Big Screen Little Things

So, would anyone like the opportunity to see Little Things on a screen other than a computer monitor and in the presence of an audience? Well you're in luck because you have two opportunities...


For those of you who live in or near North Wales, this is a really interesting one. Andrew Gale at Dogsdinner Productions and my newest facebook friend has made a film called Dark Waters and here is the teaser trailer...

Looks awesome don't it. Dark Waters has in its cast none other than Little Things' own Richie Nolan and is having its world premier at the Llangollen Fringe Festival on the 19th of July, and Andrew has been generous enough to include Little Things as part of the program. Not only that, but there will be a Q&A session with Andrew and the writer, Andrew Stevenson. So for a few quid you get to support North Wales indie films and get involved with a discussion with the writer and director, for the life of me I can't think why you wouldn't want to! So 19th of July, Llangollen, tickets are available here. Get your tickets booked now so that you won't be disappointed.


If however you life on the south coast and coming to North Wales to see Little Things with an audience is not really an option then fear not because Little Things will come to you. Christopher Regan  who writes the excellent Writer by Night blog runs a monthly even in Brighton showing off more indie film, and again has been generous enough to include Little Things in the August line-up. Moviebar runs on the first Monday of every month and will show Little Things on the 1st of August, with hopefully me getting there to defend myself chat about the film.


Can I also say, god bless the interweb, without which none of this would have been possible...


Next time I'll talk about my next project that Pete spoke about in his last post. Working title - I Don't Bite

Thoughts on co-writing

With Little Things finished and released online, the time has come to set our sights on the next Broc Glic project. I don't want to give anything away about the plot, but it's an idea Mark has been playing with for a while. He started working on a script a couple of weeks ago and approached me with a little experiment.


I was one of the first people to read the script for "Little Things" and gave Mark fairly extensive notes on it over a few months, which was the sum total of my involvement in the writing process. This time out, Mark suggested that he and I try co-writing. I was dubious to say the least, and thought the resulting argument would make him reconsider asking me to be his daughter's Godfather. In short I expected abject failure, but figured what the hell, it could be fun so Mark sent me his first draft.


It's turned out to be a really productive process. As I said before Mark and I discussed the script of "Little Things" extensively over a few months. Mark took a lot of my ideas on board, modified some and rejected others out of hand. This being said it was very much Mark's work that I helped with. This time when he mailed me I butchered the script. I completely rewrote the first scene, dropped the final one and redefined the main character entirely. I used ideas that Mark had already vetoed. My draft fixed some problems in Mark's script, created problems that hadn't existed before and highlighted problems that existed in both.


With both Mark and I both invested in the writing process we were able to debate about character motivation, style and probably most importantly, what was being achieved with each scene. Shorts are tough, you have very little time to play with so you have to be into the whole brevity thing. I didn't like Mark's final scene at all. I thought it was too long, had too much dialogue and introduced too many new characters. I removed it completely and integrated what I thought was necessary for the plot into the scene before (which had already been heavily rewritten). My ending didn't work at all, the tension peaked too quickly and necessary character exposition was lost. So the last scene in neither draft works, but looking at both it's clear what needs to be achieved in a rewrite. We had a brainstorming session yesterday and may have a solution.


Thus far the co-writing experiment has been a success.
More thoughts on this are very likely to follow.
Comments welcome folks.