Chronicles 32 - Time to pound the keys?

I've just got back from the UK and I'm sitting here watching the recently released Pink Floyd DVD, Pulse, live from Earl's Court. It rocks of course. "All in all yaw just annuver brick in the wall"... Awesome vocals on The Great Gig In The Sky... Great axe work on Money ...

It's starting to look as if I have my work cut out for me. A producer that I met in Cannes phoned me out of the blue and has asked me if I'm interested in re-writing a biographical drama script set in the 19th century. Uhh..well...yeah...sure!

He likes the writing on my rom-com and thinks that I'm the right man for the job. So far I've read the treatment and the script, which is based on a true story very close to the producer's life. The script definitely needs work mainly on a character level. It's a love story that is currently dead on the page. The main problem I see is that the characters have no internal conflict and the dialogue is slightly soap-ish and cringe-worthy. The characters need building from the inside out. At the moment they're outside in.

It's an independent project so we are talking partial deferral on fees therefore the cogs in the brain are ticking over - Will this film get made? Is it worth the not insignificant effort? (the project will require some substantial research), will this generate other work? Interest from agents? And so on.... The truth is, of course, you just don't know. It does have a few things going for it, mainly the generation of media interest with a forthcoming book publication tie-in so I'm going with the flow right now and I'm about to read a 300 page biography of one of the characters to get a better feel of the "world".

Last week I also met with the prod. co. that wants to option one of our animation projects. They absolutely love the idea and are totally buying into it with what appears to be some serious greenbacks. They want to put some subtantial dosh into producing short animations of each character and commissioning a background artist in order to prepare a pitch for Cannes 2007.

They absolutely loved Act 1 of my treatment so after bouncing around some ideas with my co-creator I knocked out Act 2 and 3. The response on Act 2 and 3 was decidedly cooler and in hindsight we should have spent more time on it. Still, it hasn't turned them off the project and we've agreed that with their notes we'll come up with a treatment they're happy with and then start putting things in writing. I'm getting the notes next week, so along with the biog drama I'll have no shortage of key pounding to do.

Apart from that I had a great meeting with our short film co-producers. They've recently installed their own editing suite which is pretty damn convenient for the Kuerz flick. The web site's getting designed as we speak so I have some hip content to right there before we hopefully shoot in October. It's all resting on actor's availabilities right now.

So, looks like the new comedy heist spec is on the back burner right now. In the meantime I have to write a synopsis for a play that I'm developing for an actor's group which we hope to put on next year.

With this recent "industry interest" I've decided to dip my foot into the "bagging a UK agent" water again and have had a couple of requests so far. We'll see, last time I tried this I got nowhere but I'm incrementally further ahead now so who knows.

Meanwhile it's good bye procrastination and hello sweaty fingered key pounding.

Ciow for now

See Chronicles 31 - Do I Smell A Deal?