First off, more Ten Dead Men UK release news here.
And if you or anyone you know are in the Brighton/Worthing area on Monday 27th of April Ten Dead Men is screening as part of the End of the Pier Festival. You can buy tickets here.
Anyway, I've been at a bit of a loose end this year. I got off to a good start with a major rewrite on a script (Jimmy Sci-Fi) that at the moment is looking like the one most likely to be turned into an actual film. Which means there's also not much else I can do with it at the moment. Since then I've been working on the other Jimmy Scripts, which has mostly involved writing treatments. Jimmy Fight is in Brother Pete's hands at the moment for the first draft and seems to be moving along pretty well. Jimmy House went through a couple of treatments and I'm supposed to be having a meeting about it some point soon. Jimmy Horror I never really got started on but it's also in the treatment stage. Then I did the Dark Future rewrite which took far more time than I thought it would but in the end I think it was worth it, if only to go through the process of doing a really tough rewrite.
As I mentioned a couple of posts ago there are things I could be doing, like getting pitches ready for Cannes. But that all seems like a long way off (even though it's actually less than a month). I know what the problem is - it's the last minute rule. When I was at university I never managed to get any work done prior to the evening before said work had to be handed in (which I believe is quite common) and I've never managed to shake the 'why do today what you can put off til tomorrow' attitude.
I realise this is a bad advert for anyone wanting to hire me to write anything. I'm not like that with everything, honest. Sometimes I even do things a whole two nights before they have to be done.
If Cannes was happening tomorrow I'd have no problem motivating myself to getting these pitches sorted out. But it's not, and there's also the fact that I haven't done any new script writing all year. It's all been pitches and treatments and reading other scripts. And that's what scriptwriting is, for the most part. I think I've said before that the first draft is fun but the real work is in the preparation and the subsequent drafts. But if you don't do the fun part you kind of forget why you're doing it in the first place.
So I'm doing this instead and now have to write a short film in one week. I've got my assignment, I spent most of Sunday researching 1950s phone bills and now I've pretty much got a story and characters. I just need to write the thing.
And I've picked a week where I've only got three free evenings.
And I'm using up one of them writing this...
And if you or anyone you know are in the Brighton/Worthing area on Monday 27th of April Ten Dead Men is screening as part of the End of the Pier Festival. You can buy tickets here.
Anyway, I've been at a bit of a loose end this year. I got off to a good start with a major rewrite on a script (Jimmy Sci-Fi) that at the moment is looking like the one most likely to be turned into an actual film. Which means there's also not much else I can do with it at the moment. Since then I've been working on the other Jimmy Scripts, which has mostly involved writing treatments. Jimmy Fight is in Brother Pete's hands at the moment for the first draft and seems to be moving along pretty well. Jimmy House went through a couple of treatments and I'm supposed to be having a meeting about it some point soon. Jimmy Horror I never really got started on but it's also in the treatment stage. Then I did the Dark Future rewrite which took far more time than I thought it would but in the end I think it was worth it, if only to go through the process of doing a really tough rewrite.
As I mentioned a couple of posts ago there are things I could be doing, like getting pitches ready for Cannes. But that all seems like a long way off (even though it's actually less than a month). I know what the problem is - it's the last minute rule. When I was at university I never managed to get any work done prior to the evening before said work had to be handed in (which I believe is quite common) and I've never managed to shake the 'why do today what you can put off til tomorrow' attitude.
I realise this is a bad advert for anyone wanting to hire me to write anything. I'm not like that with everything, honest. Sometimes I even do things a whole two nights before they have to be done.
If Cannes was happening tomorrow I'd have no problem motivating myself to getting these pitches sorted out. But it's not, and there's also the fact that I haven't done any new script writing all year. It's all been pitches and treatments and reading other scripts. And that's what scriptwriting is, for the most part. I think I've said before that the first draft is fun but the real work is in the preparation and the subsequent drafts. But if you don't do the fun part you kind of forget why you're doing it in the first place.
So I'm doing this instead and now have to write a short film in one week. I've got my assignment, I spent most of Sunday researching 1950s phone bills and now I've pretty much got a story and characters. I just need to write the thing.
And I've picked a week where I've only got three free evenings.
And I'm using up one of them writing this...
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