Eddie Murphy pimps my script.

Pimpin' my wares all about the place now.

First up is Trigger Street , it's a peer review script submission site. When you sign up they give you 'homework' to read an review four scripts from other users, once you have done that, you may upload your script for review. It's a good way to ensure that you get feedback from people know what they're talking about as you have to be dedicated to stick with it. I'm not sure if I'm going to submit 'Jerusalem' as I think I'm as far as I'm going to go with that at the moment. Maybe a few of the short films. I'm primarily interested in seeing what other people are writing - to check out what I'm up against. I've been assigned to review a pretty cool script of a Tim Burton - y type film...it's very good (drat).

UK Screen - boy why didn't I know about this sooner? It's a great resource of film industry contacts. The search function alows you to browse all registered users which include everything from catering supplies, to actors, to lighting rig hire and more. You could set up an entire production from home. It also has a great forum with topic posts such as 'HORROR SCRIPT NEEDED FOR LOW BUDGET FEATURE' - yeah...that's what I want to see.

I've also been exploring the BBC's submission procedure for feature length scripts. They seem suprisingly open to everyone (well... it is the BBC I guess.) As long as you have a neat and tidy looking hardcopy of your script (not even formatted correctly) to send to them then they'll read the first ten pages and either bin it or put it on the 'to read' pile.

Not so straight forward is the Film Four submission process. Understanably they need to reduce the number of scripts they get and subsequently all have to come via a registered source. The vetting process is pretty thorough - but I think with a little ingenuity we'll be able to get our foot in the door. Their arcane submission form is a deterrent to most people, but if you make it through it's like you've passed some 'Golden Child' style test.

Episode VII : The Phantom Seat Syndrome

The script is currently being read by someone who has the power to get this film made (let's call him Mr. B for now). Mr B has had it for a while and seems to be reading it veeery slowly. The first feedback was that he thought the title was good. A few days later he's just reached the end of act 2 and he seems to like it so far but with reservations about character progression. This dribble of information is killing me. I'd rather the quick sudden jerk of a plaster being torn off rather than this slow water torture, even if the feedback is positive. I'm constantly on the edge of my seat, even if I'm walking down the street I experience 'phantom seat syndrome' on which to be on the edge of. Fabricated psycological afflictions asside, I could really do with this limbo state to be over. Maybe I'm just to invested in what rationally I know has a very slight chance of actually going ahead.

How long does it take to read 100 pages? I've read loads of scripts in preparation of writing one, maybe I should get a job doing that.

I think I need to get back to the new script, get my mind off exciting possibilities and potential dissapointments.

Locked in.

Internet's been playin' up recently so this is the first update for a while.


The script has been passed on to various producers and agents and also Warp films. It's just a matter of waiting now to see what they think. I've lined up some other places and people to send the first draft to if this first batch of contacts doesn't pan out.
I'm not sure just how long I should wait for a reply or any feedback from these people. I'm sure they're very busy and get scripts shoved in front of them on a daily basis. I'm not going to hold my breath - I'll give it a month or so.

If nothing comes of this, it's not quite a' square one' situation. There's always a possibility of private funding or indeed self funding. If it comes to that I'll have to reign in the script's excesses to reduce cost but this is the kind of film that would suit being shot on cheapo camcorders guerrilla style.

This limbo state I'm in, as the script gets thrown to the dogs, has allowed me to start a new project. I've spent a week or so weighing up the relative values of three different ideas I've wanted to do and have finally settled something quite odd, a bit of a challenge really. Bad Day On Jerusalem Hill weakest element was character I'd have to say - not that it really mattered, it was after all a action/horror movie - so this new idea is almost entirely about individuals in isolation. I'm calling it 'Locked' for the moment and hopefully will allow me to concentrate on an aspect of writing that I'm not entirely confident with. It's a multi stranded story in the style of Altman or PT Anderson with a good dose of Stephen King and 'Lost' thrown in aswell.

I'm going to aim for a steady five pages a day on this, nothing to ambitious. Hopefully the structure of having what is essentially a group of short stories will make the process faster. We'll see.

End Of Act One

Well that's that then. Finished the script. Typed FINAL after the title on the file name just to press the message home. (Yeah I know it's not really going to be final but I can relax for a bit now at least)
After one last read through, an idiot check for spelling mistakes and grammatical errors, I realised that the script is actually pretty good. I'm quite proud of it to be honest for a first feature length effort. Considering it's quite a straight forward genre story there's quite a lot of unexpected scenarios in there, which over time, add up to give an unique feel. The light hearted opening gives way to much darker scenes later on then finally to bleakness without letting up on the action. Thrilling and depressing? Now that's a sales point right there. Put that on the poster.

Now of course comes the hard part as they say: getting it produced.

I'm not fully capable of judging how much a script will cost yet, but I guess BDOJH could be made quite cheaply - not micro budget but defineately small. Less than a million sterling. I just have to select who to pitch it to. First up is WARP-X who I've always had in mind when writing this story, but I absolutely intend to give this to every company I can possibly think of that would be interested in this kind of thing.
One possibility is to approach an agent who has a much better chance of getting the script seen. I've read that agents only consider signing writer's if they have at least three scripts ready to sell. Fair enough, they are taking a gamble when they commit to a writer but there is a down side to that - you have to write THREE SCRIPTS. Three good ones aswell. Considering how long it took me to do this one that task seems herculean.
Having said that, I've learnt a lot about constructing a story, about setting an outline, the peaks and troughs of narrative, what works and what shouldn't even get near a page. I'm going to start straight away on a new script (plot keywords: dildo, avatar of creation, chainsaw, morris minor, rebirth, brothel, schoolgirl) and I'm guessing it won't take so long now that my process has become a lot more refined.

As for Bad Day On Jerusalem Hill well I guess we're approaching the end of act one. We've set up ground work and the long second act of selling it is about to start. Hopefully we'll make it to the halfway mark, the important Point Of No Return, and get in to production, over come a few obstacles on the way, learn a little about ourselves and then BLAM! - third act twist: Jesus returns to Earth invoking the rapture and film-making becomes redundant.

Can't wait.

Jeff Fahey and Daniel Baldwin in...'Urban Gauntlet'

It took me three days to write one sentence. One very important sentence. The shortest version of the script I could do. Not a tag line and not really a pitch, just a simple condensing of what the film is about. Boy was it hard.

It's important because it'll be the first thing that any prospective producer/financier is going to experience of the work, so it has to succinctly convey as much as possible about the story and get the reader's attention so that they want to continue reading the script itself.
The big problem i had was that my script when condensed in such as fashion sounds so utterly generic, and you know what it was always intended to be a traditional genre film so no real surprise there. It's always meant to have been about the execution of that traditional concept that set this story apart...not something you can easily get across in a one sentence precis.

This is what i came up with -


'An isolated community resorts to extreme measures to protect itself from people sent to help them.'


Quite simple you might think, but boy were there a lot of discarded one-liners.
To briefly recap the plot, 'Bad Day on Jerusalem Hill' is about our nerdy hero Lewis who is sent to remove graffiti from the notorious Jerusalem Hill housing estate as part of his community service - compulsory unpaid work as it's called. Here he meets up with Jordan who leads him to further criminal activity when they find a weed farm in one of the flats - they end up stealing a lot of cannabis. This sets in motion a chain of events that leads to the unfortunate death of one of the residents who then seek revenge. The entire community service team are pursued through Jerusalem, trapped and picked off one by one until the remaining survivors are forced to fight back. 'Who will survive and what will be left of them.'

So,let's break it down -

'An isolated community resorts to extreme measures to protect itself from people sent to help them.'

I think you get what this film is about straight away,you've seen this kind of thing before...'Wrong Turn', 'Deliverance', etc... an 'isolated community', cool okay we dig.

But here I've started with the community, not the people sent to clean up the graffiti who are the protagonists. This is to highlight that the script deals as much with the nominal 'bad guys' of the film as we do the heroes, something that is never really done in this kind of film.

Now we move on to 'resorts to extreme measures'. I think we all know what extreme measures implies but the fact that we qualify that with 'resorts' means that there's a definite sense that these people were provoked, perhaps they're not in the wrong.

But now it gets interesting ' from the people sent to help them.' This puts in question everything that's gone before. Is this isolated community justified in their retribution if the people they're after are meant to help them. If this whole scenario is has emerged from a benign beginning what could possibly have happened to make it go wrong. Violence, Intrigue, Community.

I went through dozens of permutations to arrive at that, including such atrocities as this -

A group of community service workers are sent to clean graffiti from the notorious Jerusalem Hill estate where a fatal accident triggers a relentless fight for survival as our heroes are pursued through an urban gauntlet.

'urban gauntlet'... fuck off mate.

99 pages and a bitch ain't one

99 pages. Phew that was difficult.

A new slicker intro and general pruning of my rather wordy action sequences and I've managed to get it in under a hundred pages.

Things to do-

- I really want to do a reading with a few mates to get a feel of what the script sounds like out loud.

- Edit the script down further, maybe by amalgamating a couple of the characters.

- Get the script out. To actual people who actually deal with this kind of thing. So we can get this made.


One thing I've been thinking about is budget. There are a lot of characters in this script - it's no Magnolia - but having both sides of the story has upped the number of speaking parts. This is inevitably going to hike the cost. This coupled with quite a few locations and I can see the budget getting out of hand.
An idea I like, to reduce the overheads, is to make the central siege sequence the entire film. One location and a handful of actors. Of course it would be a very different movie but I'll keep it at the back of my mind just in case.

Another way of dropping costs would to be to shoot various elements simultaneously with extensive second unit activity. Luckily the story has several parallel sequences that can be filmed separately but concurrently. I'm not completely sure if two crews filming for a shorter time is cheaper than one main unit filming for longer... we shall see.

Good Bad Guys done well

I spent a while avoiding the script because I thought it was a bit shit, but on re-reading it recently I like it once more. There are still problems with the opening but the end is in sight now.

I'm having fun at the moment going through and tweaking each scene to give it 'a moment'. A 'LOL' moment - I've always liked it in films where you think 'why the hell did the film makers do that',those quirky little moments that don't really have much of an impact on the story as a whole but cumulatively give it a unique tone.
I made myself laugh when I added a line which reveals that a largely anonymous masked killer is named 'Baby'.

It works in the script, trust me.


I've been listening to a lot of Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcasts which have been inspiring me. They're very in depth and quite conversational QandA sessions with scriptwriters, mainly of big american movies like Star Trek and Watchmen and the like with a few smaller films thrown in there aswell. They're very informative as to the working pratices and pratical methods of crafting a story.
I in the latest one they were discussing the merits of having a good 'Bad Guy' in relation to the movie 30 Days Of Night.
This got me thinking about 'Jerusalem' which really doesn't have a main antagonist as such. Or rather the closest thing to that, is never a consistent threat in so far as he has no interaction with our heroes until the very end.
I panicked. Shit - there's no baddie in the film. I immediately started to devise ways to develop a viable antagonist - more structural re-writes - damn.

But then it came to me, I have a 'Bad Guy' already, I always have had in the form of my very own 'Overlook Hotel' the block of flats called 'Jerusalem' where the movie is set. All those incidents that get in our character's way are the building's doing. Not in the way that the hotel in the Shining becomes a character in itself, but more to do with social, political, survivalist, economic, architectural factors that it imposes on it's residents, it's practically given birth to them.

I've got a 'Bad Guy'.

Now that I've realised that guess what... more rewrites. I'm going to take advantage of the setting more and include the very structure of the place as as a key element.