A massive setback!
Retyping my script, more updates when it's done.
Sorry.
Wednesday, 2 May 2012
Wednesday, 25 April 2012
Research and other sundry things
Write what you know.
It's a mantra that I absolutely hate. When I was a younger writer, I would actively try to write things that I didn't know about, or characters that I couldn't relate to. Whilst this experiment could hardly be called successful, it has always left me feeling more admiration when I watch or read something created by someone who is trying to twist the tropes and dogmas of a genre into their own style, and constantly trying to push themselves artistically, expanding their horizons.
Having said that, I have since come to learn that, regardless who it is, it's very hard to write anything in another voice, and it's not advised to do so. It's also not advised to write about a subject you haven't researched at all.
With this in mind, I decided to get down to researching what I will provisionally give the title of N.I.P.S.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9359000/9359360.stm
In terms of how I am shaping the narrative in the first draft, I am going to tie in what some behavioural experts have said about imaginary friends with paraellels to the decline of the industrial sector in Britain.
So, I am writing what I know. But it's not a film about someone in a pub, at least.
More soon!
It's a mantra that I absolutely hate. When I was a younger writer, I would actively try to write things that I didn't know about, or characters that I couldn't relate to. Whilst this experiment could hardly be called successful, it has always left me feeling more admiration when I watch or read something created by someone who is trying to twist the tropes and dogmas of a genre into their own style, and constantly trying to push themselves artistically, expanding their horizons.
Having said that, I have since come to learn that, regardless who it is, it's very hard to write anything in another voice, and it's not advised to do so. It's also not advised to write about a subject you haven't researched at all.
With this in mind, I decided to get down to researching what I will provisionally give the title of N.I.P.S.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9359000/9359360.stm
In terms of how I am shaping the narrative in the first draft, I am going to tie in what some behavioural experts have said about imaginary friends with paraellels to the decline of the industrial sector in Britain.
So, I am writing what I know. But it's not a film about someone in a pub, at least.
More soon!
Monday, 23 April 2012
My Inaugral post
So the story begins...
Hopefully this is not too flippant, and it's all very informative about my creative process, which tends to consist of lying in bed, wondering where it will all lead to, and going for lenghtly walks, ranting through script ideas to myself, scaring the civvies and forgetting everything because I didn't have my notebook on me.
Over the last two months, I have been thinking long and hard about what I would want my final film to be. In much the same way that I nearly put myself away in the head trying to think of a good Tati idea, I was regularly losing sleep over the idea of my final assignment. Going into this course, 2 years younger and 4 stone heavier, I had several little things I dreamt of making. A road movie about about a suicide pact. A film about Jeffry Dahmer and Ted Bundy living in an apartment together in hell. A superhero film that was probably the most plagiaristic rip-off of certain Grant Morrison comics from the 80's, ever.
These ideas, in hindsight, range from a bit naive and silly, to face-meltingly terrible. I would like to think I have improved since, if only slightly.
The ideas I have formulated in the last while? Well, let's have a look see. In true Mark Goodier fashion, I'll count them down as a top 5:
5: This origninated when I thought of my 'transforming moment', the day I discovered that Santa did not exist. I thought, fleetingly, of making a short film about a small child discovering that Father Christmas is not real, mirroring it with the child as an adult, as his wife discovers that he is having an affair. I abandoned this idea very quickly, for two reasons. Firstly, I found it morally simplistic, and found the implication that finding out Santa is not real is hardly an excuse for someone to behave horribly as an adult. Secondly, it felt unoriginal, and lacked a real punch that I wanted my piece to contain.
4. An idea formulated in workshop with Chris Thompson. A pastiche of sci-fi action/thrillers from the 90's, it concerned genetics and cloning and an upper and lower class in a near future society, and all the other things that you would expect to find in a William Gibson novel. However, considering that there is nothing particularly interesting or new about making fun of a genre that has eaten itself over and over again for the last 25 years or more.
3. One that did interest me was the idea of two old friends meeting in a park, having a confrontation about the one friend sleeping with the other's wife. They still decide to meet even though it is the end of the world that day, but their conversation still focuses on the mundane, even in the face of armageddon. I think I was very heavily inspired by Pinter with this idea, and, like most things aping truly great artists, I suspect it would come across as ametuerish rubbish, too busy trying to be Pinter without actually being original.
2. My fall back idea is, provisionally, called 'GSOH', a film picking up my Mr Pickle character from Shopper's Paradise. It would be heavily inspired by the sort of physical French silent comedy films of the 60's. A sophisticated slapstick film about dating. At least, that's what I would hope. Ideally, this is the sort of thing I would like to do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orX3qV2Bskw
1. The film I would really like to do, and certainly am most inspired by, is an idea I have formed over the last few months, slightly refining it as time passes. I would like to make a mockumentary about imaginary friends, but the catch being, the friends are not imaginary, but are people actually working under a government wing, such as the NHS, supplying imaginary friends to play with. This is the one idea that is, by far, what I am most interested in doing. I was guided toward checking the Henry Koster film, 'Harvey', and it certainly seems to be a similar sort of thing to what I am aiming for, although it would be focused around children. I am still researching the psychology behind imaginary friends in children, and in terms of films that will inspire me, I certainly won't be taking insipration from other mockumentaries, as only failure lies down that road. Instead, I will look at documentaries that focus on odd subjects, and how they handle them with some level of sincerity, with this being a good example from BBC Two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNYgwMuCXM
Hopefully this is not too flippant, and it's all very informative about my creative process, which tends to consist of lying in bed, wondering where it will all lead to, and going for lenghtly walks, ranting through script ideas to myself, scaring the civvies and forgetting everything because I didn't have my notebook on me.
Over the last two months, I have been thinking long and hard about what I would want my final film to be. In much the same way that I nearly put myself away in the head trying to think of a good Tati idea, I was regularly losing sleep over the idea of my final assignment. Going into this course, 2 years younger and 4 stone heavier, I had several little things I dreamt of making. A road movie about about a suicide pact. A film about Jeffry Dahmer and Ted Bundy living in an apartment together in hell. A superhero film that was probably the most plagiaristic rip-off of certain Grant Morrison comics from the 80's, ever.
These ideas, in hindsight, range from a bit naive and silly, to face-meltingly terrible. I would like to think I have improved since, if only slightly.
The ideas I have formulated in the last while? Well, let's have a look see. In true Mark Goodier fashion, I'll count them down as a top 5:
5: This origninated when I thought of my 'transforming moment', the day I discovered that Santa did not exist. I thought, fleetingly, of making a short film about a small child discovering that Father Christmas is not real, mirroring it with the child as an adult, as his wife discovers that he is having an affair. I abandoned this idea very quickly, for two reasons. Firstly, I found it morally simplistic, and found the implication that finding out Santa is not real is hardly an excuse for someone to behave horribly as an adult. Secondly, it felt unoriginal, and lacked a real punch that I wanted my piece to contain.
4. An idea formulated in workshop with Chris Thompson. A pastiche of sci-fi action/thrillers from the 90's, it concerned genetics and cloning and an upper and lower class in a near future society, and all the other things that you would expect to find in a William Gibson novel. However, considering that there is nothing particularly interesting or new about making fun of a genre that has eaten itself over and over again for the last 25 years or more.
3. One that did interest me was the idea of two old friends meeting in a park, having a confrontation about the one friend sleeping with the other's wife. They still decide to meet even though it is the end of the world that day, but their conversation still focuses on the mundane, even in the face of armageddon. I think I was very heavily inspired by Pinter with this idea, and, like most things aping truly great artists, I suspect it would come across as ametuerish rubbish, too busy trying to be Pinter without actually being original.
2. My fall back idea is, provisionally, called 'GSOH', a film picking up my Mr Pickle character from Shopper's Paradise. It would be heavily inspired by the sort of physical French silent comedy films of the 60's. A sophisticated slapstick film about dating. At least, that's what I would hope. Ideally, this is the sort of thing I would like to do:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orX3qV2Bskw
1. The film I would really like to do, and certainly am most inspired by, is an idea I have formed over the last few months, slightly refining it as time passes. I would like to make a mockumentary about imaginary friends, but the catch being, the friends are not imaginary, but are people actually working under a government wing, such as the NHS, supplying imaginary friends to play with. This is the one idea that is, by far, what I am most interested in doing. I was guided toward checking the Henry Koster film, 'Harvey', and it certainly seems to be a similar sort of thing to what I am aiming for, although it would be focused around children. I am still researching the psychology behind imaginary friends in children, and in terms of films that will inspire me, I certainly won't be taking insipration from other mockumentaries, as only failure lies down that road. Instead, I will look at documentaries that focus on odd subjects, and how they handle them with some level of sincerity, with this being a good example from BBC Two:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNYgwMuCXM
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