Finished transcribing the script

I actually finished transcribing the script yesterday! Whoa! It took a lot longer than I thought. But now the dreary labour work is done and I can focus on the more intellectual part of it.

I saw that is filming the new Conan movie and that the producer is actually a swedish guy. Maybe I should drop him a line. He might have some leads into the industry.

Finished transcribing the book into a screenplay

I've finished transcribing the book into a screenplay! Incredible. Now all I have to do is get it all into the computer so I can start fixing all the errors I've made and actually create a screenplay that works.

I've read the first parts of the book "Screenwriting" and I've already come up with ideas as to what needs to change in the current script.

Right now Stanley is reacting to a lot of things but he is almost never acting first. This makes him a pretty weak character who will be in the shadow of the more coloful characters. I'll have to change his acting so that he's still vulnerable and shy but actually does start things on his own accord now and then.

The long, arduous road to a screenplay

I'm slowly but steadily working towards finishing my first draft but it's a slow process. As I come near the end I'm finding myself thinking about what parts of the book to keep and what parts to exclude. It's too long to fit it all in a screenplay.

One conclusion I have drawn is that I should probably try to find where the different dramatic structure points in the book is located. This will probably give me some notion as to where I should start cutting things out. Another option is to give dialouges to other people and maybe moving things around a bit to better fit a classic Hollywood structure.

Guess I should concentrate more on finishing my draft than worrying about this right now. I'm behind schedule as it is.

Is my screenplay behind schedule already?

The screenplay is not behind schedule just yet. I'm working hard trying to get the handwritten stuff onto the computer. The script size on the computer is now about 115 pages long. I am having less time this week since my dayjob is interfering with my plans and I'm on a developers conference all week. In other words I get no commute time to do any writing on.

Interesting quote I found on a forum.

The first draft of everything is sh*t.
-- Ernest Hemingway

I think I have to agree this far into my work... but I intend to change it for the second, third, fourth and fifth one.

Screenplay: The foundations of Screenwriting

To help me in my quest on creating a great screenplay I definately need some help. Roger has promised to help me by reading the script and I have a great spouse that gives me well deserved critique. I also have a brother who is very keen on reading the script and give his view on how a great werewolf story should be. This is all great and dandy, but before I want my script evaluated in any way, I would like to have at least some basic knowledge of how to write. This is where my latest purchase enters the picture.

Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting

I ordered this book last week and Amazon soon answered and said they would ship it on December 8th. A bit too long for me to wait happily but, since I need the book, I kept the order. The next day they sent me a new message and told me the order had been sent. Hopefully I'll get it tomorrow.

What is the book about?

"Ursula's gift" is the story about Stanley Merriwether. Stanley is a plump, sweet-natured young man who seems destined never to get a girl and never to leave his mark on the world, much to the disgust of his take-charge, big-game-hunter father. That all changes when Stanley tries to help a hooker from being thrashed by her pimp. As thanks she turns Stanley into a werewolf by giving him a bite in wolf form.

Stanley's life is obviously turned upside down. On one hand he gets slimmer more attractive to girls and gets more assertive. On the other hand he has to fight the werewolf's thirst for blood, silver bullet shooting psychiatrists and find a cure within 30 days or his father has sworn to kill him.

My work day as a screenplay writer.

Since I have a full time job, two kids and a house to renovate I don't have 8 hours a day to spend writing scripts. But I do have 30 minutes on the commute to work and as a magical bonus I get ANOTHER 30 minutes on the way back home. Lucky me.

During the time on the train I go over the book page by page and transcribe to screenplay format into my notebook. When I come across something in the book that I need to address earlier in the script I take a little note of it and continue on.

Since I'm trying to get the book into actual script format I don't just copy every line I read but try to make everthing happen in realtime and make it visual and aural so it can be represented by a movie.

When I get time for myself in the evening I take my notebook and my laptop and write it all down. I also insert all the notes I took earlier in their correct places so they make sense when viewing the movie and you don't get explanations about things like you do in a book.

Well, this is basically what I do every day right now. Well, I also read about writing scripts and read scripts to movies I like. You probaby heard of Imdb.com(Internet Movie DataBase) but did you know that there is an imsdb.com (Internet Movie SCRIPT DataBase) as well?

I'm going to make a movie!

Well I'm not actually making the movie myself but I plan to write the screenplay for it. I have been in contact with the author, Roger L. Di Silvestro, of "Ursula's gift" about aqcuiring the movie rights for his book.

It all started when I was about 12 and I read a book in Swedish called "Varulvens tid" or directly translated "Time of the werewolf". It was a fantasy-comedy that I thought was very cool. I reread it in later years and I still liked it. Many years later I still like fantasy and I feel that I miss not seeing this book turned into a movie when it's so great!

One evening I thought to myself: Why can't I write the screenplay? It can't be that hard, the story is already there so all I have to do is basically just decide how to interpret it into visual mode. So.. how do one go about this? I had no clue. I searched the web for how to turn books into movies and came up with the advise that I should acquire the movie rights for it. All I had to do was to contact the publishing company and I would be on my way.

The only problem was that the publishing company consisted of a single person, Donald A. Fine, and his company Donald A. Fine, Inc. and Donald, had passed away. After searching for a while I found that Penguin Books had incorporated the company but after searching their database I came up short. No rights for that book to be found.

I gave up and didn't continue until after a few weeks when I thought of contacting the author himself and ask him if he knew who held the righs currently. After several very nice letters back and forth between me and Roger I have now acquired the rights to turn his book into a screenplay. Hurray!

Work plan

Since the contract for the option states that I have 24 month to make a sale to a production company I thought I should make up some kind of crude schematic so that I have a couple of mile stones to aim at.

The contract is dated the 18th Oct so I figure I could make 18 breakpoint day for different tasks. I will take different peoples advice on how to do things but I will only show them at certain levels of completeness. So here we go.

18th Nov. I would like to have transcribed the whole book into a first screenplay draft. I will hopefully have managed to transform thinking parts into visual interpretations and have a pretty coherent story. I imagine it will be far to long since the book is over 200 pages and a screenplay should only be about 95-120 pages.

18th Dec. Work on environment and person descriptions.

18th Jan. Make the conversations flow more naturally.

18th Feb. Correctly formatted according to screenplay standards and make sure I use correct and appropriate scene cuts.

18th Mar. Correct the structure according to the three acts and five points screenplay guidelines.

18th Apr. I will tweak and polish the first page to be interesting enough to capture the interest of a reader. Hopefully I will have a finished screenplay by my birthday on the 19th.