First Post

I've not had a blog since Diaryland way back in the day. I think I did start a Livejournal once but then never wrote in it. I decided to get back into it, just to log my screenwriting process. You see, I'm doing an MA in screenwriting at Liverpool JMU.

I'll be honest, I love some stupid movies. I mean, I don't think PREDATOR is a work of art but it's rock solid entertainment from start to finish. Of course, I also love some not so stupid movies. Like BRICK, which I could watch over and over again. I wouldn't say I'm "into" Anime, but I do like it, a lot.

So I'm probably going to attempt to write big action movies with robots and monsters in them. My protagonist will most probably be a Japanese schoolgirl wielding a gun that weighs more than her whole family (although to give her a bit of back story she'll probably be orphaned).

I'm currently working on TOMB OF THE VIKINGS. It's a horror with some action but I'd say it feels somewhere in the GREMLINS ballpark. I got a pretty good mark for it as a half hour feature(I got 69... 70 is a distinction - DANG!) and now I have to turn it into an hour long script. I'm feeling pretty good about the changes I've made so far.

I start a little before my half hour opened but introduce my protagonist earlier too (in an action scene that shows character) and I turned my climax into my act 2 ending (kind of). Also made my protagonist responsible for the whole "big bad" (my god BUFFYSPEAK infiltrating my everyday vernacular) which links her and the antagonist inseparably. Made her relationship with her brother a lot less cosy (conflict is drama) and killed off her Dad (raising the stakes).

Expanding the Viking's back story has made them more sympathetic, but that's not revealed until later on. You've got to keep them scary for a little while haven't you? Anyway, now they feel more like they were tricked into becoming undead monsters - denying them entry into into Valhalla - by Fenrir, the Norse wolf god who has taken human form and hidden himself on earth to escape from the other Norse gods who want to destroy him.

So I kind of know what I'm doing there. Well you know how it is, after all the planning you suddenly realise that A didn't quite lead to C by passing through B. It'll all come out in the rewrite though!

So now I'm thinking about my next assignment after that. A full length feature. Got a few. Anyone with any preferences?

1. CRIMEA - A JAWS/ALIENS/THE HOST on the Mersey/Williamson tunnels.

2. BLOODRUSH - A horror/western in the same tone as PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN about Vampires. Think ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13 but in the old west and add some pale bat-like creatures that don't look very human and suck blood.

3. YOU DON'T MESS WITH TEXAS - Actually I don't have a title for this one yet. It's about a family of Rednecks. The Son, Father and Grandfather all having the same name and there's a sister called TEXAS. She has some sort of run in with aliens and area 51 but escapes and calls the boys up and they get in their Mustang or Hemi' and go off to save her. SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT meets X FILES via JOE DIRT.

4. PHOTON - I think I may put this on the back burner for a while after that movie ADVENTURELAND came out because it looks like exactly the same thing but mine was set in an 80s lazerquest place. I'll go see ADVENTURELAND before I decide.