History 101
Okay so yesterdays entry probably read like the back of a very cheap book written in the Dave Gorman style (you can tell it’s a cheap imitation because, unlike Dave Gorman’s books it’s not funny) and you may also be asking yourself “why are you writing a blog about what happened in the pub five and a half years ago, and what has it got to do with all of that drivel in the opening paragraph?” the answer to that question is quite long, so I’m going to start another paragraph.
The idea of this blog is to chart the ‘wacky’ adventures of myself and an elite cadre of friends, as over the next few months we try and pull off the darn near impossible. To truly understand where we are and why, you need to have a little bit of back history. So, over the course of this week I’m going to fill you in on all of the exciting stuff that you missed in the last couple of years, when I didn’t have a blog, so you can fully appreciate what I write now that I do have a blog. Oh and I’ll also start to introduce the key players in the Echo Black team. Now if you don’t like the sound of that just skip ahead to Monday the 18th I should have all of the history out of the way by then.
So where was I? Oh yes, one hell of a hangover!
I’m convinced that lots of people think it’s a good idea to make a zombie movie, thousands. No, hundreds of thousands! So why aren’t there hundreds of thousands of zombie movies? Well I think (and I could be so wrong here) that in order to make a film you need a number of things:
It’s like a little fire triangle. If you take away one of the elements Welliephant is really happy (he hates zombies almost as much as fire) but you don’t get a film. And while most of the people who have the crazy idea of making a zombie movie are lacking one, possibly more of the elements, all of them were present in the pub on that fateful night. That’s why, despite the hangover, the idea stuck around.
Slowly we swung into action as only a team of lazy twenty-something’s with dead end jobs can. Over the course of the next couple of weeks we met up frequently to discuss possible ideas for scenes and a plot, but mostly we drank tea or beer depending upon our location, occasionally someone made notes. During this initial stage we hit our first real problem… Money!
It’s easy to write a scene where the hero descends into an impressively huge set, kills hundreds of bad guys then blows everything up. In fact it’s free, also quite cathartic… But to film that scene… well: Big set, big bad, big bang = big money. Significantly bigger than the combined incomes of several lazy 20 something’s with dead end jobs. From early on it became apparent that we would have to tailor the script to our income and possessions. Our hero couldn’t drive a Porsche, but he could borrow his mate’s Mini Metro. But through the bizarre constraint of writing to what we had (bizarre because of what we have, not because the constraint itself is bizarre) an idea began to grow. A synopsis was written. The synopsis became a five page treatment. The treatment grew into a twenty page scene by scene. The scene by scene seriously faltered at the hurdle of becoming a first draft. Why?
Well that’s a question for tomorrow.
Although… I do believe that there is some EU law which states that all blog entries must hold some relevance to the day they are written. (If not there should be). So as not to anger the powers in Brussels, let me just say that the weather today was foul, and my living room looks like a bomb has hit it. Combat fatigues, tactical gear, lab coats and high-vis jackets are scattered every where, most of them are slightly cleaner than they were yesterday, which is why my washing machine is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
The idea of this blog is to chart the ‘wacky’ adventures of myself and an elite cadre of friends, as over the next few months we try and pull off the darn near impossible. To truly understand where we are and why, you need to have a little bit of back history. So, over the course of this week I’m going to fill you in on all of the exciting stuff that you missed in the last couple of years, when I didn’t have a blog, so you can fully appreciate what I write now that I do have a blog. Oh and I’ll also start to introduce the key players in the Echo Black team. Now if you don’t like the sound of that just skip ahead to Monday the 18th I should have all of the history out of the way by then.
So where was I? Oh yes, one hell of a hangover!
I’m convinced that lots of people think it’s a good idea to make a zombie movie, thousands. No, hundreds of thousands! So why aren’t there hundreds of thousands of zombie movies? Well I think (and I could be so wrong here) that in order to make a film you need a number of things:
Technical know what’s
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Enthusiasm--------Kit
It’s like a little fire triangle. If you take away one of the elements Welliephant is really happy (he hates zombies almost as much as fire) but you don’t get a film. And while most of the people who have the crazy idea of making a zombie movie are lacking one, possibly more of the elements, all of them were present in the pub on that fateful night. That’s why, despite the hangover, the idea stuck around.
Slowly we swung into action as only a team of lazy twenty-something’s with dead end jobs can. Over the course of the next couple of weeks we met up frequently to discuss possible ideas for scenes and a plot, but mostly we drank tea or beer depending upon our location, occasionally someone made notes. During this initial stage we hit our first real problem… Money!
It’s easy to write a scene where the hero descends into an impressively huge set, kills hundreds of bad guys then blows everything up. In fact it’s free, also quite cathartic… But to film that scene… well: Big set, big bad, big bang = big money. Significantly bigger than the combined incomes of several lazy 20 something’s with dead end jobs. From early on it became apparent that we would have to tailor the script to our income and possessions. Our hero couldn’t drive a Porsche, but he could borrow his mate’s Mini Metro. But through the bizarre constraint of writing to what we had (bizarre because of what we have, not because the constraint itself is bizarre) an idea began to grow. A synopsis was written. The synopsis became a five page treatment. The treatment grew into a twenty page scene by scene. The scene by scene seriously faltered at the hurdle of becoming a first draft. Why?
Well that’s a question for tomorrow.
Although… I do believe that there is some EU law which states that all blog entries must hold some relevance to the day they are written. (If not there should be). So as not to anger the powers in Brussels, let me just say that the weather today was foul, and my living room looks like a bomb has hit it. Combat fatigues, tactical gear, lab coats and high-vis jackets are scattered every where, most of them are slightly cleaner than they were yesterday, which is why my washing machine is on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
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