Things never quite go the way you expect, do they?

Last month, more on a whim than anything else, I applied for a management position within the company I work for, and ended up getting it. And rightly chuffed I was too.

So for the past two weeks I’ve ended up more or less doing two jobs as I tidy up affairs from my old IT Applications position and start my shiny new Marketing Communications role.

Rao and quite a few other people offline have, in the meantime, been asking about Return to Earth. Well, through all of this, I’ve had my thinking cap on, and thanks for some very good feedback from the previous draft I’ve finally nailed what the actual film is about.

I’ve also been playing with Mariner Software’s Contour, which has also made me realise that even though, after all these years, I thought I was starting to get what all this screenwriting malarkey was about, ultimately, I knew Jack. Quite a humbling experience.

Nonetheless, the fourth draft is starting to take shape now and muchly pleased I am with it too.

On top of that, I’ve been encouraged by various parties to make another short film. So, together with Blogger/Twitter friend @draconianone, we’ve been plotting a new featurette.

More details of this will emerge over the next few weeks as the script is finalised. Most of the actors are already lined up (the usual suspects plus a few surprises, hopefully).

Watch out for now customary Twitter onslaught of begging/pleading for finance to begin!

Trust me, it’ll be pure gold.

It’s been quiet round here of late, but doesn’t mean there’s been no activity chez Cogs. Oh no Siree!

The latest draft of Return to Earth is almost in the bag (I know I keep saying it, but I’ve struggled with the third act – a moment of clarity last week has unclogged the old grey matter though).

I’ve also been busy coding. The latest effort is Geeky Gifts, which I urge/beg/implore you to check out, and perhaps, with the evenings drawing in and Christmas just around the corner, to consider purchasing one or two gifts for your loved ones through the site.

Go on, you know it makes sense. Hopefully it’ll make a film too.

Good luck to everyone doing Script Frenzy this year! If you haven’t quite sorted yourself out yet, get on over to their web site and get registered now…

I wasn’t sure what I should do for it, but thankfully the amazing Lucy Hay produced for me an incredible development report for Return to Earth, so I’ll be cracking on with Return to Earth Draft 3.

Lucy’s report is balanced, fair and honest; exactly what I needed. It’s brought so much clarity to what Return to Earth should be about, I can’t wait to get started on the next draft.

I can’t recommend her script reading services enough. When you get to April 30th and you’re pounding out those last few words, you could do a lot worse than letting your attention, and consequently your script, wander in her direction.

These past few weeks have mainly seen me flitting between three writing projects. The first, Return to Earth draft 2 – still not quite complete (six pages to go!); the second, developing an idea for a TV series based on the bits I’ve cut out of the first draft of Return to Earth; and thirdly, the just-for-fun adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s ‘The Wee Free Men’.

Now, it just so happened that at the beginning of the week I found myself working my way through the scene in The Wee Free Men where Tiffany finds herself in a dream not too dissimilar to Richard Dadd’s “The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke”.

Being a bit of a fan of the painting (and the song by Queen) I decided I’d do a bit of research to get a better feel for it, and thanks to the nice, relatively hi-res, image on Wikipedia, I printed myself off a few copies, sticking them up next to my desks at work and at home.

This morning, my good friend and work colleague, Adrian Phipps, and I were making a fresh cup of tea and chatting about the painting. Being the knowledgable chap he is (part of his degree was in Art History) we discussed the curious nature of the painting, the precision with which Dadd has placed everything and the strange deformities of some of the Fairy’s depicted in the scene.

Two things in particular jumped out at him. If you take a look at the painting you’ll see the Fairy Feller, his axe held aloft waiting for the sign from the Patriarch, the grey haired man watching him with the huge hat. Just below the Patriarch are two fairies with very squashed heads. ‘Hmm’, says Adrian, ‘those heads look like eyes. And the folds of that fairy’s cloak looks like a nose and the Fellers hat looks like a mouth’.

I looked closely and pointed out that the mound upon which Oberon and Titania stand (just above the Patriarch), looks like the curve of the top of a head, and the coat of the fairy to the left of the pinky-red cloaked fairy looks like an ear.

As soon as we’d seen it, it seemed obvious that Dadd must have intended the face to be there, perhaps just for fun, but it felt too prominent to be a coincidence. All I could see when I looked at the picture was the face and wondered why I hadn’t noticed it before. We found some other possible faces elsewhere in the painting, but none were as clearly defined as this one.

So this evening, I threw the image into Photoshop and messed around with the levels a little. A few things started to bug me:

• Firstly, the pinky-red cloak of the (female?) squashed head fairy, directly below the Patriarchs beard, lacks detail (which doesn’t match the clothes of the rest of the Fairies).
• Secondly, if her head is meant to be an eye, it doesn’t quite tie up with the eye/head of her partner.
• Thirdly, what’s with her partner’s foot? He’s crossing his legs at a very awkward angle.
• Fourthly, the hidden face is almost at the centre of the painting but not quite, it felt a little too far to the right and off balance.

Then I noticed the gold curve that stretches round the right hand side of the Patriarch’s hat.

And I saw it.

The profile of an Ape!

What’s more it’s the profile of an Ape overlaid over the profile of a man’s face, much like Apple Finder Icon.

Suddenly, it all made sense.

• The cloak is the smooth pink part of the Apes face.
• The Eyes don’t match as the Ape’s eye is looking to the right, and the man’s eye is looking forward.
• The awkwardly placed foot of the partner makes up the Ape’s nose.
• When you put the outline of the Ape and the Man together it’s right, slap bang in the middle of the picture, thusly:

Whoah, thinks I. What’s that about? Ape and Man? Evolution?

Now there’s been a lot in the papers and on the radio recently about Charles Darwin, so I knew that he would have been a contemporary of Richard Dadd. I did a bit of digging on t’interweb and found quite a few similarities between the two men.

• They both travelled extensively in their early careers.
• They both apparently suffered from Bi-polar disorder.
• Both had strong links with Kent.
• (You might even argue that they were both murderers, one of his father, the other of religion)
• Dadd painted The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke between 1855 and 1864, Darwin published Origin of the Species on the 22 November 1859.

So would Dadd, locked away in Bethlem in Beckenham, Kent, have known of Darwin’s ideas, perhaps even known Darwin, who after all lived a mere seven miles away in Downe?

Dadd painted The Fairy Feller’s Master Stroke for one George Henry Hayden, the head steward at Bethlem Royal Hospital at the time.

A quick Google search revealed records of correspondence between George Henry Hayden and Charles Darwin at darwin-online.org.uk. I have no idea what was in those letters, but it’s not the greatest leap of logic to think that Hayden knew Darwin, possibly treated him, and spoke to Dadd about Darwin and his theories. As a gift, Dadd hid the image of the man and the ape in the painting for Hayden. Perhaps the hidden man is Hayden? Who knows? Pure speculation.

But great fun.

I’m with Neil Gaiman, who suggests that the ‘Pedagogue’ – the little bald, bearded chappy (or Sneebs as Terry Pratchett calls him), is in fact an old version of Dadd himself. I like the way he’s sat right on the shoulder of both the Ape and the Man.

I feel like one of those diabolicals from Umberto Eco’s ‘Foucault’s Pendulum’, which, incidentally, will be my next just-for-fun adaptation.

What do you think?

With the festive season (and all the family going down with flu) now a dim and distant memory, my thoughts have turned fully to Return to Earth (R2E). The second draft is slowly, much more slowly that I’d like, coming together, mainly because;

a) I’ve been working on a host of potential money-making ideas in order to at least part-fund R2E. More details of these to follow in future posts…

b) I’m having to do loads of research to make sure my ideas for R2E are realistic. I can’t abide Sci-Fi that ignores the laws of physics. An occasional bending of the rules for narrative brevity or style I can live with, but blatant disregard is right out.

and c) I had this great idea that I should take it upon myself to see how practical it would be to adapt Sir Terry Pratchett’s ‘The Wee Free Men’*.

But, pre-production on R2E rolls ever onwards – I’ve now got myself a provisional Cinematographer and Editor in the shape of the inimitable Will Docherty (@mejo).  We met up at Tuttle a couple of Friday’s ago to chew the cud and talk all things film, tech and geek (with the very tall Derek Mantle (@delboydare)).  A good time was had by all.

I’ve also had my nose deep in Adam Davies and Nicol Wistrechs’ Film Finance Handbook: How to Fund Your Film, which, quite frankly, if you want to make films and haven’t read can only mean that you’re a complete dimwit hell bent on financial ruin**. The book is an absolute goldmine of useful info. Buy it! Read it! Now!

In other news; there’s a rather useful resource page of the top 100 blogs for film and theatre students, and this humble blog has been selected along with the likes of John Augusts and Fun Joel to be on there. Chuffed to pieces I was when I got the e-mail telling me. If you’re here from clicking through from that page, welcome!

* Because Sir Terry is reported to have been less than impressed in the draft that Sam Raimi’s screenwriter came up with, and I’m convinced it can’t be that hard to do – he follows the STC! formula almost to the letter.

** The same could be argued if you still want to make films after you’ve read it! Ah, the Indie spirit…

Return to Earth, which I’d put on the back burner for NaNoWriMo is now back in the forefront of my mind, especially after the interesting news I got from Ben the other day. 

While I was working through all my notes for the second draft, I came to the realisation that even with one and half drafts under my belt, which more or less hit the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet note for note, I really wasn’t happy with it.  

Some of the reasons I could put my finger on – mainly cost and complexity of production, but there was something else… it felt flabby.  Perhaps there were too many characters not doing enough?  Some got given the heave-ho, but still no joy.  

As chance would have it, I’d randomly signed up for Chris Soth’s ‘Screenplay by Phone’ call about his Mini Movie method which, whilst not mad enough to stay up ’til half past three in the morning to dial in, I did listen to via download later that week.

And inspiration struck!

I’m not saying Chris has struck gold with his Mini Movie method; I don’t think he gave enough detail away on the call to say either way, but what he did impart was enough for me.

Now, I love Blake Snyder’s STC! methodology.  It works – some of the best films and books hit the beats spot on. But both of the screenplays I’ve completed in the past year or so just didn’t do it for me.  They needed something more.

So I started pondering whether Soth and Snyder couldn’t snuggle up in bed together, see if the two models didn’t overlap a little.  And whaddayaknow?! They do. Kind of.

It’s not a perfect marriage, but for me, using Soth’s Mini-Movie method (effectively splitting the story up into smaller sub-movies) means my little brain can get a much better grip on the story as a whole.

Now, as much as I like it, I do find the STC! methodology a bit lacking in the middle.  Blake says a lot about how to start and how to end, but I’ve always struggled with the whole ‘Discussion – Break Into 2 – Fun and Games’ bit.  Soth’s method gives that area a little more structure, enough for me to get my head round better.

By adding Chris to the mix, along with my own take on Dramatica, Blake’s key beats are still there, but rather than trying to just satisfy story logic, the story is now looking after itself, driving itself forward with purpose that I’d never been able to capture with STC!s 40 beat structure alone.

It’s worth checking both methodologies out (along with Dramatica), but I guess this kind of proves that there is no panacea for Screenwriting, no magic pill for the perfect screenplay.

It’s just a case of keep doing it until you find what works for you, and then keep going… and going… and going…

…writing and thinking hard about Return to Earth – and making reasonable progress.  Nothing startling, but it’ll do me. With the million and one other things on at the moment, I’m not expecting miracles.

I have set up a separate blog and Twitter feed for the Return to Earth project, http://returntoearth.at/once/ and @returntoearth respectively.  Feel free to check out and follow (and donate!), I’ll no doubt update that site more than this one, with my recent track record of updates.

In case anyone was wondering what the previous post was about it was all part of a big game run by the the creator of Moblog, Alfie Denning, where forty or so bloggers were provided with geo-cache type clues which would lead people to various points around London where they would find photographs by the talented James Nachtwey and a letter.  Find the photos, collect the letters and work out what the question was. 

It was all to raise awareness of Extremely Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis – which you can read more about at http://www.xdrtb.org/

Inspired by Tim Clague’s post about how Marvel write their comics, I’ve been inspired to take hold of an idea that has been bubbling about in my head for some time now; namely that I should write the next draft of Return to Earth initally as a StoryBoard, and then, once I’m happy with the structure, write it back to screenplay format.

I have no idea if it will work, but it seems to make so much sense to work this way, primarily to force myself to think in images and structure the story visually.  

The notion struck me a few years ago while I was reading The Conversations, Michael Ondaatje’s superb book where he discusses the art of editing with Walter Murch.  Walter describes how he likes to take screenshots of takes and line them up to see how they cut together. 

Now I’m straight from the Murch school of editing and think the key to any film is the cut, the juxtaposition of the images has enormous power.  So it got me thinking, why not apply this process to the writing process, it may even free up the right brain a bit more?

We’ll see.  

I still don’t know quite how I’m going to do it.  I have StoryBoard Quick 5, but I suspect this might be a bit limiting.  FrameForge is tempting, purely because I can build the moonbase as a virtual construct and set the characters free in there.  Drawing it freehand also seems like a sensible idea, it would have a quicker turnaround, though I may end up drowning in paper.

Whatever, I’ll post up some of the results on here…

A screenplay in under two weeks!

A complete(ish) first draft of ‘Return to Earth’ (working title) is sitting there glowing at me lovingly from my screen.

It needs much work, and some of the scenes have characters spouting gibberish until I do a bit more research and fine tune the detail, but the story is there.

It’s only 87 pages long, but as I was aiming for 90 and being as concise as I possibly could be, I’m more than happy.  I can think of at least two new scenes that could go in if needs be.

Think I’ll do a first pass rewrite v. soon to correct as many mistakes a possible – especially with the layout of the moon base which I only really got fixed in my head last Friday, and then stick it away for a few weeks to mature.

Image via Wikipedia

Looks like I’m through to the quarter finals of the BlueCat screenwriting competition, with my slightly (well, very) dodgy first draft of The Trimes. Not sure how it’ll fare against the remaining 536, but it’s good to have got this far.

On another note, in an astounding display of procrastination, I’ve been working on a little side project for the past few evenings which, if I could be so bold, I’d like to ask your help with.

It’s a little web site mashup type thing which you can find over at http://waydig.com and I’d be ever so grateful if you could test it out.

My main concerns are:

• Does it make sense?
• Is it too difficult to understand?
• Does it work?

Any feedback will be gratefully received (e-mail andy@waydig.com)