The Quiet One now has a 10,000 word treatment. The second half of the movie came out in a flood of ideas today.
Naturally, bits of it suck and bits of it I’m suspicious of but it’s a first draft. First drafts are meant to be suspect and unsatisfying. It can and will be improved. I’m too tired to try to begin fixing it today, but it’s mediocre enough in places that it’s not too daunting to have to improve upon.
Now it’s time to ask what if.. why doesn’t.. isn’t it strange that.. all those fun questions. Rethinking and rewriting, and not letting go of it until it’s as wonderful and true and vital as it needs to be for me to commit the hours to bringing it into the world.
I mean there’s concept art, storyboarding, production spreadsheets with assets to build, animatics with music and scratch voices, a few artlangs of various depth to create.. and that’s just pre-production. The linguistics stuff could anchor me to pre-production for a bloody long time. Even these blog posts take their sweet time to come up with.
So. I accept that I will be at this for a while. I’d like it to be over and done with before Australia goes to its next election in 2016 or whenever.
I also accept that I’ll be flying blind and that I don’t know how to do a lot of this stuff yet. Like the character in the story, I have to dive in with a whole lot of faith that I’ll work out the technology and craft of how to do it and give it everything I’ve got no matter what’s trying to stop me. (Within reason, in my case – still need that day job to pay the bills.)
If you asked me what the movie was about, the way the guy asked me on Friday evening, I’d say: it’s the story of a guy who just wants some peace and quiet to get on with his invigoratingly difficult life’s work, but the universe has other ideas. No mention of the actual sci-fi conveyances of the story. It’s a situation many of us of a particular temperament can relate to though, if not everyone.
In other news, I spent 44 minutes watching Ratatoing on the weekend. I hope my movie looks better than that when it’s done.
