Slow Progress on the "The Barrier"

I did a little on "The Barrier" this week. My wife's illness has progressed and that is a higher priority for me than this project, so I don't expect to have much time for "The Barrier".

It's been at least a month since I did any work on "The Barrier". This week I got back on to it. Mostly I planned out what I need to do, and I didn't do any actual writing.

My main objective was to see how to fit the new scene I developed into the story. I had to rework the outline to fit it in. I had to delete one scene, add a new scene, and modify another scene to make it all work.

I also wanted to shift the focus of the story to give more emphasis to the storyline about the traffic barrier and less on the traffic impact study.

I deleted four scenes about the traffic impact study. I will have to revise one other scene to patch up the problems caused when I cut the other scenes. It was hard to delete the scenes because I thought they were good. I had revised two of the scenes earlier and lost that material too.

That said, I think it improves the movie as a whole. They do say that often you need to cut your favourite scene to make a movie work. Fortunately, my favourite scene survived. At least so far.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

My Computer, My Script and Rob Ford

I noticed a  similarity between a recent news story and a script I wrote years ago and had abandoned.

I upgraded my computer from Windows 8 to Windows 8.1 this week, and spent the rest of the week fixing the problems that created. I didn't get anything done on "Felix". That left me with nothing to talk about in my blog, so I thought back to an old script.

Back in 2010, I wrote a script that I called "My Detective Story". Not a great title I admit. I meant to go back to it, but after a while I decided to abandon it.

Nevertheless, from time to time I do think about it. Although, overall, I am not happy with it, it does have some good ideas. I often wonder if I should have another go at it. I think I have learnt more about writing since then and could do a better job of it.

The central idea of the story is that a very important person commits a crime. A lowlife happens to make a video of the crime. The detective learns about the video and for the rest of the story he tries to get it.

I was struck by the similarities to the case a certain Canadian mayor. Do you think I can sue for plagiarism?

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog

Amazon Studios, “Orville Sharkbiter” and “Bright Freedom”

It was a little bit of everything this last week. At least I made a little progress here and there.

Amazon Studios

Back in 2010, I submitted my script The Doorman’s Sacrifice to Amazon Studios. It didn’t get much interest or feedback. I lost interest in the whole thing. This week I got a note that they’d changed their rules. Initially you had to agree that you gave them an option on the script that lasted for a year and a half. If they wanted to, they could extend the option, but they would pay you for that.

The rule change was to reduce the initial year and a half option to 45 days. They also now allow you to delete the script after the option expires. I decided to delete my script. While they had an option on the script, I couldn’t really do anything else with it. Now I can. Not sure what. I can’t have all my projects on the front burner.

Bright Freedom

I only worked on Bright Freedom for a couple days this week. I still kept it to about one hour each day, so it was a tad over 2 hours I wrote. That got me about 1,800 words. That brings me close to 4,800. Altogether, I think I am almost a fifth of the way through.

I am not too happy with my writing though. It seems like I use the same phrases over and over. It will need a fair bit of rewriting to fix that. I need to talk to some people to see if the basics of the plot are realistic. I suppose I should clean it up as much as I can before I have other people read it. On the other hand, if the plot makes no sense, then that effort would be wasted.

Orville Sharkbiter

I’ve been trying out some Google AdWords to promote my Orville Sharkbiter story. I got some free ad credits a while ago and thought I’d experiment a bit. I did a fair bit of analysis of the statistics AdWords produces. I don’t seem to have much difficulty getting people to click the ad, but if the campaign is to work, I need them to share the page. That hasn’t happened. Yet.

I read a book a short time ago called Made to Stick about how to create viral messages. I used some of the ideas to develop some Ads, but I’m afraid to use them. Some people might find them misleading, and get angry with me. It is not just a mater of attracting people, but it has to be the right kind of people.

This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog