The screen story is now finished, so it’s off to the editors. We went through a period of hating it, but have come out of the other side and now like what we have done. Sitting down and thinking about what we have written we feel the story has been fully explored, and we know we cannot add or improve any of it without massive rewrites. So it there, all done and now we can start turning it into a script. In its raw from the script will be about 40-50 pages, however the prose can be reduced and a few scenes combined, possible even take out a minor character. However that’s yet to come and it’s the story that the most important. I have done the first 4 pages of the first draft of the script, and from the development work on the screen story it’s coming together fantastically, the characters and story are coming right off the page.

One we have been through a few drafts of the script we can then start properly scouting locations, and tracking down actors. We’re going to use a 2 tier actor list, the top tier is the ideal actors from the UK, this list is most improbable, the second tier is going to be local actors which is more probable and would help promote the film industry in Wales.

There is a lot of work still to come, but with the script coming together now it all seems more possible than when we first started. We’re going to start looking at local crew and talent for everything, as our budget is currently nil, we are looking for people wanting a challenge and to try something new.

I have spent most of the morning looking in to video codec’s and encoding, though I would love to film edit and work in 4:4:4 samples, I feel that 4:2:2 might be the limits of my editing system. Though I am getting a 6 terabyte raid array for doing this film on so dependant of the data throughput I might be able to push 4:4:4. I have also been looking at colour depth; 8-bit is good but for that highly polished look 10-bit is the only way to go.  Though this means more bandwidth considerations, if I can work in 10-bit I’ll do it. Well I know I can work in 32-bit colour on my editing system, but the final output I’ll be looking at 10-bit 4:4:4 1920×1080 progressive. At the moment I’m testing a series of codec’s for storage of the original footage and CG work, though I may just request the CG as still images then it makes it easier for everyone.

At the moment my PC is rendering out a number of HD samples to test codec’s here are some results:

Black Magic: 10-bit colour depth 4:4:4 samples, no compression.
Huff YUV: 8-bit colour depth 4:4:4 samples, lossless compression.
AVI uncompressed: 8-bit colour depth, 4:2:2 samples, no compression.
Quicktime uncompressed: 10-bit colour depth, 4:2:2 samples, no compression.

On the face of it Black Magic wins, however in tests it eats hard drive bandwidth, so unless the 6tb array can keep up then it’s probably only going to be a final transport codec. Huff YUV I have used before but only for SD video, and it halved the file size, which is great when you cost limited. However in preliminary tests Huff YUV struggled to work properly, however if I can get it to work, it might do for storage of original files and CG layers, then in rendering output to Black Magic, to maximise the colour depth when they layers are flattened. AVI uncompressed is okay, but by far the worst, so unless I’m really stuck for a stable fast codec I’m not going to consider it. The Quicktime codec is interesting, and this might be an option depending on the camera we use and its output, 4:2:2 is acceptable if the original footage is in the same sample ratios. All if this is dependant of the max throughput of the raid array, but first choice is Black Magic, second Huff YUV and finally Quicktime uncompressed. Redcode is probably out of the question as we need to get an uncompressed output from the camera, and the Red One can’t do that yet. Though the Scarlet 2k might be an option.

In other news we have gotten a lot of feedback on the screen story and have implemented as much as makes sense. The first part of act 2 has had a major sub plot added and the slow scenes removed. Act one is pretty much sorted, Act two has more action and reflects better the hopelessness of the characters situation, and brings in the consequences of a change in a Significant Event in time. One more read through then it’s on to working out the characterisation getting the dialogue tight and on track. Hopefully by Monday the story will be off to our editor, and when we get it back it’s over to Ian Watson (Screen story: A.I. Artificial Intelligence).

One last thing, this is a bit of a gripe at women on film and TV especially in Sci-Fi and action roles. Most women are written as men with boobs they act like men talk like men and react like men. There is no subtlety to them or their actions. Alice our main character is written as a woman and developed by a woman. She is a strong female role-model, but not by being a man with boobs, by being a woman and succeeding in her actions in a positive manner.

Well after a lot of work over the last few weeks, the screen story / short novella is complete. We hit about 17.5k words, so just comes in the novella category. This is now out to our crews to get feedback and to see what they think. Let’s hope they don’t run and hide in the corner.

Looking for sponsorship is going well; a few places are interested, so let’s hope it goes to the next stage. If not we have at least gotten an awareness of the film out to these places. If you are interested in helping a hand full of ambitious students, become better film makers and one day great film makers, were no opposed to finding ways we can help each other out.

On the PR front we have had a meeting with our PR advisor and been told where we should be looking at this early stage. So over the next week it’s finding more places we can send our Press release to. Must remember all publicity is good.

Also we have had some very positive feedback from one of our producer friends; they like the idea, and will tuck into the novella over the next week. So fingers crossed we can pull something out of the hat, that isn’t a rabbit.

Well back to the grind.