Rain
A couple of posts ago, I talked about my experience during last year’s inaugural ScriptFrenzy, and in particular about the experience of co-writing with a complete stranger. I asked the question: would I do it again.
Well, the answer is yes. This year I’m doing ScriptFrenzy again, and once again, I thought it would be fun to write with a complete stranger on the other side of the world. And I am having the best time ever!
To start with, I should explain what we’re writing. A lot of my favourite films have very tight casts and settings: The Breakfast Club, Twelve Angry Men. I also loved Before Sunrise and The Rear Window. So a year or so ago, I had this idea for a film, which was basically this: Two people meet when they both take shelter from the rain in a phonebox. They meet, they chat … and that’s it. It ends with the sun coming out and them walking away.
Clearly, I’m clinically insane. I thought it would make an amazing film, done well; but I knew it had to be well written otherwise it would be awful; and I was worried that if I tried it, I’d run out of material after 15 minutes. Still, I posted the idea on the ScriptFrenzy website, mentioned that I was looking for a co-writer, and added that I was quite happy to junk the idea if a potential co-writer thought it was dumb.
What actually happened was I got a message back from someone who said she’d love to try to write the phonebox story, as long as we could make it a stageplay. I figured that was a fair compromise, and off we went.
The experience has been nothing short of amazing. We’ve had a great time chatting about it, throwing ideas around. We’ve not agreed on everything, but I can say categorically that the play is much, much better for my co-writer’s input – and hopefully she’d say the same (he says modestly). It definitely feels like the "whole" of our little team is bigger than the sum of the parts.
Not only did we have great fun with the ideas, we’ve both written loads. In fact, we reached the magical 100 page mark on Sunday morning – only April 13th, less than half way through the month. I’m amazed at how productive we’ve both been – it has been truly a joint effort.
And we’re not finished! No sooner had we spent a day basking in the glory of what we’d written than we both found areas (different areas) we felt could be improved, and went back to set about re-writing them.
And is it any good? Well, we haven’t finished yet, and the revision is making it much better. But there are some great moments in it. And the main thing for me is that it actually works. I had this mad idea of a whole script with just two people in a phone box. I never thought I could make it work – make it interesting. But between two of us, we have.
Two people in a phonebox. How on earth could that be interesting? Well, that’s the best thing. Because, in my experience, to my belief, there is nothing more interesting than another human being. And when you strip away everything else – a set smaller than Hitchcock's Lifeboat, two characters, no special effects – all that is left is two people laid bare.
Well, the answer is yes. This year I’m doing ScriptFrenzy again, and once again, I thought it would be fun to write with a complete stranger on the other side of the world. And I am having the best time ever!
To start with, I should explain what we’re writing. A lot of my favourite films have very tight casts and settings: The Breakfast Club, Twelve Angry Men. I also loved Before Sunrise and The Rear Window. So a year or so ago, I had this idea for a film, which was basically this: Two people meet when they both take shelter from the rain in a phonebox. They meet, they chat … and that’s it. It ends with the sun coming out and them walking away.
Clearly, I’m clinically insane. I thought it would make an amazing film, done well; but I knew it had to be well written otherwise it would be awful; and I was worried that if I tried it, I’d run out of material after 15 minutes. Still, I posted the idea on the ScriptFrenzy website, mentioned that I was looking for a co-writer, and added that I was quite happy to junk the idea if a potential co-writer thought it was dumb.
What actually happened was I got a message back from someone who said she’d love to try to write the phonebox story, as long as we could make it a stageplay. I figured that was a fair compromise, and off we went.
The experience has been nothing short of amazing. We’ve had a great time chatting about it, throwing ideas around. We’ve not agreed on everything, but I can say categorically that the play is much, much better for my co-writer’s input – and hopefully she’d say the same (he says modestly). It definitely feels like the "whole" of our little team is bigger than the sum of the parts.
Not only did we have great fun with the ideas, we’ve both written loads. In fact, we reached the magical 100 page mark on Sunday morning – only April 13th, less than half way through the month. I’m amazed at how productive we’ve both been – it has been truly a joint effort.
And we’re not finished! No sooner had we spent a day basking in the glory of what we’d written than we both found areas (different areas) we felt could be improved, and went back to set about re-writing them.
And is it any good? Well, we haven’t finished yet, and the revision is making it much better. But there are some great moments in it. And the main thing for me is that it actually works. I had this mad idea of a whole script with just two people in a phone box. I never thought I could make it work – make it interesting. But between two of us, we have.
Two people in a phonebox. How on earth could that be interesting? Well, that’s the best thing. Because, in my experience, to my belief, there is nothing more interesting than another human being. And when you strip away everything else – a set smaller than Hitchcock's Lifeboat, two characters, no special effects – all that is left is two people laid bare.
Labels: ScriptFrenzy
posted by tomdg at 12:09 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home