30 Pages?

Who said anything about 30 pages?

I ask this because I looked through my course notes and course handbook and saw my treatment is due in on the 15th but that is pretty much all it said.

I don't know where I got the notion that it had to be 30 pages (or thereabouts).
This is always a problem with me. I just never seem to get the details totally right. I'm never where I'm supposed to be when I'm supposed to be there. I never manage to have the work ready when it's supposed to be ready for. Well hopefully this time I will!

As it stands my treatment runs in at just over 20 pages which seems to be its ideal length. having looked at other treatments they seem to be about that and it's not as if I have a lot of padding in mine. I've just written what happens in the order it is seen on the screen.

I still have some bits to add, I'm still figuring out the through line of those pesky scenes with the customers playing the game. Trying to integrate it and make it all relevant and pay off. I'm almost there though. Not much is needed for me to reach the stage where I could safely say I have a first draft.

Of course, even then I'm going to want to go in and redraft it. I don't think any writer's first draft is ever really a first draft, it's just been the first draft they feel comfortable with showing anybody and even then it has that "First draft" label meaning "This still very early and very rough and I want to make some improvements but have a look at it and see what you think, let's see if your ideas for what needs improving mesh with mine". They don't really mean that. A first draft is the very best work a writer thinks they can produce. All it's waiting for are a pair of unbiased eyes to take a fresh look and see what a writer is too close to it to see.

So I'm almost there. I've solved a few problems I didn't realise where there along the way and I'm hoping the work I've put in shows on the page.

I've also just pulled out my career development loan forms from my folder and have them half filled in. All the easy stuff is done. My name and address. I reckon I got 100% in that part of the test! Now just to fill in the rest, the hard bit. I just hope I manage to stay on topic with the essay question.

Actually it's not that bad. I had expected to see pages and pages and pages but it looks pretty much like they just want to know who I am and how much I want. After that it's down to the computer. And I really hope the computer says YES!

Remember how I said I hadn't had any other ideas for movies distracting me from what I was doing? Well I did. I've always wanted to do an ordinary man in extraordinary situation action script. Not some ninja or ex special forces soldier who just happened to be in the White House when the terrorists took over. Just some guy, muddling through as best he can. He jumps through a window out of the 2nd storey and he gets hurt! Really hurt. So by the end of the movie he should look a complete mess.

Hmm on an aside I wonder if putting White House and terrorist in this blog flags it to the NSA or something? Now there's the start of a script. A guy at home writing a story about how a secret society actually runs the government and how they are brought down by a group of young freedom fighters. His story is actually closer to the truth than he would ever believe and too close for the comfort of the bad guys who seek him out to silence him. He manages to escape them and realises the only way to survive the ordeal is to fight back which leads him to destroying the secret society - mirroring the plot of his story. Is there already a film like that? I'm thinking of THREE DAYS OF THE CONDOR but I know that's not quite it.

I shouldn't think about it too much. I have other scripts that need writing first. However if you are a Hollywood (or even Bollywood) producer and would like to buy the idea off me I can be reached here. Sinister government agents need not apply!