Blank Slate

This year’s Blank Slate scheme is now taking applications. Read the Guidelines to make sure you’re eligible. As the deadline 30th November it now means my writing break is over. Hoorah!!!

Nottingham Media Academy Hollywood Scriptwriting session

Attended a session put on at Broadway Cinema as a member of the Nottingham Media Academy. It was billed as Hollywood Screenwriting-Jumping the First Hurdle and was delivered by scriptreader James Barlett. Barlett has lived in America for the last five years. He delivered his 13 top tips to avoid. He said he was motivated to write this after the scripts he received from the UK compared badly to the American scripts. Not in content, character or story but in the little details that acculate to a ‘no’. Barlett echoed what has been written and spoken about elsewhere in that these executives jobs are to say no. Saying no is less risky than saying yes and committing, thousands, hundreds of thousands and/or millions to a project that doesn’t work and so exposing them as the one who said yes. Only yesterday I was reading the same idea allegedly as spoken by a Channel Four executive.

I’m not going to outline all the tips here as the session had a charge associated with it so presumably James got paid to deliver it but the tips went from 1- spelling, punctuation etc to 12- Transitions to Nudges, jokes, prompts to the reader.

Barlett reads 500 scripts a year probably equivalent to all the scripts sent to the regional screen agencies in the uk so this process means that anything that takes him out of the story is a negative mark, not necessarily a dealbreaker but they accumulate negatively against the script.

Vincente Minnelli biog

Finished Greatest SciFi Films (Movies sorry. It’s American in sensibility) Never Made yesterday (author David Hughes). What struck me, as ever when reading these types of books is how difficult it is to get work made. I pitched for a SciFi film a couple of years ago which I got some support to develop as a feature through a BBC WritersRoom and Royal Court scheme.  I was clear that the project was very ambitious and that it required a ‘leap of faith’ by the commissioners to move it on. The discussion about the films were really more  about ‘development hell’  as opposed to films that were never made so the different levels of leaps of faith required to get work made struck me. This isn’t really about the funding levels of the projects the book describes but more how work is commissioned and developed.

The other major thing that I’m reflecting on is how difficult it is to get a script that ‘works’. This challenge is what I love about writing. The script is both a technical document and a literary piece of work and getting this balance ‘to work’ on the page is the motivation that keeps me writing.

Now as to the title of this post- I have moved on to now reading Emanuel Levy’s biog about Vincente Minnelli. He always struck me as someone who tried to make ‘different’ films inside a very particular creative system.

Romanzo Criminale

Started watching Romanzo Criminale last night. I seem to remember it was reviewed well but couldn’t watch it. It seemed overly derivative of gangster films to me and very disjojnted so I bailed out. Unusual in that I normally watch all films to the bitter end but didn’t have the patience last night. The Consequences of Love was a much more interesting angle to approach these types of stories I found.

Boat Gypsies Reading- Thoughts

Boat Gypsies was presented last night at the Momentum:Nottingham Festival organised by Theatre Writing Partnership.

I didn’t feel it went as well as the showing in July but this is why I like theatre. The five shows were presented and I felt the shows after the interval, including Boat Gypsies didn’t play as well as before. My cast were the same, Ivan Cuttings Directed once again, traverse again but I felt the energy after the interval resulted in a slightly different show. Their were small changes to the script but everything was pretty much the same. So the audience, the audience, the audience.

What really did work was the traverse. Traverse in the Nottingham playhouse was a new experience for me. The space was very tight but this worked really well as they no longer needed to ‘act’ the limited space. Their proximity was also very good.

Fela’a Wives-reading thoughts

Woke up this morning with a clear idea of how to approach the next draft. The feedback after last night’s performance at Nottm playhouse was positive. The characters seemed vivid and were the thing that got the most response from the audience. The thoughts this morning were about clarifiying the story. Will reflect a while before committing to the next draft after convo with Kate Chapman and Bianca Winter at TWP.

Ending Panel

Enjoyed the Momentum: Northampton readings on the 24th. They took place at the Royal and Derngate theatre Northampton. My monologue piece Ending Panel was presented as part of the Young Britain season. The actor got the energy of the piece and did a good job. The piece got lots of positive comments from the locals. The specific Northampton references to places and postcodes in a way that people recognised and identified with, It’s language, particularly seemed to strike a chord. People kept complimenting my on how I ‘captured’ the speech. I kept reminding them it was the edirol R09 record button that did that. As I’ve posted before about 90% of the script is directly from the young peoples words, almost always used in context also.
Some light talks about whether the piece can be expanded from it’s 15 mins to a larger piece. I am confident this can be easily and creatively done to make an interesting piece of work. We’ll see what happens over the next few weeks and months.

Fela’s Wives- Rehearsal

First day of two days of rehearsal over. Met the cast (I was late), made lots of decisions. Cut twenty pages. Still not sure what I feel about the piece. See what happens with it in front of an audience.

Fela’s Wives- Rehearsal

Went to Africa House on Handel Street, Nottingham to speak about the Fela’s Wives reading on Monday.

Spoke to a couple of committee members about the project in an attempt to get them to speak to their members. The project seems to speak to their constituency of Nigerians but as the project is also about empowerment and responsibility it will also speak to others. The opportunity for the Nottingham playhouse to also perhaps get a different type of audience is also there. The publicity material shows my inability to decide on a project name as there are earlier publicity material and then later, later draft publicity material. Not entirely happy with any title as yet but we’ll see.

I was also keen to stress the opportunity for feedback from the audience after this first public performance.

Rehearsal takes place this Sunday and Monday at the Broadway cinema.

blatant plug

check it out and buy a ticket