Cutting my teeth as a fi lm-maker, I wanted to test myself without falling back on dialogue. This is as hard at the script stage as at the directing stage.
James Condon: Writer/Director Snowed Under 2008
AV•BASICS FILM MAKING: SCREENWRITIING TB
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Alisha McMahon > James Condon> Thomas Gladstone and Alexander Johnson
Where did your ideas come from?
At the time of writing I wasn’t aware of my inspiration. It came out of being a fi rst-year undergraduate and working a lot and writing in a Starbucks at lunchtimes in Hull. It came out of the time pressures.
The inspiration was hidden but looking back it was more to do with my life at the time.
Your idea was very personal; how did you make it accessible for an audience?
The subject is potentially dangerous for a writer – being too personal. It’s a bit tricky being too aware too early on of how personal things are. Better if it’s seeping through your subconscious.
A good story will appear to spring out of nowhere, but looking at it later and refi ning it will make it more audience-friendly.
Where did you start the writing process?
I started with a 25-word punchy log line... once I’d given it enough in that format it moved to a step treatment. I used a log line but went through a number of different log lines. Crossing them out. If it’s not right at that stage then it’s not going to work later.
What came next?
Then I went to a story beat/draft. A very rough treatment. The idea lent itself to the structure. Because I was writing the story with a view to making a punchy story when I was fi ltering it, I was selecting it for that form so it was straightforward to move to a step outline.
Did following the conventional developmental process help you with structure?
There was no particular problem with the structure. It was what lent itself to the idea at the time.
How did you prepare for your pitch?
The idea had been worked through before the pitch. When the idea originated, I had to pitch an idea and take it to the group and informally pitched it to the crew. I had to pitch over the phone – and was lucky because I had a very punchy log line – I could say what it was about, who it was about and why we should be interested in this – the poster/back of DVD blurb.
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Screenwriters: unscripted
James Condon
How did you develop your characters?
Dealing with one character mainly helped. There is only one scene where two characters interact. The dialogue couldn’t be frivolous.
Not that it ever should be in any fi lm! With so many scenes [featuring]
one person on his own, it forced having to think carefully about how the fi lm would show what’s happening. It was important to keep thinking about the original concept and what the fi lm was actually about.
How did you contend with dialogue – the hardest part of screenwriting?
Cutting my teeth as a fi lm-maker, I wanted to test myself without falling back on dialogue. This is as hard at the script stage as the directing stage.
How quickly did you get to the fi rst draft?
The treatment very quickly sprung into a fi rst draft – the idea was fully structured in these earlier processes. Spending a long time on the idea meant I’d been through a lot of draft ideas and changes before I wrote anything.
I notice you use cards with scenes on them.
It helps organise my thoughts and move things around before starting to write. You can see what happens to the story like that.
And how did you develop your script into draft one and beyond?
I went through three initial drafts and then tried to impose things on it. I then went back to the initial draft. The process was then broken into two distinct drafts. The ending changed the most. Initially, it had a suspenseful ending, but the crew thought it would be better being lighter. I was urged to give it a try, but it made the ending something and nothing. I reined it back to its original tone.
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Alisha McMahon > James Condon> Thomas Gladstone and Alexander Johnson
How do you think an audience responded to your work when it was made and appeared on a screen?
Did the audience get it? The audience seems split down the middle about what happened. The fact that [the story] needed to be explained is a failing of the fi lm. Endings are so important – especially with short fi lms – fi lms need to lead to[wards] that, otherwise [they] won’t mean anything.
The ending works and people enjoyed the fi lm, but being true to your original ideas can be the best way. If you change one thing it forces you to look back at everything you’ve written.
Snowed Under centres on a single character trapped in an offi ce – trapped in more ways than one. With supernatural overtones, the fi lm works as a metaphor for the experience of being constrained by circumstance.
AV•BASICS FILM MAKING: SCREENWRITIING TB
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Screenwriters: unscripted