Archives: Writing

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.

Thursday 1 April not only saw far too many people sucked in by (and irrationally annoyed by) Philip Bloom‘s masterful April Fool on Canon DSLRs, but also the launch of the month-long Twitter-based #scriptfrenzy.

In essence, the plan for Script Frenzy is to churn out 100 pages of an original screenplay in the 30 days of April.  But just how useful is it to hammer out a first draft in a frenzy?  I took some time to weigh up my own personal pros and cons:

PROs

We all like a deadline.  Actually, most writers hate deadlines, but it can’t be denied that setting one focuses the mind.  And by sharing that deadline with all the other “frenziers” out there, not to mention all of your other Twitter followers, you’re binding yourself into a loose contract to say you’ll at least have something on paper at the beginning of May.

Sometimes it’s good just to write.  Far too many writers – especially those just starting out who are struggling to find the time for wordsmithing alongside busy and demanding day-jobs – put off starting that new piece because there are “other things” in the way.  By forcing yourself to sit down and hammer out an average of just 4 pages a day for a 1st draft, you get those creative juices flowing.

CONs

Thinking time. Former Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies talks about the majority of his writing time being time spent in “the Maybe” – that etheral neverland of thoughts, shapes and possibilities where stories solidify and conform in the brain before you actually sit down to hammer out the pages on Final Draft.  Similarly, Paul Schrader, writer of modern classics like Taxi Driver and Raging Bull, has a Maybe that exists in his meticulous outlining and documenting of the entire story prior to the 1st draft.  How do you account for thinking time in a frenzied rush to hammer out your 100 pages? Do you need to have put that all in place before April 1st, or do you build that into your month-of-crazy?

Arbitrary page counts. Yes, a feature film script should come in somewhere around 100 pages, but – more importantly – a script needs to be the right length to tell the story, whether that be 75 pages or, God forbid, 150 pages.  100 is a good guideline, but is it an appropriate target?

Forcing the words out. All screenplays need a little time to digest as you go.  Undoubtedly, sometimes you do just need to sit down and hammer your way through a stumbling block, but other times you need to be free to step back and recognise when simply bashing the keys is wasted time until you’ve worked out why the scene isn’t working for you.

I don’t have anything against #scriptfrenzy and certainly not against those taking part. But I know that it’s not the way that I can sit and hammer out a first draft of anything. I need the time to consider it, the time to plan it and then to set myself a deadline that’s reachable at a daily page count that works for me, my working time and my goals for the script.

How about you? Are you a frenzier, a plodder or a somewhere-in-the-middle?

Since the back-end of last year, I’ve been working on a new screenplay for an ultra-low-budget film with just two characters and a powerful, emotional love story.

It’s now at that stage with which many writers will be familiar – the skeleton is there, the bones and muscles, but it still needs that little something to really form it into something special.

What I’m battling with now is the classic filmmaker’s dilemma of just how commercial do you make a script for a micro-budget indie? I know that the market for the film isn’t going to be vast, but I also know that a couple of simple – but major – tweaks could open it out to a wider and more passionate market. If nothing else I’m confident these changes would give it a much better chance on the festival circuit.

The trouble is, I don’t know how big a compromise this is. I’m not as familiar with the environment I’d be re-setting the film in and although I think the story would work just as well, am I betraying both my instincts and my original story in pushing for a bigger audience? Or am I doing the underlying story a disservice in sticking to my guns and potentially reducing the market for the finished film?

As it stands I’m torn between the two, hence this little cry for help. At what point does targeting a market becoming selling out?

A few weeks ago now, I started talking to Matt Shea of Swanky Reviews about joining their team as a UK/European writer for their reviews site.

Swanky is a reviews site with a difference – it’s not solely focused on what’s hitting the screens or the streets this week, but rather in building up a catalogue of quality reviews of great – and not so great – movies, so that any time you’re stuck wondering which DVD to choose from or which of the movies on your satellite channel to pick you can refer to SwankyReviews.com for advice, guidance and heavily-subjective opinions.

None of us at Swanky pretends to be the ultimate in film reviewing wisdom, but we share with our readers what we like, what we don’t and why – then we leave you to decide whether you want to believe us, disagree with us, watch it or skip it.

So head on over and check it out at http://www.swankyreviews.com. You can also follow new posts & reviews via the site’s Twitter feed or subscribe to the RSS.

As I said on Wednesday, we’re going to need your help to make this film and achieve what we want to achieve. That means cold, hard cash – £25,000 of it in fact.

It’s a huge amount, but it’s worth it. To be considered for Oscars and the like, shooting on film is really the best way to go – it’s not dead and it never will be. More than that, though, as a calling card movie for both myself and the people who end up coming on board to help, it’s important to show the world that we can handle the big boys’ toys.

More than money, as I said before, is support – and as I know now, support comes in many fashions. I will be asking everyone who works on this film to give their time for free. That includes the military adviser who helped me write the screenplay and their commitment to assisting us throughout production.

So far they have been absolutely brilliant. Not only were they instrumental in the creation of the script, but they have also offered us the use of a fantastic location to shoot the military battle scenes in as well as full technical support and advice throughout preproduction and production.

That should hopefully tell anyone umm-ing and ahh-ing over this project something significant – these guys like it. A lot.

With military backing and the financial support of not only you guys but also some bigger sponsors I’m hoping to pull in, we can truly make this a film to knock people’s socks off.

There’ll be more on how you can help in non-financial ways here next week, but until then have a root around the sofa and see what you come up with. You can find out all about your options and rewards for chipping in here.

After all the to-ing and fro-ing, the waiting, the build-up, the Big Secret Project is finally here.

Oscar

BAFTA

As many of you will know, a good friend of mine set out to make a short film when I was waiting for my transplant. Gone Fishing eventually reached the final 7 in the shortlist for the Oscars, some going for a little film made with the help of friends, colleagues and people he didn’t even know at the start of the project. Shot on 35mm film and finished to the highest of professional standards, Chris’ film has won far too many international festivals for me to count. If you visit his blog, you’ll be able to find out all about it and the festivals.

By far the biggest thing to come out of Gone Fishing for Chris, though, is the launch-pad it has given him into the film industry. From taking meetings in LA to signing with an agency and manager, Chris is living the life he (and I) has always dreamed of.

When I sat at home an mulled over my options for how to get where I want to go when I don’t know how long I have to achieve my goals, Gone Fishing and Chris’ experience thrust themselves into my consciousness. I’ve always wanted to be a filmmaker, I’ve always wanted to make films. It’s that simple. So why sit around thinking about it when you can actually go out and do it?

And given the blessing I’ve been given – the most wonderful gift any person or family can give to anyone else – it seems even more important to push myself to achieve the very best that I can. No middle ground, no soft-peddalling. If I’m going to do this, I’m reaching as high as I can. As a wise man once said, “Reach for the stars and you may just reach the ceiling, reach for the ceiling and you will barely get off the ground.”

Every journey, as they say, starts with a single step. And this is it, “Remembrance”.

Remembrance is a 15 minute short film about war, family and memory through the eyes of three generations of a single British family. It’s chock full of action, carefully-crafted dialogue and packs a real emotional punch. It’s designed to showcase all of the things I can do as a director and writer, working with big names (if things go to plan), working with children and young actors, directing action scenes and working with stuntmen and stunt arrangers as well as working on a smaller scale with intimate dialogue scenes.

As I said when I first sat down to write about it: this one’s good. It’s really good. And I believe it can go all the way. I intend to fully document the process on here for everyone to read and for filmmakers to learn from and I will shortly be enlisting you all for your help in creating this piece of historic cinema. It may not rock the entire world of film, but it will turn my world upside down and become a launching point not just for my career, but hopefully for everyone involved.

Keep checking back for progress reports and on Friday I’ll tell you all how you can help.

I will update the rest of the blog at some point in the near future, but today has been too good to pass up the chance of blogging about it immediately.

As I’ve rather cryptically mentioned over the last couple of weeks I started writing a project that I’m really keen on. Many of you will now know the name of Chris Jones, a friend of mine who set out in 2007 to make an Oscar-winning short film. Many scoffed, but all were eating humble pie when he was short-listed down to the final 7. Now, that short (Gone Fishing, buy it here, it’s awesome) has landed Chris with all sorts of meetings and potential jobs as well as a top-flight manager Stateside.

Never one to re-invent the wheel when others have ploughed the furrow previously (nor, clearly, afraid to mix a metaphor), I thought I’d see if I could write something that might hit the same kind of notes and be the same kind of showcase as Gone Fishing has been for Chris.

So I started writing one night and came up with a story I liked. I sent it to my brother to look at and he liked it. More than that, he sent me 2 pages of notes to bring it up to scratch and then today we’ve spent the afternoon working through the script and really ironing out the detail of some very heavy military sequences.

What I have now is the first official draft of what I believe could become my calling card to the industry. *EGO ALERT, please look away now* I’ve known for a long time that I have the talent to succeed in this business, but I’ve never quite worked out how to convince other people of what I know I can do myself.*EGO OVER* This is it. This is the script that can change everything for me – I 100% believe that.

More than that, my brother likes it so much he’s putting the wheels into motion to get me the kind of support I could only dream of to help get this made. I can’t go into detail here as it’s in way to early a stage, but mark my words – keep your eyes out for Remembrance. It’s going to rock your socks.

I was up middlingly-early this morning to drop K at the station to go in for an exam – she’s all done with lectures for the year now, just exams and assignments left – then home to go through the minor email backlog that I’ve built up over the last two days.

That cleared, I jump in the car and head to Toddington to the house of one of the writers whose pieces I’m directing for the MKT Snippets showcase. We’d planned a read-through so we can all meet – KH (the writer), myself and the cast – and go through the script to polish it up. I was a little concerned about some of the dialogue but actually most of it read fine and the bits that didn’t KH was really open to changing and adapting into the right language for the characters as the actors felt it.

Lots of valuable work on one script done, I came home to try to collar the cast for the second piece, to discover that one of them had pulled out and the other we STILL hadn’t heard from. The last remaining cast member has been absolutely awesome in trying to find us replacements, but it’s not easy at such short notice. Here’s hoping.

The rest of the afternoon and evening was spending tidying up the application and cracking on with the rewrites. I finished the major load of script work by the early evening, had a break for dinner and chill time, then went back in to redrafting one of my shorts and polishing another pair of scripts.

It was another late night/early morning finish, but I’m really happy with where I’ve got the scripts to. The short – the ambitious project I was talking about having written a couple of weeks ago – will need a further tweak for dialogue and authenticity, but I’m really excited by the whole thing now. I’ve got lost of projects which are really getting my creative juices flowing at the moment and it feels fantastic – I suddenly feel like I know what I’m doing and precisely where I want to go rather than sitting feeling open to all possibilities. I still want to work in multiple mediums, but I know what I want to do within them now, rather than having aspirations all over the place.

Now I just need to apply myself and push forward to get myself where I want to go. To borrow from a friend, “Onwards and upwards!”

It’s interesting how you end up perceiving time when your wake up calls move all over the place. I was up at 7am again today, which feels like an early start. When K is in the middle of a uni semester, though, it’s actually an hour-and-a-quarter’s lie in if we get to wake up at 7am. Strange.

Anyway, it was another early start this morning to get to the Grove for a short follow up to the first aid course in January to learn the specifics of paediatric first aid. We all expected the course to be a full day, but it turned out to be only a half-day, which was a nice surprise, although equally frustrating as I’d just paid £4 to park when I could have spent £1.50.

Still, post-course I headed straight home and settled down to my Arts Bursary application. MK Community Foundation offers an annual grant of £10,000 to an artist to help them develop their practice and create opportunities to earn their income from their art forms. The application calls for examples of your work, so while I had finished DVDs of my film work and some really nice photography to give them, I realised hastily that I needed to do a re-draft of one of my screenplays for my writing submission, as well as a polish on two others.

This afternoon, then, was dedicated to pushing on with the redrafting of the script. It has to be said there weren’t a huge number of wholesale changes to the script, but there was a lot of re-jigging and dialogue revision to be done. I worked on it solidly from 2pm to around 7pm with a couple of breaks, then settled on the sofa with K to chill and watch some TV.

When K called it a night I was back at the computer, getting to around halfway through the screenplay by the time I called it a night around 2am. Late night writing suits me, but it’s a pain in the proverbial if you’ve got things to do the next day. Luckily, I don’t have a heap of stuff on tomorrow, other than forging on through the redraft and application.

After a personally-enforced Easter away from all things work-related, a blissful 4 days off, I spent the large part of last night sitting awake in the lounge unable to sleep. Frustrating isn’t the word.

Still, having been mulling over a new short film project in my head for a little while, I finally managed to get it down on paper. A 13-page stream of constant writing from 3am-5am got me through the whole thing in one shot and I’m actually really proud of the result. I’ve got to assess the options with it now, but I’m likely to “go big” with it – watch this space for grand plans to follow.

In the rest of the world, I slept for a grand total of about 3 hours between 6am and 9am before taking K to the doc’s in Northampton where I intended to work while I waited but ended up listening to a Radio 4 doc on Tommy Cooper instead – it’s almost work! Also chatted to my bro about advising me on certain parts of the new script, so I’ll print him a copy and drop it to him tonight.

When we got home I took the camera kit down to a friend who’s looking to borrow it for a donation to LLTGL so he could do a camera test with his Red Rock 35mm lens adapter and we were all impressed with the results. While I was there I also caught up with the guy who was on board to produce my last short before the casting when tits-up and it fell through. We chatted about our respective current projects and got into a great creative groove, which was awesome. I’ve not really got many friends in the same fields as me – particularly filmmaking and writing – so it was really nice to have a chance to sit and bounce some ideas around with people who think on the same wavelength and are happy to brainstorm ideas without thoughts to practicalities and everything else.

When I got back it was into full helpful-boyfriend mode, helping K encode and burn a DVD for one of her Uni coursework pieces to be handed in tomorrow, before bathing, shaving and dressing to go out.

My bro wanted to thank us all as a family for keeping him semi-sane with gifts and letters while he was away, so he took the five of us (him, me, K and the ‘rents) out to Loch Fyne, the seafood and oyster restaurant in Woburn. I say “new” in the title as it’s not a place I’ve been before, but it’s a real family favourite for everyone else.

Unhappily, many of the best things on the menu are on the big list of Forbidden Items for me post-tx, including Oysters and Mussels, the latter being one of my absolute favourites. I did, however, enjoy a fantatic meal of Squid followed by Bream, the latter being served almost plain such was the quality of the fish and the cooking.

We may also have enjoyed the odd tipple or two.

Back home after dinner, I finished shouting at iMovie (piece of rubbish) and wishing I had taught K how to use Final Cut Pro to edit her vid on, then manage to get it burnt and give her essay a quick proof-reader’s once-over before printing, binding, filing and packing for the morning before bed.