Nostradamus got it wrong
Two weeks ago, work was so exciting that I pimped myself out to Marketing in desperation – before Hollie pointed out to me that I was about to take six days off (“That fitness course you’re doing – remember that? It’s next week…”). Marketing were pleased to see me and passed over a few programme synopses for a new History microsite. It was the most bizarre afternoon and I realised how much I miss working on the History site. Bio is fun, but History is fascinating and there’s a big difference between the two.
Firstly I wrote and sifted through images of 9-11 for a programme called 201 Minutes That Changed America, and was genuinely startled to find how distant that event now seemed. I was reminded of how time might be the great healer, but only through theft – her inexorable passage takes us away from trauma and love alike, and I think we must at times fight against this widening distance.
Marketing were also featuring two programmes about Nostradamus, and writing those synopses has completely changed Sieren & Rael. The opening is still giving me a headache and as I pondered the many problems biking my way home, I joking thought that the cataclysmic Second Coming from the story could have been the event that Nostradamus, the Mayans, the Hopi Prophecies, the Sibyline Books and the I Ching allegedly predict will ‘end the world’ on a predetermined schedule.
Now I haven’t done the hard research outside of a History documentary on the facts pointing to this 2012 deadline for mankind, but the next thought that came to mind is that D’Aeon, the beast that lurks below London and will eventually rip up Westminster in a most dramatic fashion (thank you Chris) could have been the originator of the many doomsday predictions for 2012.
Which all gives me a whole new entry to Episode/Chapter 1, setting the scene (2022, ten years after the cataclysm), offering an easy opening joke about London being saved from the Olympics, knitting genuine mythology into this fictional world providing me with an all-new hook line into the treatment (Nostradamus got it wrong).
As if this wasn’t all too exciting, I later listened to a podcast from last year’s Screen Writer’s Festival in which Laura Mackie from ITV was encouraging writers to be more imaginative with their pitch documents. Her example of thinking outside a pile of white paper referred to hit UK hairdressing series Cutting It, which was pitched in the form of a glossy magazine, such as you would find in any salon.
Something went click and I had a whole new idea for pitching S&R – a DVD marked Top Secret with ETI (Earth Force Department of Extra Terrestrial Investigation – strictly separate to the department of ET Defence, who are a bunch of brigands) branding, and which loads up a Flash (?!) presentation documenting retrospectively the events and characters involved in the 3 seasons of the series.It would be like looking through a closed case file – essentially presenting everything required in a normal pitch document, but in a much more exciting, interactive manner.
Meanwhile I’ve read an excellent SharpShooter report on the Northern Irish Screenwriter’s Festival in which Nuno Bernardo, creator of Portugal’s hit online drama Sophia’s Diary, talked about the potential for web drama. Lots of ideas are clicking about by this time, and I’m starting to think: Sieren & Rael could have a seriously awesome complimentary online component. Video diaries from the Orpheus Boys, character blogs, finding codes to ‘intercept’ ETI transmissions, accessing a top secret feed from Portal One… the series is built upon such a complex network of mysteries and mythologies that I can see countless opportunities for creating an online community to support the aired programme.
Now I just need a Flash genius and to swot up on a few History docos…