Archives: Blogging

Following yesterday morning’s excitable, if over-tired post, I decided the best use of my time was, clearly, to redesign the blog. There was some logic to it, since I see the blog becoming quite a key part of the new project, but mostly it was because I couldn’t really focus on anything work-related.

As part of the process, I figured it was about time to move the blog to its own server. Since migrating to olilewington.co.uk from my old blog about my transplant journey, I’ve used a masked-forwarder for the domain to hide the fact that I’ve been hosting it on the server of another of my websites.

To cut a very long (24 hour+) story short, the hosting company went all weird and ‘lost’ the domain, then when it reappeared it was still set up for the old site and the re-direct didn’t work and I’d copied the wrong database over. Deep breath.

In the end, though, it was Twitter that came to my rescue, providing as it did a HUGE volume of helpful responses from my various tech-savvy followers and, eventually, Mike Busson managed to help me get it all squared away.

The whole experience just goes to illustrate what the true power of social media is: helping people.

By offering practical advice and solutions – as was the case with my issues – supporting people having a hard day, celebrating your friends’ successes or RTing people’s good causes or crowdfunding campaigns, you are doing things for other people and forming an active part of a community.

Engagement and involvement is the ultimate key to getting the most not just from social media, but life itself. Only by being willing to give to others will you find others willing to give back.

So next time you’re asking people for a ReTweet, or encouraging people to click on the ‘Share’ buttons on your blog (did you pick up the subliminal message in there?), stop for a second and ask yourself: when was the last time I did this for someone else? What have I given in order for others to give back?

Call it Social Media Karma. Or SMarma. If that didn’t sound so much like smug and smarmy…

I’m writing this at an almost respectable 7am, but considering I’ve been awake all night it doesn’t feel like the start of a new day.

Why have I been awake all night, I hear you ask? Or is that the voices in my head? They crept in about two hours ago and are pretty insistent on staying there. But I digress.

I have a weird and wonderful brain that kicks into gear at random moments, which is fantastic for creative and lateral thinking, but not so good when it steps up to overdrive just as I settle down for some well-earned kip.

And so it was last night, when my head hit the pillow mere minutes after hitting on the most amazing concept for a HUGE new project. The real beauty of it, though, is that it’s not a ‘new’ project. Rather, in a flash of awkwardly-timed, knock-out inspiration I found a way of tying together no fewer than FOUR existing projects into one symbiotic whole.

For those of you familiar with transmedia storytelling, hold your groans. I haven’t just wedged a bundle of ideas together into one unconscionably complicated and sprawling hole. I have – you may be surprised to know – actually thought it through.

Some of the ideas were already concrete in my head, other were more shapeless and still others were small moments of “wouldn’t it be great if I could…”. But they all shared a common theme that I just hadn’t identified before, a theme which will – hopefully – over the coming few months, be explored through a wide range of stories and across a variety of different media; not least, I suspect, this blog.

This is going to be a HUGELY ambitious project, but one I passionately believe in. I’m going to need a lot of help and support along the way, but that’s what you, dear reader, are there for. Together we can not just explore, inform and entertain, but hopefully expand and engross as well.

Here’s to 2011 and a new world of excitement. Won’t you come and join me for the ride?

PS – regardless of project-related bloggage, there’s going to be a lot more content on the blog in the weeks and months to come, so stay tuned (or come back more often than you have been…)

At last! After three weeks of mad cutting, re-cutting and finishing, I’ve got through all three days of the London Screenwriters’ Festival Video blog. And I’m quite proud of all three, if I’m honest.

Here, for you delight and delectation, is the final day of the festival. You can also read about it on Chris Jones’ blog, too, and show your support on my Vimeo page, if you’re so inclined.

Apologies for the delayed return to the return to blogging – I’m not sure why I chose to re-start blogging just before going into production on yet another short film – I should plan these things better.

The film in question, Love Like Hers, went remarkably well despite a hectic schedule and 3 lost hours on the first morning thanks to the good old Yorkshire weather.  The writer/director, Danny Lacey, has already detailed the ins and outs of a crazy 3 days on both his blog and his live show, which you can watch back on demand on his LiveStream channel, so I won’t go into it too much. For those of you who want a taste of what we went through, here’s a short behind the scenes vid from Danny’s YouTube Channel:

My role was essentially as an on-set coordinator, since I’d come on board too late to really be able to take a lot of the “real” production stuff from Danny. Although, frankly, I ended up with more than enough on my plate as it was. It definitely would have been an impossible mission had it not been for the extraordinary Bethan Davis, who started as a Production Assistant, but ended up as a Production Co-Ordinator/Production Manager and was outstanding, as was Danny’s girlfriend, Jacqui, who shouldered a huge amount of stress on Danny’s behalf.

If there was one mistake we made it was in not having enough time for me to take financial control of the picture, meaning all spending decisions had to come from Danny himself. That will doubtless be rectified in future projects together.

What I’ve learned over the last few weeks, though, is that I’m actually not only a big fan of, but also well suited to being a producer. I like the coordination, I enjoy the on-set challenges, but most of all I like to be able to help other writer/directors achieve their vision.

This became abundantly clear to me yesterday after spending over 2 hours in a script meeting with a first-time writer/director who’s got a great little story mapped out.

Louisa is unique in many ways, not simply because she has made a powerful and fascinating documentary exploring her physical and emotional recovery from an horrific accident. She also knows exactly where she stands in terms of skills, abilities and desires.

The script she sent to me has, at its heart, a really strong emotional pull and a really quirky, captivating idea behind it, but it it – by her own admission – in very rough form. Yesterday afternoon she stopped in to my place and we talked through the whole thing from start to finish and really started to delve deeply into the characters, where they were coming from and why they made the decisions they did.  I’m totally confident that when she sends her second draft over it’ll be a vast improvement.

For those of you who want to know why I find Louisa such an exciting person to want to work with, check out her doc, The Highest Low:

And while I’m here, if there’s anyone out there with a script they want to turn or see turned into a finished product, I’m all for taking a look.

Way, way back in the olden days of May or June a few of my Twitter buddies started twittering about the Red Planet Prize, a free screenwriting competition run by Red Planet Pictures, the production company run by Tony Jordan behind dramas like CRASH, HUSTLE and ECHO BEACH/MOVING WALLPAPER.

The competition required writers to send in the first 10 pages of a 60 page TV show, either a stand-alone hour or part of (or pilot for) a longer series.

I’ve had an idea buzzing about in my head for quite a while for a TV series I want to write, so I thought I’d give it a whirl.  My early drafts were shabby to say the least, but as the first-round submission deadline loomed I had ten credible pages that I felt I could send off.

The biggest issue was the recommendations of most professional writers when talking about the prize – make sure you’ve got all 60 pages before you submit, so you can send the script across as soon as you get the call.  That is, if you’re successful enough to still be in the running once the 1500 submissions are whittled down to those few whose full script will be read.

I asked a friend and script editor, Lucy Vee, what I should do.  Her advice? Go for it anyway; it’s free, what have you got to lose.  So I did.

I have to confess at this point, I’ve been going through something of a crisis of confidence in my writing in the last few months.  I’ve not written a huge amount and what I have written, when glanced back over with a critical eye, doesn’t seem up to snuff for me.

I’ve been laying low, not hitting my keyboard as much as I should have (as evidenced by the lack of bloggage) and focused instead on filmmaking rather than writing.  I’ve been on a great project with Northants County Council, through Catalyst Theatre Arts, making a doc about a sibling support project in the area and I’ve also just come off Assistant Producing/Production Managing a UK Film Council short film, ELLIE.

I wasn’t prepared, then, for the email that landed in my inbox yesterday to say my script, NUMBER 10, has made it through to the next round of the RPP.  Seriously.

My first reaction was utter delight – it felt like a real vindication of my work thus far and showed me that despite my crisis of confidence, I do actually have a bit of talent at this writing lark.  The second thought was dread.  I hadn’t actually looked at the Final Draft file with my submission on it since I sent it in.  The email stated quite clearly that the full 60-pager had to be submitted by email by Monday lunchtime, just 6 days away.

I checked the file and did some calculations.  I’d managed 21 pages of the script so far, of which I’d submitted the first 10.  I now had 6 days to come up with another 40 pages that would match the quality of the submission that appears to have piqued the interest of the judges.  And given that this was at 6pm, it really meant 5 days.  And since I’m away giving a talking Liverpool on Thursday, that really meant 4 days.  That’s an average of 10 pages a day, but I’d still need time to proof-read and edit before submission.

Yes, ladies and gentleman, I am also currently blogging.  This is 600 words that could have gone into my script, but instead I’m sat here filling you all in.  I hope you’re happy.  I am.

Yours sincerely,

Oli Lewingon, King Procrastinator & Red Planeteer.

It’s been almost two months since my last post following the closing of the Production Office’s first season. Since then I’ve been engaged in all manner of projects but not found time to blog.

In truth, it’s largely been down to two things: too much work/too little time and a want for things to write about.

When I rebranded the blog with my own name (after years of blogging over at Smile Through It), I intended it to be my “professional” home – a place where the real me was hidden beneath the façade of my work. Over the last week or so I’ve realised that this is far from the right approach. My life is inextricably linked to my work and my work is fed, nutured and grown from my life.

It’s pointless for me to try and separate who I am from what I do, so from here on out I’m returning this blog to covering all the things you may have read on the old blog, but with the added bonus of the increase in work meaning I’ve got more thoughts to share on what I do as well as who I am and how I feel.

On a shoot I did last week as an Assistant Producer on a UK Film Council/Screen East Digital Short, I met a girl who made me realise just how important it is not to deny yourself or who you are. People gain inspiration from many areas of life and through interaction with many people. One of the things that drove me to continue with Smile Through It when I frequently wanted to give up and shut up was the comments and emails I received from numerous people telling me just how much they valued reading my experiences.

It’s not for me to say whether I’m an inspirational person, but if this blog can be of value to anyone at all – including me, as a place to air my thoughts – then it’s a worthwhile place to have around. If you like reading it, please come back more often (I promise I will, too), and if you don’t then don’t worry about it – it’s just not for you.

Life is about doing what you want, how you want, when you want. I’m fortunate to be doing things I love every single day, driven by the knowledge that someone died to give me this chance. I vow, here and now, to neither waste that chance, nor deny it in the hope of presenting a “different” me.

As a good friend of mine is wont to say, onwards and upwards!