Saturday 9 August 2008

Crashing into the Red Planet

I crashed and burned in Page. I wrote an experimental short about a woman dealing with grief. Problem with those is that people either love or hate them. It's a much bigger gamble. It is still my favourite short script and is through Round 1 of BSSC though. Even if it gets nowhere there I'm not putting it away in a drawer. It will be time to send it out elsewhere.

I've got a bit further with the Red Planet project. The first episode is now plotted out as a series of bullet points and it should make about 1hour. I've now started writing it. Well I suppose you'd really call it blocking it out in more detail. But I'm doing it in feature script format so it looks a bit cooler to me anyway.

I'm putting dialogue in but only what they mean. Very on the nose at this stage but I like to put all that down then go over the whole thing again and replace with what they would actually say.

Blocking out in detail is when I discover something really isn't working. Bullet points can gloss over problem stuff. In this case a suicide. At this stage I'm considering binning that whole sequence and putting something else there because it just seems too stereotypical. It won't be hard because this is the part that gives the protagonist's motivation. I can give her that motivation another way.

2 comments:

Colin McBride said...

Commiserations on Page, Rach. But hope the Red Planet entry comes together. It's nice that we've got a bit of time for this one - as opposed to the mad dash for Sharps

Rachael Howard said...

Hi Colin. I'm making the most of the time. It is a nice luxury. Good luck with your entry.