New Year

So, it's been half a year... sounds like it's time for an update!

All continues to go well: we're developing several show ideas with various production companies and producers, are in the running to write on one of the UK's best and most exciting shows* , and have landed ourselves a manager in LA - an unexpected but seriously cool development!

We also had a show turned down by ITV, which was a shame, but it was awesome to get a pitch to that stage... learnt a huge amount through the development process, and worked with some fantastic people along the way.

We can't wait to see what 2011 brings, and hope this new year brings much excellence to any of you who have chanced upon this rather back-water blog - something to change, I feel!

Jonny

(*I'm being as pessimistic as possible about this so as to avoid disappointment, leaving Mark to redress the emotional balance - poor chap: always smiling now, but those eyes, oh those haunted eyes... )

Annual Update

Well, seeing as it's been a year since our last post, the time felt right for another entry - maybe we'll even manage to make more than one in the next twelve months... watch this space!

The last year has been great: we've optioned a show to a major UK production company, had many meetings with many exciting people, developed several other ideas and are currently writing (what we think is!) our best and most ambitious script yet - there is already some interest for the finished product, which is such a massive encouragement when slogging through yet another re-write... let's just hope we can make it as good as we think it can be...

Anyway, thanks for reading, hopefully we will have some semi-insightful things to blog about over the next few months!

All the best,

Jonny and Mark

Out of interest...

Just out of interest, in case anyone pops in here these days, we are alive and well... and busy writing! 

We found ourselves (or rather, they found us) a lovely agent at an extremely well respected agency and have since been living in that wonderful world of re-writes, notes and final draft... 

Venn Diagram of the Week

Rol Cats...

Whilst the whole 'lol cats' thing is a bit old, I came across this, russian cats, which had me giggling like a little child. Check it out: http://rolcats.com/

Venn Diagram of the Week...

On Comedy Writing...

I was going through some old posts from Jane Espenson's blog (which she is sadly not writing anymore) and came across this gem of joke advice which totally sorted out a joke I have been stuck on in a script I'm working on. I have quoted the entire post for ease of understanding, but do take the time to go through some of her archives, she's brilliant and has loads of useful advice:

"One of the first shows I worked on was a sitcom called Monty. It didn't last for very long, although the cast included Henry Winkler, David Schwimmer and a very teenaged David Krumholtz. The show runner was the brilliant Marc Lawrence, who was extremely patient and kind with a certain green young writer. He also completely startled me by disagreeing with what I, at the time, thought was one of the unbreakable tenets of comedy writing. You've probably been taught to end joke lines "on the funniest word." Marc preferred lines that continued past the joke. Here's an example of the kind of thing I'm talking about, taken from a "Jake in Progress" script, because that's what I have at hand:

MARK (to Jake, re: Adrian) Geez, when did this guy become such a prude?

JAKE (absently) 1992. (then) See that girl over there?

And the conversation continues on, now about the girl at the next table. See the effect that you get? "1992" is where the laugh falls. But the line goes past it. This takes the pressure off the joke, allows it to be "thrown away," tossed out casually by the actor. As a result, the whole exchange feels more confident, less rim-shotty, less desperate. Even when it is just being read, not performed.Here's another example adapted from the same script:

ADRIAN But I thought things were going great with you two.

JAKE They are! We go to the movies, and we talk, and she’s really cute and funny...

ADRIAN You want her.

JAKE Like Robin wants Batman. But she’s so happy that we’re taking things slow.

Here, the joke breaks on "Batman," but the line continues, driving us back into plot. Notice how even, frankly, a fairly cheap joke like this one feels better this way, when it isn't left hanging out there in the spotlight.If you're writing an hour spec, instead of a half-hour, the same thing applies. Even more so, since very jokey humor is probably going to feel wrong in an hour, but thrown-away humor might feel just right. Here's an example from an episode of Angel in which Cordelia realizes she needs to cleanse her new apartment to get rid of a certain ghost.

CORDELIA This is easy! Little old lady ghost. Probably hanging around 'cause she thinks she left the iron on. Let's get us a nice cleansing spell and do this thing!

It would've been easy to end the line with "left the iron on." But it would've felt jokier. You can't, and shouldn't, do this with every joke in your script. But if you have a joke in your spec that's always bothered you because it feels too ba-dum-dumpy, try shooting past it a little bit. See how that feels."

Check out her blog: JANE ESPENSON

Graph of the Week

Google auto-complete...

Whilst temping at a certain government building today, I examined the last 100 searches made on the office computer, here are some of them:

• Junkie hands
• animated horses
• horse eating carrots
• biffy
• rooster sounds
• sleep, feel like I'm being squashed
• sleep paralysis
• belladonna.com
• mens slips

A small insight into our current government.

Venn Diagram of the Week...

Joy...

Just a quick note before returning to the far more relevant world of doodles...

Been a bit down on British TV recently, there’s been nothing that really grabs my fancy. So it was with joy and jubilation that I came across two, two, good shows within the same week! It’s a miracle.

Moses Jones (BBC) and Whitechapel (ITV) are two very different crime dramas. I’m a bit of a stickler for crime shows, so two fresh ones further upped my initial excitement to the point of organ failure (for those wondering, I’m currently jobless, and I’m sure you’ll appreciate the monumental event a new TV show becomes in the life of a state-dependant).

Moses Jones was wonderfully vibrant, with a super soundtrack and an unsettling atmosphere. Aside from the actual storyline, which was great, I felt it captured the feel of a community managing to exist within a lager, all encompassing culture, really well. The acting was such you forgot it was acting, with smooth and believable dialogue.

Whitechapel is rather more rambunctious, or felt that way at least. It’s much more of a romp, with slightly cartoon-like proportions. However, that’s not to say it’s in any way a bundle of laughs. No, whilst it is rip-snorting entertainment, it remains serious, urgent and extremely watchable.

Great stuff, really looking forward to future episodes. Do check them out if you get the chance, well worth it.

Calendar conundrum...

Given that it's now 2009, has our blog title become an embarassing inaccuracy or a testament to the time we began our (attempted) writing careers...? What do people think?

The Writing Wizard...

Moleskine!

Moleskine!

Lessons Learnt On Our Previous Blog...

Rare Scripts: The Low Dweller...

Get The Low Dweller HERE

Alt+Ctrl+Del

Primer: A Thing of Beauty...

Nothing shows the potential of modern independent film making quite like Primer.

Made for only $7,000, Primer is the incredibly dense and complex story of two engineers who spend their free-time designing various pieces of hardware in an effort to make a big sale to a tech company. Whilst inventing a new gravity subjugating machine (as you do), they instead end up producing an effective time machine. Once the shock of their discovery has started to wear in, the two start experimenting with sending themselves back in time by a day to play the stock market and in doing so start to unravel the nature of reality generating near time paradoxes and changing the reality of events that have already occurred.

There is a great quote about the film which goes something like: "If you claim to understand it upon one viewing, you're either a savant or a liar" Indeed, on a single viewing the movie is hard to follow, which makes miltiple viewing actually pleasurable. It's creator Shane Carruth is clearly a clever man who actually taught himself the complex physics involved whilst writing the script. In interviews he goes onto state that even under detailed scrutiny the movie contains no plot holes or contradictions, and for some reason it makes me think of Cube...which is a good thing.

Primer serves as a model and inspiration for low budget independent filmmaking. The movie took 3 years to make, most of which was spent by Carruth in preparing, editing and composing. Set in borrowed locations the science fiction tale always looks perfectly real and honest proving that big budgets and special effects are not necessary components for effective story telling. What is required is an engaging script and a desire by the filmmakers to see their vision realized. The movie was awarded the Grand Jury Price at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival and is not only quite deserving of the laurels but also very much worth finding and seeing, whether you are an aspiring filmmaker looking for inspiration or just looking for a great film to waste an evening staring at.

Title Sequences...

Perhaps one of the most interesting developments in TV has been the evolution of the title sequence. This has gradually moved from an economical and frankly boring delivery method of credits, to in some cases, a sequence of images which leave you wishing the program was more like the titles than the 60-odd minutes that follow.

This is the issue I have with True Blood.


Unlike film directors, the artists who create innovative title sequences don’t get much recognition outside the industry. But now there’s a blog devoted to their work, the brainchild of Ian Albinson of Bristol and his Boston colleague Alexander Ulloa. At Artofthetitle.com, they’ve posted dozens of them, from the cinematic and sublime sequence of Raging Bull, to the creepy grunge-filled jump-cuts of Se7en.

Seeing them out of the contexts of their respective films and shows, somehow lets you appreciate the artistry in a way that you couldn't before, being unconnected to the "main attraction" allows them to be viewed as seperate films....but perhaps that's just me.

Anyway, on to True Blood. It's not that I don't like the show, I do. I think that it's unusual and probably brilliant, but it's just not as good as it's titles. The titles freak me out, they make me uncomfortable in the way that I feel the show should, except it doesn't. It doesn't deliver what the packaging is selling.

Anyway, check out The Art of the Title Sequence, it's a great site!

Robert McKee's 14 levels of Coneflict:

Rare TV Scripts:

Click on the image for the pilot episode of Entourage.

Venn Diagram of the Week...

Spec Odyssey recommends...

Well, rather late into the game, I’ve discovered a somewhat useful resource. It’s the ‘Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook’, in this case the 2009 edition. My oh my, if only someone had suggested this as a must read when we were starting out! It’s full of every useful piece of industry information any budding or established writer could wish for. From books to television to illustration, for anyone involved in the creation and publication of creative media in the UK, this should form an essential part of their combat library.

As a footnote, we’ve had some rather exciting news today, something of a breakthrough in script writing terms. Watch this space [and congratulations to all the others who may also have had news ;) ] J.

Californication...

Join David Duchovny for an odyssey of self-loathing, despair, bitterness, and projectile vomit in Showtime's best comedy-drama (dramedy?) Californication.

Here, LA (or should I say Hell-A) is a one-stop shop for the dispossessed, and Duchovny's writer Hank Moody is its angst-ridden chronicler, indulging just about every blush-worthy vice feasible, all between man size doses of self-pity of course. After seeing his Bukowski-esque best-seller turned into a chick flick, Hank finds himself and his writing lost in a labyrinth of self-hatred and, for want of a better term, drowning in a sea of pointless...ness.

Hank's a man in crisis, and it’s this internal conflict that provides the engine of the show. Indeed, his inner demons make for compulsive viewing, as he becomes both the protagonist and antagonist, parts he plays with perfection. Hank is a caricature for sure; a cartoon figure who’s every word is dripping with sarcasm, and self-deprecation. This character, in fact, probably wouldn't work without Duchovny, who brings just enough playfulness to the dialogue. Add a barrelful of sorrow, and combined they make Hank more than a formidable presence. And that brings me to the writing. A smorgasbord of delights await those who stay the first season, because let me tell you, there is nothing better on television at the moment. Anyone who can deploy the phrase ''cadaverous lay" to a lady whilst keeping some semblance of empathy for the character deserves an award in my books.

Californication...watch it!