Today was decision day for Short Film. By the end we had to decide upon a final idea thus allowing ourselves enough time to produce a fundraising video for our Indiegogo campaign and start to take the first draft script into the development stages. We had already shortened the list of scripts down to two; ‘No Town Like My Town’ written by myself, a Contemporary Western located in Old Town Prague that followed a wandering man on his search for the troublesome crime lord Tomas, and ‘Man and Can’ written by our director Ryan Potter about a busy business man who comes across a can attached to a string in the streets of Prague and follows its orders that ultimately teaches him how to live life.
Before our meeting with the production team, my co-producer Tahany Hmaid first took our two scripts to the three executive producers for their approval on the ideas and their overall feedback on each of the ideas. All three of them were more heavily in favour of the ‘Man and Can’ script because they saw the potential for a film festival entry based on previous entries they had seen. Now most people would be quite off put by this negative reaction to their work, however I have taken it onboard. To me it is simply a gift of time. Time to hone the script into something much better, and it isn’t like they outright disliked the script as they offered me some great feedback to work upon. One thing I felt coloured their opinions however was how vague the ‘Man and Can’ script, it delivered a beautiful concept but a loose idea whilst I wrote my script to be direct and as developed as possible due to the lack of time we had. This in the end was my downfall however as the direct and hasty approach meant I had not fully contemplated everything and as such some of it was golden whilst some of it was heavily under developed.
I value the feedback of all three of the executive producers (or in fact anyone willing to take the time to read my script) and so I requested Tahany make record of their feedback on my particular script so that I could continue developing it. It was pointed out that the script felt very generic, I assume this was in regards to the fact that I include a guy taking down a drug lord. I had contemplated this myself and tried desperately to think of something different from drugs. For this I turned to watching more Western films and analysing their narrative structures, what kind of plots were typically featured. There was a strong theme of the old way of life resisting the new style of life and I thought about including this. Other common themes are revenge, saving of a town or damsel and the rescuing of a hostage. Whilst reading the script, the execs struggled to connect to someone or something to identify with, whether this be a theme or character. Usually in a Western there is a stranger who comes into town to save it, even though he might be an anti-hero, the audience should still feel for or relate to that individual. This was something I lost due to rushing the script, character development. The end stand-off as such carried no weight to it. There was an abundance of swearing that felt very out of place for a Western film that also needed to be addressed through development of the characters personalities and motives. Clifton remarked at how he could see similarities between this script and my first script ‘A Game of Bluffs’. I’m not sure if this comment refers to the writing style or the narrative itself. Their closing comments were that it was written very well despite the narrative and character flaws.
Unfortunately, it was decided by a vote of four to two that my script was to be dropped and ‘Man and Can’ was to be developed further. Well, perhaps unfortunately is not the correct way to put it. I think that Ryan’s concept is excellent and has real potential as a film festival contender. With work on the dialogue and a more structured narrative it could be something great. But I feel there are some difficult logistics to be worked out such as tricky public shoots, lighting complications and the issue of acquiring multiple location permits across the city. Whilst my co-producer assessed the narrative having been reassured by the executive producers that thinking of logistics at this point was unnecessary. As Producers looking at a script read, that is all that is necessary. The matter of the narrative, the characters and the tone of the film falls in the hands of the director. I found myself agreeing with Rachel Mann’s article on the PCS blog that discusses her approach to script read as a Producer. Myself and another member of our team raised our concerns over not looking at logistics when making our final decision on the script but it fell on deaf ears. Then theres also the fact that of course I am passionate about my own script and obviously set out with the hopes that it would be selected. Due to this decision all further posts regarding ‘No Town Like My Town’ will feature under the Scripts & Pitch Ideas category.
My intention going forward is to break each character down, analyse their tropes, motives and personalities. Once I have done this I would like address the narrative problems. I need to find a way to remove the drugs from the situation and get back to a more Western themed narrative but one that can also be related to in the modern day climate. Following on from that, I would like to make use of a roleplaying game called Fiasco with a group of friends whereby each person will enter the persona of the characters and role-play scenes out, recording it as it goes. This will tell me the natural flow of the narrative and will allow the characters to speak truthfully to me in a way I could not so easily imagine.
Dreaming of Escape 