Faintheart
Screenwriter David Lemon recounts how he got his first feature film from a TAPS workshop to production, via a £1 million online competition.
I’m writing this from a situation I’d hoped to one day be in but never thought I would; that of a writer whose first feature script (Faintheart – a title which I owe to my fellow writer and fellow TAPS alumni James Skivington) is currently in production.
I will be visiting the set very soon, and, if everything’s going well, will be completely superfluous to requirements. I’ve done my bit. Now it’s up to the director Vito Rocco and the terrific cast and crew he’s put together to make sure the funny bits stay funny, the touching bits touch and the whole thing is as good as it can be.
Fast-tracked
So how did this all come about? Well, given the often tortuous development periods of many feature films, Faintheart has been a fast-tracked blur by comparison. Slingshot Studios, a new Ealing-based company dedicated to making micro-budget digital films with new(ish) talent, were the ones who first optioned my script in the spring of 2006.
However, I doubt they would have picked it up if it weren’t for the development the script had already received through an organisation I mentioned earlier, TAPS (if you don’t know them, look them up: www.tapsnet.org). The TAPS experience gave me three great things: a brilliant mentor in Ruth Caleb, a script that was much more focussed than the one I came in with, and a chance to see real, proper actors saying lines that had only existed on the page.
Once Slingshot had optioned Faintheart, I tried to stay realistic/pessimistic about the whole process; a very English ‘best not get your hopes up’ form of self-protection. After all, financing could fall through, the producers could fall out of love with a project-or worse yet, it could be banished to that weird phantom zone known as turnaround.
Luckily, Slingshot have proven to be about actually producing films (as opposed to just talking about them). By the time Faintheart reaches a cinema near you they will have already put out at least two features and have several more on their slate.
The development process was the usual mix of agreements, disagreements and ‘killing your babies’. For me, the toughest of these was losing the father of the main character. His scenes had some nice touching stuff in, but they also slowed the first act to a crawl, and if we wanted the film to have the kind of pace we wanted, they had to go. Curse you, momentum!
Slingshot also put me and Vito together in the film-makers equivalent of an arranged marriage. This meant that from a very early stage we had to agree on just what sort of film this would be, with Vito offering lots of script notes. This took a while to get used to, but in retrospect makes perfect sense. After all, it’s Vito who’ll ultimately be responsible for bringing it all to life.
MySpace money
Then, around June/July of this year, Faintheart was entered into an online competition run by MySpace, Film4 and Vertigo Films. If we won, it would mean a much bigger production budget of £1 million. For a film that was already proving surprisingly expensive (I had written a script with night shoots, children, crowd scenes, sword fights-a production manager’s nightmare) this would mean the world of difference on screen.
There would also be an interactive element, with MySpace members not only suggesting script changes but even auditioning online for parts in the final film.
Vito and I shot a promotional pitch while on one of our recces into the world of battle re-enactments. It was fun – and Vito got to indulge his passion for dressing up in chainmail and bizarre headgear – but it also forced us to take a long hard look at the story. What was it about? And why should MySpace members vote for it?
I must admit that when we won I became worried that the interactive element would mean people I never met being allowed to change the story out of recognition. I felt that with all the extra producers now on board, I’d have more than enough script notes to be dealing with without some 16-year-old from Arkansas e-mailing me to say “U suk and so duz ur script”.
Fortunately, I was allowed to suggest the scenes which would be made open to MySpace, so the changes suggested were of the genuinely helpful dialogue polish variety rather than the sort of radical structural change that gives writers ulcers.
As well as discovering some great talent online, Faintheart has also been cast in the traditional way - i.e. actor and director meeting in the real, non-virtual world.
Vito and casting director Gary Davy have put together a terrific line up. Richard, the hapless hero whose passion for re-enactments costs him his marriage, is played by Eddie Marsan. Ewen Bremner is Julian, Richard’s best mate and die-hard Trekkie, while the role of Richard’s ex-wife Cath has gone to Jessica Hynes, who not only starred in and co-wrote one of my favourite TV series of recent years (Spaced) but also brought a tear to this sci-fi geek’s eye in the last series of Doctor Who. There’s also Bronagh Gallagher, Tim Healy, Anne Reid – but I’m going to stop now before I become a full-on luvvie.
Now I’m just waiting to find out the best time to visit the set. While all seems to be going well, we’re still in the first few days of shooting, so it’s probably best I get in the way when things are going more smoothly. I’m also hoping to make a brief appearance as a ‘background artiste’ during the battle scenes, but only if I can wear thermals under my chainmail. After all, you can take this ‘authenticity’ thing too far.
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