Dearest readers, I recently recieved some feedback from a fellow fan and it was suggested to me that I should be writing more about the film in development and giving more frequent updates as to how it is progressing. Now I had planned to wait until I had news that was more concrete, but I can totally understand wanting more frequent updates. After all, you want to see the cast together again and you want to know what’s going on!
I’m cool with that, but I should give you a little warning first. It’s important for you to know that film production can be, for lack of a better analogy, like an old mountain road, with its accompanying unexpected turns, twists, and bumps. One can think that they are going in the right direction and that everything is fine and then suddenly something happens that slows down progress or gets one off course. That’s just the way film production works and one has to be willing to go with the flow and deal with these unexpected occurances when they happen. So if one week I report about some plans in progress and the next week I tell you those plans have stalled or been changed, don’t worry, I might have just hit a pothole. I’ll find another way to get the job done and get the project back on track.
With that in mind, let’s talk about the film, shall we?
Let’s go back to February of this year. I had just found a writer who was interested in tackling the script. I had some personal stuff that was coming up and I knew it was going to keep me busy for quite a while, so getting a writer onboard and working on the project before that happened was very important to me. My top priority is to keep the project moving forward.
Things seemed to be going fine then I found out that the writer didn’t have the time to work on the project. A couple of great opportunities had come her way and I don’t blame her a bit for grabbing them. I couldn’t be more thrilled for her successes. But, now, I’d hit a pothole. The project had stalled. Nobody was working on it.
The next logical step would have been for me to get the project back on track by finding another writer. Fortunately, I was saved that effort when another writer approached me out of the blue and offered her services. That was about six weeks ago and I’m happy to report that this writer has been hard at work on a story. Things are moving forward again. Already, she has written the first draft of Act 1 of a treatment and it is coming along quite nicely.
I should explain what a treatment is for those of you who may not be familiar with the term. A treatment is basically a screenplay written first as a short story. Writers often them use them to focus and flesh out the story without having to worry about formatting and all the other considerations that come with writing a script. But treatments are also used to sell a story.
Now the decision as to what story we tell isn’t just mine alone. It also belongs to the cast. They have to want to do the story also. So I’m asking for a treatment instead of a script because treatments are generally shorter than scripts so there is less to write and less to read. I figure it’s easier to write and read a 10- to 20-page treatment than a 90- to 120-page screenplay. If the cast likes it and wants to do the story, then I’ll give the go ahead to the writer to write the script.
So that’s where we are in a nutshell. I promise I’ll try to be better about giving more frequent updates.
