A Savaege Blog?

I said I would write a short from scratch a few posts back by the end of the month, that month being March… well I failed to do so.

I did manage to write a first draft to an idea that has being in my head for a few months but that wasn’t the brief I set myself. I think I’ll give myself a C+ anyway for this task… yay I past!

Anyway with the Summer months approaching fast it’s high time I got the finger out and get some idea’s down on paper.

Last Summer I had planned on shooting a few projects one being my short “Turn”. I spent weeks trying to get a cast and crew together. I got some but failed to get the people who I thought would help make a good short.

When things weren’t working out I pulled the plug, I felt that I if I went ahead then I wouldn’t do the crew or myself justice. By then the summer had past. I later did shoot Turn in December.

This Summer I am going to shoot at least 3 shorts! There I said it.

They will be short zero budgets. I have several projects already and some are almost ready for Pre production. Ideally I would like to start shooting in May… a whole (less than a) month away! We’ll see.

I finally got some writing done last night and finished up with the first draft to a 4-5 minute short which I’ve given a working title of “Open the Gate There Will Ya”.

Its about a guy who wakes up on a up river stone beach and everything around him seems out of place and not normal. As he walks along the beach he encounters even more bizarre situations.

I did cheat a bit in that this was an idea I had a few months back, I came across it last night as I was trying to refresh my mind during a brainstorming session. So while I have completed a first draft by the end of the month it is not an entirely new idea.

Therefore I will try to come up with a completely new idea that would only have been conceived since I set myself the task.

With the weekend that was in it I got very little done (not a thing) with regard the writing a short script. I set a deadline for the end of the month, which now means I have 12 days to come up with the first draft.

I have a few ideas they just need a bit of beefing out. Hopefully tonight I will manage to get something constructive done.

Before Christmas I had set myself a brief to write a few shorts but the production of ‘Turn’ put an end to that.

I’ve been meaning to start writing something with the last few weeks but have never got around to it, I get as far as turning on the computer and then go of doing something else…

The brief is simple as I will probably fund the productions myself, hopefully costing somewhere between €00.00 and €00.01. With that in mind there will be no fancy stuff.

All Exterior locations. Locations kept to a minimum, preferably just 1 location 2 at most.
Little or no live sound.
As little talent as possible, just 1 would be ideal but 2 to 3 would be ok too.
Always keeping in mind that you’re writing with a no budget production in mind.

Now I might as well set myself a deadline for a first draft as I’m at this… we’ll say the end of this month.

We’ll see how I get on…

I wrote my first feature length script when I was around 15/16. It took a long time to complete it but I got there eventually. I had looked up the Internet to get information on writing a screenplay and I was fairly happy with the format.

I sent it on to a few people and the feedback was always positive. My head swelled. Looking back now these people wouldn’t have been experts on screenwriting. TV producers maybe.

To the untrained eye it looked very much like a script. I signed up to a screenplay review site and uploaded the script for some more feedback. I didn’t get much before it was dumped, not because it was necessarily a bad script but because of formatting issues.

I was disgusted with them, what did they know anyway? “the script was constantly going in and out of past tense” one person said.

Fast-forward a couple a years and completion of a filmmaking course as well as writing a few shorts and reading tons. I had lost interest in the feature script so didn’t really touch it in a few years.

One thing that pains me is reading a script that isn’t formatted correctly, sometimes you put yourself through the pain to give the writer some feedback on the story. It’s Lazy, if you want someone to read your script, learn how to format correctly. Don’t give them a reason to hate your script after two lines!

So… recently I decided I’d edit my feature script and maybe give it to a few contacts I had made over the years for some more feedback.

OH MY GOD! IT”S TORTURE!!!

On the first page alone I must have made up to 10 corrections! The whole bloody thing looks like it’s in past tense, and the spelling and grammar mistakes! SAVE ME!

I haven’t got round to finishing the re edit yet and boy it won’t be fun!

So one bit of advise. Learn how to format correctly. Proper spelling, it’s you’re NOT your. And write in present tense! (I’m learning that the hard way)