So... I've decided to do it - I'm going to take on the challenge of writing a first draft of a movie in just 21 days using a book by Viki King called, you guessed it; How to Write a Movie in 21 Days.
It sounds like a fun challenge and gives me a time frame to actually get something down on paper rather than stressing about this being right, or that sounding authentic or even basic stuff like character arcs and tropes - you just write what you're feeling at the time and hope that everything comes together at the end. It's called the Inner Movie Method - basically you "watch" the film unfolding in your head and write it down as you think that you see it on the screen. All the tweaking, character description, malarky that goes into actually writing a polished screenplay comes later in a second or third draft.
So I did a little work before I started so that I didn't entirely have the fear of the great white page and came up with a couple of ideas before settling on what I was going to write. In the end I settled on an action/comedy that I've had kicking around for a while and seems the most formulated in my mind. It's called The Deck and was the result of too long spent on CNN late at night. I found out that there was a crazy/genius guy who at the height of the hunt for Bin Laden decided that he could do with the reward for his capture and set off into the hills of Pakistan with little or no knowledge of what on earth he was doing to bring the worlds most notorious terrorist to justice and collect his pay check!
I decided that I wanted to make the piece a little more comedic and write it as if myself and my friends had one day thought that it would be a good idea to go after one of the "deck" of most wanted terrorists as put out by the CIA after the latest Iraq war. Unable to relate to the hunting of terrorist all that well and for obvious reasons not being able to find all that much about how one goes about doing it online I thought that the closest experience to actually being involved in a fire fight was playing on COD. So The Deck became a bunch of avid computer games players out looking for what they considered a "soft" terrorist in the hope of picking up some easy money using the "skills" that they leant when they were behind the sticks.
Obviously it needed a little more and I crafted the lead character Stu into a recently unemployed investment broker who is now unable to pay for his fathers medical bills and after realising that he's never going to make it onto the pro-circuit with his "team" of gammers who are unable to work together to win a qualifying spot he decides to convince them to turn their attention to heading out to the middle east. Though Stu might be hiding something from the group that will shake them all and could mean an end to even their current tenuous partnership.
On day 1 you have to write pages 1-10 (or the ordinary world - establishing where the hero was/is before they set off on their adventure. It has to show the overall tone or theme of the piece and set up the questions that will be answered during the film). I started the group playing for a spot in the finals of the MLG Call of Hero's tournament in Vegas each at their respective homes. It all goes horribly wrong where none of the guys are willing to work with each other and eventually the other team win and the gang falls out for the first time.
Stu then heads off to an interview at Happy Burger where he is turned down for the job because he is over qualified and the paranoid manager thinks that because he turned up in a suit he must be from head office being sent as a spy. He then leaves for the hospital to see his dad who, with no medical care to pay his bills, is looking to be turfed out of the hospital.
It's as far as I've got and it's only a first draft but I'm happy with how things are going so far and I'm enjoying discovering what I want to do with the characters so far on the fly making me learn new things about them with each new scene that I put in.
Anyhow keep up-to-date with the blog to find out where The Deck goes!! Once it's finished I'll be more than happy to have people read it - just give me another 20 days!!
peace,
- Ted
It sounds like a fun challenge and gives me a time frame to actually get something down on paper rather than stressing about this being right, or that sounding authentic or even basic stuff like character arcs and tropes - you just write what you're feeling at the time and hope that everything comes together at the end. It's called the Inner Movie Method - basically you "watch" the film unfolding in your head and write it down as you think that you see it on the screen. All the tweaking, character description, malarky that goes into actually writing a polished screenplay comes later in a second or third draft.
So I did a little work before I started so that I didn't entirely have the fear of the great white page and came up with a couple of ideas before settling on what I was going to write. In the end I settled on an action/comedy that I've had kicking around for a while and seems the most formulated in my mind. It's called The Deck and was the result of too long spent on CNN late at night. I found out that there was a crazy/genius guy who at the height of the hunt for Bin Laden decided that he could do with the reward for his capture and set off into the hills of Pakistan with little or no knowledge of what on earth he was doing to bring the worlds most notorious terrorist to justice and collect his pay check!
I decided that I wanted to make the piece a little more comedic and write it as if myself and my friends had one day thought that it would be a good idea to go after one of the "deck" of most wanted terrorists as put out by the CIA after the latest Iraq war. Unable to relate to the hunting of terrorist all that well and for obvious reasons not being able to find all that much about how one goes about doing it online I thought that the closest experience to actually being involved in a fire fight was playing on COD. So The Deck became a bunch of avid computer games players out looking for what they considered a "soft" terrorist in the hope of picking up some easy money using the "skills" that they leant when they were behind the sticks.
Obviously it needed a little more and I crafted the lead character Stu into a recently unemployed investment broker who is now unable to pay for his fathers medical bills and after realising that he's never going to make it onto the pro-circuit with his "team" of gammers who are unable to work together to win a qualifying spot he decides to convince them to turn their attention to heading out to the middle east. Though Stu might be hiding something from the group that will shake them all and could mean an end to even their current tenuous partnership.
On day 1 you have to write pages 1-10 (or the ordinary world - establishing where the hero was/is before they set off on their adventure. It has to show the overall tone or theme of the piece and set up the questions that will be answered during the film). I started the group playing for a spot in the finals of the MLG Call of Hero's tournament in Vegas each at their respective homes. It all goes horribly wrong where none of the guys are willing to work with each other and eventually the other team win and the gang falls out for the first time.
Stu then heads off to an interview at Happy Burger where he is turned down for the job because he is over qualified and the paranoid manager thinks that because he turned up in a suit he must be from head office being sent as a spy. He then leaves for the hospital to see his dad who, with no medical care to pay his bills, is looking to be turfed out of the hospital.
It's as far as I've got and it's only a first draft but I'm happy with how things are going so far and I'm enjoying discovering what I want to do with the characters so far on the fly making me learn new things about them with each new scene that I put in.
Anyhow keep up-to-date with the blog to find out where The Deck goes!! Once it's finished I'll be more than happy to have people read it - just give me another 20 days!!
peace,
- Ted
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