The sculpting and shaping of the new screenplay (or at least the latest draft of the old screenplay), is rumbling along quite nicely now. In the process, another key character has bitten the dust. I realised that a sub-plot he was a key character in would be better served told from the perspective of another character, leaving him somewhat redundant. Although, it does leave me with a little bit of a plot hole that will need to be addressed. And so it goes…

Things also seem to be hotting up on the Web TV idea that I mentioned a few weeks ago. It seems now that the whole thing could become part of a much bigger project, incorporating the the old local regional film development service which has lain fallow for the past few months.

Unfortunately, because it will skew the business to be much more community focussed, the original plan of simply setting up a limited company won’t work. It also means that the business model is far more complex.

On the plus side it opens up a host of opportunities for funding and development far outside the original remit of the Web TV idea.

The problem is finding a way through it all and coming up with a sensible business model that satifies everyone.

The whole thing seems to fit together nicely: the Web TV side of things promoting the work and talents of local filmmakers, opening them up to a wider audience (albeit a local one), which opens up the potential for local business sponsorship and advertising revenue, which then filters back into the community aspects of the business and encourages more filmmaking in Kent. Everyone is a winner.

The catch is that the Web TV aspect and the filmmaking aspect are a little chicken and egg. They both need to arrive on the scene fully developed at the same to work effectively as a viable self sustaining business model that will be acceptable to the powers that be, yet are somewhat dependent on each other to get started. Where do you break the cycle? Tricky.

Lots of thinking to be done over the weekend, methinks, as we have just ten days to submit some kind of business plan to the regional funding body.

Just got back from a relaxing, technology free, week down in the West Country in a lovely little cottage just outside Chipping Sodbury.

During the week serendipity gave me a little nudge, guiding me to the closing down sale of Bookends in the Yate Shopping Centre, where I found some useful books on Spielberg and Lucas, as well as an awesome couple of books by Cicely Berry who was/is the voice coach at the RSC.

These books are all about the voice, as you might expect, are mainly for the stage, but there’s a whole lot in there to be taken for the film director.

One of the books is especially interesting as it deals with the Actor and Director relationship as it relates to the script. She argues that too much emphasis these days is put into finding the emotion of the scene without really paying due attention to the actual text itself.

One thing I noticed while I’ve been making my shorts, and Cicely also notes, is that there is a lot on the printed page that the writer never knowingly intends (this happened a lot in House of Donn especially) where the right brain is allowed more reign to get into the flow and slip in deeper meanings and even meanings contrary to the logical or obvious one’s the writer may be thinking at the time.

The book deals with ways of working through scripted dialogue to find its rhythms and metres, regardless of what emotion the actor thinks they should be portraying. In doing so, a richer relationship with the material can be developed.

Much of this deeper layering will almost certainly not be spoken out loud, more likely inflected in the rhythm of delivery or just acted out (see Tim’s recent post), but just finding ways to mine these extra nuances is very exciting.

I’m only a third of the way through the book at the moment, but I’m intrigued to learn more, as I feel that too often dialogue is seen as a means to an end, that’s certainly how I’ve seen up until now. It’s quite an eye opener to suddenly find this whole new ocean of meaning and depth that can be plumbed.

I also did a fair bit of writing while I was away – and managed to sketch out the outline of a fantasy film, much in the vein of Neil Gaiman. I’ve been a Neil Gaiman fan for years (I have most, if not all, of the Sandman comics – I also managed to get the Mirrormask illustrated screenplay and Anansi Boys in hardback in the Bookends sale), and now Matthew Vaughn is making Stardust, a precedent for original fairy tale type material is being set.

I also did a lot of thinking about my current screenplay, and after after going round the houses a few times realised that perhaps I’d still not kept it simple enough. I worked on stripping it down a little further, and, after an initial panic that all I had done so far would be in vain, I realised that not much would need to be done after all. So the plotting and the writing continues in earnest.

Back to the grindstone…

I got a great e-mail this evening to say that ìHouse of Donnî has been selected for the Eleventh Hour Pictures Short Film night, which is part of the Reading Fringe Festival.

So all you people in Reading, get yourself down to the South Street Arts Centre on Thursday 24th August at 8pm for a fun filled evening of films. More info at http://www.readingfringefestival.com/.

Five more festival submissing went in the post today including, Chicago REEL shorts, Sundance, Brest and Dubronik. Fingers, legs and anything else that crosses, crossed…

Went to a test screening of fellow KFK’er John Rackham‘s ‘Bloodmyth‘ this evening. After a weekend fraught with technical mishaps and dilemmas (John came round here on saturday night to run it through DVFilm Maker and my laptop would not, for love nor money, recognise his portable HDD), John managed to get the film onto DVD at about half five this morning.

The screening went well and I was impressed with the film. I wasn’t sure what to expect, having seen a few unfinished excerpts from it for various showreels, but the film so far is very good. The sound needs work, and there is plenty of scope for tweaking and tidying, but overall, a very impressive effort. Well done, John!

I spent a while afterwards chatting with Ken Colley and we got on to the whole idea of keeping the story simple and touching the audience on an emotional level. This is something that has been on my mind while I’ve been working on the new screenplay over the past week. Even though I’ve cut out an outrageous amount of material and ideas, there is still quite a lot of backstory and I just don’t know how much of it is necessary (it is for the world to exist, but how much does the audience need to know?). I’m really starting to appreciate why George Lucas went with the scrolling text at the start of the Star Wars films.

For the time being I’ll crack on. I’ve plotted my way in some detail through the first act and I’m steaming through the second. I’m just being mindful that I must resist the temptation to give up on the plotting too early, as I have done in the past.