Continuity

Well I’ve started creating Breakdown sheets today for the script – all 70 of them – or something close to that number.  We’re shooting our horror film out of sequence so continuity is vitally important in all aspects of the films development and production.  But when it comes to shooting it’s extremely important.  The idea of the Breakdown sheet is to make it easier for all members of the crew to know exactly what’s going on and exactly where we’ve come from (in the script) and where we’re going to (in the script).  The more eyes on a job, as I learned at Aardman – the more likely problems are to be solved and the less likely that there is a large problem to appear.

We have three weeks left and as Producer the brunt of the work has hit me.  I finally learned to delegate this week!  It was that or sink (sink or swim being the phrase here), but even with a small number of PA’s that was easier said than done.  We have about four or five PA’s for DeadTime.  I guess the ideal number would be ten but we can’t really afford to feed them all!  Saying that we’ve been very lucky, we have an exceptional crew.  Ed Wills is creating some fantastically magical (to me at least) gory horror pieces for the SFX side of the film.  Our Makeup Artist Michelle Crooks is delivering on continuity and has managed to get a sponsorship deal of sorts while we shoot the film for makeup – go Michelle!

So with such a brilliant crew it obviously makes a world of difference and coming back to continuity it assists with this no end.  We could have had people who lacked initiative and who basically weren’t very good but it’s certainly the reverse.

So now it comes down to the last three weeks.  Hectic is the wrong word and my typing speed must be way up at 95 words per minute.  Haven’t had such a big project like this since I marketed my book or finished my degree last year – so I am enjoying it, because I like to stretch myself to be a better person and I feel that situations and jobs such as the Producer’s job, make you come up with solutions to a variety of problems.  Not everyone would push themselves to be a better person on four hours sleep, but I’ll certainly want to, because for me that’s more important than just doing the job – I really mean that.

Best get back to the 55 emails I had today and see what else needs attending to!

Don’t forget to check out www.deadtimefilms.com and join our facebook group!

And the most important thing…

If you’re going to make a film, it’s got to be diplomacy, or excellent communication skills.  I just read a blog entry on Chris Jone’s website about a Producer who was talking about many of these elements, but for sales and distribution.  Regardless they’re the same, how can you get as much as possible without paying for it, or by providing something but not at standard retail price.  Maybe that’s just good selling, but I think in Film especially it’s a whole art form to itself.
In my eyes the reasons a lot of would be authors tend to fall short is because they live outside of what I’d call this diplomatic mindset.  I’ve nearly finished reading the JFK biography at a whopping 650 pages and it’s enlightened me that’s for sure.  One thing JFK always did was negotiate around the issue, whilst presenting the facts, saying what he wanted (especially when it came to Moscow) and then seeing what he could do with his charm by his side to move things along.  It worked better with some than others Krushchev being an absolute nightmare to charm.  But regardless, it worked on the population of the world, for no matter where he went, communist or capitalist he drew massive crowds, as did his wife Jackie.  More to the point this man was a fantastic diplomat and of course after learning about WW I and WW II he knew to his regret (his brothers death) how important it was to make sure that diplomacy came foremost and when every minister for defense wanted to use nuclear weapons it was sort of nice that he was around really.  Jokes aside he was the best diplomat at one of easily the worst times.

So if only would be authors would step into his shoes, or anyone else who’s been successful for that matter they’d see a great deal.  I think some of this can be taught, a good friend of mine uses the phrase “look into people” instead of “look upto people”.  What he really means, as an expansion, is that you should get to know people, get inside their lives, don’t harass them but build a friendship with them – then strengthen that friendship and genuinely enjoy each others company.  Sometimes that doesn’t work, but I firmly believe that for 75% of people it would work if they just applied charisma to the diplomatic relation for example that they needed to have with a literary agent.  One case in point is Tess Geritsen, so sick of being ignored she made friends with a Literary Agent (In new york I believe) and only after this time did she find herself being published.
I’ve done similar things myself in the recent past and you’d be surprised what it can garner.  After all the person who knows your industry is a literary agent, or someone who actually sells work on.

So back to film.  Diplomacy is crucial – as ever it’s not the only requirement, it never is, but it’s a major one at that.  Getting it right however, if there is such a thing at all – let’s just say there is, gives it its own prestige.

Dominic Took

It’s been awhile

Busy would be an understatement.  I never knew casting for a film would be so much fun, nor so much work haha.  But it’s been great, a very enjoyable process that’s not actually quite over.  We have a fairly large cast (at least in my terms) of about 12 and three or four of those are complicated multi layered roles that required really good actors.

ASoA

I was following A Swarm of Angels recently (I’ve been trying to remember the website for months).  ASoA is the internet’s answer to real filmaking.  With a consortium of individuals acting together and voting on various parts and elements of the film, they also decide what to green light, who will be cast and what will be made.  It’s a highly collaborative process and I believe a British invention, which I have to admit is nice to know (I always thought it was american).  What happens is that ASoA get people to put in £25 into the program and from this £1,000,000 fund (50,000 consortium members I believe) they all take a part in the films production.  In theory that could make for an amazing film, but the organisation will have to be extremely good to pull it off.

Say Hello To the Devil

In the meantime I’m going to be starting on a new short film sometime soon (can’t say what) and my screenplay Autumn Leaves is finished.  I’m just getting feedback at the moment from actors and various other people to see how good it is – seeing as it’s my first screenplay.  That and I’ve been adding to my new novel The Blue Gemstone, which is the third novel in the Acias Series about Gracious and his ever expanding travels through the universe (No not Dr Who).  It’s a penultimate novel where nearly everything comes together, so it’s certainly an exciting write so far.

Until next time happy filmmaking!

The Path of Gracious – Great Comments from PYR Imprint

I finally got a reply from an editor in the US about book two in the Acias Series “The Path of Gracious”.  I finished this book at Christmas 08 but had been waiting patiently to hear back.

It does appear that the story is very intriguing, so that’s the first plus.  Secondly he liked the overall idea, thought it was very original which is certain to be a plus as time goes on.

Book three is incorporating more and more of those ideas and I think it’s far better in it’s written style too.  So with some luck someone may take number 3 and I can finally start earning some money from it, seven books later!!  Shame it wasn’t this year, the epic fantasy market is going mad in America, probably due to Twilight I guess, but they’re selling fast.

Must get book three done when I get some time, hopefully after we finish filming DeadTime.

Manchester Short Fiction Prize 2009

Well I just found out my entry to the Short Fiction Prize 09 has been logged and checked.

I can’t wait to see what comes out of it, I sent my best work anyway a short called “His Futile Guilt” I wrote in 08 and recently read at a festival in Cheshire.

It’s been very well recieved so far and the cash prize is massive so it would be fantastic to win – not to mention I could do with a bit of money!  The writer still looking for a job!

Well I’m finalising a script at the moment for our Production Company so I best get back to it!

Here’s hoping it wows the judges.

It’s

Only recently have I noticed how many people don’t appear to use “it’s” properly.  Now I know it’s not necessarily crucial, but being dyslexic I had to rigourously learn out all my incorrect grammar and mentally force myself to apply the rule each time I wrote something (trust me that slowed down my writing).

I just find it weird how many people get it wrong, but maybe that’s the benefit of dyslexia.  I even know that “anymore” isn’t really a word, the americans use it as “any more” but really ideally it’s not actually a word at all.  Saying that a recent copy editor reminded me that when writing it’s best to remove all extraneous words that would otherwise clutter up a good sentence.

I mean there are loads of books on “how to write well”, I have a rare one here by William Zinsser – even though I choose not to read the whole thing just in case it makes me a grammar whore.

Goes to show though – I don’t even have a degree in english!  Just another way for me to remind the world that academia will not make an excellent well rounded individual with the skills they need to go out into the world and prosper – all that comes later if at all.

I just finished a screenplay I’ve been working on called Autumn Leaves, it’s contemporary drama with a supernatural twist.  Hoping to sell it but I don’t know how saleable it will be.  Either way I believe in it and for that reason alone I’m going to see if anyones interested…UK first.

Dead Time

Well we’re full into pre-production on our horror feature Dead Time.  We did a script reading on Sunday and made quite a few changes to the scenes and ideas but not the structure per say.

Really looking forward to the challenge of the whole process, I really do think it’s going to be taxing on our energy levels and there’s no doubt these will be long days, prior to, whilst and post shooting.  I’ve been reading “The Guerrilla Film Makers Handbook” – 2000 Edition.  Even if it’s quite old, it’s a brilliant book, highly recommended.

I’ve also bought “The Pitch” just to go over my pitch ability and see if I can glean any ideas.  It’s put together by two prominent UK producers who’ve done very well for themselves.

Then there’s “The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver” by Syd Field.  From what I can read I’ve been looking for this for ages, it’s a SUPER cheap book – being a publisher I recognised that straight away.  But even so the binding is excellent – goes to show what a cheap print run can do if you can get it done with a good printer.  It seems to be less based on technique and more based on “if this happens, what would you do?”.

All this and I appear to have Swine Flu lol.  But it’s not that bad at the moment, I just have a really high temp after eating (oddly enough) and I did have some aches like a nervous system attack the other day.  Hopefully it’ll pass as the work load has increased!  Funding applications to be written and much more!

I also intend to put up contracts and documents onto this site, once I know they’ve been as useful as I first expected.  I’ve found finding these documents on the net a bloody nightmare (especailly for the UK).  So hopefully I can remedy that (when I get time).

Gone Fishing

Found a great blog today via a online contact – he’s the scriptwriter Danny Stack, the blog in question is Living Spirit. It’s about a company who have put together various short films and and the blog is about their efforts to get them out there into the world.

They’ve got a letter from one of their scriptwriters on there, actually a script editor. But it’s a really important letter, it defines something that I myself began to experience after I began meditating every day for nearly a year. This script editor was working on a short film and the actress died suddenly of Lukemia over roughly a few months. It shocked the whole crew greatly, but this particular guy found that the money and the awards just weren’t worth it – weren’t important.

He ended up finding contentment in his family, his kids and writing. You should read the blog itself, as it does a better job of explaining the ins and outs. But after meditating I experienced the same thing, contentment. Sounds great right? Well it is, but it has a downside. Your drive is diminished in anything that doesn’t provide you with a truly worthwhile and inspiring project. This often makes you see what you actually love and what you thought you loved, but now see that you hate/detest/despise.

Fantastic blog for reading up about filmmaking anyway, but that particular entry struck a major cord with me.

Hope you enjoy it too,

The Blue Gemstone

Well it’s finally time to start book three in the Acias Series.  Book two even though it’s not published yet, is all done and dusted and now I’m not writing any scripts – for a short interlude I hope – I might as well get cracking.

Book three is the BIG crescendo.  It’s when everything comes together.  The Gracious Ones, the mysterious blue gemstone and some true epic fantasy.  Maybe even the Storm will get its comeuppance, who really knows?  Not even I do!

At the moment Gracious is facing up to what’s just happened.  Barnabe is trying to cope with the consequences of it all and the Gracious Ones themselves even though displaced are where they should be.

So it’s time to light up the skies and encircle the eyes – for the last time.

Woo, can’t wait to see this baby finished.

Dead Time Productions

Well i’m now stepping into production territory as a Producer on Dead Time – a feature film that I am working on in November.

This isn’t quite as ad-hoc as it seems, as I’ve been building up to this for awhile and already have a lot of experience in admin/management and potential deal making.  So most of the expereince is already there and the really really big requirements are time management and good organisation/communication.  Which I certainly feel I have.

I have also been asked to write a feature film script as well, though it’s all under wraps at the moment.

More to come as and when I get it!