Roger Moore is returning to the screen in a film called Connemara Days to be made in the west of Ireland this Autumn. It’s a love story running parallel with the making of The Quiet Man, apparently his favourite film of all time. It's being produced by Causeway Pictures.
All being well, I’m lined up to script edit it. The added bonus is that when the producers receive cash to make Connemara Days, they can then pay me to write another feature for them which will be made up North next year.
So far, for the latter project, there’s an exciting director tied in and I believe Hubbard have signed up to do the casting. As a result, there were some interesting names mentioned for the cast when we were developing it last year.
No role yet mentioned for Pettigrew the snail, despite her extensive list of hits such as Honey, I Found a Kid in the Long Grass and Snailspray the Musical.
Connemara Days is the first project to be funded by the the Luxembourg-managed / UK-administered Red Carpet Film Fund, which Sir Roger Moore has joined as Chairman. The Board also includes visual effects maestro Ilyas Kaduji (Harry Potter, Chronicles of Narnia), producer Richard Holmes (Waking Ned, Shooting Fish), production executive Terry Bamber (Quantum of Solace, Gullivers Travels), and respected film lawyer Richard Moxon.
Principle photography is due to begin - ash cloud willing - in late August, followed by studio work in Belfast, with the support of Failte Ireland, Section 481 and Irish equity. Kevin Connor will direct and the cast includes Sarah Bolger, Stacy Keach, Geraldine Chaplin, Judy Cornwell and Roger Moore himself.
Showing posts with label snails. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snails. Show all posts
Monday, 17 May 2010
Wednesday, 12 May 2010
A Fresh Gale and Cold Chicken: on cuts and motivational deadlines
Met with Patrick Sutton of Smock Alley Theatre today and we’ve settled, provisionally, on the week of June 21st to hold the rehearsed reading of my play on Farquhar in The Boy’s School, Smock Alley. It’s a fantastic and unusual venue; a version of theatre in the round where the viewing area is a ramp that ascends around the space several times. It almost feels as if you’re observing a play from the terraces of a tenement building in the 17th century.
Smock Alley is where Farquhar performed before he went on to become the most popular Restoration playwright based in London. It’s also where he nearly stabbed a fellow actor to death on stage but more of that on the night!
Since arranging last week to meet Patrick, I’ve re-written the first act, based on our at-home reading in March. It’s fantastic to be back under its 17th century skin, to be bawdy and bold as well as poignant and witty! Oh and keep the narrative and all the threads flowing freely.
Of course, when I type it all into the computer, some of it will work and some of it will be far less exciting than it appeared when I was scribbling in the margins, but it’s good to have something tangible to put in. Deadlines are fantastic, if occasionally vicious, motivators.
I have agreed to cut the play down from a full length one-man show (we were aiming to follow Simon Callow’s footsteps with his Dickens show) to one hour 15 max. A tall order, but then haven’t I spent the last month crafting seven minutes scripts?!
In some ways, it feels really refreshing. I have been given the freedom to cut everything that isn’t essential, gripping and entertaining... But then I haven’t sat down to try and do this yet, so the pain threshold hasn’t yet been breached.
Since I have a gut feeling the script currently runs close to 100 mins... this means cutting at least 25%. I put the expected pain on a par with the extraction of one, possibly two wisdom teeth and the squashing of seven particularly healthy and shiny cockroaches with my bare feet on a tiled floor in the dark.
It may be a case of keeping two drafts so I don’t feel I’m abandoning favourite sections or speeches. I’m just putting them aside.
But I can’t wait to start. I’ve had a chat with Pettigrew, the Creature of Small Stature, Minimal Dialogue and Varicoloured Shell. She has agreed to assist. The idea is I place her on the script and she’ll mark what needs to go with a gentle slime trail.
Smock Alley is where Farquhar performed before he went on to become the most popular Restoration playwright based in London. It’s also where he nearly stabbed a fellow actor to death on stage but more of that on the night!
Since arranging last week to meet Patrick, I’ve re-written the first act, based on our at-home reading in March. It’s fantastic to be back under its 17th century skin, to be bawdy and bold as well as poignant and witty! Oh and keep the narrative and all the threads flowing freely.
Of course, when I type it all into the computer, some of it will work and some of it will be far less exciting than it appeared when I was scribbling in the margins, but it’s good to have something tangible to put in. Deadlines are fantastic, if occasionally vicious, motivators.
I have agreed to cut the play down from a full length one-man show (we were aiming to follow Simon Callow’s footsteps with his Dickens show) to one hour 15 max. A tall order, but then haven’t I spent the last month crafting seven minutes scripts?!
In some ways, it feels really refreshing. I have been given the freedom to cut everything that isn’t essential, gripping and entertaining... But then I haven’t sat down to try and do this yet, so the pain threshold hasn’t yet been breached.
Since I have a gut feeling the script currently runs close to 100 mins... this means cutting at least 25%. I put the expected pain on a par with the extraction of one, possibly two wisdom teeth and the squashing of seven particularly healthy and shiny cockroaches with my bare feet on a tiled floor in the dark.
It may be a case of keeping two drafts so I don’t feel I’m abandoning favourite sections or speeches. I’m just putting them aside.
But I can’t wait to start. I’ve had a chat with Pettigrew, the Creature of Small Stature, Minimal Dialogue and Varicoloured Shell. She has agreed to assist. The idea is I place her on the script and she’ll mark what needs to go with a gentle slime trail.
Friday, 7 May 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)