Now, where to start. Not quite at the beginning but somewhere near.
The script is complete and as I write this, the cast and crew are gearing up to start on Day 2 of shooting. I was invited along to Day 1, and I popped along after an early end to the daily grind.
The location was an estate I’d never been despite growing up in the borough it was located in. And thankfully, save for 3 rather worrying and distracting kids, it was mostly empty of people, thus ideal for the particular scene that was being produced. A pivotal scene in the narrative at that. One thing that struck me, as it did when I received the screenshots for THREE KNOCKS, was how it was pictured in the mind of the director and how differently it will appear on screen. Similar to when a book is read and is then adapted for screen. How many of you have experienced that and thought ‘OK, not quite how I pictured it’? In this instance, what I saw is as dark as I imagined it but in a different way. But I’m at the point where I don’t have to remind myself that I turned an idea into a script, and it’s not my baby, despite how much of the writing is attributed to me.
And this baby, after much thought (and not much of it by me, mind) has a name. I said on a previous post that I was more keen on the director coming up with a project name, simply because it would be like her getting a gorgeous pet and getting someone else to mame it.
So after much thought and a couple of suggestions, the short film will go by the name of JUDGEMENT (a name that is direct, singular and all-encompassing) And it focuses on Tessa (Kate Simpson) who attends to give evidence at the trial of the man accused of attacking her. The overarching question asked is who is actually being judged? Tessa? The accused, Dennis (Grant Sterry), the prosecutor or the barrister? Or anything else?
What made articulating that message a bit of a challenge was the fact that much of the ‘punch’ was originally contained in the courtroom but obtaining that setting would have severely blitzed the already minimal budget so the decision was taken to remove that location and write around it. I still wanted to break up certain scenes and maintain a particular narrative structure so I used a space (inspired by a suggestion by the producer) and location that allowed Tessa’s isolation to be highlighted and magnified.
When seeing the filming taking place, it dawned on me that my participation in the process was more or less over and the next I would see of it would be when I attend a preview showing next month. From the most minuscule footage I saw when attending the filming, it will be a very good finished product.
The script has a brilliant cast and crew bringing it to life and it was pleasure to meet them, and am grateful for the invitation.
Myself and Kadeena (all being well) will work together again, a new idea formulating in that head of hers. I’m to be told what that is in the summer, though one hint dropped is it will be much ‘lighter’ than JUDGEMENT. Watch this space…
As for now, I’m going to take one or two days to let ideas of my own formulate before returning to work on my own material. I’m also going to revisit ‘INEVITABILIS'(where I took something, in this case, inevitability, and simply gave it a singular, ominous Latin translation to make it stand out as a name), more confident than ever that it will find a home.
The same plan applies to ‘GET IN, GET DONE, GET OUT’ (which, more simply, was taken from a line uttered by the character Peta) but part of me is inclined to post the script on here, just to give you something different to look at 😂
Till that decision, and till we meet again, thanks for reading.
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