Tuesday 24 November 2009

Creative Hydra

Matt’s idea was smashed a while ago, but we have picked up the pieces.

We just listened to a whole list of the reasons it couldn’t be done – largely outdoor locations, child cast, vast set dressing, action, marketing a children’s film…

More info on our company blog.

Friday 20 November 2009

Fazed & Dazed

So, all of us have been reading so many scripts that we now rate our dreams out of ten.

It’s not hard to get a response from hundreds of aspiring writers on mandy.com or over facebook, but it turns out there’s a reason most of these scripts are available to us. They are, ahem, not very impressive

We have been asking for just a synopsis initially, until something grabs our interest, but even so.

We’ve signed NDA agreements with paranoid writers, we’ve courted people who look promising based on their website pitches, we’ve approached generous literary agents and asked for the unread scripts on their shelves, we’ve milked our friends and previous colleagues…

To be fair, we have actually read some pretty great pieces. Not so great that we could use them to raise a few million, but with promising strengths. The problem is that we’re really looking for something very very specific:

A budget under a million, playing to our directors strengths, in a marketable genre, already completed and available without a steep writer’s fee.

For a moment there, we got so desperate we even considered Grampas Gay Vacation. It sure had a marketable title.

Now we have decided to slow this process down a little, as much as that’s a sad thing and I’m a little worried about momentum, it may be for the best. We’ve chatted to the directors and they have agreed that even their untrained writing skills could match our script shortlist.

So now we’re writing our own screenplays. A feature for each director – a children’s film for Matt and a psychological thriller for Ben.

Exciting!

Sunday 15 November 2009

Cards on the Table

It’s been quite a tough task for the directors to write alongside their full time jobs and it seems this new approach may be delaying us more than ever before.

Luckily, there are signs of hope – Matt has an emerging plot outline which looks like it should be a lot of fun. He’s perpetually inspired by the films of the 80s, so there’s a definite element of The Goonies in the script. Kids on an adventure – and the characters are very cute, but I have moments of brief heart palpitation when I think of the budget we will need to build a futuristic town, even a rural one, even with CG and not very far in the future…but plans shall be made!

Meanwhile, Ben has been offered help from one of our new colleagues at the office – he’s a business development guy with an imagination that burns through pop culture 24 hours a day! And he’s decided to try his hand at a heist/horror, which turns out to be quite a nifty mix of genres. I’m looking forward to seeing the first draft of that one.