Living Da Skreama De Shalka

Anyone remember the Scream Of The Shalka?

Wonder how many blogs have opened with that question.  I don't ask it because its something that was so cultish that it should be forgotten and consigned away as a side step in the rebirth of Doctor Who from Geeky Anorak Fodder to mainstream Drama Juggernaught.

There are many people who have negative opinions about it, Richard E. Grant's take on The Doctor, being interesting, the twisty reveal of the Master companion being (*spoiler*). But it has a lot going for it if you like, urban darkness.

There's a line in a Big Country song that goes "Some people say you have to change to stay the same, I guess we tried so hard to stay the same we changed."  I've never been one for change myself, I like settlement. In fact over the past two months I've probably felt worse than I have since the start of 2012. Having a regular pattern of 7 hours sleep when working nights was great, but then people left and the saviour was once again needed.

So in all this change what remains the same? 2nd year in a row Star Rabbit Tracks received a Parsec Award nomination... Basically what that means is that my second series DID NOT SUCK!! Jumping on board a series established by someone else and trying to stamp your own mark on it isn't easy, and I thank people who have enjoyed my eps, the recent few eps have been amazing to the point where even I was laughing at my own jokes.

And Of The Night returned from the dead (ironic with it being a Vampire Noir) episode 3 after a 2 year absence. And I still think its one of the finest things I've ever written. It holds a tender part in my heart and am very proud of the guys at Spiritblade for what they've done.

Did I also tell you that In The Line Of Duty: The Vanguard Archives is also a ratings success with regular downloads of over 100 a month from across the world? The series has grown through a lot of pitching and repitching with my collaborator Ben Reed. The formula is as follows. There are action sequences, but the characters are real with emotions and back story. Every little character has a tale and a connection. My favourite ep is the one where David Ault's Jack Anders carries the story on his own as the husband who has lost his wife, but (and this is a secret) Michael Hudson's performance as George Marcus a man who has lost his son was so good we decided to write him into the series full time.

My writing life will come full circle if Eric Busby releases the Byron specials I wrote for him. One of which was inspired by what someone described as a Twitercrush. she liked Mummies so Mummies appeared in the episode.

But all of this is old news revisited. This isn't the new news. I hear you cry, some of you say "Please stop blogging" some of you say "you ignorant arrogant pig" some of you even say "I don't get it" which I suppose is most of you. So for all those interested in what's happening I'll let you know...

The Soul Trilogy is a little set of short films linked by a narrow thread. I've been persuaded not to be such a protective, power hungry so and so and I've relinquished my arm to my London colleagues for their particular stories. casting, locations... Because I've been working on:

Manchester Nun With A Gun Productions...

TaDah! What do you think? I'm working on T-shirts as we speak. (No, I'm not kidding)

The first Manc Nun wit' Gun production is cast, semi located and I'm currently wooing a film crew and hiring an AD. I know that I'm not to everyone's taste, but hopefully I do things for what I consider the best intention. So on this occasion I will be stepping into the Ron Howard director's hat.

So, I work hard at the day job doing things I don't like, working long hours for extra money to finance the production that I do like, but that I'm doing a job I'm not sure about to get the vision I want...

Sometimes in order to get to where you want you have to take risks and do something you hate, to be hated and know that deep inside you're doing it for the greater good.

Write It Again, Sam.

There's so many different pieces of advice that come from writers, to writers. Most of the 'how to' books will tell you that writing has rules which must be obeyed, it appears that most of these ever so helpful 'how to' books will quite readily ignore literary classics which ignore every rule in the how to book and are still talked about in English Lit classes throughout the world.

One of the main "this is how you must write" orders from 'experts' is to write about what you know.

Some writers take this literally at face value, write about people and places and events that they're familiar with. I have been told today that I should write about my work place and make it an observational comedy because of everything that goes on. It got me thinking about what the meaning of "write what you know" actually is.

In my opinion, write what you know goes deeper than situations, it's about characters and interactions. At its heart the Lord Of The Rings trilogy is less about Orcs, Elves and Dwarfs, and more about family and relationships. Twilight is about being the outsider and finding your place among similar peers (the other films don't have the same focus and as a result suffer IMHO)

So, I suppose in essence what I'm saying is that I believe the only thing that a writer should remember is focus. To plus my own works, they work best when looking at relationships, Byron's relationship with Slate and Sam drive the highlights of Hour Of Portland, several episodes of Star Rabbit Tracks focus on people finding or losing friends and loved ones.

Take a closer look at ForeverTogether, find the relationship. It's so subtle and yet so integral that you could miss it altogether, but without it the whole thing would fall apart, it would be empty and hollow........

Ever Circling Seasons Of The Skeletal People

So, how do you combat fatigue?

I like to take a big glass of all your hopes and dreams and that great big light at the end of the tunnel.... and smash it against an oncoming freight train that's put its tickets up 15% because they can.

Obviously none of the above actually amounts to anything other than surreal ramblings of a person with things on their mind. I'm 30 years old now, way older than I believe myself to be, the big difference is the way that a 30 year old woman is no longer a hot milf, but is actually my age group. Again, not really much to do with anything, but rambling.

Rambling is good, apparently. Cleanses your mind and a little piece of your soul.

February was amazing, it was the moment of clarity, the veil that lifted. The tunnel was coming into view and there was the light. Everything started to stack up, the people, the choices, the workload. I was happy.

Whoops, there it goes again. It sounds like a rumble and then there's the hooter then the light, the light gets closer and closer and closer...

You get the idea.

I hate being teased, it's horrible having that potential dangled in front of you, having choices, making choices and then... It's taken away in an instant.

At the start of the year I was told, there's no job for you, you'll have to go on nights.

I hated the thought, saw it as a total loss of everything, I was wrong, it was liberating, I got to work and achieve and saw my dreams flourish. Without nights #ForeverTogether would never have been born and released and organised in time. [I am not being ingenuine, I hope, to my fellow workers, if so I do apologise]

So what's the one thing people do when they can see you happy and reaching for your dreams... They stop you.

All of a sudden, within a couple of weeks, everything changes and 'no job on days' becomes 'no job on nights' and job on days becomes extra work on days. Oh how I laughed... well not really, more died internally.

Norman Stanley Fletcher had three rules to survive.

1) Keep your nose clean

2) Bide Your Time

3) Don't Let The Bastards Grind You Down

I've done number 1, been doing it for 10 years.

I'm doing number 2, working harder at it over the past few years.

Number 3, is really really hard.

PRODUCTION NOTES - part 3

I challenge anyone who thinks that making films is easy to undertake the challenge that we have. The past few days have been stressful. I myself undertook a 5 hour journey, meeting and pre-planning location photograph session and an extra 2 hour of journey time (plus twenty minutes on the underground playing musical stations) on only an hours sleep. I apologise to the people of Chatham, Strood, Rochester, Rainham and Gillingham for whose stations I slept through at 10:30 on Tuesday night.

On top of that on the day of shooting I walked out of the location and saw.... snow! Noooo!! It can't snow we have exterior shots to film. Luckily it subsided, apart from the cold and the wind chill which turned quite a few hands blue.

And our poor actress, by poor I mean suffering because in terms of the quality we received this was high end stuff. If the previous actor we worked with is anything to go by she can expect to have leading roles in commercials very soon. Oh how we punished her, having her in a negligee opening a door to sub zero temperatures and still being seductive, that is ACTING!

I don't know what I expected, as my last experience of filming was very much based on patchwork, multiple locations multiple days spread over months of filming. The pressure to get it right, to stay on schedule this time was immense, over running wasn't an option all night filming if necessary. We have to complete, there was no way it could be another week, everything was planned to the tiniest detail, writing week 1, pre production week 2, filming week 3, editing week 4, final edit and upload week 5. Maybe we have to apologise for being so pushy that people feel put out, but sometimes we have no option. The best thing about the day, was that nobody stepped out of line, everybody had a role and everybody stuck to their task.

Everybody appreciates good, hard work. When you're good, you're good and I find myself in a great position in that due to possibly more luck than anything else I can surround myself with people who are not only good, but great. Let's take for example my followers on Twitter, I needed faces for a fake social network site, and out of all the people I asked ( I will refrain from naming those who didn't respond) I had a majority yes from them all. It's frankly a weird world where someone you hardly know asks for your picture and you say yes.

I sometimes in these situations feel like a fake, a bit like that TV show whose name escapes me where someone pretends to be in a job they know nothing about. When the lovely Elinor Perry-Smith (Nun With A Gun Productions and co-producer of ForeverTogether) treated us to a lunch break I found myself surrounded by people with degrees and proper training, they've had their talents honed and developed to be the best they can be. Here was I , the untrained Northerner, somehow I'd gatecrashed a group of people with degrees and certificates and awards and yet I was an equal. It goes to prove one thing, if you have the talent then it comes to the surface. I had the priviledge of working with extremely talented people and they were just as complimentary to me as they were to each other. I still feel a fraud, but I'm not going to dwell on it because I'm a very good fraud.

Taking time to reflect on the day, I don't think it's an understatement to say that with another crew I wouldn't be as confident that we would have succeeded. I could put my faith in them and go there you are, location, actress, script. Do your thing. While I just faffed about in the background moving furniture and offering minor suggestions and collecting minor props that had slipped our mind.

[A test, anyone who can find the last minute prop that masqueraded as something else entirely will win a box of chocolate fingers]

So where do we go next? A very good question as the journey is far from over. We still need music, we still need an edit, we need to keep our fingers crossed that the thirty people we're thanking don't count towards our crew count. (I wouldn't have thought so) We need to upload it, we need to find tuxedo's, we need to discover if I and Danny Boyle have shared memories of the hills and dales of Bolton's countryside, we need to know how to get to the O2 arena to pick up our prize.... In terms of fantasies it's not a bad one. You have to try and you have to believe, as Teesha proved, if you try; you succeed. You cannot wipe the smile away from someone who has beaten the odds to be somewhere they only imagined. She may be one of a thousand dancers at the opening ceremony of the Olympic games, but she will have one of the biggest smiles.

So, here we go. Win Sundance, Adib and Adeel get their shot at a million dollar budget movie, Vanessa becomes lead role in Downton Abbey as Hugh Bonneville's long lost daughter, Scott gets to write the next Jason Statham action flick, Elinor is the most talked about new writer in the art movie world and I get a phone call from Toby Whithouse that says "I'm taking over Doctor Who.... let's talk."

We can dream.........

PRODUCTION NOTES - part 2

Four weeks of the Five Week Film Project to go.

Sometimes you do things that make you feel like a right bastard, I've been reading 'The Writers Tale' finally got round to picking it up again. He talks a lot of sense, it's real insight and almost like finding a kindrid spirit with a similar work ethic. Although I'm not for one second kidding myself that Russell T. Davies and I would ever be friends.

If you find a project that you believe in, you will push whatever you can to get it made. Sometimes you have to take charge and walk over people. I hate that thought, steamrollering your way through people to make a change and a difference, but in hindsight that's the only way small people get started. Believe in yourself and make others believe in you too.

When I contacted the directors the first question was "can you make a short film in 5 weeks." his answer ended with "Nothing is possible, I always believe :)"

In reality there was a lot of pressure on that question. Without the right answer things could've been different, storylining and scripting would probably still be ongoing, I'd be sitting back and writing and fretting about my day (or night as it is at the moment) job. Because he believed it could be done, I believed it could be done. I became obsessed and almost possessed. E-mailing people and sending messages when I got home at 5:30 in the morning. Hunting down locations I knew would be possible and practical, really wanting to get as much sorted as soon as possible.

It is now 4 weeks until deadline day.

We have a script,

We have a location

We have a schedule

We have a shooting script

We have directors

If we can get an actress within the next three days then start to film next week. That leaves 2 weeks for editing and post production. At this point I have to put things in the hands of talented people, but I have faith that they will come through.

The second point that has dawned on me, is that I am for all intents and purpose this is partly mine. I can take it away, claim ownership, take all kinds of praise... Or be the punchbag if things fail. My dad has always tried to protect me from failure, but his way has always been to tell me to step back and not get too deeply involved. I hope that with this he can understand that it's ok for me to take these risks and get deeply and passionately involved.

I feel more relaxed, because I know that if for whatever reason we fail to make Sundance:London. Then the project doesn't stop or die or fade away. It still gets made, it enters other festivals, because I and the execs will all have a piece of this and have the power to push it wherever we like as hard as we can.

PRODUCTION NOTES - part 1

Today I discovered how Jerry Bruckheimer feels every day of his life. Man it's stressful. But exciting.

The main things needed to make a film, director, writer, actor.

Out of those three we currently have writers and directors. Waiting for an actress. I hardly slept last night. It's like a nervous excitement because the deadline is so tight, if one thing falls apart then the whole thing may crash.

Luckily, we have a tentative yes from the location for filming and we may hopefully get a discount, which is great for a no budget movie. :)

The script is on its 5th revision, and I've had to put my foot down and say enough is enough. One last edit each. But I know I'll be editing it once more when it comes to location filming, pushing a scene from interior to exterior.

A list of things to buy, black cloth, silver gel pen, candles, incense sticks, photo paper, sexy nightie. Ok, maybe the actress will have her own... But will it be in my size???!!!

The main thing is to have back up and luckily the other guys all know an actress who may be available.

Creating the schedule is daunting, I need to know if the location is available so we can book a filming block, the location wants to know a date for the filming block so it can tell us if it's available. Have I done the right thing by saying I'd try for a 12 hour window between Monday and Thursday without consultation with the Directors? Probably not, but if I hadn't we could lose the location...

So far so good. Written, cast and location booked all within a week. Which would give us 4 weeks to film and final edit. It sounds easy doesn't it?

I hope so......

Waiting To Sundance

Everyone likes a countdown, to name a few well know ones there were

Channel 4's gameshow with Carol Vorderman.

The wait until Charlotte Church was legal.

The Millennium

The end of the world

New Year's Eve

The Channel X free-view 5 minutes

Please feel free to remind me of any I may have missed, :)

The Sundance London film festival, has a closing date of 28th Feb 17:00hrs. So, in true reckless fashion steps are afoot to write, cast, direct, edit and enter a short movie in 5 weeks, 1 day.

I will try to keep you abreast (or a*insertbodypart*) of the situation. Good or bad.