Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas every bods!

Snow all bad...

Happy writing!

A page a day keeps the block away

A page a day keeps the block away

(201) Farewell Sheiky, Hello Gareth

Farewell Sheiky, Hello Gareth.

So, changed the blog title to go with my FB title change.

Thing is:

Typing in upper case does not work...

So does anyone know how to make the title appear in capitals?

And could they tell me how to, in plain, good old fashioned English?

No cyber geekese, pur-lease.

(200) Hasta Luego

Hasta Luego amigos buenas. Mrs S y va a vivir en España por tres meses para escribir en la sol. xxx

(199) Monkeyvision: Writers Opportunity

There's an old adage along the lines of "If you lock enough monkeys in a room with enough typewriters, they will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare" - well, OK, Sheikspear, maybe.

Anyhow, yer dear old Auntie Beeb visited Edinburgh Zoo, put a 21st century spin on it, and trained chimpanzees to use specially designed video cameras so they can go round shooting home movies!

Apparently, the BBC report that "despite the fact that the chimps had never taken part in a research project before, they soon displayed an interest in film-making."

As they'll obviously tick all the under represented minority boxes for film funding I've sent them some scripts...

Full report at http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8472000/8472831.stm

(198) Surfing by

Just surfing by
to say a big "Hi"
to see if you still take a look
or have you all deserted to Face book..?

(197) Happy Valentines!

Love and kisses, Sheiky, xxx

(196) I.F. only...

I.F. only I'd made it though, I'd be in this piccy amongst this talented group of ifeaturers!



Any Sheiky fans in there? Do you recognise anyone?

Best of luck to everyone in the twelve teams who won through to initial stage of intense development from South West Screen, BBC Films and Bristol City Council.

As you may recall, the aim is to produce 3 commercially viable films for approx £300k a piece this summer. Full details at http://ifeatures.swscreen.co.uk/

Good on 'em I say! We need more opportunities like this...are you listening Screen South? Portsmouth City council? ITV?

Like all the others, My Prod Co team, who I "met" via an ad on Talent Circle tried their very best with the process package, but alas, for us, it was not be. They simply cannot raise the capital elsewhere in these hard times.

The experience and opportunity was exciting and inspired me to write a brand new treatment. And, as you all must agree, any excuse to run with, and actually write, a new idea should be pursued and championed!

My treatment, "The Brunel Legacy" is offered on my website, and may still be made one day. If you have the Prod Co, experience and the funding, gimme a call...

Here's the list of the diverse peeps and projects under development:-

Obscura
Thriller. Martin Kiszko (Writer) Vadim Jean (Writer/Director)
Vale Park
Drama. Billy Mackinnon (Writer) Kate Swan (Producer) Joe Magee (Writer/Director)
The Bristol Job
Comedy Heist. Carol Noble (Writer) Nick Pitt (Producer)Matt Golding (Director)
Take Me Out
Supernatural Thriller. Lucy Catherine (Writer) Alastair Siddons (Director)
Flying Blind
Drama. Caroline Harrington (Writer) Alison Sterling (Producer) Katarzyna Klimkiewicz (Director)
Our Own Shadows
Drama. Matt Haynes (Writer) Conor McCormack (Writer/Director)
8 Minutes Idle
Black Comedy. Matt Thorne (Writer) Nicholas Blincoe (Writer) Sarah Cox (Producer) Mark Simon Hewis (Director)
Novikov-B
Sci-fi Thriller. Justin Trefgarne (Writer/Director)Daniel Jewel (Producer)
Over and Under
Rom-Com. D. R. Hood (Writer/Director)Simon Onwurah (Producer)
The Bristol Mix
Documentary. Mark Kidel (Writer/Director) Natasha Dack (Producer)
Sonia and Juhi
Thriller. Manjinder Virk (Writer) Neil Biswas (Writer/Director) Willow Grylls (Producer)
Bait
Horror/Coming of Age. Lucy Moore (Writer)China Moo-Young (Director)Matthew Vizard (Producer)

(195) Talent House

Hi ya!

You've all heard of Talent House, right?

No?

Some of you? Great! Yeah you at the back? Good on you, just knew you'd be in it...

For those who don't know yet, it's a great, FREE site I've just joined.
They have all sorts of free challenges for artists (everyone from us lowly screenwriters through to painters, composers, designers, etc all the way up to them high flying Director types!)

The difference here is some REAL COMPANIES stump up yer actual CASH to make these challenges actually happen for the winner!

So, if you get 5 mins, can you please pop over to http://www.talenthouse.com/gareth and read and vote for my new 5 minute horror short "Alone" in their Fewdio challenge... Then they might make it into a liddle baby movie!

Ta awfully, Sheiky xxx

(194) WRITING UPDATE

Hi Gang, hope all's well with you!

Me? How's old Sheiky doing? What's he been up to we wonder?

Damn good of you to ask...




Once upon a time, as the story often goes, it was Jan 1st 2008 and an unknown scribbler with the made up name of Sheikspear surfed out into the inter-webby what-not thingy declaring he was going to set the screens aflame with his witty scripts.

Lucky us, you cried...just what we need...

Yet another spec monkey clogging up the slush piles

So, anyway, off I jolly well went. I had a bash at the keyboard, read all your blogs, asked some stupid questions and read a ton of scripts.

And through a bit of luck, dogged perseverance, and a lot effort cranked out the odd "not too bad" yarn. Even sold a couple. A comic strip for a band that split up before the comic got printed and a short for a "Producer" who didn't even have a camera. Hmmm. Ho Hum...

Still, carried on, onwards and upwards. Well, bit sideways and back-steps really, for a while. But then I made loads of new friends (and not all out of wood and paper) through this 'ere blog and on Talent Circle, Face ache, Myspace, going to writer events and the like. Found out it's called networking and it's a very good thing to do. It is. Do it, if you don't already.

Advertised for any lonely, er, I mean sociable, screenwriters local to Pompey, the jewel of the South, and came up trumps: bagged a pro-writer who I conned into letting me co-write two projects with her (both ongoing) and joined a talented, diverse screenwriters group who meet in an arts center with a bar! Lovely. The bar and the group.

Spurred on by the infectious enthusiasm of (or the wine bought by) the group leader Roy, I formed my own liddle band of ne'er do wells into a fledgling guerrilla (or gorilla?) film company, 2Scribes ( http://2scribes.yolasite.com/ ) and made two 48hr films with them. We made the films in 48hrs, you must understand. They weren't 48hrs long. That would be stupid. They would, of course be continuing drama series if they were that long for chrissake! And who is this Chris anyway?

The team were great, we worked well together and all learned a helluva lot. And quickly too. They are currently shooting another short at the mo' and will be making another of mine, er, shortly.

Nearly got a huge bucket of cash from Screen South to make a film when I was a finalist in their 2009 digi-shorts thingy my jig.

Close, but no

Had a few meetings. Had their people call my people (the wife).
Swapped loads of business cards.

Ended 2009 with a slate of diverse, exciting scripts written and a number of quality enquiries from producers via my updated website, some of whom actually have access to crew, cameras, studios and even funding...

Please feel free to take a gander at my updated website http://garethturpie.yolasite.com/ yourselves and let me know what you think. Cheers for that!

2009 also landed me my first two BBC contracts!

Two BBC contracts? Wow, Sheiky!

Well, ok, technically, it's actually only one, but they send two, so my copy now has pride of place on my office wall. To encourage me to earn some more. Contracts. Keep my head above the radar, so to speak.
The lovely, talented Phil Differ at the comedy unit in Scotland, eventually gave in, it seems, from under the barrage of sketches I sent him and used a couple on his fab show Watson's wind up.

And fame and riches duly followed. The End. Ahem.

Well, nearly...

Another of my shorts is slated to be captured onto digi-whatever-they use now instead of film, in sunny June. Can't wait. But I'll have to, cos they're calling the tune!

And tonight, our very kind and far sighted local radio station, Express Fm treated me, and a few other lucky scribes to a Radio Soap Master class with top Archers scriptwriter Louise Page 'cos they want us to write a new Portsmouth located radio soap.

2010, come on son, bring it on.

Sneaked in a bit of round up there. And only nearly a month late.
Still no-one will notice...

(193) Happy Birthday to me!

Happy Birthday to me! 21 again! (ahem...)





Party on!



Have a cake or two on me! Cheers! xxx

(192) snow good...

This blizzard of crappy weather t'aint all bad if you're creative...









And, saving the best to last...

(191) Snow so bad here after all...

So you think you've had