After some umming and aaaing I decided to pull out of Project Microbudget Feature. As the project outgrew its original microbudget mode, two things happened: the finance fell through, and the ideas got bigger, meaning that we now had 0% of something medium-sized, rather than 100% of something tiny. Although between us we have a decent amount of industry experience, we were all new to our roles, which would have made funding very difficult. I did come up with a few ideas which I genuinely believe could have given the fundraising a huge boost, but in order to try those avenues we would have had to have made the whole journey to get the story to a decent draft.

The problem with the script was that D and I were both working on it, but not together. We started to meet on a weekly basis in a pub in Cardiff. I loved those meetings; there’s always something magical in seeing ideas bounce around the place like that.  I really liked D’s sense of story too, but the further into development we got, the more clear it became to me that we were trying to write two different stories. And while some of my ideas were complete and utter horse manure, I believe some were very good. To see those good ones go straight out the window made me think that perhaps we were not on the same wavelength. Of course, him being the director, it would end up more his film than mine anyway (especially as he had such a big part in developing the story), so I just thought that the best thing for me would be to nip it in the bud. I told them I was more than happy for them to carry on with it, but I would go off and write my story, as a novel. 

My decision years ago to focus on screenwriting rather than being a writer/director was based on the fact that I find it hard enough to master writing, let alone directing too. But who in their right mind would want to be a non-directing screenwriter? Anyone who’s read Adventures in the Screen Trade will know just how difficult life is even for a famous screenwriter with two Oscars to his name. And what about Alan Ball? He wrote one of history’s great screenplays, got an Oscar for it, and then had to go back to TV because he couldn’t get arrested! Just about every Hollywood screenwriter out there is dreaming of being a novelist apparently. [And if that’s the case, do robotic screenwriters like Blake Snyder dream of electronic novels?! Sorry - I digress ;-)] 

And if that’s what it’s like at the top, then what is there to aspire to? Especially when you consider that what will end up on the screen will not be your story anyway. The only positive thing I can think of at the moment is something Robert McKee said. He said that when directors, actors, producers and others fiddle with a writer’s script, it’s usually for the best.  And that’s coming from a screenwriting guy. I suppose the reality is, if you want to write movies and you don’t want to direct them, then just write the damn thing and move on to the next one. Grow up and lose your ego.

If D & P decide to pursue the project and drive it in the direction that D wanted to take, I wish them all the best, and I know that their talents will make it something special.

It feels like a long time since my last post. Feels like a long time since I’ve done any writing at all. So what have I been doing all this time?

Well, apart from watching the Six Nations rugby and the football World Cup qualifiers, I’ve been doing that funny little thing called research. Which never really feels like work for some reason. Especially given that I’m in the fortunate position of having to study some pretty interesting things, such as:

Manga films
serial killers 
moral philosophy
guns 
WWII
cityscapes…

…I’m off to watch Ninja Scroll…

Monday’s meeting was pushed back to Wedsnesday. We revised at our Act climaxes (as you do), and looked at the pros and cons of how they affect each other. In the presentation draft, I included a scene where the main character has a fight with a geek who brings up a nasty incident from the past as a kind of cruel reproach. D suggested we develop that incident, and it’s now snowballed into a major theme (as well as a storyline) that provides a perfect antithesis to an existing theme. Right now, it’s all crystal clear and beautiful and immaculate, and I’m learning to cherish this moment while it lasts. It reminds me of a Leonard Cohen line - “…and for something like a second I’m cured and my heart is at ease!” Don’t melt, Snowball. Don’t melt.

Time for some shorthand methinks, so here goes: the Producer shall hereinafter be known as P, while the Director shall hereinafter be known as D. Sorted. OK so I met with D on Monday evening and both of us lost track of time, which can’t be a bad thing. D had plenty to say; after all, this was the first of the feedback for the presentation draft. What he said made a lot of sense, and he had lots of good ideas to help push the story along. At this stage it’s mainly about fleshing it all out and complicating the plot and subplots. We’ve agreed on a way to structure it all, and I think we’re both aware of an increasing urgency for getting the ending bang on and nailing it into place so that we can work backwards from there, knowing that it’s totally solid and immutable.  

D and I seem to work well as a team, possibly because we come at writing from completely different schools. My propensity for working from the inside out has eventually paid off in that we’ve established a vivid story world, and D’s eye for spotting the potential for twists and turns and complications is throwing up a whole range of “spanner in the works” opportunities, which is just what the story needs at this stage. We’re meeting again on Monday evening, so things are moving fast again now. The deadline for the final draft is the end of this year, because it looks at this stage like the guys will shoot in April next year. It seems that the great thing about projects on this scale is that there’s a decent chance that prep & production will go ahead on the scheduled dates. I know this was the case with P’s last project, and I’m sure it’ll be the same with this one, provided that everything that’s outside P’s control falls into place.  

Last night I followed my own (and everyone else’s) advice, and attended an industry event. Despite having double-booked it with my meeting with the director. I need a P.A. Applications most welcome. Diary skills essential. Anyway, I postponed the face-to-face simply because I’d RSVP’d for the event a while back, and who should I bump into there but the producer, who told me he was glad to catch me before I had the meeting as he needed to update me on the timescale and the financing. So there you go. Always go to these industry events.

I got an email yesterday from the producer saying he likes the new direction that the story has taken and he’d like me to meet up with the director again to bounce some more ideas around and to discuss ways of taking the story forward. If the previous face-to-face meetings are anything to go by, I think it’ll be a productive hour or two. I’m sure there are countless things that’ll need to be ironed out - some major, some minor, but by the sounds of it we’re all coming from the same place again, which is quite a relief!

Presentation treatment signed, sealed and delivered. My deadline was the end of the year, and by 6:30pm on NYE, I was just finalizing the document while Anna was flapping around having a pre-murder mystery wardrobe crisis. I emailed the treatment to the producer and director, along with a “rough rough draft”, and started sucking beers in true NYE spirit. Tragically, it was non-alcoholic beer, as I don’t drink anymore. But Beck’s non-alcoholic beer still fools me every time…The murder mystery itself was good fun and also coincidentally appropriate, given the concept of the story.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned the concept on this blog before. Well it’s a kind of murder mystery but it’s more whositgonnabe than whodunit. So our protagonist is the killer, and we know that from the off, but we don’t know who he shot or why. The story then tells of how that shooting came to be. It was really useful to write about the concept in the treatment. Although the three of us are more than familiar with it by now, somehow the process of committing it to paper made me more sharply attuned to the story. It sounds crazy but I think it’s quite common for writers to occasionally forget what story they’re telling. I think Linda Aronson is wise to advise writers to remind themselves of “what film [they’re] in”.  I know I’ve taken a major wrong turn on this project already. It’s so useful when others are involved, because these things become immediately obvious to them. Having written so many script reports and having read so many books on screenwriting, part of me is always convinced that I have immunity from making the classic schoolboy errors, but that’s simply not the case.

Although we’d decided on a 10-15 page document, I ended up submitting more. As I said, I handed in a “rough rough draft”, which is basically all the scenes that I’ve conjured up so far, written out in full, with scene headings and all. It’s all quite sketchy at this stage - very rough around the edges - but I felt that I had to write the dialogue early on. I know this goes against the classic (American) approach to screenwriting, which is all about writing scene outlines on index cards and/or mapping out the scenes on a large board that’s broken down into acts. It all supports this mantra that (again, particularly in America) dialogue must come last. Granted, Hitchcock was a fan of this method and it’s something Robert McKee keeps banging on about. But on this project I just couldn’t wait, because I wanted to hear the characters talk, and I wanted to establish the tone so that (in theory) I never forgot what story I was telling, or what film I was in. I don’t really know how you can do that successfully with a messageboard and a bunch of cards, to be perfectly honest. But to be fair though, I think it’s probably a case of horses for courses. You could argue that the atmosphere and tone should all be down to the director anyway, but I think it starts with the writer. As a script consultant, I will always give the thumbs up to a script that tricks me into thinking I’m watching a movie rather than reading a screenplay. I suppose I just want this script to play like a movie too - eventually.

I was at a Sharman McDonald masterclass a couple of months ago and a young student asked her how to tackle the problem of “life” getting in the way of writing. She answered that she is at her most productive when she’s busy with other stuff, as she has to make the most of any writing opportunity that crops up in her day. She said that when her kids were young she was especially productive.

The masterclass coincided with the release of the Dylan Thomas love triangle drama The Edge of Love, which Sharman McDonald wrote, and so she talked a bit about Dylan, and mentioned his own attitude to life and writing. I’m paraphrasing here but Dylan would say, “I’m a poet; life is my resource.” In other words, if you write, you have to have something to write about, and in order to have something to write about, you have to live life.

But when you live life, life gets in the way of your writing. And right now, I don’t have any time to do either. I’m putting the bulk of my time and energy into another job that has just got manically busy. And suddenly the December 31 deadline seems quite tough.

I got feedback on the developments I’ve made in the last month or so, and the upshot is that we’re not coming from the same place right now. So it’s back to the drawing board. The joys of writing

The D word has finally reared its ugly head. We have to be realistic as I’m not working on this full time. So we decided on:
31/12/08 - Presentation-style treatment, 10-15 pages, just for internal use.
15/02/09 - Original draft treatment, 30 pages minimum
01/04/09 - Rough draft
10/05/09 - First draft

These deadlines will give me enough time to develop the story properly. He says.