Metlab Update, Part 2

I met John Sweeney from METLAB on Thursday afternoon at London Metropolitan University. The best way to describe John I think is ‘irrepressible’. His enthusiasm is hugely infectious, and besides – how can you possibly dislike someone who greets you with the line: ‘The only problem with Universities is that they’re full of students!’

If you haven’t heard of METLAB click here – suffice to say, as a ‘scheme’, it sounds massively exciting. John takes on the role of ‘studio head’ (“Like Harvey Weinstein,” he said, “but with ten times the ego!”) and with the assistance of various script editors (of whom Lucy is one), attempts to hone and polish (or in my case hack, slash and decapitate) your script until it resembles something that can be successfully marketed. The whole process takes about nine months, with a meeting once a month – a little like a truncated MA course, but with the emphasis very much placed on having a finished ‘product’.

A couple of days before the meeting I finally managed to get my script over to John in a format he could actually access – and he liked it. Even so, he spent some time riffing on a possible opening scene which was about ten times better than the one I have in there currently (John: “I’ll take a credit for that!”). This to my mind is the essence of METLAB: if you’re precious at all about your writing, this isn’t the place for you. As John said, if you can justify it, fine: if not, out it goes. If I get on, it looks like being an interesting and informative nine months...

Oh, and John signed my book as well...

Anyway, I’m on the shortlist, so more news as it drops into my inbox.

A to B (And All the Way Back Again)

Once upon a time, I wrote a script. In chronological order, this is what happened to it:

1) To start with, read about Terry Illot and the Hammer Films episode here.

2) After that, Marchmont Films got their grubby little hands on it – you can read the full sorry lowdown here.

3) More or less at the same time, this happened (hello Yellow UK!) (I never got those script reports done, incidentally).

4) November 2007, and the script is selected by METLAB for development and eventual pitching to a cabal of investors. After a meeting in January 2008, I launched upon a month’s worth of rewrite and whizzed the new draft over to the truly gorgeous Lucy Vee for comment (Lucy is/was METLAB’s script editor of choice). Notes came back: super! At this stage, I was hoping to get another meeting with both Lucy and John Sweeney (METLAB head cheese) as per the original ‘calling notice’ to discuss potential ways forward. For whatever reason, the meeting never materialised. Wary of putting a lot of work in for no discernible gain, I turned my attention elsewhere (I was mid-way through a tricksy collaboration/treatment; stay tuned for more fun and games on that one at some point). Over the next few months, I waited for a meeting and a plan of action from John Sweeney, but nothing turned up. By now, I was starting to get the feeling that nothing was going to come of this (my sixth sense by now is quite well attuned to episodes of this sort). The project sat on the backburner for several months until I e-mailed John asking him what was going on (and giving him an ultimatum of sorts). I received this in reply. Game over.

5) In February 2008, I got this from an agent at United Agents:

...I absolutely loved it. It is smart and witty and unsettling.

...I’d love to read anything else you might want an agent to sell and I’d love to meet, if you’re still looking for representation.

Er, let’s think about this for a second – yes please!

Then: complete and utter silence for months. I chased up Mr Agent on a couple of occasions - he was always politeness and charm personified, but still nothing doing. Is it worth another chase? Probably not.

(Apropos of nothing at all, United Agents represent Henry Naylor: a couple of friends of mine were on the same Cambridge Footlights revue as Mister Naylor, and had a frankly uncalled for rhyme whenever his name arose in conversation: “Henry Naylor, Henry Naylor; about as funny as Vlad the Impaler.” Honestly, there’s just no need for it (*chortle*)).

6) “Notable Producer X”: I am wary of blogging too much about this at the moment, as I might say something I'll regret (as if that's ever stopped me before).

7) BBC Writersroom: a couple of months ago I got a lovely letter from Writersoom with a couple of pages of notes saying how much they liked the script and inviting me to send my next grand opus in (which I duly did, only for it to come back a month later – they’d already read it, you see. Oops).

Strangely enough, I wrote this in a post on 30th July 2007:

... if you want to know where NOT to send your speculative scripts, then stay tuned – I seem to have an almost supernatural knack for ferreting out production companies for whom procrastination is a profitable pastime...

In a bizarrely circuitous fashion, over a year later I’m back to where I started from - which really does go to show that if you want a successful screenwriting career, keep one eye permanently glued on Unfit for Print. Whatever I do, do the exact opposite: you really can’t go wrong.

METLAB COURSE 2007-08

Thanks to Lucy for the tip off on METLAB this year.

The email below from John Sweeney gives an outline of what to expect:

Thank you for your enquiry about the new Metlab course.

Here are the answers to the questions some of you have posed.

1) This is not a taught course. That is, we will not be teaching people the various formats and methodologies for writing scripts.

2) The aim of the Metlab programme is to develop commercially viable scripts, either from existing scripts or potentially viable treatments that adhere to the principles laid down in the book: Successful Business Models For Filmmakers. These principles are based on tried and tested formulas used by the mainstream film industry.

3) If the script is made into a feature film, the University will retain 2% of the gross income accruing to the film, after it as been released.

4) The writer retains all other rights to the script and the right to be paid.

5) To be considered for the programme, a one or two page synopsis/treatment for a genre based feature film must be submitted.

6) The closing date for submissions is 1st October 2007.

7) Final selection will be by interview, scheduled for October 2007.

8) The programme is free.

9) Writer must be willing to accept and carry out the changes to their script, as and when requested.

Thanks for your interest,

John Sweeney - Metlab Director

My application is already in, so we'll see what happens.

Boring Draft Update

The next draft of my script for METLAB isn’t really a new draft at all – what it is is an iteration.

I tried to follow some initial advice from John Sweeney about the opening scene, but couldn’t make the logistics of it work (you know, who stands where, who’s watching who, who’s looking after the bazooka) – so I’ve spent a lot of time tarting about with a more coherent back story. The general pain in the arse with back story as far as I’m concerned is that very often you don’t get to see it in its entirety on the page – as long as it contributes to the internal logic of the script then I’m happy, but it’s a lot of work for something that essentially remains unseen.

I’ve also had to do some additional research into leylines and standing stones (stop chortling at the back! The appearance of Stonehenge never did Halloween III any harm). And whilst I’m on the subject, here’s Chip’s Top Screenwriting Tip of the Week: DO NOT attempt to do your research as you write (I’m very often flipping between my script and several whacked out sites on leylines). As I gathered a little while back, I have the crappiest working method ever – but at least I’m in good company. No doubt if I relied on an outline a little more, my mental state would be that much calmer, but things would certainly be a lot less entertaining.

I’ve also started to be a little more brutal with some much loved scenes – unless it’s in there for a reason (i.e., to move the story forward), it’s out. Reading through a previous draft, it was quite alarming to see how much exposition I’d somehow managed to shoehorn in, so there’s a job of work there to make this less clunky and/or obvious. And bearing in mind METLAB’s budgetary guidelines, I’m already thinking about how to shave a few quid off here and there – for instance, the Godzilla-esque dinosaur fight scenes have already been dumped (just kidding). I’ve also taken on board some more decent advice from John Sweeney to make two of my central characters a little more larger than life – i.e., a touch more obsessed, mental and vain.

Like I said, it’s an iteration – I dread to think how much more I’d have to do to call it a proper re-draft.

And with that in mind, here’s a Jane Espenson moment: breakfast this morning? Espresso and two Anadin Extra – the only way to start the day!

Metlab Update, Part 5

So, Metlab yesterday.

All very painless as it turned out. Lucy Vee and John Sweeney one side of the table, Martin and I on the other. My notes from the meeting read, “double goal”, “Mind Hunters”, “no gore”, “necrophilia”, “conflict vs empathy” and “dialectical materialism”. Blimey! Sounds a bit like Katie & Peter Unleashed to me. I have a new draft to wrestle into submission (two falls or a knockout, grapple fans) by the beginning of April.

As well as being an all round nice guy, I also discovered that there is very little about Doctor Who that Martin does not know. I’m not the world’s biggest DW fan by any stretch, but I will say that I was seven years old, I loved it. I also have only one DW anecdote, as follows:

When I used to live in Cambridge, there was a great book cum junk shop on Mill Road – I bought a Doctor Who paperback in there for 10p, purely due to what was printed on the spine. The book’s title was Doctor Who and the Planet of Evil, written by Terence Dicks. The problem was the designers/type setters had forgotten to leave a large enough space between the words ‘evil’ and ‘Terence’, so the book was actually entitled Doctor Who and the Planet of Evil Terence Dicks – which is, when you think about it, a pretty frightening prospect (OK, so it was funny at the time).

Metlab Update

Those terribly nice folks at Metlab (well, John Sweeney to be precise) have requested the full script on the back of the synopsis I sent in a little while back – which is nice. Plus a ‘meet and greet’ next Thursday: which will be hopefully be enlightening and entertaining.

I sincerely hope it’s not an interview type situation as I tend to come across as either one of the following:

a) a highly enthusiastic version of my usual pessimistic self (I tend to switch to this default for all job interviews), or

b) a tongue tied inbred with a medication problem.

I suspect it will be a combination of the two!

METLAB Gets Credit Crunched!

Things have been very quiet on the Metlab front for the last few months (what with me being busy elsewhere with Red Planet, Sharps and that unnameable treatment), so I thought I’d give John Sweeney a prod. Got the following e-mail today:

Thanks for your thoughts. I have given the matter a lot of thought and because of the changes brought about by the current economic situation, our potential investors no longer being available, I think it best that we do what you suggest and draw a line under this episode of Metlab...

So there we have it.

I think the next step here is to write a post about the many and varied hoops that my poor ickle METLAB script has jumped through over the last couple of years – it ain’t pleasant reading, but at the least it’ll be entertaining...