Pangs

First post in an age and it will be brief.

First and foremost, you must hop over to Dan's website. Very nicely put together with info on all his short films including the two I have co written with him and some ace photographs fromthe various productions.

Ella is nearing completition. After a few sound hiccups, we are nearing the finishing line. It had a showing to cast and crew back in October and went down a storm, which is great news.

Violent Crimes is out there in the wilderness.My fingers are crossed, but I am not too hopeful. Its a decent script, maybe the ideas are way above my station and i have bitten off more than i can chew and it most likely needs some editing, but i hope the writing stands out.It has gotten through to round two of the Red Planet Competition, which is awesome.

Hands are tied by the madness of Christmas and my job in an awesome bookstore, so writing is few and far between.

Have a few projects on the go, including two short film ideas, both are skeletons of scripts. There is a script I keep going back to over and over again, well, there are many, Powerless is one that is quite personal to me. I have found a new way to tackle it, to make it more personal, more contempory and less miserable. So pretty excited about that.

NO LIFE...

Morrision's Batman run.... fuck me the coolest brain frying thing ever!

Monsters... cannot wait to see this.

Scarlet... Brian Michael Bendis is God.

Mad Men... continues to be all that is awesome about TV.

The Event... Lost meets 24, but more 24 than Lost.... nothing can replace Lost.

Fringe... except maybe Fringe... which is bloody brilliant.... but could never replace Lost.

Lost Encyclopedia.... all kinds of awesome geekery

Sons of Anarchy... Its taken me a while to go from liking to loving this show.But fuck yeah, brilliant!

No Life

Inception - Christopher Nolan is a genius. This film is genius.

Batman The Return of Bruce Wayne - Fucking brilliant.

The Passage - Greatest Novel Ever!

Joanna Newsom 'Have One on Me' - Beautiful, enchanting, wonderful. I love it!

Justified - Find it, watch it, love it!

E L L A : First Blood

The first cut of Ella has passed my eyes and I adore it. It's a beautifully shot film with an emotional core that has really lept off the pages that Dan and I crafted over six months. Almost there. It's gonna be brilliant. Our cast have done an amazing job of bringing these characters to life. It's so surreal to think that those characters we both lived with for so long are now flesh and blood, walking and talking and growling and shooting and crying and shouting and maiming animals.

Violent Crimes has now finished. I have finally completed the newest draft. Aside from Ella and a brief diversion into the world of Powerless last year, Violent Crimes is the first full script I have finished in ages. I am so pleased with it. It's a tad too long, but that doesn't matter at this stage. All that remains is to fine tune it and get some feedback and get a first season outline written up and get it out there.

Ella FX

Andy Chappell provided the excellent make up and effects and general gore for Ella and completely stunned me with how ace they were. Very freakish. Check out his website for more coolness. His Predator is very very cool.

Speaking of which... Predators... waste of time. Dull. Not as good as Eclipse, which was also pretty fucking dull.

Violent Crimes

Darkness Rising is something that has been rattling around my brain for bloody ages. Over the last few months when breaking from Ella I have been rewriting a script that is about ten years old. It is now completely revamped with a new name. Now called Violent Crimes, it tells the tale of the worlds most angriest police man.

Anyway, each year Tony Jordon's Red Planet Pictures has a competition, asking firstly for the first ten pages of a script. Today I entered the first ten pages. Fingers crossed please!

Ella has been shot... twice, once in the gut, once in the head....

July 8th - July 11th.
Deep somewhere in Somerset I got very sunburnt as Ella was commited to film (or some digital variation of film). Cast was magnificant, crew was amazing, the weather was bright and sunny, hot with a few light showers, days were long, tough and satisfying, evenings were full of excitement, stress, worry and not enough sleep.

Ella is now filmed and it was awesome.

Dark

It's a sunday and I have a horrible ear ache.

There is some tossbag outside blowing what sounds like a trumpet at random intervals. It kinda sounds like some strange mating ritual between elephants, or cows, or rhinos, or Lions? Or ducks? I don't know, sounds fucked.

Ella... or as it may now go back to being called Dead Rabbits is nearing its shoot date.We are currently casting at the moment, I say we, I'm at home right now while Dan and Sophie audition people and scout for locations. I've just finsihed the lastest revised draft of Ella as we try and get it perfect for a shooting script. Its going good. Its going well. I just can't wait to see this thing become life. Its very exciting.

Darkness Rising... or Dark as it is now called. Managed to write about seven pages today, introduced the big bad in the form of Michael Elliot, evil doctor, complete nut case, but I have tried to approach it differently from the millions of drafts that I have tackled in the past. This is the second draft that I am looking at currently, trying to make it a workable script that I love and want others to love.

But I think I am done for today.

Alan Wake awaits.

Ella

As of right now the short film Ella is entering preproduction!

I am over the moon. I am so excited that this crazy little script that myself and Dan have been pouring our heart and soul into has been recognised and will soon become flesh and blood and blood and dog's faces and blood and a bit of blood.

My writing has been validated, it has been chosen it has been looked at and now is having money thrown at it.

Its an amazong feeling!

Now the hard part begins, pre-production! Actors, locations and crew are going to be gathered together to make this awesome little short.

More soon...

Graphic Moments

The short film previously entitled Dead Rabbits has entered the final leg of possible funding. A final development draft was pushed off into the ether on the friday just gone. I have to say I'm happy with it. Its good, its depressing, its pretty horrible and made more so by some beautiful little moments that stick in your head due to the emotions they stir up, and the fact that those moments are then crapped all over by something nasty. I love the fact that rereading the script left me with a nasty taste in my mouth.

So, yeah, script is done for now and handed in. It's new name is Ella, written by myself and Dan Gitsham, its about a family unit that has completely broken down, and the father, feeling guilt over his inaction to prevent this brake down from occuring goes out to fix it once and for all.

A while back I began writing up many of the loose ideas that Dan and I had discussed into a graphic novel. I loved the ideas we had and thought they could work, if nowhere else, as a graphic novel. And they are working very well indeed. I am currently rewriting the first 40 pages, shifting the tone and focus a little more towards the ideas of the short film and mixing in the rather nastier ideas of the graphic novel. The graphic, while still following the short film about being a family breaking down, the story here looks at the reasons why this has happened and why the father takes so long to react to it, it looks at the relationships behind the breakdown and shows the cracking of their lives. Arthur Miller, the father in the graphic novel is the main character and we follow him on a journey that takes him full circle where he must confront his demons and understand why he is the way he is.

Its pretty bleak, and pretty harsh, but is very cool. Its something new for me to be writing. Horror that is. I have never really tackled horror as full on as this (both short film and graphic) and why I am finding it so interestingand fun to write is the understanding of where the horror comes from. Many times in the past I have thought, 'right, lets create a horror, lets write something horrific and nasty' and i always found them falling flat, or I would get bored, and thats because I approached it all wrong. This short and graphic can be seen as a horror, but can be seen as other things as well. Its a horror due to the situations the characters fall in, its a horror because it plays on your fears, its a horror because it goes to some dark fucking places and makes you question yourself and your feelings, it makes you think what would you do if you were in this place.

If all things work out, this could be something of a huge stepping stone for my writing, funding on a short film will be out of this world, it will be amazing, and if the graphic novel people dig the script i am writing and the prospect of having a book out there with a disc strapped to it containing a fucking awesomely written and directed short film... well... fucking ace!

NO LIFE.....

The Box... Just watched this the other night on bluray, looked amazing, but more importantly, was fucking amazing. I love Richard Kelly's work, Donnie Darko is flawless, Southland Tales is brilliant and underrated and misunderstood... but The Box, possibly his best so far, weird, tense, paranoid madness awaits. I loved it!

Sons of Anarchy... I miss The Shield since it finished so amazingly afew years ago now, and now I have found its replacement. BIker gangs, Hellboy, violence, and some truly brilliant writing... Everything The Shield was but with bikes in it.

Dr. Who... New Who is pretty good. Like Matt Smith, love Karen Gillan, loved the opener of the season, but is slowly making me loose interest again.... hmmmm...

Shuddertown... Awesome new comic from IMAGE.

Nemesis... Makes Kick Ass look like shit. So it says on the cover. Miller's new book is great and so far a little bit more fun than Kick Ass.

The Sword... One more issue to go... one hell of a rug pull at the end of 23... cannot wait!

LOST... Nearly finished and I am very sad.Don't want it to end, but I am loving the game changing madness of the last few episodes. THE BEST THING ON TV!

Dead Rabbits

The short film that I am working on has now entered its fourth (possibly more than that) draft, officially its the second draft and has, as of this morning been sent off to be poured over by various people who know what they are talking about. The working title of the short was Dead Rabbits for a while, and before that was known as Hide and Eat. It has a new title currently, one that is as interesting and subvertive as its themes and contents. It's a film about fatherhood, nature, masks, death, birth, smoke, blood, dogs, friends, empathy, shit, eggs, broken T.V's, scratches, copying and most importantly, its a film about love and how it can lead to your downfall. And it does all of this in just nine pages!

This has taken up a huge amountof my time at the moment, along with work, so GATCOC has fallen a little to the side, but I shall be returning to that as I have about a week away from the short. Really looking forward to some feedback on it.

NO LIFE!!!

Occupying my brain currently...

LOST Season 6 - final season, mind blowing and there are only seven episodes left till the end. THE END. I am now very sad. Truly, very very upset by this.

Our Tragic Universe - Scarlett Thomas - The only book I have really been excited about and its not out for another couple of months and I am 100 pages into it! A perk of working in a bookstore are proofs! I have one and I am loving it. Every page. Very inspirational, has set me on my path of understanding Omega Point theory.

Caprica - Tough going, quite slow, but brilliantly written and a true grower. Not the LOST replacement I once thought though. Fuck knows why i thought that!

Fringe Season 2 - Continues to get better. Walter is an ace character!

Mad Men Season 2 - Almost at the very end of this season and its brilliant. So much better than the first season and that was brilliant too! In everyway. Season 3 is sitting on my Sky +

Buffy Season 8 - Twilight, the big bad for season 8 has been revealed. Annoyingly i kinda knew who it was, but it still shocked me. Most recent issue confused the shit out of me though. I don't know what the fuck is going on.

The Sword - Its almost at its end. Why does everything i love come to an end?

Well... not everything, just media wise. My true love continues!

The Point Of It All

Because I'm an idiot who has just had nine days off work and thought he was due into today, when in actual fact I'm not due in until tomorrow...(bloody 15 minute walk, 10 minute train journey,another ten minute walk and then do it all over again for nothing... mumble grumble)... I was up earlyenough to get my arse into gear and get some work done. Proper work, not that stuff I actually get paid for, but writing.

The last week has been ace for many a reason, but one of the best is amount of writing I have managed to get done, both physically, ala actual typing at this computer, and mentally, the amount of shit i have managed to get noted down, planned, blocked out and most importantly thought about. Its been ace, and having an extra day of it has been awesome.

I am now well into the first act of The Girl At The Centre of Creation, an idea I had a few years ago. Its developed into something pretty cool, cooler than I could have imagined at the time of coming up with it. Its still basically the same story, good versus evil, but I have been doing some research into Omega Point theory and string theory and whole bunch of crazy science theories that have set my brain running wild with story possibilities. It has given this story of good versus evil and whole new canvas to play on.

Its about a 30 year old woman who works in a book store. Her husband wants a divorce, she still loves him, this divorce has come completely out of the blue. Her boss hates her, sick of her drama and she has just been in a pretty horrendous bus crash, and just like Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, hasn't got a mark on her. That's pretty much the first act there. Its coming on nicely.

One thing that has benefitted this new script is the work I have been doing with Dan Gitsham whom I shared an eventful university experience with, whom i have worked on a few shorts at said uni with and co wrote a short called Insides. We are collaborating on a short film project that was born out of few emails back and forth shunting ideas about. The current work we are doing on this project is character and backstory and its amazing how well it has opened my brain and mademe realise that I don't really know my characters very well at all until i get to know them.I know that sounds dumb, but the amount of times i think its fine to throw myself into a script knwoing them in my head and writing a substandard script that mainly falls down on character is ridiculous. So yeah, usually i go in having met my characters, shaken hands with them and then think i can write their fucking life stories. Again, i know its obvious, but you really truely need to get to know them before you can write them. I'm usually pretty bad at all the prep work that goes into a script. i get anxious and impatient, i want to tell the story and tell it NOW! But this collaborative work Dan and I have been doing has been awesome.

The Girl At The Centre of Creation

It's strange starting up something new after using something else for so long. You get used to a certain way things work, you get used to the feel of things... but i kinda felt the need tomove away from it. Currently i have all this kinda bumf over on myspace,but i just kinda hate. Tried to jiggle it about and make it look a bit better but just ended up making it look more of a mess.So, i am gonna be using this to blog on from the time being i think.

Anyway, GATCOC is going nicely. Still developing the whole thing. The only thing really down on paper is the teaser. I am following the layouts of US drama at the moment as its what i know, and its a really cool way of setting things out. Been doing a heck of a lot of research in Omega Point which is informing and enriching the central idea of this show. Very much enjoying this. Characters too are coming together very nicely. Spent the afternoon watching Hitchcock who is a master at taking a character apart in front of your very eyes.

Also, short film work is coming along nicely, again character work is making the rest of the pieces fall into very nice places...