October | 2018 | Rich Teasers Scripts & Films

Recently, Shooting People asked community members to comment on their experiences with the site’s Script Pitch service – a conduit through which screenwriters can connect with filmmakers to start building something beautiful… so long as they keep the dialogue going. Despite those times a promising something fizzled out to nothing, we haven’t done too badly from the conversations that carried on.

So we replied:

False starts are emblematic of any collaborative venture, so we tend to ignore them: connections that go nowhere, dialogues that end before they ever really begin – who hasn’t been there…? The real value of a network becomes clearer once those who feed in decide to trust their instincts and take a chance on a project they might not have initially considered.

We had some false starts. Some dead-end dialogues. Then we connected with a script seeker on SP who’d never directed or particularly considered comedy. The script she was curious about was a comedy, but it had an indirect appeal. We met for a beer at the BFI. We talked. We committed. Rewrites were made to develop a shared vision and accommodate production values. People were drafted in from the real-life production world to work on ‘something fun’, and within the year, we had ‘Snug As A Bug’ filmed, screened and earning laurels on the festival circuit.

Immediately after, we began working with Snug’s producer on ‘Making A Killing’ where all the necessary production ducks fell into their rows in less than five months. This screened for the first time in late September.

More dialogues. More connections. Four more shorts were made in the calendar year with the director of ‘Snug’. A feature’s being pushed. Some very interesting people are getting to know what we’re about… and it’s no word of a lie to say that it all fans out from that one connection on Script Pitch for a project that wasn’t necessarily ‘the one’ for a director we’ve now made five films with.

If I’d say anything to anyone coming into this diverse collaborative network, it’s open your mind a lot further than you’ve opened it up until now. All of our successes, major and minor, feature collaborators who’ve made major comfort zone or preference concessions to see these projects through… quite a lot of which has rubbed off on us.

And so on we go, ready for more new projects, more new conversations.

Who wants to talk…?

Of course we’d been through all this before, but a debut screening’s always going to test the durability of any writer’s nerves: would the punters show, would they like our work, and would they want to stick around to talk about it after… or would they ALL have to duck out to a function they couldn’t get out of “somewhere in Covent Garden”…?

We needn’t have got ourselves so worked up. The punters came, the punters liked it and the punters stuck around long after the bar had been drunk dry a second time and all that remained were the pretzels.

Our latest dark comedy short ‘Making A Killing’ made its splash and cast its ripples with a very healthy crowd in attendance. Stars Adrian Scarborough and Tiff Stevenson received due praise for elevating the funnies throughout and we were particularly pleased to hear director James Debenham, producer Rosie Wells and editor Will Peverett lauded for their efforts.

[Photos courtesy of Tony Hay]

But now that ‘Making A Killing’ has filled its knotted handkerchief-on-a-stick with bread and cheese for the long road to wider recognition, we’re not content to simply stand back and bid it a teary-eyed farewell from the garden gate. We’ll keep pace beside it like Dick Whittington’s feline familiar, but just like any single-minded puss, we’ll be nipping off here and there to commence writing from scratch, continue working on developing projects and occasionally pounce on mice and ravage bin bags.

In fact, there’s another short in post-production we’re dying to tell you about… but we’re happy for ‘Making A Killing’ to hog the limelight here – we’re extremely proud of it and incredibly grateful to everyone who helped it get this far.

Think you all deserve a few stills…