Archives: tips

The Red Planet Prize, a free scriptwriting competition looking for the best new writers in UK TV drama run by Tony Jordan’s Red Planet Pictures and Kudos is once again open for submissions.

I was a finalist last year and even though, for various reasons, I was unable to attend a lot of the workshops and mentoring sessions, I learned more from this one competition than anything else since I’ve been writing.

Here are my Top 5 Tips for becoming a Red Planeteer:

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Welcome to another new LOWDOWN, that part of the Production Office that brings you tips and tricks on all the tools you need to enhance your career as a filmmaker and creative.

Today, it’s Productivity.

Anyone who follows my blog will know I’m pretty hot on productivity. For far too long I spent my days being busy, but rarely productive. Since harnessing some of the tools I’m talking about today and putting some best practices of getting things done into place, I’ve become much more focused, much more productive and much more successful.

Let’s have a look, then, at some of the tools you can use to make your life easier.

EVERNOTE

Evernote comes at the top of the list today for two reasons: number one, it’s the tool I was most recently introduced to and two, it’s the tool I now find the most invaluable.

Evernote is a desktop and web-based app that you can also get for almost all smart phones.  It’s free to get started, but if you go over a certain storage limit you have to start paying.  That said, I’ve used it quite a lot and still not exceeded my free allowance.

What Evernote does is to collect together all those bits and pieces of things on the web that you want to take note of, as well as allowing you to compile your own To Do lists, projects and other notes.  It’s the simplest, cheapest and easiest way of keeping track of just about everything you need to remember. The Evernote logo isn’t an elephant for nothing.

THINGS

The second tool that works hard to keep you on time and on-topic is Things. The biggest down side? It’s Mac-only. So all you Windows dinosaurs can’t take advantage of it. You also have to pay around £30 for it, which puts it a step below Evernote to begin with.

Once you get past those elements, though, Things is brilliant for tracking To Do’s, project files, notes and reminders. Most usefully, though – and what helps to elevate Things to a point worth paying for – is it’s interaction and syncability1 with iCal and iPhone. If you use Apple’s MobileMe syncing solution to share your calendar across all your home computers, like I do, Things swaps and shares data seamlessly with not only all of your computers, but your phone as well. An invaluable way of keeping track of everything you need to know when you need to know it.

BASECAMP

There are numerous online project management tools that help you and all your collaborators to keep track of all the strands that make up your project, but the best one I’ve found (and used) is Basecamp.

Unlike other, equally useful online tools like Huddle, it’s Basecamp’s pricing structure that really makes it stand out. You pay a flat monthly fee from $24 (£15) and upwards that allows unlimited numbers of people to join your project and work on things with you. Huddle, by contrast, charges you per user per month, meaning a major film or creative project would quickly rack up sizable fees.

Basecamp2 is best used for sharing documents and keeping track of project timelines and goals in a way that everyone involved can see. Not only is that a great motivational tool – if everyone know what you should be doing, you’d better be doing it – but also a great way of making sure key things don’t get missed and that everyone knows the timeline their working to and the goals their aiming for.

There are hundreds of different tools of productivity for you to explore, but I’d suggest you limit yourself to trying one or two at a time, otherwise you risk undoing all their good work by spending all day getting to know them and setting them up as opposed to using them to help get your work done.

For more o productivity, keep an eye on my blog here, as well as checking out the99percent and lifehacker, my two online bibles of productivity tips and tools.

1. new word alert! [↩]
2. and, in fact, all online project management tools [↩]

Starting a debate is a great way to engage your creative muscles. Not only does it force you to examine your own perspectives, it also opens you up to taking on board new ideas.

Great debates create new angles to examine problems and new ways to solve them.

As a writer, stirring debate can also help you to write both sides of an argument. I frequently start writing scenes between two characters and realise that it’s totally one-sided because I agree strongly with one of the characters. By entering a debate with my friends and Twitter buddies, I can get different views and arguments that help me round out my characters in a much more successful way.

What debates have you used to aid your writing or creativity? How did you get them started – is the interactivity of Twitter the best way to go, or the public discussion of Facebook?

This week I discovered the many pros and the major curse of staying regular.

Since re-branding my blog1, I’ve been blogging to a steady schedule of Monday, Wednesday, Friday for new, authored content, with Pick of the Web linked-content on a Tuesday and Thursday.

Last week, I didn’t blog on Thursday and Friday as I was busy taking stock of things in my life. In those two days, my readership on the blog halved. Just three days when the blog was devoid of new content.

But worse than that, it’s stayed at a lower ebb and is only now (after 3 days back on the regular schedule) starting to pick back up towards its previous numbers.

Blogging regularly is great in terms of building an audience; if people know when you’re posting, they know when to come looking and they know what to expect from your blog. But beware of committing yourself to a schedule of posts you can’t sustain.

Much better to follow a simple, one-post-a-week formula (such as that employed brilliantly by Clive Davies-Frayne on Film Utopia), than it is to attempt daily posts that you can’t keep up, or to release new blog content in a scattershot manner whenever you feel like or are able to write it.

Work out what you can realistically achieve, define your schedule and stick to it. Staying regular is the key to creating value for the people who read your blog as religiously as you write it.

1. and myself, to a certain extent [↩]

Writer/Director1 John August has put this post up on his blog today (or probably yesterday, US-time) linking through to an original pitch document from Gene Roddenberry for STAR TREK.

The document itself is well worth a read, for insight if nothing else, but JA’s comments and thoughts are equally valuable. More than that, though, he once again shows his generosity in helping writers understand the process by linking through to three similar documents he created for un-produced TV shows.

Not many writers would have the confidence to share what is, essentially, rejected work with a wider audience. JA’s willingness to open his work to writers across the world shows not only his confidence and talent, but perhaps that we all could be a little more open in order to learn more about ourselves and others.

Read his full post here.

1. and London Screenwriters’ Festival Hollywood Hookup guest [↩]

My most productive periods tend to be first thing in the morning and late afternoon/early evening1. I suffer terribly – like many people – with a post-lunch/early afternoon slump.

Having battled it, ignored it, slept through it, worked through it and, frequently, failed to do anything with it, I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way to beat the slump is to embrace it.

Whenever your slump may come, using it wisely is the key to keeping productive all day. My slump is spent catching up on the blogs and websites that I like to read every day, a bit of conversation on Twitter and back-and-forthing on Facebook.

Finding something that’s useful and productive as well as being light on the brain is key to avoiding the loss of two hours of your day to your dip.

1. although I have to say, when I’m writing I’m rather prone to pulling hyper-productive all-nighters [↩]

I posted on Friday that you shouldn’t start anything on a Monday because it’s generally a mess of doing things other than those on your To Do’s.

Case in point: today I knew I had all morning taken up with a schools project I’m working on at the moment, then a meeting in MK at 3pm and one immediately afterwards.  I knew I had a couple of hours in the middle, so I’d scheduled some time to make some calls and catch up on the weekend email.

It’s now 8.45pm and I’ve not only haven’t I made any of the calls, answered (or even read in detail) any email and, which is even more of a crime1, is the fact that I’m only just getting around to my Monday blog post.

So, in an odd sort of way, what I’ve achieved today is prove myself 100% right. Sometimes it’s no fun being right.

1. in my mind, anyway, INCEPTION-style [↩]

When we take on new things – from launching a new project to starting a new health kick – we almost universally choose to kick off “on Monday”.

Monday is convenient because it’s the start of the week and we imagine we’ll be as fresh as a daisy and raring to go.

Ask around, though, and general wisdom will suggest people hate Mondays1. Why choose to start something fresh and exciting on such an energy-draining day?

If you genuinely want to start something new, start it today. Or Wednesday. Or Tuesday. Or any day of the week that will allow you to start with a bang. Don’t put it off ’til Monday.

1. try Googling ‘Monday’ and see how many of the results are positive [↩]

Or cheque, for us Englanders.

This post from Seth Godin1 sums up very neatly some of the ideas and concepts about ourselves and our potential I’m working on at the moment.

A check in your wallet does you very little good. It represents opportunity, sure, but not action.  Most of us are carrying around a check, an opportunity to make an impact, to do the work we’re capapble of, to ship the art that would make a difference.

Seth Godin, sethsblog.com

1. one of the few people on earth always worth listening to [↩]