Hey look, I’m alive!

I think I am, anyway. I marathoned most of Hannibal season 1 over the weekend, and it got a little hard to tell by the end due to the constant barrage of madness in that wonderful show. Anyway, I haven’t updated in ages. Since my last entry I have:

• Moved from Wellington to Auckland (!!)
  
• Been lucky enough to start a new job as the writing team intern for a TV show (!!!)
  
• Spent actual grown-up money on things like a car, a fridge and a washing machine instead of an aquarium, a virtual reality machine or a year’s supply of Skittles 
  
• Spent a whole month away from my cat (boooooo! Get her back soon, though)
  

So, because nothing makes me happier than brainstorming these, here’s some B-movie ideas:

• Ex-NASA employee Dahlia quit her beloved job to raise her daughter Kaylee, and these days delights in simple things like finding a tiny asteroid on the beach - perfect for Kaylee’s upcoming Science Fair! But when the asteroid emits a green gas which merges the school students into a giant scuttling monster made of child limbs, Dahlia must draw on her top secret NASA skills to get her daughter back from the... SCIENCE FEAR!
  
  
• Local mad scientist Regina is tired of her nerdy next-door neighbour Dillon trying to spy on her. So naturally, she defies all logic and science and hacks his computer to sends pixels flying out of his monitor and into his skin. There, the evil pixels burrow deeply and take over his brain, making him Regina’s test puppet in… ATTACK OF THE PORE PIXELS!
  
  
• When feuding Civil Defense responders Marsha and Frederick are attacked by a Godzilla-like monster and swallowed whole, they are surprised to find themselves alive and well in the stomach of the beast. With limited time before the stomach acid devours them, Marsha and Frederick must deal with the BEAST CASE SCENARIO. 
  
  
• Recently promoted FBI agent Carmen Dallington is determined to solve the murder of the popular Doctor Williams at the county hospital. Dr Williams is same man who narrowly escaped a tragic hospital fire twenty years earlier, so when Camilla can’t find a single clue to solve his murder, she is forced to examine the only person alive who could hold grudge against him… a woman with no sense of smell, touch, hearing, vision or taste, who wasn’t so lucky in the fire... and who may be capable of... SENSELESS MURDER. 
  
  
• Sharon’s dreams have always been vivid, but after breaking up with her asshole husband, night time gets a little wild. Sharon dreams constantly of her knight in shining armor, a noble man who at first seems like he has come to sweep her off her feet and treat her like a lady forever. But when Sharon’s dreams become a little too real and she starts waking up with chain-mail shaped scars, she must acknowledge her own personal… KNIGHTMARE. 
  

I’ll see myself out.

I just realised I've forgotten to update and say HURRAY, Squidwig Productions made the Wellington 48Hours final with our little film YES I CAN! Plus, we were nominated and then won (!!!) Best Art Direction for Wellington!

Super stoked about this, but mostly happy that we had such a blast making it. Sometimes 48Hours can be a stressful affair, but going into it with very little gear this year gave us a 'screw it, let's have fun!' attitude which gave our end product a lot of extra life. Plus our crew & actors were off the chain amazing <3

Anyways, here's the film!

No blog this week! Just this.

THE ROBOT MONOLOGUES
Starring Emma Smith
Written & Directed by Becca Barnes & Alwyn Dale 

When Astrid has a near death experience, she discovers that she’s actually a robot. Join her as she shares the stories of six other robots from all walks of synthetic life. 

Emotion isn't a bug, it's a feature.

THE ROBOT MONOLOGUES will be at Newtown Community Centre on:
- Fri 14th Feb, 8pm
- Sat 15th Feb, 8pm
- Sun 16th Feb, 12.30pm
- Sun 16th Feb, 8pm

Koha entry. Email squidwigproductions@gmail.com to make a booking, or just turn up and hope we're not full and/or slaves to our new robotic overlords.

Hello! It’s February, holy shit.

January was eaten by play rehearsals, writing, and Simpsons Tapped Out. Ssssh, tell no one about that last thing. I spent today trying to get the first 25 pages of GASH PALACE up to scratch for an upcoming writer’s workshop, and it’s on more or less track. Although, I changed so much stuff, the rest of the story will need a once-or-twice-or-twenty-over.

Had a lot of fun with research this week. Who knew how many YouTube videos there were of people explaining how a car crusher worked? There are many, and all of the dudes explaining have really awesome beards.

I’m still flicking between the various directing books looking for answers on things I have questions about. Too many of those sessions end with me going “Ooo, I should buy a new lens” and going down a Trade Me rabbit hole, so I should probably put a can on that (note: have resisted thus far, mostly because I still know shit all about lenses).

NEW IDEAS!

So, there’s been a lot of oddly specific movie worthy news articles floating around lately. A vial of Pope John Paul ll’s blood was stolen from a little church in the mountains east of Rome. Here’s three ideas based around that:

•  Movie about a kickass secret service style NUN SQUAD sent to retrieve the vial before it’s used to raise up the Pope’s body with the spirit of Satan. They fail, and must kill The Anti-Pope.
  

• Movie about the small, tight-knit community who relied on the vial of blood in their church to bring them good fortune from God, and how they fall apart and blame each other new bad fortune and the vial's disappearance.
  

• Movie about the two country teenagers who were paid to steal the vial, but then find out they’re being paid by a Satanic cult who wish to use it to bring down the church with black magic. So now they’re on the run from a group of angry Satanists AND the Nun Squad mentioned above. Eeep!

None of this of true, but it’s nice when the news gives you a chance to dream, right?

It’s Sunday evening, and Wellington weather is having a hissy fit outside. I’m still in the office, a long and bloody battle with twenty or so carded out scenes today.

This is how my day went:
It’s not working, it’s not working, it’s not working, it’s not working, it’s not working, it’s not worki-- oh, shit, this actually kinda makes sense now. Cool.

It might sound sort of depressing, but it actually kind of gives me hope in a weird way. I’m getting fairly confident the ‘It’s working!’ moment will eventually turn up if I keep at it. I’m not one of those people who believes inspiration comes from an invisible golden monkey sitting in the sky. The only reason I make any progress at all with a story is because I’m incredibly stubborn about making it work to the point of (metaphorically) punching myself in the brain until it does.

“Ooo, that all sounds positive..ish!”

Hmm, there’s still that flipside along the lines of what I mentioned last week. For every time I solve a problem, there’s probably about twenty more ready to crop up, often negating everything I’ve previously just figured out. But that’s just part of it. Right? Rightttt??? ...Shut up, you’re not my real Dad. Overall, though, I'm pretty happy with where GASH PALACE is heading.

So that’s where I’m at with writing. For directing, this week I started reading a book recommended by some friends called Grammar of the Shot by Christopher J. Bowen & Roy Thompson. It’s cool, it’s the closest book I’ve found to finger puppet explaining (aka. it’s nice and simple). Apparently it’s the classic “Hey, read this!” at Auckland film schools. My film school was more fond of Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances for Film & Television by Judith Weston. Also a great read for those wanting to focus on working with actors rather than the technical side of things.

Okay, I have a headache and I want to go home and watch something trashy. Although, it’ll hard to beat last night’s viewing trash wise: FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC (2014, Lifetime channel remake), and THE DISCO EXORCIST (2011). Both suitably terrible. Anyway, here’s some trash of my own, inspired by a book of drive-in movie posters I got in the states.

THREE NEW IDEAS!

• REPTILE QUEEN: Set in a world just like ours, a teenage Princess is sick of the demands of her Grandmother, the Queen of England. After walking in on her Grandmother unzipping her skin to reveal the fact that she is a LIZARD PERSON, the Princess must reassess everything she knows about her family, herself, and the dark reptilian secrets of the monarchy. 
  

• THE BEARDED AUNTY: When beautiful Vera’s long lost circus performer Aunt comes to stay with her and her ailing mother, something doesn’t feel quite right - especially when her circus freak pals turn up and they all decide that ‘with a little tweaking’, Vera would make a very good addition to the freak show indeed…
  

• CONTROLL: A small garden troll makes befriends a little girl and convinces her that her family doesn’t love her, and she should eat his magical troll berries and join the troll race who will be her new family (oh god, I’m sorry guys, my buddy Jez bought me a ceramic troll back from overseas and he’s sitting on my desk staring at me telling me to write bad movie ideas about him… time to go home).

Hello and welcome to another edition of ‘Becca writes her blog really fast on a Sunday afternoon because the time is probably better spent writing scripts.’ As the title suggests, I’ve had a slightly annoying week. I’ve had a whole bunch of breakthroughs with Gash Palace (yay!) but each of them has meant some major structural changes requiring massive rewrites (boo-- but also yay-- oh, I don’t know how to feel).

Regarding directing, this week I looked into the line some more and got suitably confused once I got up to multiple lines of action in things like car races. I’ll look into that again next week, and will potentially enlist a friend with finger puppets to help answer some questions I have. I also started reading a book called ‘Making the Transformational Moment in Film’ by Dan Fleming, which centres around Vincent Ward’s work. Looks like the sort of thing I’d have dreaded ploughing through at university, but I’m a little older and wiser now, as well as much less likely to be hungover than I was during first year uni in 2007.

We’re pretty busy at the moment with rehearsals for The Robot Monologues after hours, but it’s coming along nicely and you should come. Yes you, singular-reader-of-my-blog-who-is-probably-my-Mum.

Another thing I wanted to do in my blog this week recommend the Screenwriters’ Lecture Series podcast produced by BAFTA. I’ve just finished everything up so far and it’s bloody great. It’s a whole bunch of professional screenwriters giving 1 hour lectures about the craft. It’s worth listening to the lot just so you get to experience the way every writer works in different ways. But if you’re going to try just one, listen to Charlie Kaufman’s. He made me cry on a treadmill at the gym. Classy.

THREE NEW IDEAS!

Welp, I really got nothing this week because I’ve been so flat out, so I’ll try and come up with something right now. Warning: incoming bollocks.

• SNAKE BRIDE - When Scott puts his rare snake importing business ahead of planning for his wedding, he gets more than he bargained for after his fiance is bitten by a mystery cobra whose poison turns her from Bridezilla to Snakezilla. 
  

• PUTTING THE PAL IN PRINCIPAL - Two teenagers sick of their boring small town decide to start a rumour about their overly peppy principal being married to his sister to shake things up. Soon the teenagers finds themselves drugged and locked in the principal’s basement - uh oh, the rumour was true, and they’re locked down there with the strange product of their principal’s sordid relationship - a teenage girl who has never seen sunlight or met anyone other than her parents. Together the teens from outside must work together to escape and expose the principal, but they need the help of the daughter if they’re ever going to get out. They must unbrainwash and educate the daughter who hates them, and idolises her parents.
  

• FURRY FURY - A middle-aged woman bored with her husband and job stumbles across a new community and a secret new passion: sex in furry suits. But when Sheila lies to her husband and goes on a retreat with the group, she finds all is not as it seems. The group worship a race of undiscovered intelligent furry creatures living in a society under the woods, and Sheila’s next on the list of human sacrifices to the furry overlords. 
  

Anyway, tomorrow is Wellington Anniversary Day, a public holiday from day-job. I’m going to take advantage of a free writing day and try and plough through all the rewrites to get back on track. I feel a bit like writing’s clingy girlfriend at the moment, grabbing every spare hour I can get to spend with it. Hey baby, I heard you like tight stories and multi-dimensional characters. Me too, gee, we have so much in common…