The 48: Writing

I was in the writing team for the 48 hr film challenge. I admit to some trepidation – although I back myself in the writing arena, my two counterparts were hix and Sean, who have a long history of collaboration and whose work I admired long before I met them. (Yep, I was one of the people who saw and loved Hopeless on the big screen, woo! And check out that user comment, huh? Nifty.) My experience in writing for screen, and working collaboratively, is pretty thin in comparison.
But mostly I was excited. I was confident it was all going to go well.
So the writing crew gathered at base-camp Indigo City for the 7pm announcement of genre and required elements. We watched the elements being decided live on TV, and shortly after that the cellphone call came telling us our genre: Monster Movie.
We whooped. We actually whooped. I’d always wondered what a genuine whoop sounded like, and now I know. See, Jenni’s Angels was well-supplied with a bunch of assets that other teams didn’t have. Of specific interest to the monster movie genre – we had a great make-up artist, and a small but eager team of stunt performers. This was good.
The required elements were the character Robin Slade, who is an eternal optimist; a mirror; and the line ‘that’s what I’m talking about’.
Getting Ideas Flowing
We got stuck into the brainstorming. The brainstorming group was fairly large – director Jenni and the three writers, plus a contributing presence from Steph, Svend and Lee. This worked out quite well, as we nailed a bunch of clever ideas quite quickly. One of them, which jumped out and grabbed us all very fast, was that the characters should be monster hunters.
We decided to build our short around a classic feature of such movies – two ex-lovers who are forced by the monster to work together and overcome their differences as a result. With Robin Slade as the optimist, the counterpart we settled on was a pessimist. This suggested a conflict of methodology, with the optimist seeking to understand the monsters and avoid violence, while the pessimist was enthusiastic for the violent solution. We had the conflict that would drive our film.
Getting It Done
We gradually settled on a series of scenes and started working through the beats we needed to hit, and finally the three writers got stuck into the business of actually churning out script pages. We divided the film into three and each of us wrote one of the three segments. (I started with the beginning.) After each iteration, we read through it together, dissected what we’d done and where the problems were, then took a new section and wrote that. After three cycles, we had something we were happy with.
Actually, we were more than happy – we were damn proud, I think. We had something quite special on our hands and while we were a bit fatigued from being inside it for ten hours, I think we knew it was the basis of a kick-ass film. (Although, somewhere in there, we made the fateful decision to film the entire thing on location in the bush.)
Through this process, I was definitely the junior partner. Sean and Steve were full of good ideas and snappy lines, and their sense of where the meat was in scenes and what bits were falling flat was very astute. I contributed a bunch of things, but they made most of the calls, and rightly so. I learned a hell of a lot, actually. In fact, I think I learned more about scripting for screen in this one writing session than in the entire rest of my life. It was good 🙂
Stuff I contributed that I was quite proud of
The line “We need to figure out what it’s trying to tell us,” which conveys a huge amount of Robin Slade’s character and approach very deftly and is way better than previous attempts at that line.
Giving the ‘It’s trying to tell us we need swords’ response to sidekick Nick, instead of hardcore Diana as it was originally written. It not only gave Nick his greatest and most perfect line, it also solved all the issues with a very problematic beat.
Diana’s “I already have a team” line, delivered just before the entirety of Diana’s team is taken to pieces by the monster. I angsted about this line for a while before I realised that it was exactly right, and the performances would sell it.
Difficult But Awesum
The hardest part of the process was the cutting back. We had to keep slicing out wonderful lines, over and over again. Some incredibly funny stuff was removed for the best of reasons – it wasn’t part of the story we were telling. And all that ruthlessness worked, and worked well. The proof is in the produuct: the film rockets past, never flagging and never pausing and never losing its momentum, which is a sign of a well-honed script.
Another thing I’m particularly happy with, and I hope the judges care about it, is the way we included the required elements. They weren’t just tacked on – they’re each fundamental to the story. Robin’s optimism is the basis of the entire story. The ‘That’s what I’m talking about’ line is a crucial turning point in the narrative and the film’s tone. And the mirror not only provides a nifty early gag, it turns out to be the keystone to the entire resolution. The way we used the required elements makes me very proud indeed.
It was an awesome experience. We had a satisfactory draft done at about 4.30am. hix set to work assembling it, tidying it, and emailing it to our crew, while I headed out home. I walked in the door about 5am, and didn’t manage to get to sleep until about 5.30. But the weekend was only just beginning…
My Fave Cut Line
In closing, here’s my favourite line that we had to cut, which came from a hix draft I think:

ROBIN (to Nick)
Our chain of command is much simpler. Me, you, monster. Monster at the bottom.