LSWF 2016 PART 4

SUNDAY 4TH

The morning after the night before. I don't recall what time I went to bed... it was late and I had pickled myself in networking juice. Still, I was up at the crack of dawn and raring to go after a large, strong coffee and something to eat.

Sunday was all about making the most of any potential networking and going to that session I'm not allowed to talk about.

Script Editors

First up - A Day In The Life Of A script Editor. Great session. I really enjoyed listening to each of the speakers and how they dealt with notes and giving them to writers. Always good to get opinions from other points of view. I've had plenty of notes in my time. Some good, some bad, some utterly bonkers, but I've always sat down with the producers/directors/script editors, worked through the notes, come up with alternative suggestions where I can, agreed on changes everyone is happy with and then implemented them in an orderly and stress free manner... which was basically what the above session was about. Remember kiddies, a good script editor is for life, not just for (insert seasonal holiday here).

Second - Subtext; Writing For Depth and Impact. I'm hoping the video for this session is up on LSWF Connect soon, as I'm embarrassed to say the weekend's overload of information took its toll five minutes into this session and I fell asleep. Oops... sorry, Mr Pope, hope I didn't snore too loudly. However, I'm reliably informed it was an excellent session.

My Heroes

FIGHT CLUB!

Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! I want to watch the  film again! I'm planning on doing so with my dear lady wife ASAP. Jim Uhls' commentary was a lot different to Peter Iliff's Point Break approach. Jim kept the majority of his comments focused on the screenplay, the difficulty of adapting a novel (honestly never knew it was an adaptation... I know... book on order), the changes he made and the reasons behind them. Obviously, I can't go into more detail about these, as I'm not allowed to talk about it... shhhhhhhh!

Peter Iliff having a quiet pint or two.

The rest of the day was spent in a blur of networking, swapping cards, promising to email out more screenplays and trying not to drink the right amount of beer to make me an incoherent mess. I can't stress the importance of networking at LSWF enough. It's vital if you want to find work as a writer. Yes, I skipped a few session that day, but you can't beat quality networking.

And so ended this year's festival. I vaguely remember an overly excited guy shouting at me from a stage, telling me I was fucking awesome and to go out into the world and make it a better place... or something. I also vaguely remember standing outside The Globe on Baker Street, drinking beer, promising more people to send them my screenplays and marvelling at the fact Peter Iliff was getting pissed with us. Everything else is a little blurry. Maybe all that lovely information over the weekend was way too much for my grey matter and a bit of it dribbled out of my ears when I wasn't looking?

Happy writing.

LSWF 2016 PART 3

SATURDAY 3RD SEPTEMBER

The brilliant Hayley McKenzie

I woke up early and made my way to the Ackland Lounge for Hayley McKenzie's Crime/Mystery/Thriller Script Lab. I learned a great deal in those three hours from 9am to midday, not just from discussing my own project, but also from listening to what Hayley had to say about all the others' projects too.

Specific points I learned in this session:

• Set the genre expectation.
• If it's a thriller, is it exciting on the page?
• If it's a mystery, will we want to spend six hours to find out the answer?
• A 60-page thriller - turning points every ten minutes, five in all.
• For a six hour TV serial, you need enough story to last. Most writers try to instinctively stretch their plot rather than put more in.
• Give your characters more problems, more obstacles to overcome and send them to more places to find more clues.
• A thriller has to have a threat to life.
• Thriller - the protagonist is always firefighting the antagonist's plans. What is the antagonist's goal and plan?
• Don't be afraid to force your antagonist into a corner. Let it happen and then worry about how to get them out afterwards.
• You must make the tone of the show obvious and consistent. It can't change from episode to episode.

I came out of the session absolutely buzzing (and not because of the coffee), full of ideas and motivated to the maximum. I really wanted to jump on a train, get home and start writing... but I still had part of the weekend left. For me, this was definitely the best session EVER!

Ashley Pharoah - one of my writing heroes.

Next up came Showrunners: Staffing Up The Room and How You Can Get A Seat At The Table.

Again a brilliant session and very informative. It was great to get two differing points of view of what exactly a showrunners' job is and how Kim Revill and the legend that is Ashley Pharoah approached the job.

Then came the script to screen session of Point Break. I bloody love that film so I had been looking forward to its screening all weekend. It didn't disappoint!

Peter Iliff not only kept us entertained with details of how the screenplay evolved from his original idea, but also with his anecdotes of the people he worked with; James Cameron, Partick Swayze, Lori Petty and Tom Sizemore. He was insightful, funny and honest about his work on the film.

Chris Jones introduces the legend that is Peter Iliff.

Peter was actually a revelation over the weekend. Unlike most speakers who quickly return to the green room after their session, Peter hung about all weekend. He could often be seen mixing with fellow writers in the Final Draft Marquee and even came for networking drinks with us at the Globe on Sunday evening. Best of all he was very approachable and was more than happy to chat and answer questions. Peter, as far as I'm concerned, is an absolute legend.

By the time the evening came around I was brain dead from all the information that had been thrown at me. I had earned my bed by the time I finally crawled into it at 11pm.

Happy writing.

LSWF 2016 PART 2

FRIDAY 2ND SEPTEMBER

As usual with the festival opening, Chris Jones delivered his high octane, positivity reinforcing, highly motivating speech that had everyone on their feet whooping and hollering, whipping them up into a frenzy without the aid of caffeine or mainlining hard drugs. It was just the wake up I needed after a very long and busy day the day before.

I was totally ready for Pitchfest. Normally I would have prepared the hell out of this day, but because I had been working on a new commissioned feature, had a weeks holiday in Cornwall and spent the Bank Holiday weekend up at my parents, I didn't have any time to prepare. I found it strangely liberating.

I did research the pitch exes who were going to be there and I did decide which projects I was going to pitch to which pitch exes before hand, but I didn't practice my pitches one bit... not even the loglines. In fact, the only real preparation I did for the session was a few quick stretches to warm up and wake up before I entered the room.

Last year I learned all my of loglines off by heart but found when I pitched them they sounded flat and rehearsed. I even got badly tongue tied on one of them and fluffed the pitch magnificently. This year I was calm, relaxed and when I delivered my pitches I delivered them with passion. And I didn't do too bad. Out of the six execs I pitched, I had two positives and one possible and more importantly I had way more fun than last year.


The standout session of the day for me was Getting Commissioned in 2016: What the Broadcasters Want. It's always great to here what broadcasters are looking for and as soon as I got back home after the festival I made sure I followed up on every juicy morsel of information from this session.

And I even got to meet Karl Iglesias, who's book Writing For Emotional Impact I reviewed on my blog back in January 2015. He even signed my copy for me. You can read the blog post here.

Networking drinks. Always fun and a great way to meet many new and exciting people. Cards were swapped, friends made and beers sank. I was hyped at such a good day and could wait for day three.

Happy writing!

LSWF 2016 PART 1

WOW!

JUST WOW!

What a weekend. I'm still buzzing. The adrenaline is still pumping. And I'm still striking that superhero pose.

Strike the pose.

Four days of awesomeness that's like mainlining a barrel of caffeine while taking a shot of adrenaline straight to the heart.

I fucking love my tribe.

THURSDAY 1st SEPTEMBER

Up at 5am. On the train at 6.11am. Arrived at Waterloo at 8.16am.

That gave me 44 minutes to navigate London to Regents University for the inaugural Drama Writersroom session with the amazing Danny Brocklehurst. Sweaty, out of breath and lugging two heavy bags I staggered up to reception and found myself arriving at the same time as Danny. I said hello, told him how much I was looking forward to the day and quietly snuck off for a quick caffeine fix.

The Drama Writersroom was amazing, even if the room we were allocated was like an oven and we were wilting within minutes. Being the first ever writersroom we were all, even Danny, a little unsure as to how things should work, but we soon got into our stride. We had been asked to watch Danny's BBC drama Ordinary Lies and come up with a character, a lie, or a true life story we could turn into an episode idea. We all pitched our idea and one was chosen.

What's my name?

The team then set about plotting the episode together. I found this a fascinating exercise. Immediately it was clear who the outspoken characters were in the room and which ones were quieter. I fell somewhere closer to the quieter end of the spectrum, mainly because a 5am start doesn't agree with me. But it didn't matter who was loudest, or who was quietest, everyone's opinion and ideas were listened to and slowly, after much debate, we began to piece together an episode.

There were times when I thought we would never agree. There were times when I thought we had nailed it, only for someone to highlight a gaping hole in our plot. But by the end of the day and with Danny's expert guidance we created a believable and coherent episode outline two of the team pitched to a panel of experts.

I was really proud of what we achieved.

I learnt a lot about myself, my ability as a writer and my place in the world I've chosen to inhabit. All valuable insights.

I hope they do the writersrooms again next year. I'll certainly be applying again. I'd also be happy to sign a waiver so whoever the showrunner is can use the idea created in the session as an episode of their show, while we the creators receive a thank you in the credits. I would get quite a kick out of that.


Other things I learned on Thursday:

• Danny is an awesome chap and very approachable.
• Danny drinks a lot of coffee.
• Everyone loves nacho Pringles.
• Protein bars are yummy.
• The halls of residence at the university are actually not that bad and are very handy for staggering exhausted into bed at 10.30pm after consuming several bottles of networking lubricant.
• I missed my friends.
• I need to get involved more.
• I fucking love my job.

Happy writing!