In my previous post, I alluded to a potentially significant project I was working on. I’ll give as much as I can in the way of detail without… Er… giving too much away in the way of detail 🤔
For me to give it proper context, and like a large percentage of stories, I will start at the beginning…
In the latter part of last year, I was made aware of an inaugural Networking event for Black Filmmakers and duly attended in the second week of January at the British Film Institute. Not knowing what to expect and without business cards, the event proved, on that front alone, the importance of marketing and selling oneself. I’ll be working on that going forward.
Among the throng of very creative people at various levels of success, stood a young, quiet and composed lady engaged in a conversation. I was dragged over to the conversation and said our hellos. She introduced herself to me, her name Kadeena, and I to her. You know my name 😂 A student at the Drama Centre, London, she is a budding director, who is working towards her graduation piece and freely admitted she can visuslise something as opposed to putting it into words.
To see if this were indeed the case, I showed her one of my scripts. The general response was a positive one and I provided my details of this humble blog and other contact details. Part of her interest in me and my writing lay in my job and the profession it is in.
I also did my bit in the spirit of Networking and took her over to a guy I had been introduced to before as a Filmmaker/Director of Photography, before I left, not sure if I’d hear from her.
About a week later, contact was made and I was presented with (what I’m sure she’ll forgive me for referring to as) a rough draft of an idea and an explanation of what it was about. As long as I roughly followed the idea set out I had license, had I opted work on it, to otherwise do with it what I wished.
As you can guess by this, and after much thought, I decided there was enough of a message and outline that I could at least attempt to help. After an exchange of clarification e-mails and a meeting with Kadeena, I got to work on the script. Given my writing style, it probably ended up being a longer read than it would be if shot, at 18 pages.
I had a couple of things I had to consider before I took the project on:
1) The first was the subject matter. While I’m probably not at liberty to disclose it in full, let’s just say I had to do a hell of a lot put myself in a particularly dark place mentally. Even then, there is a level of understanding I will never attain on this issue.
2) There is a scene contained that is fairly in-your-face in regards to the language and what it describes. Not the kind of thing I’ve written, my immediate thought was it may need to be revised but I reminded myself whose story this was and it was subsequently identified as one of a few scenes that must remain, more or less, how it was designed. So the words remain 🙈😂
3) I also had to square the easily identifiable ‘Women YAY, Men BOO’ undertone but I managed to put that out of my mind for the good of the project, again, not mine. Lol
Ordinarily, I write my own scripts with my own characters and message, with only a couple of exceptions, so this is still, relatively speaking, a new writing hat I’m wearing but I enjoyed the process of helping someone put something together. I also had it in the back of my mind that it is for something very very important so it helped me focus my mind when other things in my life threatened to overwhelm and distract me.
As it stands, the reaction to script has been positive from Kadeena, but more meetings are to come and I fully anticipate edits would need to be made but as it stands, something tangible is there to move forward with. As an aside, I now know that the DOP I left our intrepid director with in January is on board with this project.
Again, it’s a new literary hat for me to wear. And it fits pretty nicely so far…
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