So, I had a 'meeting' today in regards to Coffee's For Closers. I felt the need to talk about it because of just how good I felt after it. The meeting was with one of my friends from Uni who's going to be helping me put this project together. We had a Skype meeting and it felt all official. Well, not really. Not in the sense of dressing up in a presentable fashion, going out to a production company meeting room and talking to a bunch of execs, or whoever, but it did feel as though something positive was going to come out of it and, I feel, that that's exactly what happened. The script is only 6 pages so what we did, after talking about a few random things that included (but wasn't exclusive to): the Resident Evil 5 demo, the Matt Hardy heel turn, the fact I joined the library yesterday and got a bunch of books out, Chris Jericho's autobiography, microphones and headsets, and a bunch of other things, was talk about the script in great depth.
The meeting was scheduled (I refer to it as scheduled in order to make it sound that much more official, awesome!) for 1pm. Mike had ordered a headset, in part, for this meeting, but it didn't work. So after discussing a bunch of random topics, including a few in the list I mentioned above, we decided it would be best if he went out to buy another headset that would work so that the conversation wasn't limited to me being able to talk, and him having to type a reply. Obviously that was never going to really work, despite the fact I feel it was one of the best conversations I've ever had with him. Anyway, he went to go a headset (a feat that takes a couple of hours for him, as he's got to travel into Dover in order to reach anything resembling a functioning society it seems - I tend to forget that not everybody lives 10 minutes away from a shopping mall/centre like I do.) and I went and watched this weeks Smackdown.
An hour and a half (and one mediocre wrestling show) later I got a txt from Mike saying he was nearly ready to go online. I was half way through a section in the book I'm currently reading, World War Z, and met him online after I was done. Incidentally, that book is really weird. At numerous points I've found myself wondering 'Why am I reading about a fictional zombie war that has never (will never?) happen'.
Anyway, the actual meeting has totally re-instilled my confidence with this script. Seriously. There was a short while there, when it was losing momentum, that I felt my faith in the script and the project slipping, but after this Skype meeting my confidence about this thing has sky rocketed again. The script IS good. It's a GOOD idea and it's a GOOD short story. It's a, well, it's not really sweet, but it's a good story that's funny, in an observational kind of way. No walking into walls in this one! And, most importantly to me, it's got somebody else interested enough in it to want to invest their time (possibly money, Mike???) into helping me create it. Now, I know I can write. Without coming off as brash, or egotistical, I know I can write. But I also need quite a bit of positive reinforcement when it comes to my writing. I'm sure a lot of writers feel this way, because they tend to put a lot of themselves into the story or their characters, and they worry about people judging their writing, the story's substance, or tone, hell, there's a whole wealth of things that could be criticized, in some cases without being at all constructive. Because of this I think a lot of writer's can be quite fragile in regards to their scripts. So to know that somebody likes your writing style and the story you've put together means a lot, frankly.
MEANWHILE, back on topic; Going through the thing word by word, page by page with Mike really helped me to get perspective on the story as a whole, as well as helping him to fully understand where the characters were coming from, etc. The meeting lasted for a total of about 2 hours and we managed to get through the script, again 6 pages, no problem, highlighting the elements that we weren't sure about. Thankfully that's restricted to, literally, about two lines and it's something that I should be able to sort out without a problem. There was one part to the story that I wasn't so hot on changing up, but I'm definitely going to have a look at it due to our discussion. However, and Mike is one of the people who also believe this, the scripts (or stories in general) that you write, ultimately, have to fulfill you as a writer. You shouldn't write something, or change something, because somebody told you to if you honestly don't feel it would work. Of course, there are occasions where a convincing argument is made and you suddenly have a moment of clarity and understand where they were coming from, but these tend to be few and far between. I've always believed that as long as the criticism is constructive, then it should be heard. Yeah, you can choose to just ignore it, but at least hear it out.
So, yeah. The meeting went well, everything is pretty much in place for the script. One more redraft and I'm happy to lock it. Next step is sorting out a location and equipment. Seeing as I'm unemployed at the moment (one of many, of course) I'll most probably try and do some location scouting some time next week if I can.
As a final note; I'd like to say thanks to Jack Goddard for, hopefully, getting the ball rolling on this Cash Drive for 'CFC' by picking up Solaris for £10! That's £10 that is going straight into helping this short film happen. Thank you, dude!
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