The workshop was very informative and great fun. We watched a few shorts, discussed them, what we thought worked best, how clever they were. Or not!
Brevity, and quick and clever visual character clues were the order of the day. Show, don't tell. Clearly, with shorts, time is off the essence. Get in late, get out early. Though, of course we should be doing this anyway with all our scripts by now. Yes?
Tina Walker, our star guest, was funny, animated and interesting. She talked us though the lengthy submitting process for regional awards for funding and commissioning of her short. She showed, not told(!)us her successful treatment document and generously circulated her short script for us to peruse.
As usual, the finished film is changed a tad due to budget restrictions, etc, what was canned on the shoot and bizarrely couple of key scenes just being dropped by the director.
Her overall take on the schemes was very positive and she encouraged us to "have a go".
We then saw another impressive short by a local film maker. His short has been around the world at various film fests and is taking him to the Venice festival too!
He ended his brief, friendly chat with an invitation for us to send him our quality, low budget short scripts...
Poor fellow was suddenly inundated with biz cards, scripts and hastily scribbled email addresses on scraps of paper!
The evening ended with a couple of beers and scribey, filmy chat at the local pub. Yeah!
How's you? Whatcha up to?
p.s. in the meantime, this was an excellent event last time, so, if you're nearby, make the effort to go along and join in. Tell them I sent you! I'll see you at the next one.
