BCre8ive – Blog | Creative notes to explain and inspire

Creative Collaborations – starting out

Posted on 04/03/2015 by Phil

Collaboration is key to success in the arts, and especially so in digital projects and transmedia, but how do you do it, and what does it mean. In this blog I will discuss some of the key elements which are critical to the start of any collaborative work, and frameworks for helping you become a good collaborator, when you start out.

To put in context it is worth watching this short interview with musician Nate Ruess. The note to take away here is to see that one person will inevitably have the beginning of a work, but the key point is that others contribute and in the end the final work results form everyone. Recognising this, and not worrying about who started. who did what, and whether your ego is more important than the project are key essentials to good collaboration. However, everyone needs to get the credit for being part of the process.

The process can be challenging, and not always creating great work the first time around. Watch these three art students make their first collaborative work and you will see many of the issues the process throws up. From brainstorming to organising a idea, through to agreeing individual contributions and being pushed out of your comfort zone. The latter is one of the cornerstones of originality in the creative process.

Also here is Nick Park – creator of ‘Wallace and Gromit’ talkimg to BCre8ive about the process of creating work.

Organising this process, and supporting other creatives is something all members of creative teams have to engage with but for arts lecturers it is an essential part of the educative process. Listen to Fred Deakin designer and part-time Professor of Digital Interactive Arts at the University of the Arts, London talking about the process. He reinforces the point about egos, and the need for lots of ideas – see Dave Sproxton’s and Chris Trengrove‘s blog.

Finally on managing collaboration a quick comment from Steve Jobs and the importance of ideas rather than committees or individual people to success in design – an approach based on collaboration between creative people.

Posted in Art of development, BCre8ive Lab, Creative Collaboration | Comments Off

Top 5 Creative Ideas – David Sproxton

Posted on 16/02/2015 by Phil

This blog is based on 5 Creative Ideas from BCre8ive’s Creative Champion David Sproxton. Dave is co-founder and Executive Chair of Aardman Animation
working on projects from Morph and Wallace and Gromit to Shaun the Sheep.

In no particular order –

Tip 1

Don’t jump onto the first idea you have. Have lots of ideas around the subject and work hard on the strongest and the one, which is most likely to succeed.

Jessica Johnson at Creative Ideas.com

Tip 2

Surround yourself with inspirational people who are better at doing the things you are poor at doing. “Show people respect, but avoid the tyranny of politeness”

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”
― Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

Tip 3

There are many useful tools for generating ideas, try them all and listen to everyone. Check out this long list of ideas generating links to help you http://creatingminds.org/tools/tools_ideation.htm

Tip 4

Never stop learning!

Tip 5

Writing is re-writing, re-writing, and more re-writing

“The challenge of screenwriting is to say much in little and then take half of that little out and still preserve an effect of leisure and natural movement.” Raymond Chandler

Posted in Art of development, Children's Media, Creative Champions, Creative Collaboration | Comments Off

5 Top Creative Tips – Chris Trengrove

Posted on 05/02/2015 by Phil

This blog is based on the top 5 Creative Tips from BCre8ive’s Creative Champion Chris Trengove. Chris has been writing for UK and US television since 1986 with hits shows from Thundercats and Bob the Builder to Dennis and Gnasher.

Tip 1: In the beginning
Don’t be discouraged if you have a sneaking suspicion that what you’ve just written is rubbish. All writers know the feeling, however long they’ve been at it. Just press on. Don’t look back. Get to the end. Then go back and assess what you’ve done. Chances are that what you wrote first time wasn’t so bad, and if it was: so what? As the old Hollywood saw has it, writing is re-writing.

Michelangelo – Unfinished Sculpture

Tip 2: Chip away until You find Your Story
Whatever you’re writing – book, TV ep, screenplay – don’t think of it as linear. Instead, consider it as a whole, as if you’re starting off with a block of stone and creating a sculpture. Somewhere in that block is the story you want, you’ve just got to chip off the rest of the stone. As you’re writing, think forward, think back, make the connections that turn a sequence of events into a coherent story.

Tip 3: Set Yourself Targets
Set yourself a daily word or page goal. I generally find 1000 words or 7 or 8 pages of a script a reasonable target –although some can write much more (and some less.) At 1000 words a day, in a couple of months you’d have most of a novel.

Tip 4: Planning helps
Everyone who works in TV or film is familiar with writing to an outline, sometimes provided by others. Literary novelists may scoff, but it is often useful to map out a narrative in advance. At the very least, it’ll provide a rope and tackle to help climb that first draft mountain, and you don’t have to stick to it rigorously (or at all.)

Tip 5: Edit everything!
When you’re getting close to final draft stage, analyse every line. What is it doing? Why is it there? Is it funny? Is it dramatic? Does it illuminate character? Is it advancing the story? If it’s not really doing anything, cut it. Very few pieces of work have ever suffered by being made shorter.

“I’m all for the scissors. I believe more in the scissors than I do in the pencil.” – Truman Capote

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Violence v. Creativity

Posted on 14/01/2015 by Phil

Violence and creativity are part of our everyday global experiences. From the massacres to the cartoons we are surrounded by both, and though inevitably we experience these elements of life individually, is there a clear relationship between violence, creativity and us?

Violence in life from bombing towns and villages, sexual abuse, rites of passage, female genital mutilation, and school massacres to bullying can be found throughout all human history, and communities. The decline of violence in some societies in the last hundred years gives us some hope that perhaps fewer and fewer human beings will suffer the consequences as we move forward in time. However, where does creativity fit in this reduction of violence, and how does violence influence creativity?

Creative expressions of violence

Our histories are littered with creative expressions of recording, or reacting, to violence and those who participate in it. These range from recordings of pre-historic cave art to the numerous celebratory examples of triumphal columns, arches, and statues http://whc.unesco.org/pg.cfm?cid=31&id_site=441 . These have often been seen as a celebrations of violence but we have also reacted against it as in the war poets after the First World War http://www.warpoetry.co.uk/FWW_index.html, and more recently http://poetsagainstthewar.org/content/global-movement-poets.

Equally, the creative depictions of violence have been central to most human cultures. These have ranged from Assyrian bas reliefs of war https://clioantiquities.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/img_1870.jpg to murders, for example David’s The death of Marat http://the-paintrist.tumblr.com/post/29330226762/jacques-louis-david-the-death-of-marat-1793 to contemporary violence in Mexico in Elvira Santamaria Torres’ Red Flux http://elvirasantamariatorres.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/Red-Flux-2012.jpg

Clearly with this range of activities violence can play a central part in creative expression.

Violence as a creative solution

However, most people now do not relate to bas reliefs, wall paints, or even painting, and performance art, but to films, television, and games. It is these screen media that provide the modern expression of violence for most people. In this context violence is seen and used predominantly as a means of creating a climax to a narrative.

The dominance of violence as a cinematic experience is clearly seen in the global top ten films of 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cubWUCSw2kk. This ranges from Guardians of the Galaxy’ and ‘The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies’ in cinemas in the last twelve months to ‘Kung Fu Panda’ and ‘Snow White and The Huntsman’ in the recent past. In console games, ‘shoot-em up’, and violent senarios, still dominate http://www.onlinenewspoint.com/top-10-most-popular-console-games-in-2014/. Even within TV drama, often seen as a more conservative, less violent space, murder is at the heart of all detective series and violence dominates many drama series from the ‘Sopranos’ to ‘Game of Thrones’.

The reason for this dominant use of violence in screen narratives, is fairly obvious. It provides an illusion of closure i.e. of an ending for the particular narrative. We know people will want at some point to stop watching the output of anyone’s creativity. The use of violence, often leading to death, offers an easy option to achieve this moment of disengagement.

When it comes to games and cinematic experiences it also provides an obvious means of creating fast-action based, spectacle. An experience, which can be engaged in without any specific linguistic skills or historical knowledge. So clearly creatives will use violence for narrative purposes, whether this be defined as ‘cartoonish’ or ‘realistic’.

The difference between creative expression and violent reality.

In our everyday lives though there is a huge difference between these creative expressions of violence and the reality of it. It is hard to imagine when you are faced with bombing, torture, the threat of beatings, or live with a history of personal violent encounters that creativity will thrive in this moment. In the aftermath of violence, of course, creativity has often thrived – see most of the examples above, but in our everyday lives violence suppresses creativity and provides yet another illusion closure.

Those who use violence want something to end, and killing, or beating others up, appears to offer this solution. However, humanity does not end with a death, tens of thousands deaths, or millions of deaths as the genocidal acts of the Twentieth Century demonstrated. Killing anyone obviously ends their life, continually inflicting violence on a community will generate a silence, out of fear. These events may apparently benefit a few in the short term but as a community we suffer and our creativity suffers as a consequence.

Defending or creating space to be creative

It is in this context that creativity is so antithetical to violence. Violence is about destruction. Creativity is the opposite. Creativity may involve destruction in its process but its goal is the creation of something new which represents something we care about, not the destruction of someone or something we are scared of. To be creative we need a space free of violence in which to create, and those who use violence need to be resisted by all who wish to be creative. It is in the space free of violence we share our experience and understand each others means of expression.

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Five Visual Artists Collaborations

Posted on 08/01/2015 by Phil

Five Visual Artists Collaborations

Collaboration is at the core of creative activity and as the following five examples show it has been taking place for a long time. I hope you will be inspired by the range of possibilities evident here, ranging from Raphael to Bjork, and reflect on how they may be used in our new digital age.

Raimondi and Raphael promoting Renaissance visions

Marcantonio Raimondi and Raphael – engraver and painte . In about 1510 Raimondi target=”_blank”>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcantonio_Raimondi arrived in Rome. And by 1513 he had met Raphael, who included a depiction of Raimondi in the Vatican fresco Expulsion of Heliodorus (1513). Raimondi’s best engravings, such as Massacre of the Innocents, were done during the first years with Raphael. In these he retains Raphael’s idealized figures, but, also managed to add his own style to the background, and landscapes.

Their relationship was very successful financially and attracted a large number of pupils, of whom the two most distinguished were Marco Dente, known as Marco da Ravenna, and Agostino de Musi, known as Agostino Veneziano. This form of engraver and painter relationship carried on into the 19th and beginning of the 20th century.

Munch and Reinehardt’s Nineteenth century dark reflections

Edward Munch, Max Reinhardt and Henrik Insen – Painter, Theatre director and Playwriter – Munch’s target=”_blank”>http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/munch/ theatrical career began when a theatre in Paris asked him to design programmes for productions of Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and John Gabriel Borkman. In 1906, the German theatre director Max Reinhardt who had seen Munch’s paintings invited the artist to design a Munich production of Ibsen’s Ghosts and, when that was successful, Munch collaborated again with Reinhardt on Hedda Gabler.

Munch inspired by the themes or moods of Ibsen’s work created a series of paintings. Work often focussed on desperate women – the howling face in Munch’s The Scream reflecting Ibsen’s trapped wives, such as Hedda Gabler and Nora in A Doll’s House. A collaboration in one form sparking a creative expression in another.

Visual artists and theatrical creations were an on going source of collaborations throughout the 20th century.

Pablo Picasso and Erik Satie’s Surreal/Cubist Experiment

Pablo Picasso and Eriik Satie – Painter and Composer – Parade, a 1917 ballet performed by Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, was a coming together of various artists across the creative spectrum in a collaboration which not only involved Picasso and Satie but also the choreography by Léonide Massine and a script by Jean Cocteau. This story story of a trio of circus artists attempting to lure an audience to their performance, included Cocteau’s addition of foghorns, typewriters, which apparently drowned out much of Satie’s composition. Whlle Picasso’s cubist costumes, many of them made from cardboard, proved problematic for the actors when they wanted to move.
An example of collaboration where too much was bring tried at one time, but as you will see from the video below could still proved some arresting images/performances.

Extracts from a later version of ‘Parade’ performed by Europa Danse, can be seen here

The arrival of digital interpretations opened up the scope of collaborative work and new versions of representation.

Salvador Dalí and Alice Cooper’s “First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram of Alice Cooper’s Brain”

Salvidor Dali and Alice Cooper – Painter and Rock Musician – The creative coupling of surrealist Salvador Dalí and American rocker Alice Cooper was not an obvious collaboration, which is exactly what makes it one of the most exciting. They were mutual fans of each other who eventually met up in 1973. An encounter at which Dali gave Cooper a plaster brain sculpture covered in chocolate and ants. This led to them spending the next few weeks together creating a three-dimensional piece with Cooper as its subject. From their (literal) brainstorming came the now-famous First Cylindric Chromo-Hologram of Alice Cooper’s Brain, a five-and-a-half-foot hologram portrait in which Cooper is biting the head off of Venus de Milo. An image reflective of an earlier Spanish painter’s work – Goya’s Satan [sometimes, Saturn] Devouring One of His Children.

You can see a short video of the hologram here

Collaborative Reinterpretation

Chris Olfi, The Royal Ballet, Titian and Ovid – Painter, Dance Company, painter and poet -Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 a new commission for the Royal ballet, organised by Monica Mason, gave Chris Olfi the chance to create his biggest paintings. The work was inspired by Titian’s Diana and Actaeon, , which in turn was based on a poem by Ovid.

Olfi’s backdrop design had to be scaled up by a factor of 50, and required two helpers – a professional set painter and someone to mix the paints (a skilled job in itself). Working on such a scale, involved working with a stick of charcoal fixed inside a length of bamboo rather than a pencil, and buckets of paint. It took a month to complete the actual painting, and the whole project was two years in the planning. It changed the way he works, Olfi said.

An institutionally inspired collaboration, which obviously required technical collaborators an aspect of the artistic collaborative process so often overlooked when the final work is appraised.

Transmedia Collaboration

Matthew Barney and Björk – Multi-media artists and performance artist – 2006 saw the release of “Drawing Restraint 9” a video installation which went on to have a web/theatrical release.

Long before ARTPOP, Björk and artist Matthew Barney, were collaboration and sharing some screen time, in Drawing Restraint 9, a feature-length video art installation that uses drawings, photographs, sculptures, and moving images. This video based installation follows a fictional whaling vessel from the Sea of Japan to Antarctica. Barney and Björk star in the video, which had a small theatrical release in 2006 courtesy of IFC Films, with Björk providing the soundtrack.

You can visit the official website below, to see a limited view of the massive installation

or watch the trailer here

These five examples of collaboration are the first of many I will highlight over the coming months.

Please add your own examples of other visual artists and those they collaborated with to create interesting, challenging and diverting work. Look forward to hearing from you and seeing you work with others on www,bcre8ive.eu

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How to Protect your IP rights

Posted on 18/12/2014 by Phil

A small claims court for your intellectual property.

This blog is written by BCre8ive’s guest blogger – photographer Alan Gallery

The most important thing to understand about copyright is that in UK and EU law it is a property right. But copyright is of little use unless it can be enforced and no more so that when artists copyright is so easily and frequently infringed on the Internet. The good news is that there is now a UK small claims court specialising in intellectual property cases up to £10,000, without the need to hire a solicitor and where the costs are capped and cannot run out of control.

In the UK, the Intellectual Property Enterprise Court small claims track (IPEC SCT) deals with copyright, trademarks and design rights, where a cases is simple. It has been established specifically to support developing and established small creative businesses. It is suitable for claims where the copyright holder is seeking damages for infringement, account of profits, seizure of infringing items and/or a final injunction to prevent future infringement. Any growing creative business that is building a body of work, establishing a brand identity and even branching out into collectibles, could do with this sort of protection.

The IPEC has other tracks for progressively more complex and costly cases so when making an application to the court it is important to say that you are applying for the small claims track. Not all cases need to go to the court and it is advisable to make reasonable efforts to resolve the issue before hand.

Help with Letters and the Law etc.

EPUK (link below) have published a detailed guide with sample letters detailing the initial process and while it is aimed at photographers it can be adapted for simple claims.

Make sure you publish Your Terms and Conditions

What often gets overlooked in advice about copyright are the terms and conditions on which you licence your works. Even if the infringer is not a client your terms and conditions set out the framework of any claim, as it is basis on which you do business. The court will look at the cost you would licence a work for as basic amount of damages. If your terms have an uplift for using work without permission of 100% and an uplift for lack of a credit of 50% the court will take those into account when assessing how flagrant the infringement is. For infringements that have being going on for a long time it is worth claiming interest on the basic amount of damages and it helps if there is a clause for late payment interest in your terms and conditions.

Useful Links

EPUK link:

http://www.epuk.org/Opinion/994/stolen-photographs-what-to-do

Intellectual Property Enterprise Court small claims track guide:

http://www.justice.gov.uk/downloads/courts/patents-court/patents-court-small-claims.pdf

intellectual-property-enterprise-court-guide

Written by Alan Gallery
email: alan@alangallery.com

Posted in Art of development, Creative Tools | Comments Off

10 Steps to Successful Creative Collaborations

Posted on 10/12/2014 by Phil

At the heart of all creative endeavours is a team. It may only be two people – the creator of the work and the distributor of the work, but even in this simple version if there is a breakdown in their collaboration the work will be lost, perhaps forever. However, for most of the creative industries we work in bigger teams and the art of collaboration is critical to our success.

In this blog I want to set out some simple lessons garnered from various people’s experience and my own to create 10 steps to successful creative collaboration.

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”
― Ed Catmull, Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

Step 1 Check your ego at the door

We all have egos, they may be hidden, but we would not want to create if we did not believe there was something about our work, which was worth bothering with. The problem comes when you are working with others and your own ego stops you seeing the contributions others are bringing to the project, or worse stops you seeing the mistakes you are making.

Therefore, park any inflated view of your self somewhere where it will not stop you being part of a team.

Step 2 Respect is critical

This flows from the same place as parking your ego but is essential if a team is to collaborate effectively. Mutual respect for contributions is critical to developing ideas, and reaching the stated goal of the collaboration. You have to give respect, and earn it within the team. This is most easily achieved by openly assessing others and your own work in the light of the stated goals of the project, not your own ambition to make a mark.

Step 3 Define the parameters

Agreeing what the goal of any project, and the parameters within which you are all going to work is essential. These may include a time frame, a budget, audience, characters, materials, levels of finish or production, financial stepping-stones, and many more. However, if these are not agreed, and if necessary adapted by the group later, then you will have nothing to judge your work by, and how well you are doing in achieving the team’s collective ambition.

Step 4 Process is all

‘Content is King’ is an often stated maxim of the creative industries, and yet many great ides flounder, and potentially magic projects die, because the process of development, and collaboration, fails. Understanding the process of collaboration is critical to setting realistic goals. However, it is equally important to understand the individual artists/creators process. How they achieve their inputs to the project is part of the collaborative jigsaw.

Note: “content is King’ is attributed to Bill Gates in a 1996 essay of the same title. http://www.slideshare.net/mchavesrj/content-is-king-bill-gates

Step 5 Allow time and space for dreams and conceptualisation

It is easy to set out with a solid set of parameters, and a set goal, but if you do not allow time for dreaming, sharing off the wall ideas then the final creative work will be the weaker for it. It is this wild time when things will be brought in which will ultimately will be rejected, that proves to everyone in the team they are on the right track, and they have shared in its conception.

Step 6 Shared intentions give great results

The commitment of everyone in a team to work on a given project is often taken for granted. People are being paid to make their contribution, and that is it. In reality this does not produce the best work. It is the level of intensity, creativity, which stems from a share intention to create something special, which ultimately produces the greatest work.

Step 7 There is always the dirty work

Life is messy. No matter how well planned a project is there are always crises, boring days, set backs, messy processes, and unforeseen developments, which mean that things that you do not really want to do, have to be done. For people to make the extra effort at this point in the project’s development then all the above elements have to be in place.

Step 8 Allow for margins and error

Everyone wants a project to run smoothly, and be achieved in the quickest possible time – if only to allow everyone to move on and make even more amazing work. However, you need to factor in time for mistakes, set backs, and disagreements. If you do not do this then sooner or later things will go wrong, and someone will be blamed. When in fact things always go wrong, and it is the job of collaborative teams to not look for a scapegoat but to solve the problem.

Step 9 Direct contact rules

No this is not a metaphor of creative teams being a contact sport. It is about trying wherever possible to keep any intermediaries e.g. agents etc. out of the initial approaches. You as a team need to know the person is really committed to your project, not just because the deal was a good one.

Step 10 Bad timing can kill

Working to deadlines, which then change; people having to drop out; the project being overtaken, or overshadowed by some other creative work; the financiers having a change of heart, all are reasons why it is just bad timing. A good collaborative team takes the lessons they have learnt from the experience and move on. After all it is the collaborative team that is capable of creating the great work, not the work that creates the great team.

Posted in Art of development, BCre8ive Lab, Creative Collaboration | Comments Off

Father Christmas has been kidnapped

Posted on 27/11/2014 by Phil

Phil Parker

Father Christmas has been kidnapped? – A story of adaptation

Yes, Father Christmas was kidnapped on Christmas Eve, by a villain called Teatime. Some of you will instantly recognize this as a reference to the ’Hogfather’ the 20th novel in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, which has sold over 80 million books in 37 languages, and concerns the problem facing Death when he realises ‘The Hogfather” (Father Christmas – to you and me) has been kidnapped.
This blog is an exploration of some issues raised in the process of adapting this comic novel for the screen, something I had the pleasure of undertaking, for television. In particular, I want to explore the question of why does adapting comic incidents prove so difficult, when reading it is such fun?

“Oh, there has to be something in the stocking that makes a noise, said Death. Otherwise, what is 4:30 a.m. for?”

I will seek to provide a clear set of reasons as to why this type of work is often lost in translation. I will also seek to show how to review an original work’s characters, their stories, and the incidents, with a view to creating a dramatic spine and a dramatic universe, which works for screen audiences.

Why is it so hard?

The starting point of understanding why so much comedic writing fails to translate to the screen, big or small, is revealed in this quote describing Teatime in the novel: –

“We took pity on him because he’d lost both parents at an early age. I think that, on reflection, we should have wondered a bit more about that.”

The line from Lord Downey is funny on its own. It was used as a piece of dialogue within the adaptation but it worked prior to this. It does not need visuals, or a dramatic context to work. In the written form this reflective comment on a character is a classic example of a comic moment.

The simple point is that making us smile or laugh is about a moment not about telling a story, or developing dramatic narrative. Prachett’s Discworld is full of comic incidents, characters who make mistakes, use words in strange and comic ways, and funny juxtapositions.

We have all enjoyed such moments from the first time e picked up a comic as a child, and/or the first time we read a really funny novel. However, when we seek to adapt these to a screen narrative there is clearly often a failure in dramatic development and realization. Even if, as with the freedom provided by contemporary animation, we are not trapped by realistic/naturalistic portrayals of characters or their world. However, as an audience as opposed to a reader we still need to find the links between this world of incidents, and the dramatic demands of plot driven feature film and screen series.

So where do we start and what are the major issue we will always face?
Well, in all of the comic and novels we already have funny characters, comic incidents galore, a story – often a simple quest or challenge, and a world in which all the action takes place.

Let us start with the characters.

Most characters are characterised in a comedic way from Death’s wry take on life, or is it death, to his daughter Susan’s cynicism – “ ‘She’d believe in anything if there was a dolly in it for her.” Keeping this characterisation is essential for the tone, and comedic feel of the work to be translated to the screen. However, while we may happily enjoy just reading about a character’s activities, or watching them jump from one frame to another of a comic, this is not enough when we sit and watch them on screen.

Characters on screen are more concrete, by this I mean we see them. There is little room for imagination in how they look, or speak, equally we see them move rather than in just static poses. This requires us to make them more engaging, both to overcome any resistance of died hard fans, but also the scepticism the majority of the audience, who will have not come across them before.

This normally entails the first introductory dramatic action of a character aiming to either make them fascinating – we want to know what they will do next, or someone we empathise with – they are in danger, or act in a way that the audience would react if presented with this situation.

“Some things are fairly obvious when it’s a seven-foot skeleton with a scythe telling you them” – Terry Prachett in ‘Hogfather’

These moments are often missing in the original material, especially for supporting and minor characters.

Searching for a Dramatic Plot

The string of comic moments which litter the original often leads to an incident based narrative. This can work as a sketched-based narrative e.g. ‘Road Runner’ but the majority of TV series and feature films require significant dramatic build rather then just a string of often only loosely connected incidents. This need to provide a narrative drive, through a plot full of funny moments, is often the biggest challenge in any adaptation.

Initially, the existing story is seen as enough to hang these disparate moments on. Especially, if it is a quest for something or someone, or a challenge the central character is faced with, and must take on. However, as many have discovered before me, this is never enough if you are aiming to engage an audience for more than five minutes leave alone an hour and a half or several hours over a long running series.

There is not the time here to explore the need for each major character to have their own story, or stories, which woven together form the plot. However, identifying these stories is a key part of the adaptation process. In ‘Hogfather’ the activities of the main villain, Teatime, were often only hinted at, or assumed, as the novel followed Death and his companions more closely. To create the two, two-hour, TV episodes it became essential to dwell more on Teatime, and thus provide the second main story of the plot.

A Second Story?

The importance of identifying and developing the second main story cannot be overstated. From “Tangled’ to ‘Alice in Wonderland’ it is the presence of this second story which ensures the narrative does not flag in the middle, and ensures enough dramatic interest for the comic moments to thrive.

In television series, this second storyline forms the major source of change within each episode. It often belongs to the antagonist/s, and ensures there is enough comedic contrast with the protagonist’s actions to ensure that dramatic tension is also maintained for the audience.

The Dramatic (or should that be Comic) Universe

“She’d become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do.
And she’d taken to it well. She’d sworn that if she did indeed ever find
herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she’d beat herself to death with her own umbrella.” – a description of Susan

Finally, we come to the world of the action, the dramatic universe. In adapting comics this is considerably easier, as the visual style is already established, than from a novel. However, the fact that such strong visuals exit may also present problems in that everything is expected to conform to the comic’s visual framework, and any new characters or story elements may not fit easily.

This points to the biggest problem with all dramatic universes being brought to the screen. All dramatic universes have key elements and most crucially dramatic rules, or frameworks of reference, which if broken, break the audience’s belief in the world.

These elements include the degree of fantasy, the visualisation of the world, the physical limitations of characters and action, the scale of action and locations, and most crucially the tone.

In Search of Tone

It may seem obvious that the tone for adapting a comedic work to the screen has to be comedic. Obviously, this is true. The question is what type of comedic tone, and what balance of certain types of comedy are present within the original, which need to be preserved in the adaptation?

Here is a short list, which, I hope, will help you in your journeys of adaptation.

A character can be tonally characterised both through dress and action as well as dialogue. The voice of an animated character is one of the most important creative decisions in the development process.

A story line has a tone generated by how it ends, and thus how it develops through the narrative.

Each scene has a tone governed largely by the last moment/s of the scene, and this obviously has to be comic with a few exceptions. Theses exceptions only apply where there is a desire to add extra dramatic depth to the central characters.

Locations have a tone governed largely by colour but also the overall visual style.

The dramatic universe as a whole has a tone, often revealed through the music and soundtrack but delivered through each scene and sequence to ensure an overall dramatic unity within the piece.

Finally, or should that be until next time!

This brief run through of tone brings me to the end of this framework of elements, and questions, for bringing comedic works to the screen.

Many original works obviously do not contain all these elements, and it is the screen adaptor’s choices which will determine not only whether people feel the work is true to the original, but also coherent within itself.

Adaptation may be the dominant form of contemporary feature film success, and comedies may dominate television series, but as these few examples have illustrated, this does not make them easy.

I hope these few notes will help you steer a path through the tangled web we weave, called dramatic narrative, to some great adaptations in the future.

You can watch ‘Hogfather’ at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaOHaBaKq-8

Death in Hogfather

THE END
Please add your own journeys of adaptation.
P.S. If you did not get the umbrella reference check out ‘Mary Poppins’ – it will be on over Christmas somewhere.

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Sources of ideas – inspiration

Posted on 21/11/2014 by Phil

Sources of Inspiration

On Quora this week someone wrote they had a great film idea, and just needed someone else to write it up! The problem, as one reply noted, is everyone has at least one great idea for a film, but not everyone turns that idea into a film, a novel, a play, a painting, photograph, song, illustration, or animation.

The truth is most ideas are not really solid ideas, but sources of inspiration, a starting point on a creative journey, which may or may not be successful, and/or rewarding.

This blog is about the possible sources of inspiration for those who want to have more than one idea. It is a simple list of the main sources, along with a few guidelines on how to use them, and the pitfalls to avoid.

Try a few out, enjoy the process, and then you will not be left wondering if you have only one great idea.

1. Adaptation

Adaptation involves changing the medium being used from one form to another. Novels and short stories continue to be the source of the majority of adaptations for film and TV. However, comic books, video games, cartoons, poetry, biographies, songs, and graphic novels have all been used on more than one occasion to produce works inn other mediums.

The most important things to discover before you embark on an adaptation is, ‘Who owns the rights?’ and, ‘Are they available for adaptation?’ Undertaking an adaptation without clearing the rights has proven to be a very frustrating experience for many new writers. It can also prove very expensive for producers.

The process of creating an adaption is the same as if you were starting with an original idea. Many adapters have said that you have to start afresh, creating an original work using the original source as research material. Obviously in some cases the original is so well known, or loved, that the adaptation sticks very closely to the original but you only have to look at the new version of Sherlock Holmes stories to see how even in this sort of scenario things can be pushed a long way.

“Look you can’t be faithful to the book. Or if you’re faithful to the book, it’s only coincidental. You’ve got to be faithful to your audience.” Nunnally Johnson, screenwriter – Grapes of Wrath, The Moon is Down, the True Story of Jesse James and The Dirty Dozen.

“The first question for anyone transposing a book to the screen is, how to smash up the original and do it justice in another way” Jeanette Winterson

2. Contemporary True Stories

These stories are the basis of many television dramas, crime fiction, and feature films. The question of rights applies equally here, though instead of resting with the creators of work they rest with participants in, and in some cases, the journalists who have reported on, the events. Note: this obviously only applies to recent true stories for historical true stories see the note below.

The key issue is, ‘How much of the material you wish to use in your screenplay is in the public domain?’ The public domain is where material is available to the general public. This may be obtained from various sources including newspaper and magazine articles, court records, and some government records. (For a detailed view on how this works in your country consult a lawyer)

Many true-life stories have been used, based upon public domain material, without any permissions being granted by the people involved. However, it is advisable if you are writing about actual events to obtain a written option on people’s stories or accounts of events prior to committing to the work. In making documentaries, a waiver is normally signed by participants to ensure the documentary maker can use any material they record.

The form of an option deal or waiver can be obtained from producer’s organisations or a good media lawyer. They can also be found in standard books on film or television production or legal aspects of journalism (See ‘The Option and Purchase Agreement’ in Writing Docudrama, Alan Rosenthal, Focal Press, 1995.)

Just fictionalising a story may not protect you from being sued if you are seen to have defamed someone or invaded their privacy. The laws on these areas vary from country to country so you need to consult a lawyer to ensure you are operating within the appropriate legal framework.

Another potential problem with true stories is that lots of other writers read the same newspapers, books, etc., and create a work based on the same story.

3. Historical Events

History is everything, which happened before today: a rich source of stories.

However, if it requires contemporary locations and costumes, history is expensive to recreate. (A standard film industry estimate is that a historical setting increases the budget by a third.). Which is why so many historical narratives start off as novels, or graphic novels.

However a work set ten years ago will not generally be seen as historical as finding locations, and costumes for this period is not difficult, yet. However, setting a screen work thirty to forty years ago would prove more difficult. It would therefore generally be seen as an historical piece.

One answer to this problem may be to approach the material from a low-budget perspective e.g. in film ‘Orlando’, or, ‘l, the Worst of All’ or to work in animation or on stage, where costs can be kept down. This solution allows you the chance to see the drama realised, but requires a very distinct, and often dialogue-based, solution to the narrative problems imposed.

The issue of copyright can prove problematic for historical true stories if an author has written the definitive book on a person or event, and you have not obtained the rights to their book, you may need to undertake extensive research yourself to avoid copyright infringement issues. As with all things involving copyright it is best to seek advice – your local writers union or guild may be able to help you on this.

4. Future Events

The predicting of what might happen in the distant future has always been a source of stories for creatives. This often results in a major piece of creative work with whole worlds and peoples having to be invented e.g. ‘Star Wars’; Asimov’s ‘Robot’ series.

A significant number of science fiction works have been set in the near future: e.g. ‘Jurassic Park’, ‘Alphaville’. Or they have brought something from far away into our contemporary life: e.g. ’Invasion of the Body Snatchers’; ‘Starman’.

The same issue of cost applies here as it does to historically based work. With low-budget an option: e.g. ‘Dark Star’ or ‘Red Dwarf.

These first four sources suggest avenues for your research. They also often contain the kernel of a main story. The following sources of inspiration don’t give you quite so much.

5. Existing Screen Material

Existing works can provide ideas for new original screen works. What you are looking for in existing screen works are stories, characters or events, which act as a source for a new story, or theme, you can then explore. This stimulus doesn’t have to be another fictional narrative. It could be part of a documentary, a news item, or even another drama. Fairytales, myths and fables are also great stimulus for screen ideas (see Aronson, L, Screenwriting updated pp. 23-30).

Many creative works are designed with sequels in mind. If you receive a commission to create a sequel, another version, the problem is you will usually be required to write to someone else’s requirements. The compromises that involves may well not fit your creative inclinations, which can lead to more perspiration than inspiration!

6. Headlines

Headlines in newspapers, magazines, or journals, are short, sharp phrases, sometimes of only one word, which grab your attention. They may suggest stories, characters or situations, worth developing.

7. Visual and audio material

Given the significance of visuals in contemporary life it is hardly surprising that visual material is often a good starting point for ideas. Finding a way to randomly select images is key as then you can engage with the stimulus afresh. Going onto image libraries such as Getty Images enable you to do this .

Some writers find audio more stimulating.

In fact, all senses can be used to stimulate the imagination.

Colour and Light Inspire

8. Dreams

Many creatives have started their projects on the basis of dreams, both those remembered from sleep, and daydreams, when imaginary scenarios suddenly enter your imagination.

The trick here is to have a notebook close at hand at all times, electronic or physical, especially before going to sleep and first thing after waking up, and note down all those things you can remember.

9. The ‘What If?’ Scenario

This is one for when you are stranded at a railway station, or completely stuck for a new idea. Ask, ‘What if…’ and then add the most outrageous, funny, absurd thing that comes into your mind. Then apply it to an everyday situation or character.

The key thing with all these sources of inspiration is to treat them as a means of generating lots of ideas but realise that none of them will be good or bad at this stage. Keep the critical ‘voice’ in the back of your head gagged while you do generate ideas. There will be time later to review and develop them or reject them later.

10. Your own life

Often used phrases from established creatives, include ‘Write what you know, or Use your own life’ These phrases should view carry a major creative warning – ‘THIS DOES NOT MEAN, JUST RECREATE SOME RECENT ASPECT OF YOUR OWN LIFE’.

Anyone who has ever worked in development, read plies of unpublished work, scanned YouTube quickly realises that one of the first mistakes most people make is to create a work, based upon a series of episodic moments in their life. These outpourings generally fail dramatically, and the reason they fail is because the source material is flawed.

Life does not, in most people’s experience of it, have neat dramatic structures, nor do we understand why everyone does what they do, or even why things happen. If we did, then we would lose one the most significant appeals of creative works – its ability to provide some means of working out why some aspects of life are as they are.

In addition to this, most creatives are too emotionally involved in their own life experiences to be able to amend them or change them for the sake of a dramatic story, or character development.

Finally, we experience people from one perspective – our own. Being able to see beyond your own position is often key to creating a great work.

11. ‘Use what you know’

There are three distinct aspects of ‘use what you know’ which are fundamental to creativity and should be central to any creative’s approach to new work.

i) Knowing the nature of particular types of work.

If you want to write thriller, depict a family comedy, create an investigative documentary, or any other type of work, you need to understand the basic parameters of this particular type of work, as it is currently used, and work with them.

Far too many creatives attempt works without having grasped even the basic conventions of the type of screen work, which they claim to be creating.

ii) Knowing the emotions you are working with.

We engage with creative works, and expect to have emotional responses, as well as intellectual ones. These vary enormously from being intrigued, and surprised to being thrilled, and scared. We may smile, laugh, cry, or become angry.
However, to read most screenplays, walk around most galleries, or sit in most theatres, you would think that major emotion was the last thing the creators ever intended to engage. Instead, developing boredom or confusion in the reader/audience/viewer seems to be the major aim!

Any work can use emotion to engage a reader, or an audience. Not only emotion in terms of what the characters are experiencing but also the narrative needs to engage the audience emotionally, and keep them involved.

iii) Knowing the subject matter

One of the major criticisms of many works is that they are ‘a bit thin’. By this people mean there may well be a theme, a story and characters developing through the work, but how it is expressed is unoriginal, repetitive, or just strung out for far too long. The major reason for this is undoubtedly the lack of knowledge the creator has of the world of the work. They simply haven’t done enough research and don’t know the world well enough in order to generate the multiple ideas that are required if a work is to engage.

These eleven points are not comprehensive but I hope this overview gives you enough different approaches to begin to come up with ideas of your own.

You will still, of course, have to develop them into a great work.

ADD your own story about where you found a great idea.

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What do TV companies want?

Posted on 14/11/2014 by Phil

Television commissioners from Europe and a couple of Asian networks revealed their current desires for programmes this week in the latest MIPCOM publication TOP DRAMA BUYERS 2014. Here I will attempt to provide some insights into what these comments from the people who buy for our television networks, mean for those of us who create content. At first it all looks very predictable. The top two genres on almost everyone’s list are crime and period dramas., with Sci-Fi and Comedy a close second. Add to this the dominant desire for mini-series, even ahead of long-running series, and you start to see the pattern which has been created by the major successes internationally over the last few years.

The ongoing impact of HBO series, and the move of major US film talent to television has made US series still dominate buyers minds. However, the success of Scandinavian drama (The Killing, Wallander), Isreali (Homeland) and UK (New Sherlock,Downtown Abbey) has clearly opened up the market to non-US programmimg. This is good news for those aiming to write distinctive, darker thriller/crime based material, developing a period drama with contemporary resonance through either soap/romance angles or Sci-Fi with action and thriller overtones. However, comedy remains solidly in the sit-com realm for most buyers apart from Comedy Central – who just want “Comedy.Comedy, Comedy” in any form.

At Mip-Com the market is dominated by finished programmes but a few channels – especially the newer entrants e.g. SVOD, VOD, and online multi-channel networks e.g Microsoft and Canal+ are very open to early stage proposals, and the only ones seriously looking to mobile and web series. This diversity of channels is probably the most heartening aspect of this buyers’ guide. It shows that the future, while still at the moment dominated by the established broadcasters with their well established audience profiles e.g. “late afternoon”, also contains content hungry new players who need to work with non-established talent to build audiences, and fill their niche channels with creative content.

This niche issue is one which applies to all TV channels though. All programmes have specific audiences and time slots. As a result the buyers stated they really appreciated people who had done their research, knew what the channel was about, and saw how the programme they were pitching might fit, and where, in the company’s schedules. So though diversity is also reflected in the way people wanted to be approached from a trailer plus first episode to a simple “A meets B’ pitch, the need for research as to who might like your idea, after you have developed it, is crucial to saving time, and looking professional.

For the guide go to http://www.my-mip.com/en/resource-centre/white-papers/what-do-drama-buyers-want/?utm_source=clnr&utm_medium=md_emailing&utm_campaign=Mipcom2014_TVTrends_6_Novembre

All the best with you online series/serial ideas.

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