Roald Dahl on writing

"When you're writing it's rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk bit further, maybe up on to the top of a hill, and you see something else, then you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the same landscape really. The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book because it's got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see everything you've done all ties up. But it's a very, very long slow process."

On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

Been reading a Stephen King book - it's a real page turner, yet it's not fiction. It's about the craft or writing form his perspective and is split into two sections. A brief biographical history that attempts to reveal how he became a writer from the events that happened in his life and then an easy going, laid back chit chat on what he considers to be good writing with many useful tips and advice from one of the most successful writers of his generation.

What I found extremely comforting was that he says you don't need to know a lot of words to be able to write well. It's how you construct your sentences that's important. Again detail is not always necessary and should be kept to a minimum in order to give readers just enough to fill in the blanks so you don't slow down the natural flow of the writing with irrelevant detail. Often less is much better than more.

This is music to my ears, as I have always been somewhat over-conscious of my lack of vocabulary and the fact that I often struggle to bring the right word into my head, particularly when I speak. I still lack confidence with my sentences too, probably because I never remember being taught how to construct them. I have just developed a system of writing that works for me. As it turns out, it seems it is the right way of doing things. The examples King gives on poor sentence construction and what not to do, I already seem to be aware of and try to avoid at all cost, though (even he admits) it is not always put to practice.

As I grow more confident with my writing I am beginning to realise that a lot of what I do is good, even very good. I don't know why this surprises me as I have never had a producer or agent tell me my writing is bad (Only my spelling and punctuation, which is more a case of mild dislexia than bad writing). When I first started to write seriously, friends and colleagues insisted that I was not a writer, that I should stick to directing and leave the writing to someone else. However, screenwriting to me is simply a poor-man's directing as the fundamental skills of telling the story are the same.

I have always been able to imagine very, very clearly in my mind. Being a very sociable person, directing was the natural position in which to tell stories, but now with nearly ten years of screenwriting practice, I am starting to be able to translate what I see in my head, directly onto the page with increasing success. Like Stephen King, this comes to me fairly easily. The difficulties I tend to have is with character.

I'm hoping there is a book out their that can explain to how to overcome these difficulties in way I can grasp. Too often screenwriting books are written academically and I struggle to fully understand the concepts, yet books like this or Save The Cat, are much more accessible to me and I recommend them whole heartedly.

ADR session for Henry Bramble

Had  a good ADR session in East London with Archie Lyndhurst on Monday. It mostly consisted of getting better/cleaner recordings of some of his dialogue along with some moans and groans when he is attacked by the Voydarkatron. Nice to catch up with the busy young man and his Mother. There was a technical delay that took an hour to sort out, but Archie being Archie, sped though the material as a true proffessional does. We got the recordeing session free, so thanks to the guys at Filmfonix.

Woodkid’s - Run Boy Run!

Here's a nice music video by French director and musician Woodkid’s (aka Yoann Lemoine) that captures the wonderful essence of child's desire for adventure. Not too dissimilar to our very own Henry Bramble.

Turksworks commissioned for Henry Bramble poster

I can confirm that we have just commissioned the extremely talented illustrator and designer Richard Davies to create the final version of the Henry Bramble movie poster, based on my previous design ideas. 

Rich has created some amazing work that has a very modern Drew Struzan style about it - The man responsible for some of the most iconic film posters of the 1980's (Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Back To The Future, The Thing, Blade Runner and The Goonies). 

From Richard's portfolio it became clear that we share a very similar taste in films and in a particular style of movie poster art. I immediately sent him an email, begging him  to help us with Henry Bramble. Thankfully he agreed and I'm dying to see what he comes up with. Checkout some of my favorite pieces of his work below.

Evan Jolly - Genius Composer

Let me introduce you to Evan Jolly. He studied film composing at the National Film & Television School in the same year as myself back in 2002-03. We only officially worked together once in that time, on a short film called No Fixed Abode. Unfortunately part of the exercise was for the composers to be the sound designers so I never really got to experience Evan's true talents. 

However I was always was aware he had a lot of talent. He played the trumpet and the piano (among other things), his compositions on other films at the NFTS were diverse and of a high quality and above all he was a jolly nice chap! 

In the final year I asked him to write a musical song for my graduation short The Happiness Thief, which I loved, but then regrettably had to drop, as I was told that we didn't have the time or budget to include a full on musical dance number in the middle of the film - which would have been the icing on the cake!

So ten whole years later, I'm without a composer and I suddenly think, what on earth ever happened to Evan? I looked up my old contact details for him, but they were well out of date, I then Googled him, but he had no website, no Linked-In page - nothing! Eventually I checked Facebook and thankfully he was there, alive and well living in Brighton.

Less than three weeks later he has just delivered me the most amazing score for Henry Bramble. I was welling up with joy listening to it. For all the troubles we've had on this short, this was the first time anyone had blown away my expectations. He truly is a master at his craft and I am forever grateful to him for lifting our beautiful little film into a whole new dimension.

Evan Jolly, you are a God-damn genius my friend! 

Stuart Freeborn - SFX Make-Up Artist (1914 - 2013)

Stuart Freeborn the master SFX make-up artist who created Chewbacca and Yoda has died at 98 years old. It was a name (alongside Ralph Mcquarrie, Phil Tippet and Joe Johnson) that I became very familiar with as a child, reading the Star Wars official collector's magazine's and watching the incredible 'making of' documentaries on TV. He was part of the original team who brought George Lucas' vision to life and made the impossible possible. For that we are eternally grateful.

We're back! - Henry Bramble on the move at last.

It's been a a frustrating few months. The visual effects on our wonderful short halted at the beginning of July last year. Six long arduous months later and we are finally beginning to see light at the end of the tunnel. As of yesterday I have been 'linked-in' to the VFX team based in Pakistan via Asana, a clever collaborative task management application that allows me to keep track and manage the workflow, offering feedback quickly and efficiently.

Today I had my first glimpse of the work they have been doing for the last month or so and it's very promising. The texture and colour of the legs and arms of the Voydarkatron are much  closer to how I envisioned them and the shoulders have that 'gravestone' fungus on it that I was so keen to have. The top of the head still needs to be semi-translucent and slimy like a slug, but apart from the that they are progressing well - Can't wait to see more!

Proto - A Screen South Innovation Short Film

Thought I'd let you know about PROTO one of the four innovation short films commissioned by Screen South in 2011 and the first I believe to be completed. This is the first short film directed by Nick Pittom and I think he's done a great job - Much better than my first film (Drakkon) way back in 1993! Despite our problems with the guy running the show at the time, VERL's animators did a wonderful first class job on the CGI for this short film. You can follow it's progress here or on Facebook or just watch the trailer below.

First Henry Bramble Screening ...Sort Of

On Friday 8th February, Berlinale 2013 (part for the Berlin Film Festival) is presenting the first official screening of all four Screen South innovation shorts that were commissioned back in 2011 ...The only snag is our film is still not finished! So instead we are presenting our teaser trailer which will still be an interesting experiment in terms of how the audience respond to it. 

Although we missed our deadline for this, we are actually very close to completion with the music currently being composed by the charming and highly talented Evan Jolly (Unfortunately Richard Chester, my regular composer had to drop out due to bigger and probably better paid commitments). Miha Jaramaz is standing by ready to design the Voydarkatron's roars, thumps and squelches, while Ian Macbeth is cleaning up the dialogue, atmos. and adding additional sound design where needed.

We are all now just waiting with baited breath, to see what will come back from the VFX team that DiRoom have pulled together (on a shoe-string budget of just £15,000 - less than half the cost UK major VFX companies were quoting). The VFX work is been completed by no less than ten artists from Pakistan and Dubai. They've been at it for six weeks now and so far I have seen not one pixel. The anxiety is unbearable, but if they pull it off on schedule, not only will we be submitting it to Cannes for its international premiere, Screen South also plan to present another private industry screening at Bafta in early March, so keep your eyes peeled!

Incidentally Annabel Bates (producer) bumped into one of the Sales Agents that we pitched to back in November, who said that Henry Bramble was the only pitch he remembered and was keen to hear it's progress - Always good to hear positive news.