Over my 2 week holiday (back to work today, boo!) I read David Mamet’s Three Uses of the Knife. I can’t say I understood it all completely, but I got most of what he was saying*.

One thing he mentioned was that the English language lends itself very neatly to the Iambic Pentameter, and that we often converse and complete each others sentences to complete the 5 pairs of syllables.

This piqued my interest, so once I’d had searched around in my foggy brain for what the hell Iambic Pantameters were, failed to remember anything of use apart from fives and something to with Shakespeare, and taken quick look at the Wikipedia definition to get up to speed I started listening to peoples converstaions. You know what, he’s right. Most peculiar.

Anyhow that got me thinking about dialogue as I strolled between our offices at work today (a pleasant meander that crosses the Royal Military Canal). I’ve always loved the way Shakespeare wrote, and often wondered why he wrote the way he did. And then it struck me. If he was ‘being poetic’ and forcing everything into five pairs of syllables, he’d have to start twisting things around a little to make them fit and still make sense.

I know, thinks I, I could try that with some of the dialogue for that there new sci-fi film wot I am writing.

So this evening that’s what I did; rewrite the dialogue of a random scene in Iambic Pentameter. My god, it really gets the old brain ticking. If you want a good warm up exercise to get both sides of the brain going, try it. The only thing I could think of was it was like doing Sudoku with words.

And the best part was that it led to some very stylised phrasings and word patterns that a) flowed nicely when read back without the dahDUMdahDUMdahDUMdahDUMdahDUM rhythm going on in your head, b) sounded like how people possibly might speak in the future and c) naturally created quite dense dialogue which conveyed a lot of meaning in a short space.

I might just keep it up…

* That life is a pointless bag of crap, and good drama (well, tragedy) should show that it’s OK to think this and allow us to secretly identify with characters who also realise this on the stage/screen (I think, but I’m going to have to read it again some time to be sure).

I’m now officially an uncle! Hurrah! Congratulations to my sister and brother-in-law on the birth of their new baby boy.

The meeting with Alex went really well. He seemed reasonably impressed with what I’d done so far, considering it was my first effort, and gave me some excellent ideas on how to improve it.

It’ll mean a lot more work now, but as we were talking a new vision of what the film could be crept into my mind.

Strangely enough he said a lot of stuff that I’d thought, but as no one else had picked up on it, I figured they were just fanciful notions. He also suggested a couple of things that I’d tried and then lacked the confidence to stick with, so those bits are goping straight back in.

His main comments were:

The whole last sequence is unclear as to what is going on. More information is needed to get the link between the old book and Jess etc.

There were a few scenes where the acting is unbalanced, with stronger parts and weaker parts. He suggested finding the strong parts and then setting them as a benchmark and ensuring that I had scoured all my takes to ensure I was using the best I could get.

The footage I have of ‘Gertrude’ that we shot out on the Marsh all those moons ago is slightly wrong, as her body language suggests that she is giving something, rather than taking it.

There are a couple of scenes where I could start even later as well, which I’d missed.

The biggest and best suggestion he had was to perhaps introduce Gertrude in voice overs at a couple of places to explain more the origins of the book and why the ritual had to be done on a certain day etc. etc.

I’ve always thought voice overs are crap, but when you’ve not a lot of time to tell a complex story, I’ve realised they could just be very useful (the thought crossed my mind the other day while I was watching About a Boy).

He asked me a pertinent question which was; how many people do I want to get the film on the first viewing? It’s a great question, and one I’d not really considered. I’m still not sure what the answer is.

My initial reaction was, ‘only a few people’. Then I thought, ‘how pretentious and daft can I get? That flies in the face of the very reason I want to do any of this, to tell stories with some value to as large an audience as possible’. Fool.

So as we drove over to the hospital to see my sister this evening, I started formulating a new idea to introduce Gertrude and how she can better explain the book. Then I started thinking about taking it beyond voice overs and introduce her actually writing the book. Should be possible as Amber only filled up a certain number of pages…

Yes.

It is the same Alex Finbow who wrote and directed 24 Hours in London.

Very exciting, as Dr Crabtree would say. Though why he should say it just after Jess has pointed out that it’s a woman’s only ritual, one can only guess. Probably something deeply Freudian going on there, but I shan’t dwell on it.

So tomorrow at three I shall be heading over to the Shearway Business Park (all of a five minute journey) for my first proper meeting with ‘people with a reasoanble bit of clout’ as a director.

One slight prob is that Daz is working late in London and may not be able to get the latest version of the soundtrack over to me for the meeting, which means I’ll have to go in with the rough cut mix, which is pretty ropey. But never mind, as far as I’m aware we’re going to talk about editing, so it might make more sense if the sound edits are more obvious anyway…

Went hot air ballooning this evening. Fantastic! I’d recommend it.

Anyway, news from Screen South at last. They want me to go in on Friday to meet someone called Alex Finbow (cue gaffaws of laughter from my wife and cracks about meeting a yellow and green striped man).

After doing a bit of research I found out that it may well the same Alex Finbow who directed 24 Hours in London. (This would tie up with my original request to Jo at Screen South, which was, ‘do you know anyone who could cast a critical eye over my short and help improve the edit at all?’).

Then again it might not.

But assuming it is, it’s quite exciting, as they seem to be going out of their way to help me which is magnificent. Hopefully I’ll find out more tomorrow…

I’m about half way through act one of the sci-fi thing that was Architurus. My new philosophy of not plotting to the nth degree and letting the story write itself a little more seems to be working.

I discovered the other day I’m a right brain dominant person, and plotting in detail seems to be much more of a left-brain activity. Working through the plotting while writing feels a lot more comfortable to me, and the old right brain is really starting to kick in with some surprising stuff. The trick seems to be knowing when to allow the left brain to reign the right brain in and when to let it go off and do it’s thing.

Also, having edited the short, I feel a lot more comfortable knowing how late to leave the start of scenes and how soon to get out again. I’m sure if I’d written this a year ago, or even six months, I’d be on page 300 by now…

Much work to do yet, but it’s feeling good.

It feels like someones put life on slo-mo at the moment. Must be something to do with the fact I have two weeks off work from next week and it can’t come soon enough.

I’ve got as far as arranging to go over to Screen South at some point next week, and have handed the final(ish) cut of SToA over to Daz to start working on the sound and music. He says he can get a first draft of the music done over the weekend, so I should have something half decent to show the Screen South gang.

Apart from that everything feels like it’s been soaked in treacle. Slow, slow, slow…

The new screenplay is starting to come together. I’ve made some major changes to the main character’s back story, making him a bit more interesting, and mysterious, but it takes a while for the new info to filter through into the story and get him ‘in my guts’ as one of my lecturers at college was fond of saying.

One other thing I’m trying with this is to not plot in so much detail. OK, so I’ve plotted roughly in my head, and I know, at least in principle, where the main characters should be at the end of each act. But instead of plotting every single detail, so that I end up writing by numbers, I’m trying to use the storyform and PSR from Dramatica to guide writing the first draft, rather than plot to the Nth degree. I guess, I’m starting to appreciate what Sam Snape told us last year.

One thing I’ve found is that it’s easier to get inspiration while in the flow of writing, than by trying to meticulously plot each action and step of the journey. I want to try and get a more organic feel to the story, something I feel my previous efforts have lacked. And those moments where you’re writing away and you suddenly get a perfect moment of clarity, where everything just reassembles itself in your head into the most exciting twists and turns of events are absolutely priceless, a real natural high.

This seems to be working so far, with about four scenes coming out in the past few days that have, without really trying, been better fits of the PSR breakdown than I could ever contrive by plotting alone.

It’s all very mystical really.

After days of fannying about with plot structures and web pages and suchlike, I’ve sat down this evening and actually written something. It felt good. Like getting out of a nice hot bath and getting into bed where there’s a fresh duvet cover and bedsheet. Luvly.

Actually, I couldn’t stop myself, I came up with some excellent ideas for the new Architurus, including an opening sequence that I had to get stuck into. I’ve really got to think of a better working title though, the Architurus elements are no longer really in it, and it’s not terribly good either.

Last night I went through and re-edited SToA from start to finish with an eye on pacing and tempo. Some bits got changed out of recgnition, other’s merely tweaked. I just need now to get a version of the final sequence that I’m happy with and I’ll put that baby to bed (or at least give it over to Daz).

I caught up with Nic at lunchtime, who seemed quite enthused about the version of the edit I gave her a couple of weeks ago, which is good news.

Also heard back from Screen South today, they suggested meeting up in London next week. I’m not sure why as I could drive to their offices in Folkestone in less than five minutes, so what he long haul to London’s about is anyones guess.

I explained to them that next week would be a bad week for me – it’s the last week before my two week summer holiday, so it’s bound to be mental trying to tie things together before I go away. One thing I always do at work is start a new project, get stuck right into it, go away for two weeks and then come back and not have a clue what I’ve done. Every time.

I’ll see what SS suggest, perhaps there’s something exciting in London going on… I have a few hours extra holiday I could use up if necessary. And as we’re not actually going away anywhere on holiday, I could always do London the week after.

A nasty sick bug forced me away from the computer for a few days at the end of last week and has given me the space I need from the editing, which has been refreshing.

Instead, I’ve spent the past couple of days developing a web page that will show my Dramatica PSR reports, along with various other useful information in a conveneint and manageable way.

I’d got it all layed out in StoryView, but I was getting fed up with scrolling up and down to compare what was going on between the different storylines. What I wanted to be able to see the information for the four throughlines running parallel down the page. OK, it wont be perfect and it won’t necessarily be in sequence, but it will allow me to see links between the througlines with more ease and plot more tightly. Dramatica almost gives you this view, but little option to do anything with useful it.

I’m quite pleased with what I’ve come up with. Sure, it’s hokey, but it’s given me a chance to see the each act as a whole, which has led to some very useful plotting developments.

One thing I’m desperately trying to do is not overcomplicate the matter, so I’m restricting myself to two key events in the first and second acts, culminating in one big event in the third. Heaven knows if this will work, but I want to keep my focus very much on telling the story in such a way that I don’t have to resort to dropping in lots of expository scenes. The exposition must come from within the main drama. I watched M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village* the other day and felt very uncomfortable for the first few minutes where he throws a lot of information at you in what seemed a very clumsy way.

One of the dangers I’ve found with Dramatica is that if you focus too much on the macro level, you end up with lots of bits, lots of short scenes. They logically fit together, but they feel a little contrived, and often there’s no flow to them, as if they exist to serve their own purpose, and that of the main story, but not of those around them**. I think (though I shouldn’t diss my own efforts before I’ve released them) that SToA almost certainly suffers from this.

I want to avoid this and blend the throughlines together more. With this new screenplay I want to make things a lot more fluid.

* Which I actually enjoyed more than I thought I would, having read the reviews…

** Spookily enough, I’ve just realised that this is actually the key theme of the story I’m writing.