What an innocuous title for our third “entry.” I had written the story; I knew my characters; I knew the plot, so we just read the story and made a film. Right?
Wrong. In between those two processes is the task of turning the story into something that works as a movie. Forgive me if there are those reading that find this obvious. All I can say is, I was not one of them. In fact, I hadn’t even considered this part of the process at all. Enter the task of writing a “Screenplay.” This probably sounds a little naïve at this point, but remember, this whole thing was a new experience to me, and I didn’t really consider the contrast between a story and a screenplay.
Having never written a screenplay before, but always having seen this process attributed to someone in the film’s end credits, I had no idea how different this procedure would be to writing the actual story. I now know, with increased awareness, why this role is given to a “Screenplay writer”, and the film then comes with the caveat, “Based on the novel by…”
Not only did I have no idea how to create a screenplay… the “Elephant in the Room,” was the fact that, even if I did, I had no idea how to make an actual film. Fortunately, I knew some people who did.
Enter Dave and Tam. Mutual friends through a family connection, and the beginning or our “Film-Making Collective.”
I can clearly remember our first meeting as we headed into this venture, the three of us sitting in the “Copley Arms Pub”, drinks in hand, the conversation running a little like this:
Me: “Hey guys, do you want to make a film.”
Dave: “Err..”
Tam: “Yes.”
We clinked glasses, and that was that.
With the two of them already in the business of media, and having far more knowledge about how these things work, it was Dave, as I recall, who first mentioned the fact that we would need to create a screenplay. I researched, Googled and looked at screenplays from other authors, and how they compared to the original books. I began to produce my own and was happy to find that this became a surprisingly rewarding and interesting process. Together, the three of us looked at the finished product and decided it was pretty good. For a first draft. There were many more drafts to follow, but I would say that approximately 80% of that original screenplay is what we see in the finished film.
We were aiming to make a 20 minute “short film” with a screenplay comprising 29 pages. I had read somewhere that one page equals one minute of screen time, or thereabouts. We ended up with a much longer film and are very happy with the end result.
It felt like something fun had come out of that first meeting. We all had a positive energy. We were going to make a film. Sure, Dave had mentioned that it was going to be a lot more work than we first thought, but I was already caught up in the drama.
When Dave presented me a 4-page document of “Things to Do” about a week later, together with a 760-page tome entitled, “The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook” I suddenly realised that he was right (and this was just the tip of the iceberg.)
There was so much to do before we even got started. Plus, the “Elephant in the Room” had decided to bring her friend along for the ride… We didn’t know any actors.