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(EDITED – the first version of this graphic stated Vodafone were evading £5.75bn rather than £4.75bn. This one has the correct numbers.)

I know I’m late to the party on this, and that you’ve probably seen it already.

But sometimes, some days, something like this happens to restore my faith in humanity, and the sheer beauty and wonder of the people living on this Earth makes me cry.

 

More info at the Caine’s Arcade website

Well, lookey-here. It’s only the trailer for Dan Turner‘s new film! Script edited by Jason Arnopp too.

Keep an eye on those two young rascals. They’ll be going far.

IMDb

So m’learned colleague Natt has blogged about the recent fracas in the Commons Select Committee.

For those who missed it, here’s what happened:

Rupert and James Murdoch were answering to a Commons Select Committee about what was known by them about phone hacking at the News of the World, and the possibility of a cover up within that organisation. Several fascinating things came out.

Towards the end of that questioning, some fucknut attempted to put a shaving foam pie in Rupert Murdoch’s face. Not only did he fail, he was roundly slapped by Wendi Deng, Mr Murdoch’s wife.

Good.

Natt’s opinion, given in full here is, as far as I understand it, as follows:

1. Oh go on. It was just a little bit funny.
2. There are other problems with that select committee which you should get more angry about.

Taking them in order:

1. No, it wasn’t.

Hitting an 80-year-old man in the face with a custard pie isn’t funny. Missing an 80-year-old man in the face with a custard pie isn’t funny. Even disregarding the 80-year-old thing, custard pies aren’t funny at the best of time, and in the middle of a select committee, interrupting that select committee isn’t funny because it’s not the time or place.

It wouldn’t have been funny if he’d gone up to him and farted, it wouldn’t have been funny if he’d mimed, it wouldn’t have been funny if he’d stood up in the middle of that meeting and just that moment come up with the greatest Wildean aphorism ever about the corruption of the police and politicians and their terrible co-dependence on tabloid journalists.

It wouldn’t have been funny if he was Bill Hicks himself come down from heaven with a new routine that was better than all his others put together.

Because there’s a time and a place for everything. And a Select Committee interrogating Rupert and James Murdoch about the possible criminality of their company and how endemic it may have been is not the time or place for an interruption of that manner.

2. The interruption really and truly is the thing to get angry about.

Now, it’s entirely correct that the committee (with the notable exception of Tom Watson) weren’t the greatest interrogators ever.

But that does not excuse interrupting an event in which the Murdochs, let us not forget, were being held to account.

Now, you could certainly claim that they weren’t being held to account well. That’s your right.

It is not your right to interrupt that event because you don’t like someone there.
It is not your right to interrupt that event because you hate or despise someone there.
It is not your right to interrupt that event because you wish to show that they, too, are only human.
It is not your right to commit an act of surrealism to expose a surreal process.

None of these excuses matter.

They were being held to account, and you stopped that.

It gave Murdoch the chance to read his prepared statement. It gave people sympathy for Murdoch. For fuck’s sake, it gave me sympathy for Murdoch.

Maybe it wasn’t going as well as you liked, maybe Murdoch really is the evil man that you see in your head every waking hour, but that doesn’t matter.

Because we have a fucking process. It’s what separates us from the fucking animals.

Due process was being followed. Justice was being done, and being seen to be done.

And then, at the end of it, some fucknut comes up with a shaving-cream pie and proves his disrespect, not just for Rupert Murdoch, but for every single person who thinks that, yes, maybe justice can be done. Not instantaneously, but eventually, and correctly, and following due process of law.

So what justice should be meted out to someone with no respect for due process and the rule of law at all?

I’m not usually a believer in eye-for-an-eye justice. It leaves us all blind in the end.

However, if every time Jonathan May-Bowles were to attempt to perform a comedy routine anywhere in the world, someone were to stick a cream pie in his face?

I wouldn’t be in the slightest bit sad.

Still wouldn’t be fucking funny.

If you haven’t seen this yet, it’s embedded below. Watch it now, because there be spoilers ahead. I’ll wait.

Right. So, what’s so good about that then, eh? It’s just a zombie attack done backwards, right?

Wrong. It’s a fucking masterpiece of emotional film-making, is what. Let me talk you through it.

Fade in close on an eye. Elegiac music. We don’t know where we are yet. Camera pulls back ad rotates to reveal a young girl, blood-spattered, obviously dead, lying on the ground. In the background, out-of-focus, something is flailing about, obviously on fire.

So what we have here is intense curiosity, set up from the get-go. Why is she dead? What the hell is the flailing, burning thing? What’s going on here? The audience wants to know more already.

Snap-cuts of a young girl running along a corridor and gasping for breath. First her point-of-view, then an objective point-of-view of her legs running, then the point-of-view of something chasing her as she looks back over. We can’t tell if it’s the same girl or not until the third shot.

Then, suddenly, shockingly, the girl comes to life, rolls over, and – second shock – starts flying into the air, accompanied by shattered glass. At this point it becomes apparent that time is running backwards.

The first question: Why is she dead? has been answered, and a new question: How did she fall? is posed. We’re also gifted our first shot of the location. It’s an island, and she’s fallen from a hotel window.

Intercut her being chased. This time we can see her pursuers – half a dozen men stumbling after her. Out of focus. Again, we can’t see them.

The glass re-assembles, and we see her grab onto a man’s back, presumably her father, who is swinging her around.

At this point we have our first chance to put together a theory about what’s going on – look at his mouth there. We can’t see what he’s doing, but the mouth is in the right shape for laughter. He’s swinging around in a hotel room, with his daughter on his back. It’s a game that’s gone wrong, she’s let go and smashed through the window. Note how the blood disappears behind them as they twirl, so that this way, in reverse, it looks like they’re laughing and playing, a happy family.

The chase continues, and this time we see the pursuers. Still stumbling, close behind her, gaining. It’s obvious now that this happens before the reverse-time incidents.

In the hotel room, from out of shot, people come back to life. They’re using the fact that time’s running backwards to show dead people coming back to life – a major signifier of zombie films. Confirmed factually as we start to see more of the people in the hotel room and the chasers are all covered with wounds. The wider shot of the hotel room shows that it’s covered in blood spatters.

Again, we see the father and daughter, and as they continue to twirl it becomes obvious that he’s covered in his own blood, because she’s biting into his neck. Denial of the previous image and the play-gone-wrong theory, opening a new story – they’re not playing, she’s trying to tear his throat out.

New character introduced – a woman with a knife, glanced at previously as she came out from under a wave of bodies, now watching the father and daughter with an expression of horror. Obviously wife. The daughter jumps backwards from her father’s back onto the bed, with a little bounce. Using again a signifier of family play – jumping on beds – for emotional resonance.

In the jump-cuts, one of the zombies has caught up with the running girl, just outside a hotel room, setting up the (correct) expectation that it’s the hotel room we’re running the main story in.

The mother looks shocked and terrified, as her child falls back on the bed and stops moving. Again, see how the emotion plays – watching it this way, in reverse, her child has just died and the emotional hit being delivered still works.

In the jump cuts, a zombie has the girl and is pulling her away from safety. Suspense. Will anyone save her? The door opens and bright light floods into the corridor for the first time, signifying safety. We can even see see people’s feet, moving towards her for the rescue.

In the hotel room, it’s completely obvious by this point that we’re in a zombie movie. In the past, the girl screams as she’s bitten. The audience re-focusses its attention on the early scenes. All questions have been answered. We know what’s happened, and why.

Blood clears from the hotel room; the zombies are pushed out in reverse. One snarls through the door. Reading the film text in this direction, the father and mother have vanquished the monsters. Uplifting feeling, as one snarls through the door which has just been barred with an axe. Again, watch the father’s face as the zombies leave. In this direction, that’s a cry of triumph as he forces them out, successfully protecting his family. The mother goes to the bed, and we read it as checking to see her daughter is all right.

In the corridor, the father grabs the axe. And now, because he’s emerging from the door that he’s standing at in the reversed film, the shot juxtaposition says that he’s taking the battle to the enemy. The two of them take turns holding their child, and we read that as making sure that she’s safe. There’s no blood visible when her father holds her, so it reads like she’s sleeping.

Then he puts her down, and we see the expression of love on both their faces.

And then the last shot is of him withdrawing his hand completely, leaving her alone.

Finally, the shots of the happy, safe, family.

But we know that time has been running backwards throughout. Watched this way, the emotional experience is that everyone is saved. But rationally, we realise that it’s not that way. And it’s that terrible juxtaposition between presentation and content caused by time running in reverse that makes this one of the most emotionally moving short films I’ve ever seen.

Damn it. Crying again now.

Over at his blog, the delightful Jason Arnopp has introduced a new feature for the procrastinating writers of this world.

It’s called Tell Arnopp, and it works like this:

Whenever you’ve completed your writing for the day, you email him saying the type of project you’ve worked on – “World War II Drama” – and the number of pages you’ve written – “Ten”.

(Nothing more than that, mind, just in case he writes something similar one day, and you happen to be a crazy person.)

Arnopp then guarantees that he will read these messages, and will thus become aware of the fact that you’ve done your work for the day. And you will be aware that he’s aware that you’ve done your work for the day.

You therefore know that someone cares about whether or not you’ve been writing rather than procrastinating, without you having to write it down on your blog, twitter, facebook, or significant other. Which can be a bit exposing for some people.

He hopes that this will encourage you to write, as if you don’t do your pages, somewhere in the depths of his brain he will know. And you will thus be encouraged to write today, and every day from now on.

I’d like, though, to offer an easier alternative. It’s called Don’t Tell Beckley, and it works like this:

You don’t send me a damn thing.
I know that you haven’t done enough work today.

My pleasure.

Danny Stack did a brilliant series of posts last year called Professional Screenwriter. It’s ten blogsworth of advice about how to succeed as a writer and it is, as the kids say, full of win.

If you haven’t read them already, you can get ’em here:

Reading
Writing
Networking
Industry Insider
Get an Agent
Discipline
Attitude
Choosing Work
In the Know
Doing the Do

In addition to that, James Moran has revealed the big secret of how to be a writer. It’s four words long, and it’s answered in the very first question of his enormous writing FAQ.

So, there you go. Those eleven posts are all you need to read about how to become a writer.

But there’s a whole bunch of other useful stuff, too. Things that you can do to make your life easier, that aren’t exactly about writing itself, or how to make a career of it, but will come in really useful over the years ahead.

So, in no particular order, here are the other writing secrets.

Learn Proofing Marks

When you’re working on a draft, you need to mark it up with your notes: delete this, move that to there, add in a whole bunch of stuff here.

The typesetting industry has a standard set of marks, which are easy to read and which anyone in the print industry can understand – once you learn them then you’ll be able to mark up changes to your own drafts quickly and clearly.

This page introduces the basic marks and links to a two-page PDF which you can print out and keep next to your desk.

Learn to touch type – preferably using a Dvorak keyboard

Touch typing is faster than pick-and-peck, which means you can get the words out faster when you’re drafting, and change them faster when you’re revising. There’s nothing more annoying than having the right words in your head and simply not being able to get them written quickly enough.

There is one problem with learning to type, though, and it’s that the QWERTY keyboard is not a good design for touch-typists.

The Dvorak keyboard was created in 1932, and was specifically designed to make touch-typing easier. As well as increasing your typing speed, it’s easier to learn. And as your fingers don’t move so much across the keyboard (because the keys are in sensible places), many writers (myself included) have also found that it reduces symptoms of RSI.

It takes less than five minutes to switch your computer to a Dvorak layout, and you can find Dvorak typing tutors here.

Buy a laser printer

You might have had a printer thrown in when you bought your computer. Probably a colour one, these days.

But scripts aren’t printed in colour. And you’re going to be printing an awful lot of scripts.

You can buy a laser printer for less than a hundred quid, and it’ll save you money in the long run.

A laser printer cartridge is more expensive than an inkjet one, but it lasts longer. A lot longer. And over the life of the printer, that means it’s actually cheaper to have a laser printer.

Get a sensible email address

While I’m certain that cat_lover573@yahoo.co.uk is indeed a lovely email address that expresses your personality perfectly, it doesn’t exactly scream Scriptwriting Professional.

firstname.lastname is a good bet. It’s also easy to remember.

In an ideal world, you’d have your own domain (the .com thing) and maybe even put a website there saying who you are. Failing that, the largest free email providers are Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail.

Act

As a screenwriter, actors are going to have to read your words and perform your actions at some point.

Taking an acting class or performing in some amateur theatre productions will give you an excellent grounding in some of the joys and problems of that.

A little bit of acting experience will not only help you to understand how an actor constructs their performance around the text, it’ll help you to provide character and, yes, even motivation.

Stand up

If you’re a comedy writer, do a couple of sets of stand-up. Many comedy clubs have open mic nights where you can get up on stage and perform for five or ten minutes. (Five minutes is more than long enough for your first set.) Performing your own material is an excellent way to hone your skills on seeing where the laughs are, and getting more.

You’re not going to be as good a standup or actor as anyone who does it for a living. But what you will get is new tools for your writing toolbox.

Learn basic typographical design

The Non-Designer’s Design Book is a book which teaches the basics – and just the basics – of print design.

We’re not talking about anything fussy or fancy-schmancy here. Just some easy ways of laying out your text on a page to make it look nicer.

It won’t help you with scripts – they have a standard layout for a very good reason – but for things like covering letters, show bibles, or pitch documents, being able to lay them out in a sensible, beautiful, easy-to-read way will set you ahead of the pack.

So there you have it. Seven useful writing tips that have nothing to do with writing.

William M Akers, writer of Your Screenplay Sucks! is going to be in London in the next couple of weeks.

Anyhoo, turns out he’s doing a workshop at the Met Film School on the evening of Thursday 2nd July at 6:30pm. Looks like it might be interesting.

Fifteen quid cash on the door to get in, and you need to book a ticket beforehand. Details are here.

He also has a blog.

Creator/Showrunner/Sometime Blogger Josh Friedman of Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles has posted about what it’s like being on the bubble.

Sadly, the show didn’t get renewed.

“Everyone says having your show cancelled is like a death but I’ve been dead before and at least when you’re dead you don’t get thrown off the Warner Bros. lot for haunting your old parking space. They probably mean it’s like the death of a friend or a family member but that shit only hurts when it’s YOUR friend or family member and even then it’s mitigated by age, lifestyle and whether that person was a Hollywood friend or a real one and whether that family member left you money.

“Losing your show is more like a surprise divorce where you get served papers in the morning and your (ex)wife is fucking Human Target by three in the afternoon using the same time slot your child was conceived in and also where she did that one thing that one time on your birthday.”

More at Josh’s blog.

As you may (or may not) know, for the last six months or so I’ve been part of the writing team for new sketch show Splendid.

Well, I’ve just checked the schedule, and they’re shooting my first sketch today. And it’s a beautiful day, which bodes well as this one has some outside shooting involved.

Also Super 8.

More detail will no doubt show up throughout the shooting and editing period, but in the meantime you can sate your curiosity at the online gaffs of Jason Arnopp, Dan Turner, and John Harrison.