I need to come up with better names for titles
I’d like to apologise for the fact that it’s been over a week since my last post. Unfortunately I was Tomb Raider’ed. Not actually tomb raided of course, although the thought of some leggy brunette, who’s idea of accessorising is a couple of semi automatic 9mm’s, breaking into my house, killing the number of endangered species I have prowling around the place, then stealing my stuff, sends shivers down my spine, and not necessarily in a bad way. Suffice to say that our relationship was short, very intense, but I’m sleeping better at nights now it’s over.
Anyway, first contact had been made. Over the next couple of weeks I attended a few more filming days, occasionally turning up with photo’s of costumes and make-up that I or my friends had done for previous ‘events’ and I started to supply Beacon with the occasional prop. I even got talked into playing an ‘evil robot overlord’ in the season finale (paper suit cardboard helmet, pyro’s wired up a few feet behind my incredible flammable costume, all good fun) luckily I had no lines, lucky because I can’t act. I won’t make any bones about it, I can’t, full stop end of story. I also can’t dance. This doesn’t bother me, I’m happy that I know my limitations. I also know how much beer I need to drink before I convince myself otherwise, but we won’t go there. The point here is that I know my role is behind the camera (even if it’s tea-boy) not in front of it. This is a point I make to Steve. I’m starting to like the idea of writing a script for ‘The Adventures of Stephen Brown’. The bad news is that I’ve hooked up with Beacon to late in the year to secure a writing spot for the next season. So I carry on supplying costume and props, and mulling over ideas. At some point mid 2005 Steve has come round to the idea of me writing a script and hands me a synopsis for a story called ‘Cheetah Squad’.
You see as I said in my last post, Beacon having been making ‘The Adventures of Stephen Brown’ for close to 20 years now. First as audio stories, then on 8mm video and finally on DV for TV. They’ve written a lot of stories in that time, and it’s the clubs intention to try and ‘update’ their audio back catalogue on to DV. In an average season 50% of the shows are re-makes of the old audio stories. Well saves me having to try and come up with something original!
The synopsis is 1 page, about 300 words, has a hugely hilarious unintentional plot flaw and frankly makes little sense. This is slightly unfair criticism, the original story was written by a 14 year old and they’re the demographic the Uwe Boll films are aimed at, so allowances have to be made (for 14 year olds not Uwe Boll). That said its overriding theme is good. I start wondering what I’m going to do with it.
In short I’m going to write a hugely detailed back story/universe setting. Then I’m going to make the whole thing way more complicated than it needs to be, and lose interest in the project after the second double cross 3 pages into episode 2. Once this is done I’m going to dodge questions as to how the script is going for the next couple of months. In hind sight not the best plan I’ve ever come up with.
In reflection I think the problem was that while Cheetah squad contained plenty of opportunities for gun play (once I’d shifted it to a cyberpunk setting) it didn’t have any zombies. I don’t know if it was some kind of sub-conscious guilt thing that I’d essentially binned my original ‘zombies and gunplay’ project, but those damn undead wouldn’t let me move on. Whenever I sat down to write for ‘Cheetah Squad’ I just ended up staring at the screen, wondering how Stephen Brown could end up fighting for his life against a ravaging horde of zombies within the constrains of a PG rating.
Then one day I just started writing. I started at page 1, something I rarely do, and within the space of a few hours I kicked out 8 pages. Then next day another 5 followed, by the end of the week I was up to 30. I’d completely forgotten about ‘Cheetah Squad’ which was bad. In about a week the script writing meeting for the next season of ‘Stephen Brown’ was coming up and I had to pitch my story (Cheetah Squad) for approval. No green light and another 12 months in the wilderness not shooting anything. Even if I got green lit could I finish a script I had lost all interest in? Dare I even suggest my guilty little pleasure of ‘Stephen Brown Vs the Space Zombies’?
Well what would you do?
Anyway, first contact had been made. Over the next couple of weeks I attended a few more filming days, occasionally turning up with photo’s of costumes and make-up that I or my friends had done for previous ‘events’ and I started to supply Beacon with the occasional prop. I even got talked into playing an ‘evil robot overlord’ in the season finale (paper suit cardboard helmet, pyro’s wired up a few feet behind my incredible flammable costume, all good fun) luckily I had no lines, lucky because I can’t act. I won’t make any bones about it, I can’t, full stop end of story. I also can’t dance. This doesn’t bother me, I’m happy that I know my limitations. I also know how much beer I need to drink before I convince myself otherwise, but we won’t go there. The point here is that I know my role is behind the camera (even if it’s tea-boy) not in front of it. This is a point I make to Steve. I’m starting to like the idea of writing a script for ‘The Adventures of Stephen Brown’. The bad news is that I’ve hooked up with Beacon to late in the year to secure a writing spot for the next season. So I carry on supplying costume and props, and mulling over ideas. At some point mid 2005 Steve has come round to the idea of me writing a script and hands me a synopsis for a story called ‘Cheetah Squad’.
You see as I said in my last post, Beacon having been making ‘The Adventures of Stephen Brown’ for close to 20 years now. First as audio stories, then on 8mm video and finally on DV for TV. They’ve written a lot of stories in that time, and it’s the clubs intention to try and ‘update’ their audio back catalogue on to DV. In an average season 50% of the shows are re-makes of the old audio stories. Well saves me having to try and come up with something original!
The synopsis is 1 page, about 300 words, has a hugely hilarious unintentional plot flaw and frankly makes little sense. This is slightly unfair criticism, the original story was written by a 14 year old and they’re the demographic the Uwe Boll films are aimed at, so allowances have to be made (for 14 year olds not Uwe Boll). That said its overriding theme is good. I start wondering what I’m going to do with it.
In short I’m going to write a hugely detailed back story/universe setting. Then I’m going to make the whole thing way more complicated than it needs to be, and lose interest in the project after the second double cross 3 pages into episode 2. Once this is done I’m going to dodge questions as to how the script is going for the next couple of months. In hind sight not the best plan I’ve ever come up with.
In reflection I think the problem was that while Cheetah squad contained plenty of opportunities for gun play (once I’d shifted it to a cyberpunk setting) it didn’t have any zombies. I don’t know if it was some kind of sub-conscious guilt thing that I’d essentially binned my original ‘zombies and gunplay’ project, but those damn undead wouldn’t let me move on. Whenever I sat down to write for ‘Cheetah Squad’ I just ended up staring at the screen, wondering how Stephen Brown could end up fighting for his life against a ravaging horde of zombies within the constrains of a PG rating.
Then one day I just started writing. I started at page 1, something I rarely do, and within the space of a few hours I kicked out 8 pages. Then next day another 5 followed, by the end of the week I was up to 30. I’d completely forgotten about ‘Cheetah Squad’ which was bad. In about a week the script writing meeting for the next season of ‘Stephen Brown’ was coming up and I had to pitch my story (Cheetah Squad) for approval. No green light and another 12 months in the wilderness not shooting anything. Even if I got green lit could I finish a script I had lost all interest in? Dare I even suggest my guilty little pleasure of ‘Stephen Brown Vs the Space Zombies’?
Well what would you do?
4 Comments:
Space Zombies rule !!
I just happened across this Blog whilst hitting the next Blog button !
Ok I'll read everything posted so far in a few seconds.
In the meantime, I've logged Echo_Black at del.icio.us, drop me an email and I'll give you the password (or I could pop over install Firefox and set you up as the main user). You can see a few early results of me reading up on Wikipedia.
http://del.icio.us/Echo_Black
Damn it. Now I've ended up with a blogger account!
Also make sure you've turned on the syndication settings and I'll port Echo Black across to LJ.
Er yeah, Pete do that syndication thing!
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