Play: Looking back on February

So, at the end of PLAY!, here's what's I've done:

Read Mixtape: I did enjoy this script. It's sweet and light, with five or six laugh out loud moments. The structure of having a thirteen year old trying to track down the songs her parents (who have died) loved is excellent and leads to nice character growth. The film feels very much like Freaks and Geeks to me. Here's a link to Scriptshadow's review, and an interview with the author.

The Orphans: continued plotting out my creepy 'kids stuck in a haunted orphanage' movie. Have written another couple of sequences, and am getting to the point where I really need to start thinking about the film's tone: its pretty grim, but is there going to be a happy ending? Or a pyrrhic victory? Or will I embrace nihilism? I think I've realised that I'm writing a Saphhire and Steel story in which Saphhire and Steel never show up. and I'm definitely at the point where I want to find out how it all turns out for them.

Free writing: Spent a little bit of most days just jamming on different story ideas, putting absolutely no pressure on myself. So far I've played around with LARP ideas, status updates for lovebites characters, and a best-selling thriller.

Artificial (the AI story): I said that I was thinking about how to make the Pessimist character interesting. Well I did nothing on this until the very last evening of the last day of PLAY. I was reading this excellent interview with the author of Source Code, and his comment on his focus on character awoke something in me. I saw the moment between the Pessimist and the AI that I needed to work towards, and then came up with a diagram that defines the relationship between the three of them (AI, Pessimist and Optimist). That gives me pretty much all I need to start outlining the movie.

Destinies: I think I'm pushing this back a little - to focus on finishing Bad Family, and then outlining these other ideas. Need to discuss, re-negotiate timeframes with my brain-storming collaborators.


And for extra credit ...

Read The Second Session: INCOMPLETE! In fact, unstarted. My first draft script about musicians trying to record an album is still in my to-read pile.

Made to Stick: I've blogged 1.5 more posts in this series - cued up to publish in March.

The Limit: Still need to assemble a contact list of emails for producers.


I've also decided to shift the time I spend playing and working again. For the next little while I'm going to spend four weeks working and two weeks playing. See how that feels.