End is Nigh...

...in a good way. I have just about finished a year long Drama Foundation course at City Lit. Dress rehearsal this week and final presentation next. Then finally the farce is over.

Yes, it's all been a bit of a disappointment. I signed on to the foundation after a supremely inspiring and exciting 2 week summer school at City Lit called Total Actor - which I loved! I came of that solid 2 weeks positively electric. I knew I'd found what I wanted to do when I grew up. I knew it was thing thing I wanted to do all day everyday for as long as my body would let me do it. And if you've ever known that feeling, you'll know just how good that feeling is. So off the back of that feeling I signed up for a year long course of what I expected to be the same.

Half way through the second term, it seemed we were still covering the same ground covered in Total Actor. Which seemed a monumental waste of my time and money. When we finally started to mine a seam of new knowledge it was so badly explained that no-one knew what we were supposed to be doing and 1 person even left the course because of it.

Me: "Is this [example] an endowment?"
Tutor: "No."
Me: "Then I don't understand endowments."
Tutor: "Imagine you have a cold cup of water and you pretend it's a hot cup of tea..."
Me: "So is this [example] an endowment?" *confused*
Tutor: "No."
Me: "So what is an endowment?"
Tutor: "I think maybe you should go back and read the book." *Dismissed*
Book: "Imagine you have a cold cup of water and you pretend it's a hot cup of tea..."

We then spent an entire term, literally, watching the rest of the group cry. I understand the value of using memory and emotional recall, but did every single one of us have to go through the exercise in front of the whole class one at a time every week, twice, for a whole term. I can't help feeling we could have better spent the time by being, Oh, I don't know, TAUGHT SOMETHING.
The tutor declared that he could guess what we were thinking just by looking/watching us go through our memory recall. He suggested that I had been surrounded by flowers and trees during mine, I had actually be remembering being on a boat out at sea. So as you can imagine, it was a Very Long Term. And we went through it all twice. Surely our time could have been better spent...

A: Splint group into 2, 1 half does the unvoiced memory recall, the other half does it voiced.
B: Split into smaller groups and all go through the exercises together.
C: A couple of people do it voiced a couple of people do it unvoiced, we all get the idea and move on.

...Surely, there must have been another way. But what do I know. What I do know is that we've had 2 terms of being taught to "act", none of which has involved basic stage craft, working with costume, props, or scripts. Then to pass the final presentation we had to go find a script, produce it with costumes, props and stage it to pass the course. Improvisation is great and all, but not that helpful when you have to stick rigidly to the scripted word and it's prescriptive staging.

Thankfully, I only have 3 more weeks to go and I AM FREE. What has been wonderful is the group that I have worked with for the last year, committed, interested and enthusiastic. A Lovely crowd, I'm looking forward to working with them in the future, but it won't be on the Access Course at City Lit next year.

The eternal never ending joy of Writers Block

Hello all.

Yes I am still alive and I am still here. Doesn't that just over excite you, I know it does.

I could tell you of all things that i have been doing whilst not writing this blog, but as I haven't been writing (and this is a writing blog) there would be little point - unless you count a regular 140 characters on twitter, which I don't, because I am almost sure it's lost me more followers than its gained (most of whom are spammers - how dare they be so picky!)

Why is this so? Because I've had a sticky bout of WRITERS BLOCK. Such fun!

It has been a trying...while. My head sort of imploded and as a result I haven't been able to write a darned thing. All my ideas dried up and white hot panic set in as I settled in front of the dreaded keyboard; so there were a good few months when I even stopped sitting in front of the computer. Then I started sitting in front of the computer but pretended that Word didn't exist. Now I am able to sit at the computer, open word and sit staring at a blank screen before I turn it all off again and go have another cup of tea. As you can see this is a remarkable leap forward in productivity (Hey, I'm writing a blog post, ain't I)

I have found that the wealth of writing books sat on the shelf, still waiting to be read have been no help; but you'd be amazed at the amount of Vampire fiction I've got through.

Ideas are flowing again and i have begun the tentative experiment of beginning a rewrite. I am also tinkering with some ideas for sketches, so hopefully I'll be able to post some Kumquat Whatnot stuff sooner than soon-ish.

Keep patient with me, lovely lovely peoples (yeah you, you're the ONLY one) I'll get back to updating regular as a first step to getting back to writing proper. Stick with it, it might even get better. You never know.

Raw & Tasty @ Etcetera,Camden

Essential Skills

As a writer - see I said it again, I'm getting good at this - there are few things that I desperately need,other than bags of talent (still looking). I spend a great deal of time by myself so interpersonal skills, managing office politics and health and safety rarely come up. Except for the occasional realisation that my back REALLY isn't supposed to feel like that & moving now would be a good thing. But one thing that will almost certainly come up for any writer sooner or later, whether you have a computer, typewriter or other keyboard interface device or not, is the ability to type.

Touch typing ideally. This is not a skill I posses; but it is something I can learn. Don't misunderstand me - I'm not a one fingered dunce who spends 10 minutes trying to find the S (not all the time anyway) but I can't touch type. My typing skill is more along the lines of keep hitting the keys and go back and splel chack latre. I am fine with that; it gets me where I want to be and I end up with some delightfully creative phrases at the end of the day - I could be some sort of existential poet - but I am haunted by that nagging doubt of "I could do better."

I have attended a Pitman course and if there is ever a more soul sucking and depressing way to spend your time I've yet to find it:

Everything my pitman experience wasn't.

I then went on to 'acquire' a copy of the world infamous Mavis Beacon:

She's just a bit too Stepford.

Which I have no great criticism of - but it's not terribly inspiring. Frankly there is something a bit housewife-ish about it. It does everything it's supposed to but you are very aware that you are learning, and that takes the edge off it.

Now I have been introduced to Typing of the Dead - which very much appeals to the Britswitch sense of humour.





I am looking forward to giving this a go and improving may ability to type no end.
This is in NO way procrastination.
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Index Cards are next to Godliness

After a good few weeks being stuck (I refuse to use the word blocked)I realised that i need a new approach, so after reading this article in the Guardian . I have noticed that a few people enlist this method:

Sophie's Wall (I'm afraid I don't know who Sophie is)


Graham Linehan's Floor


So I have started afresh full of idea's and new approaches to my writing.

My Old System


My New system

Writer's Room Q&A with Armando Ianucci

Soho Theatre London 16-04-09
Notes from Writer's Room Q&A with Armando Ianucci

Has also written Time Trumpet, In the Thick of it, On the Hour, The Day today. He looks at his comedy as having a different approach – he was doing what he wanted to do. Influenced in early life by The Burkiss Way which he used to listen to as a child,
he has always been a radio fan.

He was part of the BBC producer traineeship which is where he came up with the idea for On The Hour, using all the serious skills that he'd learnt as a producer he put together the serious sounding news satire The Day Today. Something funny said seriously.

He described the experience of getting where he is now; we all think we're crap and we're going to be found out and then we realise that everyone is like that.

He described the writing process [and I agree] is boring and painful, to have written something is great, but to write is hard.

Collaboration = displacement. It's fun to hang about with other people. Three people make it easier because as long as two people agree, the third will come around and if one person is busy there are still two people to write.

Revealed Exclusive to the audience: Alan Partridge, if he killed himself, would throw himself off the top of a double decker bus in Norwich after ending up as a tour guide.

In the Thick Of It was about spin culture. The characters are trying to manage a system and that makes it worse. he wanted to include elements of farce, and childishness and see it taking place at the heart of government. He wanted to write a political sitcom because there hadn't been anything really since Yes Minister which went on to become Yes Prime minister. He wanted to write about the government now, and write about the SPADS.

His advice to new writers was 'Don't right down to lowest common denominator. Write what makes you laugh. It will show.'

In The Thick Of It was for BBC4. There was no money which defined the look of it and how it was made. He wanted it to look experimental or raw. Almost as if it was the edited highlights of what had happened that day.

West Wing was influential by its style of honest and accurate dialogue. Don't know what the characters are talking about, just that they are annoyed etc.

In the Loop from blank sheet to final print = 1 year. The script was partly improvised, actors were given a line that they had to include and a general idea of how to react. The production didn't take American money so it didn't have to cow tow to American whims and editorial demands.

A US Blogger who A. Ianucci got in contact with got him meetings with ex-White house staffers and aides, and journalists. In doing research he went to the state department; to get in he was told to go to reception and say “I'm BBC, I'm here for the 12.30.” And they let him in! He described this 'infiltration by deception' taking photographs and wandering around the state department as “Fun, but international espionage.”

A piece of internal tittle-tattle he discovered in the us was that emails are state property but not post-it notes, so that in government 'all the juicy stuff is on post-it notes.”

He liked the indulgence of film making because it meant he could sew seeds in the background and let them brew over 90 min. In a 30 min episode, in first 5min you have to get the action up and running get your audience hooked and let it play out. In The Thick shows at approx 28 min but probably shoot more like 50 min.

He liked to keep the shots not perfect because he said the flaws make it believable – shots with a ladder leaning against a wall or with cabling hanging down was more like real life.

He decided to make the conscious decision not to include the President or the PM as it was too big a story, In The Loop is about the little people. They don't represent the bigger figures. The Thick Of It even goes so far as to never mention which party the characters work for.

He chose to do In the Loop because he had always wanted to do a movie. The film was cast early so the writers knew the character and could find the voices and idiosyncrasy's. In The Loop is surreptitiously a screw ball comedy. He wanted the movie to have a timeless and universal.

He has always liked [and I agree] the experience of sitting in the dark with lots of people all laughing. When it previewed it was in a 1200 seat theatre at Sundance which was the first time the US cast saw it. Ianucci returned at 9am the next day for the second showing expecting it to be an anticlimax, but it was full and the audience was laughing. The US audience was just as interested and laughing at it equally. The audience was engaged. The film has been criticised as too English but as he pointed out We don't look at American films thinking that it's too American.

When talking about advice to new writers:
One of the universal questions of the commissioning process: Why Now? Think about why your project should be commisioned now, and why you.

He suggested that maybe the future training ground for new comedy writers is less and less likely to be radio or TV sketch show. Go out to establish your voice - via a blog – Parody is a strong way of making you writing obvious, Podcasts, Record your material, Look at the material out there. Make DVD's,Cd's, online links, upload video's online.

Who is the target of the comedy? If your a comic your bound to offend someone.

Writer's Room Q&A with Toby Whithouse

Soho Theatre London 04-03-09
Notes from Writer's Room Q&A with Toby Whithouse

His writing career really started because as actor (he was in House of Elliot) he had a lot of time to write and saw a lot of scripts and thought he 'could do this.'He won the Verity Bargate Award at the Soho Theatre with Martin Freeman (of HHGTTG) in the lead.

His original aim was to write sitcoms, but he began by writing to a brief – the ease of this all depends on how well they are written 1st. He found that the discipline of Drama teaches the richness of comedy.A Sitcom requires 5 or 6 gags a page, whereas drama only needs less jokes and not as often. The jokes stand out.

If you only had three or four jokes in a comedy no-one will laugh, if you have two or three jokes in a drama people think 'hey, this is a FUNNY guy!'

He now works project to project. Background as an actor and finds himself sympathetic to writing small parts - he always gives the small parts a full name so that the credit sounds better.

The TV drama works to the three act structure but you go through it quicker in TV.

He described himself as lazy about research. It [research] is fantastic. It gives you stories. It gives you the confidence that you have a wealth of knowledge and facts at your disposal.

Before he starts he writes pages of biogs and a Series Bible = Arc's for all the characters, heros and villians, bio's etc, end point (The world they live in), Treatment and scene breakdowns. The details may never be used but it can all ignite a story.

Being Human originally started out as a Rom-Com called 'Wild Thing' about a Jewish werewolf, but he was offered a commission to write a script about a flat share described as a new 'This Life' concerning three characters - out of this came the idea for Being Human.

Being Human was over 1 year in pre-production. The budget set the style – a low budget american indie film.

He described himself as writing about life and life doesn't have a genre, it changes gear effortlessly - Laughing one minute and crying the next.

He liked the idea of making Being Huiman High concept, highlights in ep2 echo through to ep 6. Dr Who opened the door for that sort of show.British sci-fi has always relied on imagination and characters

He did have other writters for BH (also for series 2 - already commissioned) due to time constraints, also so he could write as well as he could. He has chosen those writers himself and still has much of the control over the story process.

Asked if he would write in any other medium. He said: A play offers you the freedom of the stage, but TV pays better – but there are more people involved. There is always the issue about control over your writing. Money controls the setting of the piece and its length.

The 'first' episode of Being Human was difficult and frustrating as it was part of a pilot season on BBC. In that episode he had to write a story in one episode and hint at future events, introduce characters via action not exposition.

He described his writing process and control over the characters as “ruling over them like an angry god”

His writing process involves writing out 5 pages a day and revising them into three good pages by the end of the day.

Advice to new writers: Your writing is 'just yours' Write it, get it out.

And hes done stand up

Influences:
Alan Moore, Joe Ahern's Ultraviolet, PJ Hammond, Sapphire and Steel, Smoking Room.

Written for:
No Angels, Sarah Jane's return to Dr Who, Being Human, Hotel Babylon.

I blog therefore I have no time for anything else.

All new Blogging fun for all your Britswitch needs:

Britswitch's Witches Which is Just for Fun


Britswitch's Brutally Honest Review Show Which is me taking a stab at seriously silly journalism. - Under construction.

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