I’m from Australia too – so I hope that it doesn’t throw me out of the demographic pool you guys speak of. However, John (previous winner) raises a good point. Or, perhaps, (this is the conspirator in me) they have political motivations for him…

Even worse, I’m from Brisbane.

thanks guys! Cheers Unk. I’ll be back here for sure.

Blog below if you want it

http://cinewrite.blogspot.com

Happy scribbling

John

I’ve been working with their very nice head of development, about sorting the script out and getting it in a decent shape to send out for casting. From the outset, the key drivers were to get the length down from 117 pages to 95 pages (or less) and to tighten up the character motivation –especially at the back end.
I was actually dreading the development process, but as it had been two years since I had looked at it seriously, I actually found it quite easy to trim out a lot of the fat. So I lost ten pages really easily. The rest were a case of losing widows and orphans and eventually when all else failed, making some hard choices. Incidentally I had been using a software package called Sophocles but one night had a blue screen of death so had to switch over to my mac and download Final Draft – and the dialogue margins were slightly wider and gave me about five pages back – maybe something to note for anyone who uses Sophocles.
The head of development made some great suggestions, that really helped the thing along, and also made a couple that I thought were not right – and it was cool that she would really listen when you pushed back and explained why, she would drop it if you convinced her with your argument. Mostly she seems to just say “what if…” and then let you turn that idea around in your head.
The best developments came from old fashioned spitballing via email and voicemails back and forth including a killer idea for the end that really added depth to character and motivation that we sort of came up with between us.

Producer has been trusting the head of development to mostly communicate his wishes, and has been making some suggestions that are financial. As in “the train scene will cost a fortune, is there any way we could get the same effect cheaper”. He also asked if I would mind getting an American actress as opposed to Irish, just for cross the water appeal, and I said “no but shall we just make her character American rather than try and get an American actress to do an Irish accent – Katie Hudson is the only actress I have ever seen nail one bang on the money”. He also asked me if I had any ideas about casting, so I made mine (based on the movie that I play in my head when I read it) and he has gone off to scope the possibility – although of course, nothing will really move on that until we get a script that is ready to go out. He also asked would I be willing to rewrite a small greek chorus part if he managed to land a big name actor – an extremely long shot, but he is working on the “you don’t ask, you don’t get” principle. I said yes.

I have also taken the oportunity to plug some friends of mine – one for music and one for a minor role. The musician sent over a song (actually very good) he wrote specifically for the script, just to set out his stall, and the producer has indicated an interest, but that is so far in the future, he is not dealing with it just yet. The actor I sent in his showreel, so hoping he will be considered. In both cases, I made it clear that I was just going to throw their stuff in the producers path and if he declined to pick it up, I was not going to push.

At the moment, the script has literally just gone out to casting – about a week ago. The actress I suggested has indicated she is interested, but of course, nothing counts until there are signatures on the line which is dotted. We should hopefully have some more information in the next few weeks.

The film is set in Dublin, so there has been some location work going on, although I know very little about that apart from the fact that it is happening. Once the main location has been set up, there may be a requirement for a few script changes.

In terms of actual shooting, well obviously it depends a lot on actors availability, but leaving that aside, the film is set mostly at night, but also in the summertime, so the producer is considering the pro of shooting early in the new year, which gets you lots of dark hours to shoot in – versus the possibility of inclement weather. My gut feel is that they will probably hedge bets and not start shooting until March.

Once actors are on board, imagine we will have another few read throughs, get some more suggestions and do another round of tweaks, but hopefully nothing major. Anyway, that’s the condensed version of the last three months. As I said earlier, so far mostly a very positive experience – couple of minor squabbles along the way between me and script development lady, but the script is all the stronger for it.

Oh and as an aside – the script title is THE LEGEND OF NEW YORK PIZZA. I only mention this because I wrote it a couple of years ago and never bothered changing it. In the interim, I read an article by Terry Rossio where he says the word Legend in the title is the kiss of death, and I have been suggesting that we change it, but everyone else thinks it is fine. I’ll keep you posted on that as well.

Hope that was of some interest.

Happy scribbling

John.

Cheers,
Andy

Great news! Congratulations! I don’t know about anyone else but I would love to get updates from you…

Unk

Long time reader – first time poster. Am mailing mostly in response to Clive, as I won the BFSC this year and just wanted to say that I am male, white (Irish) and 38 years old, so don’t tick any of the boxes, unless Irish counts as a minority. The script is basically the story of a guy struggling to make his business a success. I’ve got no frame of reference to compare it to as this is my first feature film, but so far I have mostly been working with the producer and the head of development to rework the script – and it has been a two way street where they have backed off a suggestion, if I have been able to argue why I thought it was not a positive move. I’m personally of the opinion that the current version is a lot stronger than the one originally submitted and the producer feels it is good enough to go to cast with, which is what is happening right now. If anyone is interested I will keep posting on how this all plays out, but I just wanted to say that so far, the experience has been a very positive one for me.

In the interview at Moviebytes, he says that “producers must have ownership before production can begin” and that they are “going right into production” and explains this as the reason why all rights are signed over for free instead of simply an option to acquire the rights on first day of principal photography as is normal in North America and Europe. He seems not to understand that there is a difference between pre-production, production (commencing and ending with principle photography), and post-production. They will be going right into PRE-PRODUCTION.

The logic is inescapable:

1) If they are making this movie for sure — which means the money is in place — then pay the full amount up front.

2) If they are not 100% certain about financing (nothing wrong with that — that’s reality), then option the screenplay for a year for a token dollar so that if things fall apart, the writer is not screwed and lose the rights to their work for ZERO money — and have to PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE with the contest entrance fee.

And one last thing:

If you run a contest “for the writer” then you do not, under any acceptable circumstances, EVER EVEN SUGGEST that there may be some clown brought in to write them out of their own movie. NEVER EVER do you do that.

You will not have another competition if you do that. You will not have any sponsors or entrants. Not with the internet to police you.