Day one

And it begins.

Early, as it turns out – a mixture of raw excitement and indigestion from the celebratory team-curry last night.

And it starts, predictably, with the screenplay. Since our previous draft in early November, we have accumulated a substantial amount of (mostly) gratefully received notes and suggestions. Stuff we need to deal with before we can send the screenplay out to anyone. Housekeeping.

At FrightFest last August, Adam Green ‘fessed up to writing the screenplay for Hatchet II in a week, and then shooting that first draft. We’re working on the different principle that a script can always get better. We only get one block of clay from which to forge a movie.

So, we went through the list and debated each point. Should our 50-year-old male protagonist be swapped to a woman? Should we include more backstory about what's happened over the 15 months since the zombie apocalypse? Should we maybe dial it back a tad on how often one of our characters swears?

One of our activities was a piece of pure screenwriting smoke and mirrors.

A couple of people that read the last draft didn’t pick up on who our protagonist was at the outset, and didn’t find him suitably likeable. Message received.

So we put our faith in formula (sorry – screenwriting 'principles'). A couple of years ago I went to John Truby’s 'Beyond Structure' seminar at Raindance. Truby is the master of screenwriting micro-analysis: lists of the 38 character arcs, 1368 adjectives from which to build a more interesting persona, 6 pages of possible plot twists. And 44 different ways to build audience empathy for a character. So that’s what we did – trawl through the list to find a few additional ticks and inflections to drop in over the course of the first 10 pages, cynically dialling up the love. 

With that slightly unsavoury business behind us, the next step is to organise a read-through with a bunch of actors, and see whether the character voices really work. If something entertaining emerges I may throw up some videos onto the blog for a giggle.

And the other start-up log-jam is finding a friendly accountant, so we can get our production company registered. It’s probably too early to crowd-source the head of dead bread, but any suggestions would be welcome. Pikey.