SWF: Doug Chamberlain – Hollywood or Bust
International Screenwriters Festival: 26th October 2009 The first thing you notice about Doug is that his profile picture is a couple of years, possibly decades, out of date. The second thing you notice, soon as he’s opened his mouth, is his complete affability. Like everyone who took to the stage over the four days of [...]
SWF: Spec Script Market (Part 2)
International Screenwriters Festival: 26th October 2009 Final Draft has a rather fun Reports function which can calculate for you the percentage of action directions to dialogue in your script. New writers, Simon explained, often have around 60% dialogue and 30% action description in their scripts, which is the exact inverse of the desirable 60% action [...]
SWF: Sharp Shooters on the ground
Sharp Shooters at the SWF: from left, Kieran Doherty, Adrian Bently, Rob Eveleigh and the Fantastic Mr John Fox
SWF: Spec Script Market (Part 1)
International Screenwriters Festival: 26th October 2009 One of the early initiatives of the SWF was ‘Script Market’. You bought a 4-day ticket to the festival, paid a fee and submitted a script for assessment for the market. 30 were shortlisted, their authors provided with extensive feedback and then workshopped with members of the reading staff. [...]
SWF: S&R Euroscript Feedback
International Screenwriters Festival: 27th October 2009 There was a point in Tuesday’s 45 min Euroscript script surgery session in which I squealed/shouted so loudly/passionately/aggressively at poor Paul Bassett-Davies that people on other tables actually stopped and looked around – assumedly to make sure I hadn’t physically assaulted him in some way. Bless Paul, he was [...]
SWF: Chris Jones’ Call to Adventure
International Screenwriters Festival: 26th October 2009 Chris Jones – of The Guerrilla Filmmakers Handbook and short film Gone Fishing fame – opened the 2009 Screenwriters Festival with a confession of a grave attack of the nerves, which apparently only increased the enthusiasm for his address. He welcomed the hall of writers as ‘fellow wizards and [...]
The Gold: Another perspective
I spilled my post-UP thoughts to Trudi, who can perhaps relate to Liz’s position better than anyone I know, posing my desire to use this story to question the value of the past, to walk 360 degrees around the desire and dangers of striving for greatness. As always, she came back with hard-earned wisdom, raising [...]
EDINBURGH FESTIVAL: DAY 2 – THE MOTH
Charlie and I had a designated rendezvous for the Capoeira Knights: Boys from Brazil at 9pm, which left me just enough time to trot up to the Edinburgh International Book Festival beforehand. There were two sessions for 7pm, both sold out, one of which I really wanted to attend. Undeterred, I made my way through [...]
EDINBURGH FESTIVAL: DAY 3 – The Final Tale of Jon
I was nervous about Jon, wanting to ask for our money back for the last night based on false advertising and scary reputation and kept waking through the night to see whether he had answered the text message. Our whole experience with Jon to date seemed to point to him indeed being a harmless eccentric, [...]
EDINBURGH FESTIVAL: DAY 2 – Capoeira Knights
This was obviously my idea, which Charlie went along with despite the ticket price because she has friends who do capoeira and perform at her school in Adelaide, and her last event was in the same location, so what the hell. Meanwhile I’ve wandered in and been immediately accosted by a man who wants very [...]