Interval Musings and Tiny Gardening Techniques

Our feedback's been pretty consistent.

Generally the following are complimented:
Production values - Script - Acting

And if anything's questioned it's the following:
Length - Ending

So here's my musing but since the script was up to something like the ninth or tenth draft, it's a structural, not a writing, issue.

We went for a longer piece to see if we could sustain interest. Even people questioning the length and the ending, say they stay interested. This makes the piece a success for me, though not a triumph. I guess it also emphasises any weakness in the ending itself and aside from the difficulties the ending posed right from the start, I've developed a greater dramatic insight through this.

The scenario is situational, suited to a shorter film. The film length actually needs character driven plot development. As it is, the characters are drawn with enough depth to drive the situations but not quite enough to drive a plot with a satisfying arc. Hence the feeling sometimes that they are written as caricatures, and that the end doesn't quite deliver.

So, by being a long short rather than a short long, we've risked falling into the cracks between (I see us balancing and hopping on the edges, swooped vigorously to safety by all the positive elements). Better to write longer - with full dramatic development - and then prune, prune, prune to a perfect bonsai plot.

Seven Months On

Alan's cast and crew screening was in March, and its premiere in France was in May. So, though winter feels like the film's anniversary and this is the end of 2010, there's another four or five months before its had 12 months out in the big bad world.

And as if to make that very point, two more screenings are scheduled. One in Berlin in January and the next in London in February, at the Phoenix, which is definitely a 'proper' venue. (I just about have time to squeeze that in before the Amsterdam premiere of my first full documentary - I'm very excited!)

So this is by no means The End.