I’ve been checking out the MyVisualPitch web site recently, which I must say is very cool, especially now it has the Unk seal of approval with the Pitch Your Niche competition.

I was mulling over the best way to pitch my sci-fi script on there (as most of the pitches on there so far seem to use current material) when I got an e-mail from a nice chap telling me about his site, Ammo Previz, which strikes me as a superb complement to MyVisualPitch.

I signed up to Facebook recently as well, so if anyone wants to be my friend, give me a poke (or throw me a sheep or whatever), feel free. I was ever so excited when I ended up with Jonathan Ross as one of my friends (I remember years ago going into his Comic shop in London just after it opened and spending a fortune on Sandman comics). Thanks to Gia Milinovich for pointing him out… If anyone has suggestions for useful filmmaking or screenwriting groups to join as well, let me know.

I like Facebook, I can use Facebook, it’s possibly the first web site in a long time where I’ve actually thought, OK, that’s clever, well thought out with some very nice AJAX features.

Unlike MySpace, which is quite frankly the worst designed, most un-user friendly web site in the world. Let’s hope Google sort it out soon.

I’m heading over to Reading for a few nights this week, so if anyone can suggest some interesting places to visit of an evening, let me know… not that I’ll be heading out much as I’ve finally got my hands on the new Harry Potter book (even though I was glancing through the Sun the other day and had the ending somewhat ruined for me by a ridiculous headline revealing far too much information about who survives and doesn’t survive – grrr – don’t these people have the courtesy to plaster ‘Spoiler Alert’ over things?). Anyhow, I’m enjoying it so far, even if my feelings that JK Rowling really should be more tightly edited remain largely untouched (she uses far too many adverbs for a start…).

Speaking of the great Mr Potter, we saw HP and the Order of the Phoenix last night.

Now I’d been expecting a lot from this film, mainly because I’d heard so many good things about David Yates – how he’s the ‘master of blocking’ and he’s a great director, etc. etc. and how he’s been offered Half Blood Prince as he’d done such a splendid job of this film. So I went in with high hopes.

Which were somewhat dashed.

I thought the film was, well… average. I thought the direction was OK, but certainly no better than Alfonso Cuaron (still my favourite) or Mike Newell. The cinematography was alright but some of the editing and effects were decidedly dodgy. The level of acting is heading in the right direction, but could still be better, and I just found Harry’s characterisation, just a little bit lacking. I didn’t really care much for him (I don’t recall a Save The Cat! moment, unless I fell asleep and missed it).

I know I didn’t feel that way after reading the book, so I can only assume that the subtleties of JK Rowling’s text have got lost somewhere in translation. I realise it’s a tall order to condense the book into a film, but even so I felt it was a rushed, emotionless mess.

I did like the Wizard Battle at the end, that was cool, but even that seemed like it was over before it began.

Oh well, back to the current book…

After a final spurt of activity over the past few days, my work on Greetings is complete. It’s taken up nearly eight months of my life and at times it’s been nothing short of very hard work, but I’m really pleased with the final result.

Yes, it could have benefitted from a few extra days of shooting, and it’s running time of 75 minutes is a touch on the short side, but at the end of the day, it’s a low budget indie feature shot in one house over four weeks. We’re not in the realm of Hollywood blockbuster here, by any stretch of the imagination.

Ken seems very pleased with the end product too, though he’s yet to see it with the final audio mix on a big screen. But we’ve set ourselves this weekend as the deadline, if it ain’t right now it never will be.

Ken is hoping to premiere it at the Digital Cinema in Hawkshurst in a few weeks time, which will be cool, if not a little odd. It’s a strange experience where you live with these people in your life for such a long time that they feel like old friends, but you’ve never met half of them.

Now I can focus on the rewrite of The Trimes, after I catch up on a shedload of movies, starting tomorrow evening with the latest Harry Potter…

One book I must mention, which I’ve just finished reading is Mike Figgis’ ‘Digital Filmmaking’, which is a rather splendid little book with some real gems of wisdom tucked away inside. It reminded me a lot of David Lynch’s ‘Catching the Big Fish’ (but with possibly more useful information and less TM stuff).

If you’re interested in how shooting digitally stacks up against shooting on traditional film, Mike explores the issues in great detail. Well worth checking out.

It’s given me a big boost that I’m heading in the right direction with my plans for The Trimes.

I thought I was doing well for a while there…

I’d managed to complete the grading of Greetings using the fabulous new Color program, Denis the DP has come round and given it a thumbs up and I’d set the whole lot to render. It had taken about eight hours. I then went to the magic Send to Final Cut Pro menu option.

Color crashed.

I tried again.

It crashed again.

Nothing I can do will make Color send the XML back to FCP. I did a bit of reading up and it would seem that Color tends to choke on long sequences with a lot of cuts. I guess it’s my fault as I should really have edited Greetings in smaller sub-sequences. And I should possibly have turned of the Anamorphic switch before sending it to Color. So we live and learn.

Now I have the unenviable task of manually inserting 712 graded clips over the tops of the old ones in the FCP timeline.

My ire has been tempered somewhat by the good news that I have officially (as far as I’m concerned) finished the first draft of my first full length screenplay.

It’s more than a little ropey around the edges and needs some serious rewriting, but it’s there. 110 pages, on the nose. And very proud I am of it too.

The nice people at Free Geekery have put up a splendid list of freeware software for filmmakers. I wish I’d known about some of this stuff when I was starting out…

If you ever get stuck or bogged down and don’t know how to proceed (say around the end of the second act…), read back over what you’ve already written, you may have already given yourself the answer.

Things are getting tricky now. After sailing through the first eighty pages of The Trimes with barely a backward glance (more fool me!), I’m starting to draw everything together, and it ain’t easy.

I’m up to page 90, which according to the Great Scheme of Things, should be about the end of the Second Act with the bad guys having closed in and the Protagonist really at his/her lowest point. Which is about right.

My biggest problem is keeping an eye on the finish line and working out how the hell I’m going to get there – in twenty pages! Even with all those weeks of thinking and plotting the story has gained so much more depth than I’d anticipated, and what I figured would be a simple jog to the finish line is turning into a test of Krypton Factor proportions.

Writing the last ten pages has been particularly hard work. It feels like I’ve been walking through treacle, and my output has dwindled as I write passages, only to have the next sequence render half of the previous one redundant. Two steps forward and one back, for sure.

I’ve been tempted to jump ahead and write the final sequences, but I’m holding back as some really good stuff is coming out, much better than I had originally anticipated.

And I’ve made some awful gaffs. I nearly forgot about two important characters, and several set-ups in Act One had disappeared completely off my radar. Getting these things properly payed off in a satisfying way and combining them with the final twists of exposition that push the story off towards it’s climax is heavy work.

I’m loving it!