitch the twist …

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* Whilst still being a sweet mother/daughter getting to know each other tale, natch.

^ Not revealing Columbo is the murderer, because that would be a great twist, but … you know what I mean.

~ Like most of them.

# Because I’m hiding under your bed.

$ Huh. Do all films with twists in begin with ‘The’? Is that a way to tell if there’s a twist or not?

Memento – guess not.

No more cheating

It turns out I’ve been making a rod for my own back by actually being good at something which isn’t supposed to be true.

Everyone in the film industry knows that one page of script = one minute of screen time. It’s a fact. It’s how scripts work. Everyone knows it.

Except we scriptwriters who know that’s a load of bullshit.

One minute sometimes = one page … but more often than not, it doesn’t.

A page of one liners will (probably) be less than a minute. A page of monologue might take nearer five minutes to deliver. A page of action … eh, who knows?

So a producer’s insistence on keeping the script to a certain page-count always seems baffling. Why does the script have to be 90 pages as opposed to 95 if those extra five pages will only take an extra two minutes on screen? The audience won’t care†. Surely a budget is worked out on the length a scene takes to film, not how long it takes to watch‡? Surely the budget depends on the type of scene as opposed to its length§?

What’s particularly bemusing is how a 118 page script is too long, but the exact same script, with fewer line breaks and full stops, which comes in at 110 pages is perfectly acceptable.

It’s the same script! Commas don’t show up on screen! Removing them from the script to alter the page count shouldn’t affect the budget!

For years now I’ve assumed this page-count nonsense is just about perception. If the script seems shorter, the producer seems happier so my last pass will always be a series of tweaks to preemptively shorten the script before handing it in.

But here’s the problem: my pre-tweaked drafts (apparently) always follow the one page = one minute rule.

My 95 page script is 95 minutes of screen time. Tweaking it to 90 pages may mollify the producer and the financiers in the short term*, but as soon as the script gets into pre-production and someone puts a stopwatch to it … the truth will out.

I’ve hidden 20 pages of a script before by judicious use of ellipses and parentheticals … only to have kittens when, deep into pre-production, someone figures out the 110 page script is actually 130 minutes long. Being asked to lose a huge chunk of the story when actors have already been cast and I can’t just hack out a complete sub-plot is a spine-chilling experience … but one I’ve brought upon myself by being all smug and sly in the first place.

Knowing how to make one page = one minute may seem like a useful tool, but it’s not useful if I then screw all that up by shuffling punctuation around.

So my New Year’s Resolution is to flip my way of working. Instead of making life easier for myself at the early draft stage and harder at the production-draft end of things, I’m going to be tougher on myself from the outset and actually cut pages instead of commas.

I’ve no idea if this is going to work, but it feels like a path worth taking.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

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† I suspect some do.

‡ There’s a correlation.

§  Yes … and no.

* I’m not 100% clear on how this works. I know length can determine budget because of the number of days needed, but I suspect there’s also a need to hit certain lengths for certain genres in order to please the distributors. If anyone wants to ring me up for a chat and explain it, I’m all ears.

Using my Magnum voice

One of the problems with writing a film script is the length of time it takes to write/produce versus the length of time it takes to read/watch.*

A script of 110 pages may take an hour/hour and a half to read# but it probably took the best part of a year to write from spark of conception to final draft. Sometimes longer. I have a script due to go into production which began life in 2009 or maybe even 2008. The first six months was an intense period of rewriting and thrashing things out. Everything since then has been periodic rewrites to accommodate various cast members as they get attached or to please an array of investors/producers/whims as they appear and disappear.

Coming back to a script after a couple of years of not thinking about it is an enlightening and terrifying experience.

“Why did I think that was a good idea?”

After that long away from the page the script needs a thorough rereading before altering just to get a sense of how the new material will impact the old.

That seems fairly obvious, but what’s perhaps less obvious is the gap between writing FADE IN: and FADE OUT. on the first draft. That might be a few weeks or it might be a few months,~ either way it can sometimes be tricky to keep in mind what the characters are thinking and feeling at any given point. Even at the note card/treatment stage, when I’m finding my way through the story, I sometimes find characters doing things which don’t feel real given what just happened before. This can often lead to feedback such as:

“Hang on, they’ve just discovered the whole world’s under threat from this alien thingy and they’ve only got 24 hours to find a cure … so he pops off to buy some new shoes and she decides now’s the time to learn Greek?”

Written down like that it’s plainly nonsensical … but I won’t have experienced it in one short sentence. I’ll have had the various scenes on note cards and reshuffled them late in the day. Or cut and paste scenes from different parts of the script because they were in (a different) wrong place. Or inserted them in the second or third draft at the behest of the client because we’re getting development money from Clarks and … well, Greece I suppose.

Those scenes may have been written years apart and taken days to write, it’s only when they’re read in sequence do they seem stupid.

One way to combat this is to read through what I’ve written to date before beginning the day’s work … which is fine on page 20 but a ball ache on page 80. So a method I find myself applying more and more is what I like to call The Magnum Voice+.

You remember the bit, probably immediately following an ad break in America but often seemingly random in the UK-reduced-ad-version, when Magnum would narrate what’s just happened and how his little voice is feeling about it?

I do that.

Often whilst wearing my Magnum costume.

Sometimes I write it down, sometimes I just say it in my head, but in essence all I do is imagine the character narrating what’s been happening and how they feel.

“As soon as I found out the world was ending I decided to … “

Well, not learn Greek. Probably. Not unless the cure to the world-ending thing is written in Greek somewhere and even then it’s probably better to just go find a Greek to translate it for you.

“When I first heard the world was ending I was a bit upset … but then I remembered the money I owed in library fines and cheered up a bit. Feeling better, I decided to buy those shoes I’ve always wanted using a credit card because … eh, fuck it. Why not?”

Oh. I guess the shoe buying thing does make sense.

I find the Magnum Voice is particularly good at keeping track of emotions. It’s nice to remind myself of the shit I’ve been putting the character through because, whereas to me 30 pages ago was three weeks back, to the character it was only three hours ago. They’re probably still upset at that baboon eating their sister in front of them. Probably still quite a touchy subject and too soon for them to go to a fancy dress party dressed as a bonobo. And if they absolutely have to dress up then maybe having a little weep about it first would feel appropriate?

It’s not a universally useful tool, but then what tool is? Personally I like having a range of tools to fall back on and the Magnum Voice is one of my current favourites.

I can’t think of a snappy way to end this post, but I feel it’s gone on long enough … so here’s the Magnum soundtrack to fill your ears with awesomeness:

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* I imagine novels have a similar problem, although having no experience in that realm I think I’ll just keep my fool mouth shut.

# I used to read a lot faster, bordering on speed reading … until I realised I was never doing a script justice. A script should be read at the speed you’d watch it so you appreciate the emotion properly. Or that’s what I think anyway.

~ Occasionally it’s been a few days … but that’s rarely a good idea and even rarer as necessary as the producer insists it is.

+ I know Magnum wasn’t the first show to do it, but to my mind it’s the most successful version of it. You may like to think of this as The Gold Monkey Voice or The Philip Marlowe Voice … knock yourself out.

Emotions first

 

I have a nasty tendency when I’m plotting out a script to get too focused on the events. I work out what the beginning and end scenes are and then split the story into quarters, give each quarter a rough title and then start fleshing each quarter out with scenes.

The problem with this approach is it can sometimes leave me with cool sequences I’m very attached to which look great … but don’t really service the character’s journey. Because that’s what a film is: the protagonist’s journey, following along as they learn their most important, life changing lesson.

No matter how big or blockbuster-y the film is, I want that emotional core. I want it to the story of one person learning and changing and growing (or dying and failing, that works too) … and I want that journey to be integral to the story. I don’t want the story to happen and then the character to suddenly change at the last moment or to change independently of the events. I want the events to alter her worldview, to shape and change how she feels until she’s forced to make a difficult transition which is the only way to meet the challenges of the film.

I don’t care if it’s a superhero film or a small-scale drama. Whatever the story-flesh is, I want it wrapped around a solid emotional-skeleton.

The problem is, when I start with the flesh I end up with too many arms or not enough legs or a weird lumpy bit in the middle of the stomach which is soooooo cool … but has nothing to do with the main character’s turmoil at all.

So maybe, just maybe, the answer is to start with the emotions first?

Maybe the way forward is to write down who she is at the beginning, who she has to be at the end and then divide the film up into segments which represent the emotional steps on that journey?

Maybe if I give each step a relevant name, let’s say I’m using the five stages of grief or something, then I know the sequences need to represent denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance*.

Only when I know what the steps have to mean should I then work out what they actually are. I can construct the physical events of the story around those steps. So it’s not “She has to get the key to unlock the thing!” but “She needs to realise not all people are untrustworthy” and then figure out which bit of action best represents it. That way the emotional change is smooth, it happens gradually and every scene adds to the whole. Every scene can still be funny or cool or thrilling or whatever … but they have meaning, they contribute to the film instead of being diversions.

Films tend to get written the other way round. Certainly whenever I get a rewrite job it’s usually because the original writer didn’t have (or couldn’t convey) a clear emotional journey, resulting in a script which has good bits in it … but none of those bits add up to anything satisfying. It’s really, really hard grafting an emotional skeleton on afterwards because, obviously, skeletons are meant to be on the inside, baked into the core of the story.

It also means there’ll inevitably be that conversation with the client where they have a specific scene they’re in love with which has nothing to do with the story they’re trying to tell but looks sooooooo cool. Trying to persuade people they don’t need the thing they love most is never easy, but often the best options are cut it or tell a different story, one where that scene makes sense.

This is often most clear in action films, in the difference between a good action film where every fight scene and set piece changes the protagonist in some way and a bad one where shit just blows up for no reason.

On the other hand, we all have favourite films where nothing makes any sense and the fact it’s just shit blowing up for no reason is what makes the film so great. So perhaps this emotion-first approach isn’t always needed?

Or maybe those films we love would be even better if there was some point to them?

Maybe they’re good not because of the script (blasphemy – everything comes from the script!) but despite the script? Maybe it’s a mediocre script which has been acted, directed, edited, lit, dressed and scored well?

I don’t know. I just know that for me starting with the emotional journey makes the script a lot less painful to write than starting with the physical one.

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* You may be of the opinion that these five stages are bullshit. I may be of the opinion you’re right, I may not. Doesn’t matter.

#P̶h̶o̶n̶e̶ MeetPhill – Meeting #2: James Moran

So this meeting happened earlier the same day as the last one, hence the confusion of numbers since I like to be chronological about this sort of thing.

James Moran is one of those guys I see around every now and then with the occasional flurry of Twitter DMs and even the odd phone call. He’s a nice guy*. I like him. I like to think of him as a friend, but perhaps don’t see him often enough to have reached that status? I don’t know, I get a bit confused by social interaction.

Some of what we chatted about is the kind of stuff you don’t really repeat, you know, stuff like what projects we’re working on, who we’re working with and who never, ever to work with.

These kind of chats are the reason I never record the #PhonePhill conversations because, while they would make a good podcast (their half of the conversation, not mine – mine is generally moronic) and provide an insightful look into the lives of working writers … I’d just rather they were confidential. I like chatting to people when neither of us are guarding what we might say, it’s more fun.

For me, obviously. Not necessarily for you since you don’t get to read or hear about all the juicy bits.

James, for example, has killed 17 Belgians in the last few years. No one knows what he’s got against Belgians since they seem like generally inoffensive people to me … but he can get awfully stabby in their presence.^

Amongst the deeply personal, unprofessional and unrepeatable witterings, there were two things which bear repeating and may be of general interest.

The first, as mentioned elsewhere on this blog, is the state of genre TV in the UK … basically, it’s a rare beast.

Except on kids’ TV.

For reasons best known only to commissioners the general opinion in the UK seems to be that kids love genre shows (sci-fi, horror, super powers …) but that adults grow out of it.

Which doesn’t make sense to me, a card-carrying geek. It also doesn’t seem to be true if you look at cinema or US TV … but in the UK, adult genre fare is hard to find …

… and even harder to get made.

Maybe there’s just a dearth of good scripts around. Or maybe I’m just not looking hard enough since series 2 of Humans just started airing? And Red Dwarf X just finished. Maybe I’m talking shit?

My perception is though that kids’ TV is the place to aim for if you want to write genre stuff.

Which I do.

The second observation is a vitally important one. It’s applicable to all meetings, whether formal or informal, be it with a prospective client or a friend.

Picture the scene, James and I have arranged to meet in yumchaa in Soho (where he bought me a cup of tea and a most excellent slice of cake) and I’d arrived first. I mooched around looking for somewhere to sit and eventually opted for a comfy looking sofa.

The sofa was as comfy as it looked … and there in lies my mistake because there was only one sofa and a coffee table, forcing James to sit NEXT TO ME ON THE SOFA.

This is weird.

Sitting next to someone on a sofa is great if you want to both watch TV. Even better if you both want to cuddle.

As much as I like James, I do not want to cuddle him.+

Chatting to someone who’s sitting next to you is ridiculously uncomfortable, no matter how comfy the sofa. One of you has to contort yourself into unnatural shapes in order to face the other person. Obviously, being the bigger sociopath of the two, I made myself comfortable and let James to the contorting.

I’m nice like that.

Imagine if this had been a client meeting and I was trying to persuade someone to part with their cash? It’s just not a good idea.

For chat, chairs are where it’s at.

Preferably sit-up ones at a table rather than comfy armchairs you sink into.

I’ve made this mistake before at a meeting with a development exec at a large TV company. She sat on a sensible chair in her office, I sat on a low-slung sofa … and ended lolling around on it as if I was in therapy.

It’s hard to sell your skills when the person you’re trying to impress is looking up your nostrils.

For chat, chairs are where it’s at.

James, as ever, was delightful and funny and insightful and just generally lovely. I can’t tell you what he’s working on next, but I can tell you what he’s been doing recently … this:

And this:

And this:

And … well, all these: https://minasjournal.wordpress.com/episodes/

Turn off the lights, make yourself comfortable (on a sofa is perfectly acceptable) and treat your eyeballs to his incessant genius.

Meeting James was lovely. I probably don’t want to meet you, but I do want to chat with you on the phone.

Yes, you.

Not that person, you. The one with the face.

If you’d like to #PhonePhill then email me and we’ll work something out.

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*For a given value of ‘nice’. Obviously as a horror writer he’s a psychopathic lunatic … but lovely with it.

^Not true, obviously. He only killed 16 and only stabbed one – he doesn’t like to repeat himself. Apparently it’s ‘research’.

+Well … maybe a little.

The logline equation

It’s not very often I don’t action a note, at least not without first explaining why it wouldn’t work – generally produces and directors are smart enough to accept reasoned arguments. Recently, however, I found a note I couldn’t action.

I tried, I really did. I tried four times, but every time I got to the middle it either fell apart or meant I had to keep rewriting the entire script.

The change sounded like a small and reasonable one. In essence (and without giving away the terrifically exciting plot) two teen boys do x in order to y. Where x is something monstrously stupid and y is getting laid.

The problem was neither the producer nor the director believed the teens would do x just to get laid. Which I was surprised at since we were all teenage boys once and I at least would have happily brought about the apocalypse for less.

But in retrospect, doing x to get laid is both extreme and not really an obvious decision.

So they asked if I could change y to z – after all, it’s only a minor change.

The problem is, z is revenge on their school bullies and revenge is a fairly negative goal. It’s hard to build empathy with someone who deliberately releases x on the world in an act of revenge.

Their solution was have them quickly realise x wasn’t a nice thing to do and immediately regret it … but that led to more problems as the rest of the script didn’t make sense. Also, since the audience knows x is a bad thing to do, it seems unbelievable the teens wouldn’t. For example, detonating a nuclear weapon because you’re cold and you think it might warm you up is stupid and weird, but perhaps more understandable than detonating one in an act of revenge for someone stealing your parking space.

The problem is one of justification. I tried various ways of justifying both the revenge and x, constructing several completely different openings in the hope one of them would segue perfectly into the rest of the script … but none of the new openings ever went anywhere near any of the other scenes, the ones everyone was already happy with.

And then it hit me, the reason I couldn’t just change y to z was because it was a fundamental change to the logline of the script. Changing the character’s motivation changes everything they do and (in some cases) everything they are.

That equation, people doing x because of y, is the DNA of the script. It runs through everything, it dictates not just story but characters and theme and … well, everything. You can’t just alter half the equation and expect to only change half the scenes which spring from it, because every scene and every character is in someway an answer to that logline equation. The only way I found round it was to alter x and y at the same time so the answers still made sense.

I wish I’d figured that out three weeks ago, instead of banging my head against that particular brick wall. In the end I found a y which was similar to getting laid and actually incorporated getting laid into it, but was much broader in scope. The other, more significant change was altering what they believed x was. So instead of doing something monstrous to get laid, they believed they were doing something heroic to be popular.* The fact that x was essentially the same thing approached from a different angle meant the rest of the script from x onward remained similar … and the problem was solved.

At least, I think it was. I haven’t had the feedback yet so I may well be wrong … we’ll have to wait and see.

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* Imagine a world everyone made films about how nuclear weapons were just misunderstood and were actually fun and gently warming and sexy. Imagine the teens live in a town which has a nuclear weapon festival every year and all the other teens dress up as nuclear weapons and then have sex with each other because nuclear weapons are such a turn on. Then imagine a couple of desperate idiots and it seems reasonable (within the context of the story) that they might think detonating one would make them popular. Especially since we’re not actually talking about a nuclear weapon, it’s just  a terrible analogy.

What’s in a name?

Nothing. Nothing’s in a name and that’s the problem.

So here’s the scenario: you’ve written a script and everyone loves it. There’s a director and a producer who are intent on making it, you’ve gone through multiple drafts and now everyone’s happy. It’s time to send it out to actors.

To begin with, the script gets sent to people who match the character descriptions … all well and good.

Unless your character descriptions are like these … in which case, not good. Stop that.

As time goes on though, the net gets cast wider. Occasionally a random bit of good luck means so-and-so hears about the script, is intrigued and wants to play a part. This is fantastic! So-and-so is proper famous and a box office draw! We have to let so-and-so play that role!

Only … the role doesn’t quite work for so-and-so … but fuck it, it’s so-and-so! We’ll rewrite the part to fit and it’ll be all the better for it!

Only … now that other part doesn’t work because whatshisname in that part can’t possibly have THAT relationship to so-and-so on account of them being the wrong age, race and gender.

Fuck it, we’ll rewrite that part too!

And now thingymajig wants to be in a scene with so-and-so … but there aren’t any suitable scenes. What if we rewrite the potato heist scene to include thingymajig? Yeah, that will work!

But whatshisname has passed and now we have to revert to the original version, leaving all the other changes in place. No problem, we’ll just cut and paste that scene from the old draft! Easy.

Um …

Which draft was the one where we changed the part to suit whatshisname?

This is what’s not in the name of the draft – the details of what’s in what draft.

If you haven’t been through this before, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s pretty easy to remember what happens in what draft. What’s the problem?

Well, the problem is there were six main drafts of the scripts over two different versions (one version was a comedy, the other a serious drama). Each draft had two or three sets of minor notes. Then we started casting. The script has now been rewritten nine times, but not in a continuous forward-moving set of changes.

Sometimes A is B’s father, sometimes he’s not. Sometimes A is B’s brother, sometimes A is B’s mother or sister or twin or father again or mother again or completely unrelated or older sister or younger sister no, definitely older sister.

Or brother.

And while that’s going on, in the same drafts there are multiple versions of a different scene to please whatshisname or so-and-so or … it’s all in flux, all the time. And none of this is reflected in the naming of the drafts.

This is long before the script is locked. This is before blue pages, before there’s a First AD or Line Producer keeping track of this sort of thing. This is just me numbering the script the way that makes sense to me.

Personally, I tend to number the big drafts (1 … 2 … 3 …), with tiny rewrites meriting a decimal place (3.1 … 3.2 … 3.3 … and so on). Some people hate this but it works for me.

So how do you remember which draft had A as B’s older sister?

I guess you could keep a separate file with a list of all the changes in, but personally I just include a list of the changes in the body of the email when I send the script in.

 

Here you go! Now with A as B’s older sister, the potato heist is now a parsnip fight and the snowman fisting scene has (rightfully) been deleted.

This makes it easily searchable for me and (more crucially) easily searchable for the producer and/or director. In theory they can quickly find whichever draft they’re looking for and know exactly what changed in that draft.

I suppose I could copy and paste this info into a separate document to make searching easier … but I tend to remember roughly when things changed and only have to look at the emails either side if I’m wrong.

It feels like a courtesy to include a little summary of what I’ve done with the submission anyway – just so the person receiving the script can flip to that scene and read the new bit without all that tedious script-comparing or reading the whole thing looking for tiny changes. So courtesy and convenience combine into a few lines of explanation which help everyone and remain as a permanent record of who did what and when.

Maybe there’s a better way? If so, I’d love to hear from you … but this one works for me.

Second that emotion

Hello, happy new year and welcome back. My you’re looking slim. No, honestly, you can’t tell how many boxes of Quality Street you ate. Please allow me to admire you for a second …

… okay, let us begin the year.

I’m fully immersed in a difficult* rewrite at the moment and the danger with all rewrites (or indeed writes) when they’re taking a long time is that I’ll stray off the point.

Emotionally speaking, that is.

I know the point of the scene and the film and all the themes and character desires and what not … but I’ve found I need to keep reminding myself of the tone lest it wanders off into something too depressing or too silly or too scary or … stuff.

Tone, to me, is the promise of a specific emotion. The tone tells you ‘you will feel mostly this way during this movie’. I think it’s fine to vary the tone from beginning to end, but not to swing wildly across the emotional spectrum from one scene to the next.

A very silly scene about shoes which features a child-rape in the middle and finishes with a slapstick custard pie is jarring. And weird. And just generally horrendous.

I find keeping in mind the emotion I want the audience to experience helps weed out anything which just doesn’t belong.

I’ve done that for a while, but what I’ve noticed recently, what I wasn’t aware I was doing, is that I also keep a second emotion in mind – the lowest point of the main character.

What will the she be feeling at the end of the second act?

How does that contrast with how she’s feeling at the beginning or the tone of the film? Often I find the way she feels at her lowest point is the secret fear which drives her actions throughout. If I know act two is going to conclude with her feeling lost and lonely … then I use that as the fear which colours her decisions throughout.

These two emotions – the tone and the low point should be consistent throughout. That’s not to say the protagonist won’t have fun … but the fear of being alone will always be with her and cause her to make bad choices.

Take Woody in Toy Story as an example: he’s afraid of being replaced, of not being the top toy. The tone is lighthearted, family-friendly comedy – the audience laugh all the way through … but the underlying emotion is fear of being replaced. His low point comes when Woody realises he’s lost the thing he craves because of his actions.

I think.

To be honest, I haven’t really thought it through in any detail. I’ve just noticed it’s what I’ve been doing on the last few scripts to help me stay on target. You may already be doing it. You may think it’s silly and doesn’t work. Or you may think it’s a useful way of thinking about things and incorporate it into your toolbox … it’s up to you.

Yes, it’s a simplistic way of looking at a complex story … but sometimes the simple things help inform and support the finer detail.

When I started this post I had a pithy sign off in mind … but I can’t remember what it was … so here’s a baby eating bacon instead.

 

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* Largely difficult because I’m relocating it from the UK to the US – I didn’t realise how much I didn’t know about America. I mean, it’s all very well knowing what something looks like because you’ve seen it on screen … but what’s it called? That guy who does the thing … what’s his job title in American? And so on. You don’t need to know the names to recognise/understand stuff on screen … doesn’t work in a script.

2015

So that was 2015.

No flying cars, there were hoverboards … but they didn’t hover, they just set fire to people’s houses.

Behind the scenes I had a thrilling and exciting year … but I can’t really talk about it.

Not yet, anyway … but one day. soon.

This is what’s immensely frustrating about being a scriptwriter – all the exciting things happen (and often die) out of the spotlight. By the time I’m allowed to talk about things (because contracts have finally been negotiated and signed) it’s old news and any excitement is feigned.

Well, not feigned … diluted. Like having to remember how excited you were about a Christmas present you got last year when it’s since been broken by the kid next door.

But hey, it’s been a busy year with lots of stuff going on. On paper, it probably looks like not a lot … but that’s just the nature of the business. I’ve done a few uncredited rewrites, one of which has just been released … which is a yay I can’t publicly acknowledge.

But never mind. If I was in it for the applause, I wouldn’t be a writer.

The rest of 2015, the bits I did talk about, went something like this:

JANUARY

Apparently all I did in January was talk about 2014, which although it included Ghostbusters and a suspicious looking codpiece …

… seems a bit of a waste of a bloggy month.

FEBRUARY

Ah, hello groove I was wondering where you’d gone.

February was a proper blogging month full of blogs and … well, just blogs.

First off I tried to get you all to commit acts of phone-related mischief by adding ‘Okay Google’ phrases into scripts which would punish anyone who had their phone on in the cinema.

Did any of you do it? Please say someone did it.

Then I defended Footloose because … it’s fucking Footloose. Footloose is awesome.

After succcessfully re-educating the world about the joys of ’80s dance, I went on to prove the three act structure is fine – stop trying to reinvent the wheel, it works just fine.

And then I immediately explained why it doesn’t really work that well for a scriptwriter.

Aren’t you glad you’ve got me around to explain these things to you?

MARCH

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb …

I, on the other hand, came in with a thing about the joy of failing …

… stumbled into a confused ramble about clichés …

… mumbled something I can’t be bothered to reread about page thinking …

… compared Joss Whedon to HTC and rambled about how frustrating it must be to be either of them …

… and went out with an in-depth discussing about liars and lying for a living.

APRIL

April is where things got interesting …

Just not at first. First I wondered if maybe you shouldn’t really be able to point to the midpoint in a film.

Then I used my blog to educate my producer as to why he shouldn’t get his hopes up about the first draft I was just about to deliver …

Just as it might have got interesting … I got angry about spoilers instead.

Then it got interesting. I had a phone call …

It was Danny Stack … and he didn’t want anything except a chat.

Where it got interesting was it kicked off a string of phone calls between me and … well, just people. Nice people. People like Calum Chalmers.

MAY

And it carried on with more nice people like Robin Bell, Andrew Mullins and Dominic Carver.

In fact, most of May was taken up with phone calls, broken only by me trying to figure out how to write the perfect cameo (it worked! I wish I could tell you how well it worked … but I can’t) and to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary.

Oh and I went on a bit about competition and how much I enjoy it.

JUNE

June continued the #PhonePhill-ing bringing delightful chats with Dee Chilton, Rosie Claverton and Rebecca Handley.

In fact, June was all phone calls apart from one post about being better and how we should all pursue knowledge as if it were a … thing. I don’t know. Insert your own simile, I’m tired.

JULY

July brought yet more telephone awesomeness …

This time in the shape of Mac McSharry, James Moran, Jay Sutherland and Terry Newman.

As well as yakking to people, I also (gasp!) worked over a weekend.

Apparently this is so shocking to me I felt the need to blog about it.

I also made an uncredited appearance as Iron Man at a little boy’s birthday party in a homemade, cardboard costume:

I enjoyed that.

AUGUST

In August I had a little panic about potentially offending  someone I quite like by giving them script notes. In order to cover my anxiety, I wrote this post about the kind of script notes I get and how upsetting they can be … if you don’t take them in the spirit they’re intended.

Later on, I followed that post up by giving myself notes on an old script.

I also pretended a meal/drink with some friends was a sort of #PhonePhill episode … even though it wasn’t.

But it did lead to this picture, which is my favourite of the year:

I rounded off August by highlighting my inability to not focus on background detail.

SEPTEMBER

Man, I did a lot of blogging in 2015. Too much, some might say.

In September I added one more thing to a script and felt the need to tell everyone.

Then I added a second thing and banged on about that too.

I did a thing about tokenism and … well, I don’t know what my point was there. Feel free to read it and let me know.

Oh, and then I added some nonsense to Jason Arnopp’s blog post about hands.

OCTOBER

I kicked off October by contrasting Rose Tyler with Jurassic Park … which, you know, is clearly two different things and needs a blog explaining why.

And then … the future arrived!

I meant to take a photo of myself with my trousers on inside out … but I didn’t. Possibly because I don’t think I wore any in October.

Instead of wearing trousers, I watched some videos about deleted scenes from all three Star Wars films:

I say three because I’m a prequel denier. At that point I was adamant there were only three Star Wars films. Now, of course, there’s been another half of a Star Wars film.

Hopefully we’ll find out in a couple of years whether or not any of it makes sense.

NOVEMBER

Just when you thought I’d forgotten about it, another #PhonePhill – this time with William Gallagher. He’s written a book, you know. Bits of it are about me.

Inspired by the resurgence of telephonic communication, I immediately didn’t do it again and instead waffled on about River Theory …

Expressed my love for the Verity podcast …

And raved on and on and on about this speech from Doctor Who:

Oh, and I found this photo of a Burt Reynolds crab.

DECEMBER

Which brings us to now. All I did in December was a handful of short blogs about other people’s stuff. Things like:

Arnopp’s patreon campaign, the UK Scriptwriter’s Handbook and the Heaven Sent/Hell Bent scripts.

There were meant to be more, but there wasn’t.

I didn’t even wish you a merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

There, I did it.

And so, with this year nearly spent, all eyes turn to the next one.

Hopefully it’ll include at least one blog about my new office:

And loads and loads about my next script to be produced:

Happy New Year, let’s chat soon.