Good news and further feedback

July 16, 2011

Just a brief update on a couple of small but significant developments.

In relation to Practice in Context; Paul Gravett – one of my aforementioned professional contacts – unexpectedly got back to me and it looks like there’ll be an opportunity for a face to face in the near future! As someone whose written books I’ve referred to on several occasions and had in depth involvement with comics publishing for over two decades he’ll definitely be an invaluable source in my studies. In the meantime I need to make sure my planned questions are as concise and pertinent as possible.

Of less exciting but still fair importance; I received additional feedback on my script from a good friend (thanks Xellun!). I’m sure this would appear to suggest bias but I’m confident the criticism was honest, particularly as the positive and negative points identified are very similar to last set of feedback I got. The growing consensus appears to be that the final act of the story has too much superfluous dialogue, while a key antagonist’s reveal has been described – to quote the professional terminology used by both sources – as a bit of a “Scooby-Doo”…

It’s thankfully all fixable with no severe structural problems requiring drastic narrative alterations. There will certainly be tweaking aplenty before the pages are drawn, but it’s reassuring to hear the narrative basis is as sound as I’d hoped.

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Posted by Ozy

Assessment

June 6, 2011

As expected, in light of my imminent module assessment the last week or so has been devoted to pulling together all my research and justifying the general direction of the project thus far. No bad thing as it made me stop for a moment and think about the strengths and weaknesses in my work as a whole, considering exactly what works and – perhaps more importantly – what doesn’t.

The area of my project I’m most satisfied with over the last few months is probably my study of film noir and how remarkably well its filtered into the sci-fi side of things. I realise the influence might not be readily apparent in my opening pages but I get the feeling that this research will affect the final work for the better bringing greater depth, originality and understanding of cyberpunk’s cinematic ancestry to the graphic.

At the same time I feel that  I may have been leaning a little too hard on film based research rather than theory, novels and my chosen medium; comics. This isn’t to say I’ll be forbidding myself from researching video based sources as there’s still an enormous wealth of material in that area I’d like to study, but I’ll be making an effort to branch out into more diverse mediums and sources in future.

Outside of my research, a recent development of key importance is receiving some professional feedback on my latest draft of the script (a big thankyou to Dave for that). While the response has largely been favourable and the structure as whole isn’t particularly problematic criticism has been made of unnecessary dialogue and exposition in the final act; something I’ll be looking to remedy before it comes to producing the actual pages.

I will however be continuing with production as the opening scenes appear to be solid and it seems important that I power forward and keep things moving. As I’ve mentioned before, I could remain in preproduction for a lifetime and still not be 100% happy with the preparations. Anyhow, all being well I should have a new page up sometime this weekend and be back to business as usual again.

Oh, and on a sidenote I’ve finally got my hands on a usable font program, hurrah! Special thanks to fellow MA student Havi for that one, my dialogue at least will be produced much quicker from now on :)

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Posted by Ozy

Script: 1st Draft Complete

April 26, 2011

Forgive the lack of updates over the past week or so, while I haven’t been posting I have kept myself busy…

With the intention being to start planning and drawing pages next month, I decided to prioritize and focus on completing the script I’d formerly been piecing together alongside my concepts and research. As important as all other aspects of the project are, without a script none of it would count for much. Perhaps referring to it as ‘1st Draft’ is a little misleading since I reworked a lot of the material before I wrapping it up. In many ways this might be considered script version 1.5 given the number of rewrites the earlier sections have seen, though being completely honest a few of the later scenes and their dialogue could still use a little more polish before I take it into production.

What I am confident of though is that structurally speaking the script is sound, following a satisfying arc of developments up to the climax and conclusion. It’s still got a few problems but the story feels like it’s firmly in place now with the issues being in the surface details rather than its thematic DNA so to speak.

As you can likely see with the sample above the format is relatively loose compared to a typical film script but this didn’t strike me as an issue. While I have written more rigidly organised scripts in the past, since this is primarily for myself with a comic in mind instead of a film I felt like something closer to prose would be more fitting, while generally being easier to write.

My biggest worry right now is the length, as running around 83 pages it’s somewhat bigger than I’d planned; it’s all well and good planning to write a 50-60 page script, but once you find a flow it’s difficult to suddenly put the brakes on. That’s not to say I believe it’s unmanageable with over a year set aside for production, but it will require discipline on my part. I’m taking a risk, but I’d rather that than playing it safe with a more modest script I’m dissatisfied with.

It’s also worth baring in mind that much of the content is description (something I’m often guilty of overdoing) while should my schedule go awry there’s a fair amount of content I could afford to cut away without impacting the larger story much. It remains shorter than your typical feature film at least and changes are pretty much guaranteed when it comes to the drawing.

For now I’m focusing on refining a second draft for next week to make sure it’s as solid as possible when I start the actual pages. At the very least I’ve organised my ideas into something coherent now, bringing me significantly closer to realising this thing :)

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Posted by Ozy