CBBC's Pedro and Frankensheep are screening as part of the official programme at Annecy 2008. The episode selected is 'Fool Moon' which sees Pedro and Frank fiddling with the tides with disastrous consequences. The series was created by Phil Cooper at the BBC. We directed and co-wrote the episodes, with Greg designing the look, and me doing the voices of Frank and Hugo. We also wrote the music. Watch an episode on YouTube now or nine of the ten at CBBC.
Harry and Toto is a pre-school series created by Paul Shuttleworth at Handle and Spout productions. It's based on Aesop's fable about the Tortoise and the Hare and has been airing on Cbeebies since early June 2008. I was lucky enough to write several episodes for the show. It was great fun to work on and that seems to have been the feeling of everyone who worked on it... I met several of them at the launch party including Liz who wrote the music and Bob Golding who did all the male voices. Here's a clip...
Yesterday I attended a great course courtesy of Aardman down in Bristol. It was a one day Comedy Intensive course led by Steve Kaplan. It did what every good course should do, which is make me want to get back to my computer and start writing. One of the most useful things he does is to look at why some comedies don't work... by which I mean he shows you clips from shows or films that are supposed to be comic, but are a complete let down. Last night I got back and deliberately watched a dreadful sketch show on BBC Three just to try and figure out why it didn't work. If you ever have the chance to attend his course I'd definitely recommend it.
A recent visitor to our YouTube site requested we publish the transcripts from the Spamland films... so here they are.
Spamland#1 email transcript, taken from an email selling Viagra, Cialis and the rest. From Xochiquetzal Gerow. Sent: 05 October 2006 12:18
nodded. The door was closed and sealed again. Quietly forward. Hands extended, fingers lightly bowed. Iron John was Thats why there is no record of them
Spamland#2 email transcript, taken from a HTML email selling OEM software. The plain text version of the email included the following. From Arthur Smith. Sent 30 October 2006 05:14
In a gravitation without warning the face of rubbing grew sullen Black angry mouths, the clouds swallowed up the horsehair The air was religion with suppressed excitement The walk howled through the solidness and sobbed and calfskin in the secret of the desperado The chime of the threads bell flowed out into the jawline The course notes the holy chant thursday with the storm like refreshingly angels with Satan At last the likenesses of investments lay vanquished. The composure paused in its course to do careening to God. jehovah however aabruptness clap of thunder smote the sky The lane chime of the prints off with a a cradled dissonance Demons seemed the brethren breastworks chilling with gleaming eyes and trembling acidly the militant army of Godswept up unchaste stairs mumbling the ritual of the percy Infected boatswain by the matching hysteria Aubrey openair of the fiftypound Unearthly noises like a incorrect parody of the holy sand that marks the elevation of the backward alarmed the ears the octave monks unspeakable blasphemies streak with to dropoff Rain came down delicatessen cataract napkins of lightning chased one comp like battling fiery dragons. freak jangled hideously out of urgent cheaper and pressed experiment The caravaggio through issues more then latently and rubbed both notched
Spamland#3 email transcript, from an email received by a Bristol University departmental group. From Moi Hoffmann. Sent: 01 May 2007 23:00
Subject: The forest was moving. Body of text: She is in Mushroom--the last classroom along that passage.
Writing... You have an idea. You like it. You explain to someone. They like it. You read some scripts in the same medium that you're aiming for. You sit down. You write. You leave it a while. You rewrite. You've finished. You think... Is this a giant pile of crap? I've just wasted hours of my life on this and it might be crap. How do we find out whether it isn't or not? So far I've discovered the following...
(a) Read it out loud. This can help, but often I still can't see the thing as a whole.
(b) The old leave it in a drawer for a couple of weeks, then read it trick. Yes this helps, but can also lead to the terrible realisation that the idea is actually crap and needs a great deal of work.
(c) Go for a walk. This really works for me. Just walking the dog and thinking about the idea. Thinking about things from a new perspective or character's pov. Thinking about adding in new characters, or taking out scenes. Highly recommended.
(d) Read it out loud to someone else. This is much better than (a). All the bits that make you cringe slightly when you read it to yourself suddenly make you writhe in agony. It becomes a lot clearer what has to go, plus you can interview your listener afterwards to see if they liked it, understood it, were intrigued. Also recommended by Frank Cottrell Boyce who is somewhat more well known than me.
(e) Read a new writing self-help book, or re-read an old one. I find this helps sometimes, even if I'm just picking out passages or chapters. It helps me to focus and go right back to the basics.
(f) Read some more scripts in the same milieu (hoping that's the correct use of milieu). Then review your own script again. I find this helps sometimes - I can see how my script stands up against similar stories written by my contemporaries.
(g) Deep down, you know the truth. I think that deep down, you know yourself if something is good or not. It doesn't mean you're going to admit it to yourself though. That would require hours, possibly days, of therapy.
(h) The final solution. Send it off to whoever you were hoping to send it to - that competition, that producer you know, that director. Or alternatively, if you write and direct or produce yourself... make it. Await feedback, or see if the production works if you've made it yourself. This is the most terrifying bit of all.
After all this writing fiddling and soul searching the question may arise "Why am I torturing myself?"
This is a question I have often asked yours truly before reminding myself that I am a writer, and considering all the terrible things that happen in the world, I've actually got it good and I should stop having an artistic paddy.
I have written lots of aborted, half finished, or even finished-but-crap things over the years. Some will never see the light of day. Some were good ideas that can be recycled I hope. I think the key thing though is that the general graph of skill and storytelling ability has been on a gradual incline from indifferent to good and hopefully, occasionally, to inspired. I think it's important to just keep writing, even if, after all the in depth scrutiny and detailed tinkering, some of turns it out to be a load of old wallop.
We're just starting on draft two of the script and have a couple of weeks before it needs handing in to our Executive Producers at 4mations and Screen WM. We’ll also be sending a copy onto our appointed mentor at Aardman. We’ll be addressing some issues that mainly relate to the passive-active nature of the main character ‘Teardrop’. This is one of those interesting things that comes from adapting a work from prose to film (even if it's your own story you're adapting!). A character might remain in one place for a long time in a prose story, which can be uniquely unsatisfying in a screen adaptation. Salman Rushdie recently wrote an interesting (if slightly pompous) article on the pitfalls of adaptation in the Guardian. It’s worth reading for his comments about preserving ‘essences’.
Ernest Hemingway famously said that, “The first draft of anything is shit.” This has certainly been the case with some of our scripts. But you need manure to grow a good crop. We’re not convinced we feel quite so pejorative about our first draft, but we’re looking forward to seeing how it shapes up in the next draft.
Once we've got the script finalised and have a solid idea of the world we'll start designing the key components, the characters, layouts and props. We'll also start storyboarding. There’s already an early storyboard that we did about a year ago when we first started developing the idea in house. The first version of the new storyboards will be a series of ‘thumbnails’. Using the thumbnails, we’ll work up final storyboards or perhaps skip to the animatic. The method we choose depends on the particular project.
We have finalised the character design for our main character 'Teardrop' - We will post soon - Oh the suspense!
In the meantime, here's the first design for the antagonist's house.
I think one of the most valuable lessons a screenwriter can learn is that the worst thing needs to happen. I don't mean the writer's fingers fall off... I'm talking about story. I think I made a common mistake when I first started writing and that was liking my characters so much I didn't want anything bad to happen to them. But think of any of your favourite films or TV series and you'll usually find that the thing the protagonist really didn't want to happen... happens.
In ET, Elliot is separated from ET and ET appears to die.
In Howl's Moving Castle, Sophie thinks she may have killed the person she loves.
In Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind Joel realises too late that he doesn't want his memories to be erased.
Only once it's happened, does the protagonist realise they're going to pull their socks up and do something even more extreme and dramatic to rescue the situation. I think this rule particularly applies to the mythic adventure stories that Hollywood thrives on. Often it's represented as the antagonist getting what they want for a few moments - think of any Bond film. There's always the bit where the bad megalomaniac presses the World Destruct button. He seems to have won, and Bond's job suddenly becomes even more difficult, but the hero still overcomes. From a viewer's perspective, this is much more dramatic and therefore much more satisfying.
Which is one of the reasons the Transformers film that came out a couple of years ago is so unsatisfying. There's this All Spark thingamabob that gives life to machines and the bad dude Decepticons really want it. But they never get it. We never get to see what they'd do if they got it. As a result the film suffers from a lack of tension. There's just this big fight where you're not really sure who's who or what's going on because of all the shaky camera, so you don't really care. (This is only one of the problems with the film along with overwordy scenes, an off kilter sense of humour, scenes that could be trimmed at the ends, and a massive hole in the character identification department, especially with regard to the Transformers themselves).
With our latest short film The Moon Bird we're trying to create a more traditional narrative tale and trying to crack that way of storytelling. One of the crucial elements therefore has to be that our antagonist Experimentia (a witch) has her moment of triumph.
Last week I attended a session at the Stratford upon Avon Literary Festival. Apparently there's a famous writer who came from this neck of the woods once. Anyway... I picked out The Art of Adapation as an interesting session. Andrew Davies of Pride and Prejudice et al. fame was due to be there but had to go to Hollywood instead. The panel didn't disappoint though.
Actor Richard Derrington did some readings. He has a great voice and I recognised him from a play (rather appropriately an adaptation of the novel Unless) that my wife was Costume Supervisor for at the Stephen Joseph Theatre.
Various elements of adaptation were discussed. Here's a few nuggets that I picked up.
Paul Allen kicked off asking about voiceover. Obviously books are often told in a first person narrative which makes voiceover seem an obvious choice. But it can often be a lazy option. Sometimes the adapted dialogue needs to be more like the internal narrative of the original book and less like the dialogue as written in the original. Sometimes the deliberate use of voiceover at a crucial moment can work really well, especially if it's used sparingly elsewhere.
There was a lot of talk about what you keep, what you chuck away and what you add. Essentially you have to ignore all the fans who say, "you are going to include that bit aren't you?" and create something that seems authentic to yourself.
Adaptations of real lives can be tricky because they don't have plots! Sometimes you have to fill in the gaps. For example Deborah Maggoch commented that Anne Frank's diary isn't very specific about why she fell in and then out of love with Peter. So Deborah had to make a leap of imagination for her TV adaptation.
Dates of events are often shuffled around to suit the screen adaptation.
Adaptations into serial form have other requirements... you need to find a way of summarising at the end of a week of radio stories. And at the beginning of the new week you need to summarise and have a second big bang beginning.
Writing about absent characters works in a novel, but is trickier in radio.
When adapting something that's been successfully adapted before you have to find the themes in the story that resonate with you and find a new angle. David Nicholls revealed he's working on a new film version of Great Expectations, but it's still too early to say if it'll make it beyond script stage.
When adapting create your first draft from the original work, then don't refer back to the original work again. That is regressive. The adaptation should evolve from the draft.
Sometimes the "favourtie bit in the book" doesn't translate to screen and has to be left out completely. David Nicholls spoke about how in his novel Starter for Ten there is a comedy dance sequence which everyone who reads the book finds very memorable. When he adapted his novel for film he was encouraged to include that scene. The scene was shot for the film, but it just didn't fit in to the screen narrative. As a result the whole scene was dumped. David said it was expensive lesson for him to learn.
Depending on the project, the writers used the book alone as the basis for a story, or they did do some research around the era. Sometimes for real and recent events they decide not to talk to the people involved and to find their own story in amongst the existing material.
And there it is... and remember, all but one of Shakespeare's plays were adaptations of earlier works.
We're going to Annecy this year because our short film Codswallop is in competition there. But last week we also found out that we are doing a double whammy because children's TV series Harry and Toto created by Paul Shuttleworth and made by Handle and Spout and GS Animation, is screening an episode in the category "TV Series Official Selection". The episode is Up and Down written by Myles. You can watch another episode of Harry and Toto on YouTube to get a flavour of the series.
Last weekend I gave up my Saturday to attend one of the TENacity workshops being run by the West Midlands writers' agency SCRIPT. The title was "GENRE BUSTING: Writing Genre Material that is fresh, ground-breaking and original". The course was run by Red Room Films producer Claire Ingham and also featured a guest spot with Phil Ford, head writer on the Sarah Jane Adventures and writer for Torchwood and Doctor Who.
It was an interesting day and although I felt like I knew quite a lot of what was covered (what a big head I am) it was never boring and I never felt sleepy (as you sometimes do at these events). Both Claire and Phil were full of useful insights into genre and the business of making TV and films.
One takeaway for me was the concept of 'main character' and 'central character'. Main Character being the protagonist, the hero or heroine, someone who has a character arc (oh how everyone hates that phrase!) and the Central Character being someone who doesn't really go through any majors changes, but who is a focal point for the story.
An example given was Silence of the Lambs where Jodie Foster's character Agent Starling is the Main Character, but Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter is the Central Character. I suppose another example would be The Third Man where Holly Martins is the Main Character and Harry Lime (played by Orson Welles) is the Central Character. Like most things you learn about story, it seems blindingly obvious once someone has pointed it out, but it needed someone to point it out in the first place for you to sit up and take notice.
Other useful hints and tips
In the US if you want to work on a series they like to see a "Shadow Script" of a programme, i.e. if you want to write for CSI, you should write a sample episode and send it to them.
In the UK "Shadow Scripts" are a big no-no. They don't want to see your script in case they are later accused of nicking your ideas. They want to see something original which shows your "writer's voice" (another phrase you hear a lot).
In other words, taking my Doctor Who script with me wasn't a good idea. Which is why it stayed in its pink plastic covering and came back home with me. Ironically it's been a very useful script to show to everyone except those working on Doctor Who because it shows I can write to a format (plus I learned loads doing it - not least about simplifying plot and being able to tie up lots of loose ends in a satisfying way).
I'd recommend the other TENacity courses based on this one. I'd loved to have gone to the one with Helen Cross in Bromsgrove too, but I'll be in Aberdeen!
Once again Peter McLuskie of the Light House has asked us to inveigle our way into his fantastic animation festival. The Flip Animation Festival is now in its sixth year and we've been fortunate enough in previous years to have sat on industry panels for debates, chair a session on Doctor Who animations, show an exhibition of prints, design the look for the festival, and opened the festival with a retrospective of our work.
This year we're back like a chronic rash... and are running a scriptwriting course, interviewing Sarah Cox and showing a programme of short films (not our own this time - instead it's a bunch of films that we love and want to share).
Yesterday I attended a great course courtesy of Aardman down in Bristol. It was a one day Comedy Intensive course led by 
Spamland#1 email transcript, taken from an email selling Viagra, Cialis and the rest. From Xochiquetzal Gerow. Sent: 05 October 2006 12:18
In a gravitation without warning the face of rubbing grew sullen Black angry mouths, the clouds swallowed up the horsehair The air was religion with suppressed excitement The walk howled through the solidness and sobbed and calfskin in the secret of the desperado The chime of the threads bell flowed out into the jawline The course notes the holy chant thursday with the storm like refreshingly angels with Satan At last the likenesses of investments lay vanquished. The composure paused in its course to do careening to God. jehovah however aabruptness clap of thunder smote the sky The lane chime of the prints off with a a cradled dissonance Demons seemed the brethren breastworks chilling with gleaming eyes and trembling acidly the militant army of Godswept up unchaste stairs mumbling the ritual of the percy Infected boatswain by the matching hysteria Aubrey openair of the fiftypound Unearthly noises like a incorrect parody of the holy sand that marks the elevation of the backward alarmed the ears the octave monks unspeakable blasphemies streak with to dropoff Rain came down delicatessen cataract napkins of lightning chased one comp like battling fiery dragons. freak jangled hideously out of urgent cheaper and pressed experiment The caravaggio through issues more then latently and rubbed both notched
Spamland#3 email transcript, from an email received by a Bristol University departmental group. From Moi Hoffmann. Sent: 01 May 2007 23:00
I think one of the most valuable lessons a screenwriter can learn is that the worst thing needs to happen. I don't mean the writer's fingers fall off... I'm talking about story. I think I made a common mistake when I first started writing and that was liking my characters so much I didn't want anything bad to happen to them. But think of any of your favourite films or TV series and you'll usually find that the thing the protagonist really didn't want to happen... happens.
