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…

The first week of my new schedule is done, and here are the things I’ve learned:

• Small plastic cats and Instagram’s new video function make for a useful stand in for actors, fancy cameras, and editing when you’re just trying to figure out what cuts with what. Instagram probably poached this function off Vine, but being able to record multiple shots and play them together into a short video on my phone is going to be super useful this year. It’s exactly the same as recording on tape and editing in camera like the ol’ days, but much more accessible for when you’re sitting at your desk bleary eyed at 6.45am. 
  

• I’m already bloody awful at reaching my page count per day thing, because I’m one of those people that can’t move on until a problem is fixed. This week I got stuck on a scene with my protagonist in her workplace, and it took about five thousand years of brainstorming/screwing around to finally crack it on Saturday night. That meant most of my actual writing happened today (faithful old Sunday <3). I’m going to have to re-adjust to my schedule to allow for stuff like that, but hopefully Sundays will remain enough of a buffer that I won’t fall too behind on my plans. The clincher? I found another reasonably large problem I need to solve (“Oh hey, there’s like 10 too many scenes in this bit! Poop”) before I can go any further. Round 2, ding ding!

• When your cat vomits in the night it’s unlikely you’ll see it before stepping in it barefoot. 

There you have it, some pearls of wisdom.

Last week, I ended up printing out a script I knew really well (BREAKFAST CLUB) and shotlisting a few scenes. It was a useful exercise but also a dumb one because I know the movie well enough that it’s hard to think outside of what I know already exists. So, this week I’m going to grab a scene from a writer friend and use that as something to shotlist. And with writing, I’ll just continue trudging through, solving problems, swearing and drinking tea (Goal: 12 more pages by end of next Sunday).

Tomorrow we start rehearsals for our Fringe play THE ROBOT MONOLOGUES tomorrow night! It’s a one-woman play starring Emma Smith, it’s on at the Newtown Community Centre on 14th, 15th and 16th February at 8pm, and also at 12.30pm on the 16th February. Here’s the kick-ass poster by Hadley Donaldson:










And finally, three new ideas:

• I’m into anthology films at the moment. I’ve been following the ABC OF DEATH 2 competition, and also the 50 Kisses film. I’d like to see other neat anthologies being made by different filmmakers. Because my head is very much in the robot space at the moment from writing The Robot Monologues, I’d wanna see a series of short films about sentient robots and their roles in society in the future. ABCs of Androids?
  

• In 2012 I wrote a short film called SYNCHRO, about a synchronised swimming team messing with black magic and then brutally murdering their competition in the pool. I’ve been thinking on and off about that for a while. It would be neat to write a feature film around that central idea. I guess it would be a bit like a modern version of THE CRAFT. 
  

• I’d like to write a family film about the newest Ambassador for Earth and her family, who go and live on a distant alien planet earth made contact with and have been sending people to for a few decades. What’s the conflict? Well, the teenage daughter and intermediate aged son aren’t exactly happen to be there, especially when they discover some kind of seedy underground to the planet that hasn’t been revealed to any of the previous visitors from earth (or that they knew about and covered up). If John Candy was still alive he’d play the alien antagonist and it’d all be lovely. Can you tell I miss decent family films? I do. Would this be decent? Ermmmmmm probably not so much ;)
  

Until next week.

WHERE I'M AT!

Now it’s time for me to put my money where my mouth is regarding all this planning I’ve been talking up.

I just sat and divided up the year into manageable chunks. Maths is not my strong point, but I think I need to be churning out an average of 12 pages a week to achieve my goals.

I admit in breaking it down it’s pretty terrifying, as if I screw up even one day that’ll mess up my schedule for the rest of the week. But also, I kind of need that to keep on track. Plus, there’s always Sundays. Good old reliable Sunday afternoons.

MAH PLAN!

My plan this week is to crank out around 10 pages of a new feature. GASH PALACE is about female monster truck creators defending their autoyard against their ex-friend’s demented invention: JAGUCARS: Half car, half jaguar!

Yes is it ridiculous, and yes it is unlikely to be greenlit in New Zealand, but thus far it’s been a blast to work on. Since I’m still really just trying to get good at writing features as opposed to trying to sell them, this thing suits me fine and dandy.

For directing this week, I’m gonna continue reading Film Directing Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen by Steven D. Katz. 

This is a solid book on directing basics I’ve been inching my way through for a while. This week, I’m going to focus on the line, and not crossing it. See, this and screen direction have always been my Achilles heel. Some people are born without good spacial awareness, and I definitely one of those people. But that’s okay. I’m going to practice it this year and I will get better.

Last thing! Here’s what I’ll finish every weekly blog with: 3 or more new ideas. Either loglines, or titles, or characters or settings, or just whatever jazzes me.  

NEW IDEAS!

• I really want to write a movie called BEAST CASE SCENARIO. The logline could be something like: When a ragtag group of failing military school students on a training exercise uncover a monster in the bush, they must band together to get through their biggest challenge yet: BEAST CASE SCENARIO.

• We went to the Napier Aquarium over the holiday period, and they have a new dinosaur fossil exhibition, with videos about Joan Wiffen. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joan_Wiffen Holy shit, how have I never heard about New Zealand’s kick-ass female amatuar paleontologist? She’s amazing, and there should be a movie about her. Either biographical, or just vaguely based on her and involving time travel, because clearly she deserves to meet some dinosaurs. 

•  Interesting character: Jonas and Levana Strewan are nutso survivalists living in in a fortified home in Waikanae. They have a young daughter, Lila, who they’ve been training since birth to handle any apocalyptic situation. When shit does start to go down (meteorites? plagues?) and Lila’s parents are killed, she is the sole person in the area with a safe place to live and the knowledge to get through. Suddenly the whole community is coming to her for advice on how to survive. She’s 11 years old, but she’s the only authority on how to live during the end times, and is now the head of the community. 
  

Tune in next Sunday to find out whether I managed to get up at 5am every day this week!

A while ago, I realised the best way for me to get stuff done is to talk about it. I hate giving up, but I’ll be honest here. If there’s a way I can do it quietly and without repercussions, it becomes a viable and often all too tempting option. And I’d have been such a great ballet dancer, too.

So, this year I’m going to resurrect this blog to talk about writing, directing, and the projects I’m working on outside of my day job. Planning out what I want to achieve each week and talking about it on here will theoretically shame me into keeping it up. If I don’t, please fling your poop at me.

Without further blathering, here’s some stuff I want to do this year:

PLANNING!

• Set aside Sunday afternoons to figure out exactly what I need to get done the following week, and also to catch up on anything I didn’t get around to, like clean underwear.

• Continue getting to office early to do personal stuff, but be more vigilant about how many days a week that happens. “My cat wanted to sleep in” no longer legit excuse. Even if she does.

WRITING!

• Feature films: New draft of FINE FEATHERS, newish draft of GASH PALACE (current work in progress), first draft of THE LACTATING (co-written with Alwyn Dale) and work on a mystery (aka. as yet untitled) film which will need a scene-by-scene before I can do any more. 

•  Theatre: Continue polishing THE ROBOT MONOLOGUES with Alwyn for Fringe, get on top of whatever 2015’s script is heeeeeeaps earlier, lament about the fact I'm already thinking about 2015 and I will be 27 that year holy shit.

• Blog: One a week on Sundays to whip myself into realising I should probably try a little harder the following week, and that it might be time to quit playing Simpsons Tapped Out. 

• New idea generation: At least 3 loglines/new ideas a week, to be shoved in these blogs so I have a nice record of where my head is at. 
  

DIRECTING / MAKING FILMZ !

• This is the big one for me, as my focus the last few years has been pretty heavily on writing. This is the year I force myself to get my head around some of the film stuff that scares me. I will conquer you, lens selection / the line / screen direction. Watch the fuck out. I am coming at you.

• Not spending all of our meeting time writing funding proposals and making stuff instead: This year we (Squidwig Productions, aka. me and Alwyn and our buddies) intend to make a couple of short films. They will likely be self-funded/fundraised for. They will also be acceptable levels of the usual Squidwig weird stuff.
  

CONSUME GOOD STUFF!

• Read things I want to read.

• Read things I can’t be bothered but really should read. 

• Read lotsa scripts. 

• Watch lotsa everything.
  

BE LESS SHIT AT LOOKING AFTER MYSELF!

• Cut MSG out as one of my main food groups and cook some stuff in colours other than beige.
  
• Continue going to the gym and hogging the back corner of classes so nobody is watching me from behind. 
  
•  Do I really need to take the bus to work as much as I am? No. Time to download some audiobooks, and pretend that runners and jeans look awesome. 
  
• Take a night off every now and then and get some good sleepz, for goodness sake.
  

So, that’s the year plan, which looks completely unachievable if I think about it in terms of A Whole Year, but much more manageable in terms of Let's Take This Shit One Week At A Time And See What Happens.