PUNKY Dresses Up For The IFTA Awards Night....

Gearing up for a big day on Saturday 11th.

With PUNKY up for two IFTA nominations... with floor length gown and tux specified for entry along the red carpet into the new Conference Centre for the award ceremony... this could be one of the biggest nights for PUNKY!

The nominations are for Childrens/ Young People's Programme and for Sound Design. To everyone who voted for us, a heartfelt thanks.

But then it has already been a big nine months for PUNKY between the launch at the end of April, multiple screenings on RTEjr since May 3rd, to the overwhemingly positive response internationally - virally via the web, DVD's being sent overseas and word of mouth - to Gerard O'Rourke winning European Producer of the Year at Cartoon Forum last September and Target Entertainment coming on as distributor to launch the series internationally at MIPCom last October...

So Saturday already feels like a real celebration of all that has been achieved -- and very far from the scribblings of an idea that I had back in 2007!

FEW PLACES LEFT FOR ANIMATORS

INAUGURAL ANIMATION NETWORKING EVENT

Next Monday 30th at 7pm, the first networking event to bring together a group of writers and animators takes place in Temple Bar. Limited by space, there are three spaces remaining for animators.

The initiative will, hopefully, become a monthly event – there is great interest on both sides and a waiting list of writers and animators for the next event – but we do need to make sure there is an even mix of writers and animators for the idea to work. Hence we need three more animators for this event so we can get this series off the ground.

My hope is that these evenings will bean opportunity for animators and animation directors and writers interested in or already writing in animation to meet in comfort, with a cup in their hand and get to know each other. The meetings will last about two hours and there is no cost involved. The hope is that various collaborations and partnerships may form that might lead to new, creative and wonderful work in animation. We have great writers lined up for this one and a waiting list of writers and animators for the ones to follow. But we need three more animators to come on next Monday .

The initiative is supported by The Irish Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild (IPSG) and SDGI.

All animation directors and writers working or interested in working in animation are welcome; if you can’t make this one, let me know you’re interested and I’ll put your name down for the next one.

NEW dedicated PUNKY blog...

http://punkyandhercreator-lindsayjsedgwick.blogspot.com/

I have so many files of articles and pictures and feedback from around the world that I've decided to make a home for it all. Also, she's out there now, knocking on receptive doors and looking for international homes so it's a way of celebrating her progress as she goes.

Please comment - and let me know your own personal story - if you have one - of PUNKY.

And if you're looking for another animation series, let me know cos I may just have the perfect one for you!

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!

Chapter One of the Novel in Progress (aka The New Nipper)

I have given myself nine days, including today, to rewrite 23 chapters, an epilogue and a prologue. Actually, I like the prologue... but I'm just not sure I need it. Or that maybe I only need it 'cos the start of Chapter One is weak? In which case, it needs more than a rewrite, it needs a re-think. Maybe I need to start later, keep something back, add a bomb disposal squad or and earthquake... (I'm thinking back now to Sam Goldwyn's advice, "Start with an earthquake and build up to a climax".)

But then I have to be careful what I do. Too much action and it wouldn't be the story of a girl who is about to turn 13 and whose family cause her enough problems to make earthquakes seem benign. The prologue is very much an introduction to her and the most important relationship, at least for now, but it's good to question everything.

In Chapter Three there's a character I'm thinking of jettisoning completely. Around Chapter 12 there's a major problem with the span of time. There are other characters - and a cat - that I haven't used enough. Various chapters seem to work wonderfully well but aspects in them need more research. Others feel clunky and overwritten. I have three Mondays in a row in one, which is ridiculous. And many of these stem from issues that were not issues in the film script on which it is based. Now, instead of lying down quietly and rolling a rug over themselves, these self-same issues are wearing pink neon striped tights on their heads and jumping up and down.

The only elements that are not up for question are the piranha Ponchinello and the plot.

But can I do it all in nine days when it's already nearly three pm on Day 1?

Punky is in The News!!!

Tune in to tonight's Six-One News on RTE1 to see Punky officially launched.

Put together a packed room of adults, children and adults who are still children at heart; add a few short speeches, a blue rabbit called Oggie; present with a couple of episodes of what we believe is the world's first mainstream cartoon with a central character who is not only fun and loveable but also has Down syndrome - and stir gently ... The result: a wonderful, quite fantastic celebration of what can happen if you are lucky enough to get that germ of an idea before anyone else, to be pushy enough to create the world around that idea and believe it has to be made, to get support when you need it - (Irish Film Board Development Loan, such a lovely pre-Christmas bit of news in 2007) - and a producer - Gerard O'Rourke of Monster Animation who truly believed it had to be made ...

It was a fantastic event, so much absolute and happy positivity in one room!!! It was on Radio 1's lunchtime news too - don't think I'll ever get used to hearing my own voice on radio though but this is such a wonderful whirl and I could get used to that!!!

Aimee and Punky on RTE 1 tonight!

Aimee Richardson, the voice of 'Punky', the central character of my series, is going to be interviewed on the Saturday Night Show on RTE tonight.

Aimee has done a fantastic job and is also an ambassador for Down Syndrome Ireland, who have been behind the idea from the series since I first approached them in 2008/9 after I'd got some Irish Film Board development money.

At that stage, I wanted to make sure I was hitting the right tone with the series and they set up meetings for me with lots of Mums and their children. You have no idea how much research goes into a series like this!!!

Now it feels real...

The first three episodes of PUNKY are finished their sound edits beautifully; the title sequence is perfect, and now all the other episodes - at different stages of completion/ development are all falling into line behind.

They look fantastic, so congrats to all involved, especially to Monster Animation and the fantastic animators, and very especially to producer Gerard O'Rourke who had the vision to know this series would work...

This noble profession...

For forty odd years in this noble profession
I’ve harboured a guilt and my conscience is smitten
So here is my slightly embarrassed confession –
I don’t like to write, but I love to have written...

Without doubt, this is one of my favourite bits of doggerel by a writer called Michael Kanin. Doesn't it just sum up how impossibly difficult writing occasionally is, and how frustrating.

At the moment, I seem to be bogged down by all the material I want to finish or start. There's a competition being run by Shine Pictures called The Big Idea. Look it up. (http://apply.shinegroup.tv/writingcompetition/index.apply?redirect=true)
It's a really interesting competition and you're allowed up to one entry in each genre... only the storyline has to be 700 words and for some reason this seems to have stumped me. The pieces I would love to develop have either short two page outlines or storylines that range above the 3,000 mark.

And I want it to be a really strong piece - there's no point otherwise - and yet, every time I think I have space in my head to thrash it out, 'something' happens. An enquiry arrives from the outside world looking for me to develop a proposal for a body of work, or to see if I have something to match a certain brief -- which means developing on spec, yet again, but sometimes it pays and if you're not in, I don't see how you can win.

It's a greedy business. It gobbles up time.

Then there's the script-editing work, which always seems to take far more time than I ever allow for. And I'll be teaching again from Thursday eve in Filmbase so I managed to spend hours today reorganising my handouts, my notes, choosing different clips... Which led me to realise I have to see heaps of films and fast because I want to find even better clips.

And then there's the children's book I was rewriting. (I managed to narrow the focus down to just one for rewriting). My life - which seems large and enjoyable now that the tooth/ sinus/ jaw demon has been mostly expunged - tugged me me away from it a fortnight ago, at the tail end of Chapter 7...

I've realised in the interim that there there is sooo much more I can do with it and I'm wondering why I got an idea that all the chapters should be the same length? It's so arbitrary and it really isn't necessary. I'm hungry to get back to it but I haven't had time.

Mind you, sometimes that 'something' is me, allowing distraction to lure me in just about any direction. And hell knows, there are enough genuine distractions in life without procrastination jumping in. Self discipline is something that comes like a miraculous gift and then you get tons done, amazing mountains of work sift away into manageable dunes... but then, sometimes, it vanishes again.

And this is one of the reasons I haven't been looking at Facebook or writing the blog or watching those fantastic TED lectures. I WANT to be writing. I want to create something new and original and bloody compelling... and I want to finish everything else so that it feels new and original and bloody compelling, with bells on.

So I'm considering buying a self-zapping collar. I could rig it up so that if I strayed too far from the desk, it would remind me with a gentle (?) electric zap to sit back down... Only it might kill more brain cells than I successfully murdered with wine last night and might be self-defeating.

Besides, sometimes the procrastination, the long walks and the ruminating and the picking out of odd books from a bookshelf, or even the making of a pot of coffee are all necessary to the art of creation.

I think.

An Interesting and Fruitful Week...

I have agreed a director and production company for my play, A Fresh Gale and Cold Chicken. He is as passionate about it as I am, very experienced as an imaginative director and determined to make it happen.

We're talking next Spring. For the launch of Smock Alley theatre. Fingers crossed, toes too... all we need now is money!

My daughter and I saw the first episode of Punky too, last Tuesday. It's lovely, really beautiful and sweet and will be a fantastic series. They were finishing voice recordings on the first six this week, and the pre-publicity will begin to roll soon. The publicity that says, "yes, it is happening. Watch this space!". Exciting.

Unfortunately, this week we also buried the last of my father's sisters, and the most colourful of all that generation in our family. I didn't know her well, being at the tail end of my family, but I grew up hearing stories about her. A party animal,who lived life to the full, she could jitterbug in a way that emptied dance floors - y'know, the over the head, spun around her partner's body, flung under the legs and up again... it sounds tiring just writing it! She also had, and this is a phrase her son used, "a voice that could cut hedges"... which I thought was wonderful!

But I also discovered my father's other sister, who died a month ago, was a doyenne of high society and something of a fashion icon in Ireland in the late 40s and fifties, written about in society columns here and abroad. She was one of Ireland's first real businesswomen, running the travel information bureau in Brown Thomas'.

I knew her as a talented artist whose nail varnish always matched her shoes, who grew smaller and smaller like a little delicate bird over recent years.

As I said, an interesting week!

Interesting Times...

From feeling quite flat after that period of major productivity, things are looking up again. Next Tuesday, I see the rough cut of the first episode of my animation series, PUNKY, animated by Monster Animation under the directorial hand of Jason Tammemagi.

How many series are being made, in reality, in Ireland this year? To have one doing just that, thanks for the tenacity of the producer Gerard O'Rourke, is phenomenal and I can't wait.

On Wednesday, I get to see my latest great-nephew - my tenth great niece or nephew! (Scary, but true!) And on Thursday, I meet the director/ producer interested in putting my play - A Fresh Gale and Cold Chicken - into production next year. I had been told he required chasing; he himself told me to "hound him" and yet he was the one who made first contact looking for an early opportunity to meet. Which feels fantastic.

So I'm all spurred on again, juggling the different projects in my head that I want to get my teeth back into and thinking about my next play. There are a few I had to put on the back burner but are any of them the right one now? Would I be better coming up with something utterly new that captures the energy of this latest one? Or a children's play? Or a comedy?

I want to write so many things! Where is the time, and what should I really focus on?!

I can list at least five projects I really, really want to get back to.

Meanwhile, my daughter only wants me to play Littlest Pet Shop. We have worlds laid out in the sitting room with doll's house furniture, even if upside-down tables are doubling as beds, and each of us has a business. Mine is a book-store, hers is a magical park that covers a table, a shelf and a stool.

I've sneaked out to the office on the premise of collecting a new range of books for my characters - one hamster, one bird, two cats - to sell to hers. So long as I keep creating little books, I get to write a little more...

Nope, the idyll is over. She has informed me that my book-store is too full of books and it's time to take up the reins again. Sob!

School's back on September 1st.

PUNKY, the new animated series

The first episode of my TV series, PUNKY is now being animated by Monster Animation. There should be rushes to see - though I'm sure they're not called rushes in animation - by the middle of August.

I left the series as writer a few months ago. Hence the radio silence on the subject. The target market for the series had switched from the 9-11 year age group to pre-school (3-6 years). Try as I could, the pre-school market is one area of writing for which I don't seem to have the knack. The scripts I wrote and rewrote were being honed from larger stories, from a larger canvas, from a more complex series and I wasn't sure at the end what it was that I was meant to write. It wasn't a pleasant experience, despite the wonderful relationships I had with Monster, and was quite heart-breaking.

The writer they brought on board after this is Andrew Brenner, who created and wrote HUMF (78 episodes), which is also pre-school. He makes it look easy and maybe it is easier, if that's an age group for whom you want to write. I hadn't, but I fought that and came a cropper. Learning curves, don't you just love 'em!!

Once I'd come to terms with it, the pressure came off. Once I'd seen the first script, which is sweet and lovely and has the spirit I was trying to capture in my proposal, I knew it would be a fantastic series.

Now, I can't wait now to see my adorable Punky come to life. I invented her back in 2007 and yes, the project changed and some aspects that I loved, were lost en route to a series that would work and would sell.

And now she is finally being 'born'. How cool is that!?

40,000 Words in 15 Days...

I think it's a record... at least for me!

So far, this means I've written 80,000 words since the 6th of June, ie rough drafts of two new children's books, which are loosely based on scripts that have not been made. It's such a buzz!

Realised last night, however, that I am totally whacked so taking a break this week, if I can. But it is very comforting knowing I have that material to play with and that I will have two (hopefully polished) books to offer someone by the end of the year.

It was actually quite a relief to write books after so many years on screenplays and in development, but it has meant that everything else that wasn't necessary got sidelined. The work went with me into bed, dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night and trotted along everywhere I went. When I wasn't writing something, I felt slightly adrift. I even managed to write while my family were watching TV, which shows how much it gripped me/ took over my life!

My daughter went to camp for six glorious hours a day and I buried myself in the office, only coming up for air - reluctantly! - when my daughter needed to be collected and fed. The poor child was very understanding and quite excited but she did puzzle why I had "suddenly turned into a workaholic?"

Now she has started her own book now, about a dragon keeper. Her last one (it ran to one third of a copy book) was about the Holocaust and yes, she is only 11 but I refuse to fear or squash the competition just yet. And she knows that she will be my first reader, when I've polished them up, so it's in her interest to encourage me or, at least, put up with my absences in the evenings. (7-10 are two very productive hours, for some reason.)

I can't wait for her feedback. I'm not sure whether I should let her read them herself or to read her a chapter a night. One will test the book from a reader's perspective but the other way, I'll hear what's wrong and know what needs to be fixed. I suspect it will a bit of both.

And I can't wait for these books to be done so I can get on to the next one and the next! There are several exciting projects that might stem the flow a bit - which is why these two months are precious - but that's cool too.

Hope everyone else's work is going well too?

The Buried Blog

Yup, underneath all the work I'm doing is a blog, glaring at me balefully, making me feel his neglect - don't ask, today it just feels like a 'he' blog.

So, guilt aside, I can honestly say that it's because I've been writing too much. Which is a good complaint, if not an entertaining one. I've been working on a new TV series proposal that could/ should/ may just get funding and it has nudged much else off the table. Can't say more but it will be entertaining when it happens. (See, that positive' when' creeping in!? That's the Blog talking, grateful for being roused.)

In every other moment that's free I'm trying to finish a first draft of a new novel. It's for pre-teens - the main character, Jessie, is eleven - and it's such fun to write. Some parts just write themselves; others skulk around waiting to be yanked into plain sight and then quite enjoy themselves. I did 29,000 words last month, as well as the rewrite of the play and working on the early treatment for the TV series. I've a feeling this month will be slower. The aim is to have a rough draft by the end of the month.

Why go in this direction after 13 years writing screenplays? Because there seemed to be an increasing waft of hints and comments from so many disparate sources suggesting I should write books for children. And I've always wanted to. There's a shelf of files to prove I always wanted to, but any idea I've had the time or confidence to finish became animation series. The others sat in the 'to do' file, winking at me.

The pleasure of this book is that I can play with words, as many words as I like. I can dive inside Jessie's head and dance with her. If she'd dance, but she's a bit grumpy at the moment.

I have no idea if it works as a whole yet. I have to finish it first. That's where faith comes in. And then the rewrite. And then the test audience - my daughter. Who told me she didn't want me to read it to her until I had two chapters finished. Then, if I read a chapter a night, it would force me to keep writing until the end.

Naturally, every other moment is creatively spent... traumatising younger neighbourhood kids with their first experience of Cleudo - "It's about death? I might have murdered someone?! How do you kill someone with a rope!?" -, playing a live Cleudo game - where you have to interview my daughter as each character -; walking the dog, playing with the snail and drinking coffee.

And trying to get back to the book.

PUNKY, Pettigrew the snail and the challenge of writing for pre-schoolers

The snail Pettigrew, is behaving herself. She now has a nice shimmer of purple (nail varnish) and sunset kiss (lip gloss) on her shell and seems to be adapting well to life in a flowerpot.

That the selfsame flowerpot got flooded at the weekend while my daughter was at cub camp and despite my being given strict instructions on The Care of Snail Farm While I’m Away this doesn’t seem to have fazed either it or my daughter. She just shook it out, touched up its shell and put it in another pot. Makes me wonder what these poor snails did in a previous life.

Meanwhile, I’m adapting to Punky. Writing for 3-6 year-olds is a challenge. Yes, we are aiming at the top of that age range but I’m not an animator and this, I’m learning, is a big disadvantage when writing for this target group.

For a start, stories have to be simple, which is good. (Forgetting for now the great stories that worked when Punky was a longer form for an older age group. Muffled sob stage left). In addition, this age group tend to listen more than watch, so everything important has to be said as well as shown, in case they miss it. So I’m writing lines that in any other form would be redundant and ‘on the nose’. But they work.

Events have to be perfectly linear. If Punky decides to do something – aloud – then she does it and then we have to see the result in the next scene. There’s no opportunity to let several events build up and bring everything together in a climax. It has to be cause and effect every step of the way or they’ll miss it and it won’t make sense.

Transitions are another one. Time passing, location hops that an older audience would comprehend, just don’t work. For example, if a character is upstairs, they can’t then be downstairs in the next scene. Either we see them leave the room and head down or, if there is a significant change in time, we have a transition. This means, we show time passing.

Only we can’t have anything written because this is for children aged 3-6. So we have the classics of a sun moving across a sky, a clock's hands spinning or, ideally, someone going to bed and waking up but that takes longer.

Oh and scenes are more static, of course. At its simplest, every angle is a different drawing. You can’t turn the camera around and look upstairs so the less of this that is needed, the better.

Scene set-ups need a visual clarity too. You can’t simply have

INT – PUNKY’S ROOM

The alarm goes off, startling Punky. Her hand reaches out to turn it off.

You have to say at the top of the scene that Punky is in bed, not assume they will know. This comes down to not being an animator. If I was, I’d think in terms of the visual set up and what we need to see drawn, and then create the flow of the scene from this. One suggestion has been to make a little set and move the characters around to give myself a sense of what the animators need to see on the page. Everything they need to draw for the scene to work has to be spelt out at the very top of the written scene.

So the word now is that we really only have story room for Punky and her dog; yes, there are other characters but the focus has to be her point of view. Insistently so. Because this is what makes it original. It is also what I always intended for the series. It’s the old adage – let your main character drive the story.

So, at its most basic, I am being driven by Punky back to the root and core of all storytelling and all screenwriting.

Punky, an update, and snails

The first batch of scripts are gone despite a birthday party for my daughter which lasted 24 hours. Did we ever have them?

Overheard were snatches of "truth or dare" and "it's okay, we can watch Glee here and your parents will never know" and something about setting the alarm for a midnight feast. Fortunately the dog snored through it all, my daughter believes her alarm clock broken and so they slept through and the worst 'truth's that seemed to emerge were to do with fancying a boy years ago and "once I wore yellow lipstick but I don't know why". They're eleven.

The struggle to write when you have kids, and I have only one, is sometimes exhausting. Just rewriting one seven minutes script - I thought they'd take about 20 minutes to rewrite; they took about 70; I'd swear it's harder than writing a feature! - involved seven interruptions.

My daughter wanted me to adopt a snail. I kept fobbing her off, thinking that the work would, as I said, take 20 minutes max. Initially, I was gentle but firm. Then I explained that the more she interrupted the longer it would take me to finish. She finally drew her horns in when my response to the repeated question - are you ready yet? - became an anguished and angry roar reminding her how she hates to be interrupted when she's doing something and THIS IS WORK!!!!!

And then felt immensely guilty. It was Sunday afternoon and she only wanted company. But I still finished the work. A deadline's a deadline. I'd hosted her friends for the guts of 24 hours, making sure they had a fantastic party, sleepover, excursion to the Science Museum - go, it's brilliant! - and this was why at least some of the work needed to be done on Sunday.

My daughter has decided to keep pet snails in various containers in the front garden. She varnishes their backs so you can tell them apart and takes them for walks on a string. I had to go through a similar procedure to the one we recently took when we got our rescue dog.

I named my snail - Pettigrew, just to be awkward, got the adoption form officially signed (looking suspiciously like the dog licence), purchased the habitat (a blue flower pot), the cover (a broken tile) and the food - a bag of dry rosemary needles - but postponed the varnishing, vet visit and decision on insurance.

I have a feeling men are better at separating work and family. Either they draw the boundaries more clearly and demand that separation. Or we keep the kids away, maybe that's it? As my mother put it, she was protecting us from him, not the other way round.

But if I could maintain that division, I wouldn't now be the proud but somewhat bemused owner of an embarrassed snail name Pettigrew.

PUNKY, the new animated series

Started work on what is to be the template script for the series last week. It's a challenge. When conceived, pitched and sold, PUNKY was for 4-7 year-olds and there were going to be 13 x 11 minute episodes. Now it's for age 3-6 and there will be twenty episodes of 7 minutes.

This means I actually only have 6 minutes and 20 seconds, after credits and opening sequence, in which to tell my stories. Locations have been reduced from school and home to home and surrounds. Stories have to be far simpler and told at a more gentle pace. Everything is in the air, most of the stories I developed no longer work - too complicated - and I have to find a way to achieve what I set out to do on an entirely different canvas.

The wisdom now is that kids over six don't watch cartoons, hence the age change although we will not dumb it down and are aiming at the top end ie the 6 year-olds. Despite the fact that my child, nearly 11, adores them, as do a large portion of her friends. As do I. I suspect this opinion has come from America, from the policy and money-making machines that are the big corporations. In the UK there are 21 children's channels available now, mostly American.

But the first script is done now and I'm awaiting feedback. I suspect that while fun, it is still too busy for the new age group. Once it works, we should know what we want the show to look and sound like now. Trouble is that every book I can find on writing for animation talk about the longer versions of scripts and older age ranges. So, apart from watching too many cartoons in the early morning as research, it's guesswork and instinct. Wish me luck!!