Time to Write

Started my internship in London and thankfully they give me downtime to write my feature. With the treatment done, I'm now getting going. It's been hard with juggling writing the blind musical for calling the shots and trying to write Chris's brain child of "The Hangover in Poland". It's great though, finally having the chance to show my writing skills as that's my main goal for my future career and my final year.

Feature Treatment Done

Finally...almost three weeks behind and a total readjustment.... I've finished my feature length treatment of the Worry Dolls. First I made an outline of what I wanted (all based off of the short and some ideas I dropped from the original short script) and then today used that to write the treatment. What helped was the synopsis of Midnight Cowboy. Some of the flashbacks made the story very odd and I wanted to double check what they meant in Jon Voight's dream. They were clearly explained in the synopsis which gave me the idea of how to write the treatment. It's a calm explanation of how you are going to do things, then while writing the script, add the crazy, creative touches that make your feature your own.

RIP Ratzo.

TOTAL REWRITE

Well... sort of.
I made a finished draft of the Worry Dolls short and I sent it to friends and family. The reviews were mixed, and I'm not surprised at all. In fact, I really didn't like it, and was hoping that either

a.) Everyone would love it.

b.) Someone would tell me exactly how to fix it to make it perfect.

I just had to break down the script to exactly what I wanted. There was so much I wanted to express...

1.) A mixture of a beautiful, bizarre world that was childlike that is clashing with the dull, boring world.

2.) The worry dolls to be in Will's life until a point, and then Will had to grow.

3.) The sense that Will's job was torture from the boredom.

4.) Someone from Will's job is horrific to him. Trying to put him in his place and bringing him down into the real world.

5.) A happy outcome where Will loses the Worry Dolls, but gains a girl who is like minded.

To include this and more, would be so hard to fit into a ten minute film. Even as I was writing the feature, I thought it was long winded in the way it was presented.
So I stuck to the Amelie narrative of jumping from facts, the the character's interests, to surrealism and try to connect it all. A lot of time got chopped to changing the narrative to Will presenting all the information. I cut the dating show scene, it's good but for another movie. And so it is only Will presenting the narration, which works great as he's more irreverent and more outgoing in this version then his down-trodden, Eyore, version.

Phew....

Short Version of Will and the Worry Dolls is Finished

After finding a new structure to my script, I decided it'd help to write the short first, and then keep building up on it for the feature. It helps a lot more then to write the feature and take away from it for the short. For the short, you can start off really simple and then keep adding to it for the feature but you have more of a visual outline with the short written.
Now I'm going to give it to friends and family to read over. Also Rich Warren who works at South West Screen and Jeremy Routeledge who works at Calling the Shots to help edit the short to make it "festival" worthy. This will be crucial if I want people to be interested in the feature.