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.