Done! Or am I...?

Well, I am officially done with school. All my grades are in and I am done a term early. For my screenplay however this is not the end. I got the 3rd draft in and have let it sit for a while as I work on other projects, and have started re-visiting it again. The ending is not quite where I want it to be yet, but overall I love how the script came out. I am going to be doing a 4th and possibly 5th draft to see how it can come together and then try marketing it a bit. it's a long shot that it will ever be picked up but there's still a chance, and I would love to see this movie come to life.

Overboard with the rules of magic

So there have been several people who have reviewed my script and they pointed out some things that need to get changed. One of the things that everyone points out that needs to get fixed is in regards to the rules of magic. I had written in at one point that the elven and fairy races cannot channel the natural energies like humans can. I came up with this after reading the stipulation in a series of fantasy books called The Dancing Gods series. It was a nice little rule that played in with Areil's mixed heritage, and also creates a reason for why there are so few mages left, because most of the magical beings would have some kind of fairy blood in them. However overall it just doesn't seem to work and needs to get nixed. That has been the sentiment of several of my reviewers and I agree.

3rd draft changes

So going over my second draft and there are some things I need to address. One of the biggest issues is that After Braden first comes to the circus, Victor allows him to return to Jerome. It's what needs to happen plotwise but it just doesnt feel right how I currently have it happen. This is basically what triggers the transition into act 2, when Braden comes home after school and discovers it in ruins. The other plot mechanic/logic problem I am having is that once Victor attacks and drives out Jerome, he currently doesn't leave anyone behind to collect Braden. I need to write in someone being there and maybe scaring Braden off accidentally. The other points in my script that I think need to be stronger are the relationships between the characters. It is now written in that Victor was one of Jerome's former students, but the is currently no connection for why Braden is being raised by his grandfather or what happened to Braden's Parents. When I wrote the first draft I had it that Braden and Jerome were not related and that Jerome had seized Braden as a child and killed his parents. But as the script evolved it has turned into that Jerome IS Braden's actual grandfather, just not through Merlin's line so he cannot use the Key himself. I am plotting out how to write into possibly Braden's parents and Victor both being Jerome's students, and when learning of his true intent rebelled. Braden's Parents are killed in the fight, but Victor survives, and Jerome also gets Braden. I am not sure how I will present this information. I am toying around with ideas such as flashbacks and the like, but nothing has really stuck out as a good way to interject this information into the story.

Better late than never

Finished with my new draft of my screenwriting workshop script at last. It's taken a lot of late nights and an obnoxiously large investment in coffee, but the new draft is complete. It was delayed a lot by my senior thesis film shoot and the various crises that were involved with that, so I did not meet the deadline unfortunately. For this new draft I tried to incorporate a lot of the suggestions Prof. Bronte gave to me, which ended up in a lot of re-arranging and re-imagining of the first and second acts. In the first draft I had a huge problem in my second act where the main Character loses a lot of momentum in the search for his grandfather as he gets involved in the circus, and I needed to help him keep that search alive. To solve that I wrote in how in the first act, when he discovers his grandfather is missing, he take several of his grandfather's spellbooks with him, which he then studies on his own. In these books he discovers notes his grandfather wrote about the remenants of Magic in NYC. These lead him to Lady Agatha, a fortune teller (what is a magic movie without a fortune teller :) ), who attempts to kill him when she does a reading on Braden and discovers he is going to unleash merlin's shade. It's a fun scene and really helps keep up Braden's motivations for his search for his grandfather. Other suggestions I incorporated were taking out Braden's parents. I still have the succubis and incubus as part of the script, but they are now in the form of a pair of mangy cats that Jerome keeps. Also Victor, the head of the circus, was actually Jerome's former student. I still feel I need to place more emphasis on this relationship in the next draft. I also need to place more emphasis on Braden's physical development when he is with the circus and free of the influence of the succubus and incubus (for example there is no scene where he clearly no longer needs his inhaler).

For this draft, and the next draft, I have had to adjust my writing process and get more people involved. I was finding myself facing a lot of blocks where I knew i had to change a scene, but couldn't figure out what else to write that would be better than what was already on the page. That or I had trouble thinking of alternate scenarios to show what a scene of exposition got a across. I have basically started to show my script to more people and get feedback. When I am actually writing it I am now often over at friend's houses more than coffee shops, just hanging out in case I get to part I am having trouble with and can just call them over for a quick brainstorm. I have several screenwriting friends/friends who love fantasy who I will be showing this current draft to in order to get their opinions and suggestions. It has taken a long time, but the script has come a long way from the first draft and is starting to turn into something that can one day possibly be a real movie.

playing catchup

Unfortunately I did the one thing in this class I promised myself I would not do, miss a deadline. With the madness that was senior project, for the last several weeks I have been working many long days (average 3-4 hours of sleep a night) getting everything ready for the shoot and let my other classwork fall behind, and am now playing catch-up. It was not the smartest thing to do, but overall it was most important for me to have a senior project and be able to graduate on time (i am graduating this term). I want to finish this script though and make it as good as it can be. I love the characters and the world that has been created for them and want to continue exploring it, so it's now off to the coffee shop for a writing and coffee binge to get back on track.

making progress

so for the past week I have been going over my script and editing, and also met with Stacy Bronte and got some excellent suggestions from here. The characters of the parents are being nixed, and I am cutting a number of scenes. The difficult part will be thinking of way to motivate the search for Jerome and events that can occur in relation to that. I also need to make sure i get the importance of the key across soon. Stacy made the great suggestion of Victor being a former student of Jerome, which I am defintitely am going to write in. I was trying to think of some way for them to have a prior relationship but couldn't think of the right one. So, now it's time to keep writing, because there is a lot of stuff that needs to be fixed

I can't believe I wrote that...

So the time has finally come for me to break out the script again and read it over and start the new draft. This is the first time I've read it through from beginning to end, and it was painful. There is a lot of corny dialogue, errors, and also several big contradictions i wrote into the stories that I have to figure out. So the editing process is going to be long and arduous, but it needs to get done. Thanks to a lower class load this term I now have a couple free days per week with chunks of time devoted to screenwriting.

final boss fight Location Found!

Looking around in NYC/Husdon river more and finally found what I was looking for. Governor's Island. Not only that, the Governer's Island National Landmark is a pentagram. Looks like we have the location of the final fight

final boss fights

So in planning out my final fight between Jerome and Braden I was struggling to find a location for it that hasn't been used to death, stuff like the empire state building or central park is out, it's just too clichéd. I am looking at a couple of older historical buildings or churches. I have been toying with the idea of having it take place at some cathedral that was built over a pagan site or native american site. Unfortunately Seeing how this is set in NYC and not Europe finding a church built on a pagan sites is difficult to say the least. I have also been looking at street layouts seeing if I can find a pentagram hidden in them anywhere. No luck so far. In planning out the final battle I have tried planning it out based on different theories of how NYC will be destroyed. First, there is Jerome using the energy siphoned off Merlin's shade and start something like a shock-wave from the urban center of NYC/Manhattan and the destruction spreads from there. That would be an interesting dynamic as it would force the circus performers into the city. The other theory I was toying with was trying to find an element that somehow connects the city, and i came up with water, since plumbing connects everything. Following that theory I looked at different points with lots of water and have came up with a couple of possibilities, mainly different bridges, and one that kept coming up because it's right on the mouth of the Hudson River, Coney Island. I am not sure I can bring myself to set a final magical battle at Coney Island however. So, yeah, that's the latest dilemma with the script

Thoughts on Time Travel (unrelated to script)

Recently I have seen several shows and stories that deal with time travel, and being the over-analytical person I am I have thought of a potential flaw shared by just about every theory ever depicted in literature, movies, shows, etc. That is a person's relative position while time traveling. In a lot of shows and movies when you see time travel you see a person's world changing around them while they are staying static. This implies that when in a time machine or using a time-traveling device, you move freely back and fourth throughout the fourth dimension while not affected by stuff going on outside of your little bubble. If that is so, how does the time traveler end up in the same geographical spot as when they began. If they are moving freely throughout the 4th dimension from a singular location then everything should continue moving around them, including the earth rotating, not to mention around the sun at thousands of miles per second and that around the center of the galaxy and so on and so in. Even just one second in time travel should potentially displace a person miles away from where they started. If you jumped for a continued amount of time you you be displaced off the earth and into empty space. That is unless somehow you still have inertia while time traveling (in which case you would still be displaced because your movement would be in a strait line if you were no longer acted on by outside forces). So the only way you could theoretically survive time travel is if while traveling freely in the fourth dimension you were still acted upon by the physical forces that drive the universe. Otherwise when you re-appear it would be in empty space and you would instantly die. So, yeah, that's it for my time travel musings.

rules for magic

In writing out the first half of my second act one of the things that is going on is Braden is learning more about magic. It's all well and good to have mages and wizards and witches chanting in weird languages and casting firebolts and such, but when a pupil like Braden is being taught there needs to be some kind of philosophy or rules that actually govern magic that they (and by extension the audience), can learn. I am a huge fantasy literature fan and have learned several models for magic from various series. I have also started learning the philosophies behind wiccan/pagan beliefs on how spells and magic work. It is very interesting as paganism deals with two alternate world, the physical and spiritual, with most magical energy coming from the spiritual realm and being channeled into the physical. This concept worked very well with my idea of how with the rise of the modern world magical forces and energy became weaker. In Tolkien's writings, something similar happens when the race of man tries to invade the undying lands where the elves and gods live, and the gods then seperate the spheres of the world (it's a really complicated mythology). Anywho, i was toying with the concept of something similar happening where magic was set up so that in the old days, the magical realm and physical realm were one, but as man advanced and removed itself from nature so to did the 2 realms seperate. This then brought symbols such as the pentagram into my script and the use of magic as one interpretation of the pentagram is that 5 points represent the 5 visible planets. I thought the planets and starts could be a cool link between the two realms and so pentagrams would serve as a way to access magical energies.

So as you can guess this is getting really convoluted and out of hand, and impossible to describe in my script. So i am now exploring a revised idea of the rules of magic that is similar but different. Now, there is the philosophy that everything living has an aura of energy and that energy flows in and around it. As the modern world came to be, nature was destroyed and thus less energy. There is still a spiritual realm with spirits and imps and demons to allow for the exhistence of merlin, who is half demon (fathered by an incubus). this opens the way for Braden to have special powers as a descendent of merlin and having demon blood he is able to access the power of the spirit realm as well as the physical realm. pentagrams are still important symbols for harnessing energy as they allow for a concentration on the 5 elements (earth, wind, fire, water, and spirit), but it also allows for higher level mages to be able to spell cast without relying on a pentagram or circle as they can just channel the energy around them. (I am also much more comfortable with this philosophy of magic because it is much closer to the philosophy of projecting ki, which is the basis of aikido, the martial art I practice). So yeah, that is the new system of magic I am incorporating into my script. We will see how it goes.

The weeks went to hell in a hand basket

So it's been a little while since i posted. As the title suggests things have been less than ideal lately, in fact they have been pretty f***ed up. There are both good and bad things, but mainly there is a lot of it, just busy as hell. My senior project is still struggling with fundraising, but location talks and scouting has been very successful and I am in the process of negotiating with several places. I am also realizing how much work goes into a project of this magnitude and keep having new tasks added to my plate every day. At the moment I am looking for a professional make-up artist, and a bunch of visual effects support. I am also trying to wrap my head around the PA film tax credit to get a little bit of my money back.

In the not so good news front,  this has been a very stressful week in relation to suicide. I was the head camera op and technician for the philly It Gets Better project, a video campaign to help prevent LGBT youth suicides, so it was a pretty hard hit to take when I learned that both a close friend and also a close family member are currently suicidal and have both been hospitalized in the past 2 weeks for either an attempt or severe depression and seriously considering an attempt. I have been basically counseling my friend and trying to keep him from going over the edge again, and my family member is now on medication and mellowing out, so at least one of them is in the clear. Several months ago I lost a good friend from highschool to suicide, so to learn that I have several more people I am close to considering it has been a very big emotional toll. Nothing much more I can do about it but keep reminding them both that they are wanted and loved and that nothing is worth that in the end.

So onto the screenwriting workshop project. My first act that i turned in was very rough, but it at least laid the groundwork and I know what i want to change and where to take it to keep advancing. For the second act up to the midpoint, here is a basic outline for what is going to happen. Braden is going to go looking for his grandfather, which will lead him to the rougher side of the magical underworld. Unprepared, he is quickly cornered and in over his head until the Ringleader from the circus, Victor, finds and rescues him. He takes him back to the circus and promises to aid him in his search for his grandfather and also takes him on as his apprentice. Braden learns more magic and also increases in strength and ability (now that he has been removed from his "parents" and is now longer being regularly drained of his innate powers). The circus is goign to be welcoming vastly different from his home life, and bascially will be the first time Braden seems to "fit" anywhere. The searches for his grandfather will be unsuccessful, and as Braden gets acclimated to his new home surroundings he begins to lose his sense of ugency to find his missing grandfather, up until the midpoint where Braden becomes accepted into the circus by having his first preformance with the group.

One of the things I am having difficulty with is thinking of creative characters at the circus he can interact with, so if anyone has suggestions let me know.

Notes on my first act

Well, my first act is written. it's not nearly at the point of development I would like, but it's on the page so at least I have something to work with. Now that it is all written down there are some things I know I will have to go back and change/insert/improve. First, while I like how Jerome, the grandfather/teacher of the main character, can be abrasive at times towards him I need to make him more endearing and make him be the one person Braden really cares about to motivate his wanting to go out and find him more after Braden discovers the workshop in shambles. I also need to make his reaction to finding the workshop more intense. I need to research circus acts more so I can do a better job of describing the one Braden sneaks out and discovers. I also need to work with the transition of Braden being chosen and "discovered" by the circus for his magical abilities to when he goes back to regular life and finds the workshop in shambles.

What works and what doesn't

So some ideas in the outline work better than others when actually put onto the page. The one I am wrestling with now is the issue of Braden's (the main character) "parents." In the story his parents are actually a low level succubus and incubus that the antagonist, Jerome, is controlling and using to keep Braden's powers in check to easily control him. Succubi and Incubi are minor demons that feed off the energy of the opposite gender, usually through seducing their victims and draining their energy and life while sleeping together. So basically they are sex demons. In my script they are leaching off Braden's energy just by being in close proximity to him. Since they are demonic entities forced to do this against their will I have is written in that they have little emotional attachment to Braden and spend most of their time satisfying their lusts with each other (thus making them neglectful parents). It sounded like a great idea on paper when I outlined everything, but now that I am getting into the meat of the first act it's just coming across as very awkward and doesn't fit with the rest of the tone of the script. My script is a fantasy/adventure and on the darker side of writing, but the parents constantly doing it just seems out of place and way over the top, so I need to figure out a different way to present thier neglectfulness of their charge.

Quick re-write

I wrote up the first couple scenes of my script, and overall am pretty happy with them. There is one big issue though. In the latest scene where Braden goes to his Grandfather's workshop I wrote in a big contradiction that I have to fix, where Jerome (the grandfather), vents his frustration with modern technology and tells Braden to contact him through magical means, and then Jerome gets angry with Braden for accidentally using magic in a fight earlier. So, yeah, my poor main character got some mixed messages and I need to tweak the scene to make  it play out a little more logically.

What is Missing?

The last week has been pretty crazy. Unfortunately a lot of stuff for senior project and also a nice bought of sever stomach flu has made me less productive than I would like. However i have been making more progress in figuring everything out.I have been working on writing my opening scenes and have also started thinking about later in the script. I have come across a problem. The way I have it, the main character's grandfather, who turns out to be the main antagonist, disappears for a good amount of the second act. Basically, it means there is no visible character or opposition to my protagonist, and most of what he is involved in throughout the second act is his training and finding his niche in the circus and its magical performers. So I need to think of obstacles and other things to put into his way.

So it begins

last night saw the completion of the first scene of my movie, a framing device in which Merlin fights and is imprisoned by the Sorceress Viviane. It was so much fun to write, and also will probably be the easiest part of the script as the characters were basically already formed based on my research of Arthurian legends. I depart from the current legends in the fact that I make Viviane pregnant with Merlin's child (thus starting the line of predecessors leading up to my main character). Now it gets tricky because I have to transition from an epic magic battle on the coasts of England to modern day NYC where a teenage magician is trying to find his place in the world. I have been working on my character bios more lately and have who Braden is lock down much more, so it should be fun to write out the scenes I have planned for him.

slow and steady progress

So the last few weeks have been very hectic trying to balance everything with my screen writing workshop, senior project, and a big independent project as well. However progress is being made. I met with Prof. Bronte last week and discussed my treatment and character bios and the main thing I had to work on was really locking down who these people were. I had a decent sense of their personalities, back story, and relationships, but it wasn't concrete. I was given several suggestion and character variations to think about and have also come up with a few more when I sat down and really thought stuff through. I was able to come up with a nice recipe of traits and quirks for each character and do a much better job of locking down who they were. Now I have started writing and doing a more detailed outline of the beginning scenes and will be typing them out this weekend.

Well this week went to hell....

Not really, but I am fast learning the limits of what I am capable of doing in terms of my workload. I just took on too many projects this weekend. I am in the process of writing my opening scene and it mainly consists of hand-writing it out in a little notebook i carry around with myself for little times when I have a little chunk of time free between bouts of running around like a chicken with its head cut off. So, yeah, this week has not been the best for writing, but I am going to stick it out and just have several near sleepless nights up till sunday. After these little projects I am working on are all wrapped up I'll have several days of the week where at least 6 hours a day to devote to this script. I am starting to make more progress on developing what I wrote in the treatment. A lot of the stuff in the second half after the midpoint felt rushed and incomplete when I wrote it, so I am going back with the scene card method and writing, re-writing, changing, and re-arranging scenes into an order that tells the story I want to.

So, about that ending in my treatment

I finished what I think was a decent 4 page treatment for my script. One of the issues I had when actually writing it out was realizing that I had yet to find a location for the final battle to take place in. Since this battle will determine whether or not the modern world will be destroyed in a firestorm of magic I wanted it to take place in a popular, high elevation building or site in New York City. Instantly my mind went to the Empire State Building, and I chose it as my setting for the final fight. Afterwards though I was describing my story to a friend and her response was "oh god you're writing Percy Jackson." I have never read the books or seen the movie but she assured me that the final fight takes place in the Empire State Building. So, yeah, now I am back to searching for a possible location for the final fight to take place.