Friday 16 September 2011

Punky's producer is European Producer of the Year

Gerard O'Rourke, the producer of the series I created, PUNKY, has just, in the last half hour been awarded European Producer of the Year at Cartoon Forum in Poland on the back of Punky! RTE got the Broadcaster of the Year award for young people's programming - I'm sure I have the terms wrong - and Punky's part of that too.

But fantastic news for Gerard - he pushed so hard to make this series and it wasn't easy!

Wednesday 14 September 2011

ARCHANGEL to Visit New York City

In less than two weeks, on September 26th, in New York City, there will be a table read by some fantastic Irish actors of my feature-length pilot script for a series I developed called ARCHANGEL back in 2002. It is being hosted by the Irish Rep Theatre in Manhattan and I'm heading over because this was one of my favourite projects and still has more than enough legs and originality to run and run. It nearly made it into production back in the early days but someone lost out.

In recent years a NI producer has been trying to get it made, a Cork director has tried and is still trying, and now, thanks to actress Anna Olson Olson Nugent (https://www.facebook.com/AnnaNugentTVcop), this event is happening. And in the last place on earth I imagined it would!

Maybe now all the pieces will come together and it will get made?

Originally billed as a 'female Cracker', Archangel features a detective inspector called Rebecca Gabriel who is sent from the PSNI in Belfast to swop places with a colleague in Dublin. She manages to pick up a goose along route, based on an aggressive 'guard-goose' my Aunt Joan had for years. The whole twist on it was that Rebecca relates to the crims rather than the victims because of an incident in her past, but she would never allow herself to admit this -- at least not yet. Her partner is a hot lawyer representing the scum of Dublin whose sixteen year old daughter is about to turn up unexpectedly and stay....

I've set up a separate page to try and talk about writing, starting with this at https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lindsay-Jane-Sedgwick-Writer/117962409020

Saturday 10 September 2011

Tips From a Master - Gill Dennis

Just added a page with some of the tips handed out by Gill Dennis, the scriptwriter of Walk The Line, who worked on Apocalypse now, who has a long and esteemed history as a screenwriter, tutor and mentor in the film industry...

Thought they might be of use.

Also, typing them up has reminded me of the very many useful notes within each tip... Makes me want to start all over on so many scripts, sob!

Thursday 8 September 2011

Archangel in New York City!

On September 26th a group of enterprising and talented actors are getting together to read through the feature-length pilot script for my series ARCHANGEL at the Irish Rep Theatre in Manhattan.

It's called The Changling. Over the years it was shortlisted for the Tony Doyle Bursary by BBC NI, it was being considered for production by first ITV and then the BBC. There is a director who has wanted to do it for years, at least one producer who loves the socks off it; another director who gave great advice but I couldn't really shrink it down to fit RTE's Storyland pitch.

Thing is, I love the characters and the world; there's a detailed treatment of the whole shebang that I think, mostly, works... but I wrote it in 2003. I have no idea how it will sound in 2011. So, it's exhilarating and slightly nerve-wracking and I am so curious to see how it goes...