Long story short, I am back to working on ‘The Player and the Advocate’. I’ve been accepted for the MA in Scriptwriting at Victoria University in Wellington, and this script will be my portfolio project.

I’m really looking forward to the course, and I will be using this production diary much more to keep track of the development of the script.

Thanks for waiting.

Essentially, that’s what ‘The Player and the Advocate’ is counting on - an audience of Shakespeare and film buffs who like clever, self-referential films. I’ve hedged my bets by sticking to some conventions, with a romance plot or two, action sequences etc, but basically, this is a Long Tail film.

And it strikes me that New Zealand is kind of a Long Tail country. Think about it - we’re at the far end of the world, with a low population density, and a climate which produces excellent wine, dairy products and apparently sportspeople. We are the definition of a niche country.

But progress has been slower than I expected. Writing the treatment was a great exercise to get me focused on the story, and was also blissfully easy compared to the indepth work on the script still to come.

I’ve learned a lot about my working methods this year. I much prefer editing to creating - much of the good writing I’ve done on the script has been honing down and polishing the rough scene outlines already in place, but generating new scenes and dialogue has been a nightmare. I’ve forced myself to write pages of crap in order to have some material to come back and edit later (which is about as inefficient and demoralising as it sounds)

BUT…

On December 31st 2006, I will have a completed 1st draft of The Player and the Advocate. That was the aim when I started this year, and despite the numerous times I have put it off, procrastinated and generally balked at the task, I WILL DO THIS.

It will be terrible. It will be embarrassingly naive and self-conscious. But it will be a first draft. And there will be revisions. And eventually, there will be a finished product that I will be able to show the world and say “Look! This is what I spent all those days inside for! All the forgone sunshine, and big nights out of on the town, but it was worth it!” Perhaps.

In the Downloads section (top right) I’ve added some sample pages from the script.  They’re a decent indication of where most of the script is at - let me know what you think.

Merry Christmas to all, and good luck with your future plans for 2007.

So while I have a nice, organised desk and tidy filing system, and I’ve done a bunch of publicity work for ‘Trouble in Tahiti‘, the script has been languishing.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading around other topics in the past few weeks, and I keep circling back to some key themes that really interest me:

* technology and future developments (as a consequence of this web design course I’ve been doing, looking at how people are increasingly living a ’second life’ online, and how the very distinction between being ‘online’ and ‘offline’ is breaking down - you are who your website says you are, or what other sites say about you…)

* new social organisations and the interface between people and the State (the normal three-sector breakdown (public, private, non-profit) is undergoing some refinements / revolutions with organisations like the Bill Gates Foundation and Google getting into philanthropy and the ‘Public Good’ - what does this mean for the way we act towards corporations, our Government, and fellow citizens?)

I’m not going to try and shoehorn these themes into the film that I’m writing - themes are supposed to flow out of the story you’re telling, not the other way around. But my creative thinking time seems to be increasingly focused on business plans rather than scriptwriting. (There’s another topic for a post - creative writing techniques applied to business model creation!)

It comes back to my usual story instinct, which is that stories about power are more interesting than stories about love.

(photos courtesy of David Zander - www.dzander.com )

If you weren’t able to make it, you can now download the treatment from the link below (PDF, 45Kbs). It’s 15 pages long, and takes about 20 minutes to read, so if you’ve got a spare lunch hour this week, please do take a look and let me know what you think.

Thanks again to Katipo for hosting the gig, and my two wonderful actors, Erin Banks and James Stewart, who did a great job in bringing the reading to life.

Will post some photos of the event in a day or two, and possibly a podcast of the reading depending on how the audio turns out.

The Player and the Advocate - feature film treatment

(free for download and distribution)

Erin and James have both proved quick studies, very intuitive at picking up the language of the film and my peculiar cadences and love of polysyllabic words (although some of them will have to go before the reading on Sunday - as I discovered, I had some real tongue-twisters in there.)

We discovered the treatment really barrels along, especially towards the end when the action picks up. Obviously I was hoping that would be the case, but it was nice to hear them evolve it naturally in the reading; the two of them picked up speed and alternated passages as the tension grows in the final act and gave it real momentum.

The middle act is still weak, and I’m not sure what to do about it. There’s a real howler of a scene toward the end of the 2nd act which I’m sure will elicit groans, but it’s a reading, after all.

Overall, I think I’ve got the breadth of the film nailed down now. From here, and using the feedback I’ll get at the session on Sunday, I’ve got to start working on ‘deepening’ the script - enriching the themes, the history and the backstory, without overwhelming the structure I’ve already got. I’m nervous, but looking forward to it.

See you there!

Taika Waititi (Two Cars, One Night), Zia Mandviwalla (Eating Sausage) and Velalu Alla-Unsworth (Blue Willow) were invited to talk about all aspects of the film writing process - the (ubiquitous) “where do you get your ideas from?” right through to “how do you find a producer?”

A couple of themes came through all their responses: number 1, trust your gut instinct. They all described the notion that the film you have in your head is not the one the audience will see on screen, nor the one the reader has when they pick up the script. Taking feedback and suggestions on board is helpful, but sometimes you have to back yourself that your idea / concept is the best one for the story. Incidentally, all three writers nominated “their mum” as a inspiring source of feedback and ideas.

None of the writers actively collaborated with others on the films, which I thought was interesting. For ‘The Player and the Advocate’ I will be looking for a storyboard artist to previsualise some of the scenes (especially the big setpieces) and kick around ideas for the production design (with a period ranging from Renaissance through Victorian to futuristic, it should be an exciting job…)

More tomorrow.