Script Development
I’ve said before that writing to a budget is hard. It’s a brick wall of a problem that anybody who ever scripts an episode of Stephen Brown will repeatedly bang their head against, quite possibly until it bleeds. How big a problem? £60 that’s for the entire story which means I have to write to a budget of £30 per 25 minute episode, that’s £1.20 per minute, Tricky. There are also only 5 shooting days, so locations need to be kept to a minimum. Luckily I have access to some cool toys, a bunch of people with some extremely useful skills, a couple of leads on some awesome locations and a sleeve full of sneaky tricks. Even in my darkest hour I remained hopefully optimistic. And there were a couple of dark hours.
I had a script to write and I needed to get my arse in gear, I guess the pressure helped cause I did. In eight days I totally redrafted Lazarus into a working 59 page 2 parter (keeping only 12 of the original pages) I’d had to cut some characters (including Lazarus which did cause a small problem with the episode name for a couple of days) and the plot I’d pitched at the script meeting had been dumped by the roadside a few miles back, but I had a completed script. I needed to leave it be for a few days, I had got very intense and very close to the script. I needed to do an objective read through before I submitted it. But I’d promised the now director Dan first look. I fired him an email with draft 2 attached telling him to sit on it for a few days as it wasn’t finished and I was likely to tinker with it before officially handing it in.
3 Days later I returned to the script. A handful of dialogue alterations, a couple of scene nip/tucks, and a few small deletions later I was happy to hand in Draft 2.1 satisfied that there were no major flaws or gapping plot holes. I mailed it off to the producers, to forward to the script editors. I can’t even remember why but a couple of days later and I’m in an impromptu meeting with one of the producers. One of the script editors has some issues with the script. I started to leaf through the copy of the script that the SE had torn apart, I’m about 5 pages into it when I realise that this wasn’t draft 2.1 but the first look version I sent the director. We’re talking about 2 similar but subtly different scripts. The changes between the 2 versions however didn’t really affect the points brought up by the SE. It seemed their opinion that major re-writes were needed. A meeting is scheduled for a couple of day’s time when everyone will be looking at the right script, to discuss how to proceed.
This was one of those dark moments, major re-writes! Was I to close to the script to see that it was utter jank? Were all of the SE’s issues merely his alone? Why was everybody panicking about the corridor inferno scene? I needed some objective and independent advice. So I called an ex-girlfriend. If you need somebody to give it to you straight, who better than a girl you dumped who teaches script writing? So I gave Tamsyn a copy of the script. A few says later she calls me back and tells me she’s done. I swing by her house after work and while we dink tea she gives me her script report. I get a B+ (I lost points for spelling and punctuation) and we go though the good and bad points, then the SE’s comments. Her opinion, the SE doesn’t like the story, there is nothing technically wrong with the structure, and there are no gaping plot holes, although I could do with foreshadowing a key item used in the second episode. Oh and I should be ashamed of the 3 page talking to camera exposition scene, which I am, so that’s alright.
So 2 very different sets of feedback: Major re-writes, verses nothing wrong. Sounds like a kick arse a kung-fu movie! But who’s right? I know Tamsyn has no fear of telling me I’m writing shit, she’s done it before. We also can’t forget the biggie; this is what she does for a living. BUT (see that’s a big butt, J-Lo style) Tamsyn is looking for slightly different things to the SB SE. She’s checking the formatting, looking for logic errors and plot holes, making sure the character development is believable, and most of all circling all of my spelling and punctuation mistakes with a big red pen (the one ups manship of which she enjoys far to much). Sure the SE is checking for all of those things, but above all the SE is looking to see if the story fits in to the established universe, and can be shot for £60. Not an easy job. Tamsyn doesn’t have a problem with me wreaking nuclear Armageddon in glorious Technicolor, the SE might.
Needless to say chatting with Tamsyn made me feel better about the upcoming meeting, which was largely uneventful. The SE who originally had the big issues barely said a word. The other SE actually liked my script! The producer and the director both queried a number of points. They were concerned about me using a foreign language to conceal expletives (all translations done by a good Spanish friend of mine) they weren’t too worried about the expletives, more by the pronunciation. Once more it was queried how I was going to fireball a horde of zombies, and where I would get the horde from. Finally questions were raised regarding my scarily high location count. I answered all of the questions to what seemed like satisfaction and left the meeting not having to do any re-writes.
Pre-production was in full swing now. With the script sorted, it was time to worry about the locations, make-up, props, actors, costume, extras, CGI, and tigers oh my!
And no there weren’t any tigers in the script. I just wanted an excuse to say ‘Oh my!’
I had a script to write and I needed to get my arse in gear, I guess the pressure helped cause I did. In eight days I totally redrafted Lazarus into a working 59 page 2 parter (keeping only 12 of the original pages) I’d had to cut some characters (including Lazarus which did cause a small problem with the episode name for a couple of days) and the plot I’d pitched at the script meeting had been dumped by the roadside a few miles back, but I had a completed script. I needed to leave it be for a few days, I had got very intense and very close to the script. I needed to do an objective read through before I submitted it. But I’d promised the now director Dan first look. I fired him an email with draft 2 attached telling him to sit on it for a few days as it wasn’t finished and I was likely to tinker with it before officially handing it in.
3 Days later I returned to the script. A handful of dialogue alterations, a couple of scene nip/tucks, and a few small deletions later I was happy to hand in Draft 2.1 satisfied that there were no major flaws or gapping plot holes. I mailed it off to the producers, to forward to the script editors. I can’t even remember why but a couple of days later and I’m in an impromptu meeting with one of the producers. One of the script editors has some issues with the script. I started to leaf through the copy of the script that the SE had torn apart, I’m about 5 pages into it when I realise that this wasn’t draft 2.1 but the first look version I sent the director. We’re talking about 2 similar but subtly different scripts. The changes between the 2 versions however didn’t really affect the points brought up by the SE. It seemed their opinion that major re-writes were needed. A meeting is scheduled for a couple of day’s time when everyone will be looking at the right script, to discuss how to proceed.
This was one of those dark moments, major re-writes! Was I to close to the script to see that it was utter jank? Were all of the SE’s issues merely his alone? Why was everybody panicking about the corridor inferno scene? I needed some objective and independent advice. So I called an ex-girlfriend. If you need somebody to give it to you straight, who better than a girl you dumped who teaches script writing? So I gave Tamsyn a copy of the script. A few says later she calls me back and tells me she’s done. I swing by her house after work and while we dink tea she gives me her script report. I get a B+ (I lost points for spelling and punctuation) and we go though the good and bad points, then the SE’s comments. Her opinion, the SE doesn’t like the story, there is nothing technically wrong with the structure, and there are no gaping plot holes, although I could do with foreshadowing a key item used in the second episode. Oh and I should be ashamed of the 3 page talking to camera exposition scene, which I am, so that’s alright.
So 2 very different sets of feedback: Major re-writes, verses nothing wrong. Sounds like a kick arse a kung-fu movie! But who’s right? I know Tamsyn has no fear of telling me I’m writing shit, she’s done it before. We also can’t forget the biggie; this is what she does for a living. BUT (see that’s a big butt, J-Lo style) Tamsyn is looking for slightly different things to the SB SE. She’s checking the formatting, looking for logic errors and plot holes, making sure the character development is believable, and most of all circling all of my spelling and punctuation mistakes with a big red pen (the one ups manship of which she enjoys far to much). Sure the SE is checking for all of those things, but above all the SE is looking to see if the story fits in to the established universe, and can be shot for £60. Not an easy job. Tamsyn doesn’t have a problem with me wreaking nuclear Armageddon in glorious Technicolor, the SE might.
Needless to say chatting with Tamsyn made me feel better about the upcoming meeting, which was largely uneventful. The SE who originally had the big issues barely said a word. The other SE actually liked my script! The producer and the director both queried a number of points. They were concerned about me using a foreign language to conceal expletives (all translations done by a good Spanish friend of mine) they weren’t too worried about the expletives, more by the pronunciation. Once more it was queried how I was going to fireball a horde of zombies, and where I would get the horde from. Finally questions were raised regarding my scarily high location count. I answered all of the questions to what seemed like satisfaction and left the meeting not having to do any re-writes.
Pre-production was in full swing now. With the script sorted, it was time to worry about the locations, make-up, props, actors, costume, extras, CGI, and tigers oh my!
And no there weren’t any tigers in the script. I just wanted an excuse to say ‘Oh my!’
2 Comments:
If you need me and a couple of lads to "re-educate" a script editor, you have my number.
No no no!
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. For example I think 'Lost in Translation' is one of the worst movies I have ever had to watch! According to many people it's awsome, but it just didn't do it for me. I can't expect anyone let alone everyone to like what I write.
Post a Comment
<< Home