Bollywood appearance & London Screenwriters Festival 2010 :-)

Well I entered all the competitions I was going to enter. Didn't win any of the ones announced so far though I did score quite highly in my readers assessment for the London Screenwriters Festival Short Script competition which is reassuring. I'm also getting regular likes and nice comments from the material I have put on Circalit which hosted its own LSWF competition.

I think maybe my "teacher goes berserk and everyone ends up deceased" short script Under Siege may have been a bit too strong for some tastes! Will try and do it myself now free from the constraints of only having 5 characters. Just need to find a secondary school that's willing to let me shoot a blood bath!

The very good news is that I am now going to the London Screenwriters Festival courtesy of Screen West Midlands who are sponsoring 10 West Midlands based writers to attend. The line up looks very comprehensive and fab and its a credit to the team behind it. Apparently all the speakers are giving their time for free to make it happen which is most excellent indeed.

In other competition news I have sent 3 out of the 4 genre entries allowed for The Big Idea competition which deadlines this Friday with just my teens Sci-Fi idea kidZ:The Trident Inheritance still to go. This has to to be whittled down from 5k+ words to just 700 before tomorrow when I head down to London.

November is going to be busy with prepping a trailer short for my feature idea Finders.Keepers. with my fantastic new producer/DoP team and also doing another full treatment for another "hot" project i.e. one with a producer already attached.

The bad news is that due to actor availability becoming something of a kitten herding exercise my 30 minute short Trouble At My Door has been pushed back to the New Year - hopefully February half-term. Congratulations though to precociously talented cast member Kia Pegg who has landed the part of Vicious Vicky in the 3D feature Horrid Henry.

I also need to decide if its worth having a bash at the Terry Pratchett prize for an 80 -150k novel that is set in any time but now and is physics-ly possible i.e. no ray guns etc. That deadlines 31/12 and has a publishing deal attached.

So busy, busy, busy and thats even before I've gone and networked like a mad thing at LSWF 2010. It'll be great to meet some of my Facebook writer friends for the first time.

Finally I had the chance to appear as an extra last weekend in Bollywood film Tezz which is shooting around Birmingham and stars Slumdog Millionaire's Anil Kapoor. Its an Indian version of Speed apparently.

It was really interesting to see a big production shooting on 35mm in operation. There was loads of preparation for lighting and rehearsals but few takes. Think I prefer shooting on HD/DV as you can get as many takes as you want without worrying about the cost of processing etc. It definitely gives you more scope to do a number of takes thus giving more for the editor to play with.

Big ups to Sindy Campbell the Filming Liaison Coordinator from Film Birmingham who was really busy and doing a great job making everything run smoothly for this really big (70 crew!) shoot.

Would like to see more big productions like this coming to Birmingham as its A GREAT PLACE to shoot films.

I'm in a few crowd scenes and am quite close to Anil Kapoor at times so it will be interesting to see if I make it to the big screen.

Anyway onwards and upwards!

TAFN B x

Busy October!

I'm really busy this month with various competition entries that will also be dual purposed for other things.

Firstly I'm entering the various competitions that are being run to help launch the inaugural London Screenwriters Festival. One already packed and sent was for their short script competition which had to be set in a school/college with 2 adults and 3 students as characters. My entry Under Seige is a rather bleak but powerful drama about a teacher who finally snaps as a result of pupil bullying with tragic consequences.

The other official competition for this is the Inspired by Science award which is worth 5k to the winner. I'm dusting off my Fairyland project for this as its a perfect fit. They're asking for a 750 word treatment with a biomedical science theme so this Bhopal disaster related corporate wrongdoing story gives me perfect scope.

Over on free to join Circalit.com I've also posted an excerpt from Unix O'Mooney my novel about a young alien stranded in Ireland in 1969 which is gettting some good feedback from people. That's for another competition which gets ones novel "fast tracked into the hands of agents and publishers" and wins a professional novel manuscript assessment.

Circalit are also running an LSF related competition where you win a free consultation with a leading London literary agent and a free ticket to the festival so I'm tidying up Scampenstein for entering into that.

I'm also going to send the treatment for Scampenstein in as one of 4 genre entries for The Big Idea competition run by Shine Pictures which  deadlines at the end of the month and is worth a whopping 25k development deal to the winner so well worth a shot. You can enter one each of Romantic Comedies, Action Adventures, Sci-Fi or Fantasy or Family Comedies.

The Panther's Lair?

I'm also writing up a treatment for a producer I have done some work with in the past and also sending him the treatment for my geek serial killer/kidnapper nano budget feature idea Panther that I'm looking to self shoot over the winter/spring period. I already have a new team for this and a great location already sorted as the Panther's Lair.

So busy, busy, busy and that's just this month!