Killer Shoes, Classroom Laughs, and General Insanity

Danjo here on behalf of Dead Fishin'. This week shall go down in Dead Fish history as one of the most productive weeks ever.

Fact.

This week Professor Pisces and I have been collaborating (as I'm sure you've already heard) over Gmail to write our own TV series, called 'The Classroom'. It's been tons of fun. Pisces throws ideas around, writes some scenes, sends them to me; I do the main bulk of writing, editing and BAM! another episode done.

I've been wanting to talk about this for a while, and while I should probably be blogging elsewhere right now (blogging adultery, indeed) I wanted to say something here.

We've been wanting to collaborate for a while now but we hadn't got around to it. First it started out with Pisces sending me his work, which I critiqued and vice versa. The thought of collaborating on something original had always been in the back of our minds (mine at least) and had been bugging me until I finally had the perfect idea.

When you're just independent writers (or directors, actors, whatever) who are writing from home and can only dream of getting a job as thatparticular person, you really have to choose your projects carefully. For example, I'm a filmmaker, however I haven't made all that many films. In fact, I think the total number of short films I've actually finished and put up on YouTube (shameless self-promotion: click here!) are about ten. I've shot a lot of stuff and edited it but never really felt like it was good enough to put out for the world.

Independent artists (a general term) don't have budgets, they don't have spare time to do their projects and (quite frankly) it's a pain in the butt when we have to rely on other people to help us. That's really why I've never made anything with more than one or two people for cast and crew, because everyone has their own lives and side projects (or 'hobbies' as my parents and friends call them)and they fall to... well, the side.

It really makes me mad that I can't put together a huge production and actually spend time on something that's more than just a two minute short film. I really want to do a feature film and spend months on it, getting everything right. The truth is, a film is never finished: it escapes. We all have deadlines and budgets to attend to, which obviously means something or other in our project is going to suffer.

There are a lot of things that hold independent filmmakers (and even writers) from reaching their goal. For most it's money and time. If I had money I'd put down my 240p cellphone and buy a RED Epic (wouldn't we all?). If I had money I'd pay production companies to produce my screenplays. I'd pay for my novels to be published. If my actors and myself had an abundance of time I could do anything. Unfortunately, being independent means that everything falls to the side and you make do with what you have.

Back to the point: choosing projects carefully. Like I said, my time is valuable, and so are my resources. If I'm going to write something huge and epic I want to make sure the project has potential and make sure that I can do it. If not, I pass it on to someone else who can do it justice. When filming shorts in my neighbourhood, I only have at most one hour to get everyone down there, set up, get all the shots and wrap up production. And given that both my main actors have full-time jobs and girlfriends it's really hard to snag their free time for something like this.

Writing is kind of the same way. If you're going to write something that you want to produce yourself you have to tailor it to meet your immediate props (locations, actors, time frame, etc). And that's where choosing the right projects comes in. In all honesty you can't tailor your life to meet your project; you have to tailor you project to meet your life.

When the collaboration became a definite possibility, Pisces and I needed to create a project that fit these criteria:

• We both wanted to do it.
• We knew enough about it to make it real.
• We had enough ideas for to keep it running.
• We could actually do it over the Internet.

That, including all of the other criteria about clichés and the general troubles of writing, makes for one hard brainstorming session. Obviously, it all fit together like clockwork and we're hard at work writing it. It's been so much fun collaborating with each other because we get along great and we respect each other's boundaries/ Wait, that sounded gay. Let me rephrase: We get along great and we understand who has the final say on a project. Since I came up with the idea I control the final edit, but I'm also very open to my partner's ideas and incorporate a lot of that.

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So, that's it, my lovely lady-lumps and non-lady-lumps (ie. men). I shall return to Celtx and write away.
   Danjo the banjo

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Update: I forgot to talk about pitching 'The Classroom' to production companies. I doubt you have the patience to read through a whole other post, so I'll keep this short. We haven't really thought about pitching 'The Classroom' yet. It's not something we can really produce ourselves so we (wisely) passed this one up and voted just to write it. However, it is going to be made, whether that's ten years from now or one year from now. We have ideas for about four episodes out, and no doubt our hyperactive brains will continue to come up with more. What we're working on write now (ha, did you catch that? Yeah, me neither) is finishing the episodes and making them as funny as they can be. Adding comedy is a lot harder than you might think.

The first season should only have about six or seven episodes, just to be safe. We don't want the production company to think it's too much of a risk and not produce it. So we're going to write the first season and pitch that to our company of choice. Hopefully that will show them that this show has potential and that we're committed to making it happen.

I really didn't want that update to be another novel of a post, but it really turned out to be one. What can I say? I like to talk.

Later fools,
   Danjo the Banjo

The Classroom - Collaborative Comedy

Collaborating on something has always been something that I've wanted to do, and now I'm doing it. Here at Dead Fish, our scriptwriting team is wonderfully small. (That means that we either need to recruit more people or write really fast. Personally, I'm fine with just writing fast. Heheh.) And because there are only two of us, that makes collaborating pretty easy.

Danjo, as we call him, recently put forth an idea for a mockumentary series and asked for my opinions. My current embroilment in it is now as part of the writing team for it. Yup, that's right - we're collaborating on a comedy TV series.

The series, called 'The Classroom', is a mockumentary about a particular class in an American high school. The sophomore year are basically a bunch of really, really awkward students and they get up to all kinds of mischief. We currently plan to place a sedated crocodile in a biology classroom. Those American High Schools; they're crazy. (I jest, of course - I have nothing against America, except that it's distorted the perfectly reasonable 'maths' into 'math', which is just wrong.) So far though we have 14 pages of the pilot followed by a string of ideas for stuff later on. It's just a matter of volleying ideas across the Internet to each other. Distance doesn't matter; Gmail kills all boundaries. Heheh.

I'm sure that Dan and myself shall tell you all about it through the next few weeks and stuff. I'm not entirely sure where it's going though - we're very unlikely to actually produce it ourselves. More likely we'll sell it on to something like ITV or something else equally rich yet in desperate need of laughs. Time shall tell. Maybe you'll see our names on a credits list sometime within the next year or two - who can tell? All we can say is that we're hopeful.

Hoping for some laughs,
   Pisces

Senseless Violence? Food Fight!

OK, so I'm writing a scene filled with senseless and cliched violence in the name of entertainment. There are pros and cons to merely thinking about doing this. Firstly, it means I get to think about beating people up with baguettes and not have to feel guilty about it. Second, for what I'm planning, it means I actually will get to film people beat one another up systematically with a variety of different foods. The downside is that I'll have an awkward time at the ER when someone gets stabbed with a breakfast bar. Ell-oh-ell, I believe.

It may clear things up if I actually tell you what I'm planning. What I'm experimenting with at this point in time is writing an action scene, namely one in which a proper food fight breaks out and people get shot with bananas, beaten with sticks of French bread and are generally owned by assorted snacks. (Spoiler: The guy with the granola bar doesn't survive very long.) This is the basic premise, idea, notion and motivation behind writing this particular collection of scenes. What can I say? I like a good action romp.

The plot is nonexistent - it doesn't need one. It's just a string of events that leads to a group of teenagers fashing weapons out of savoury items. What's to plot? Who needs a story when you're going for gory, eh?

The main problem here is writing a script which can actually be acted out by those actors that I have to hand, namely myself, Matt, Bod and, uh, that's it. Basically I need more actors, unless we want to try some really difficult camera stuff and double people up. I doubt Matt would be pleased with being cast as two different girls though. I dunno; he could be an ugly woman. I could get hold of balloons... Wait. Did I just type that?

So none of us actually have action training, though Matt's sister does some sort of super-duper martial arts thing that could be put into use somehow. And Bod tends to use dart guns anyway, so perhaps we could hand him a banana and let him loose on a tree or a muffin or something. The fact is that I have to write something producable, if that makes sense. And right now I believe I may be being a little over-ambitious. But hey! We'll see. I'll write the script, do the casting and then do a rewrite of the action so that it suits abilities. And that should work.

I should talk more about this later, but I may never get around to it. If not, then at least this made for a post. (Note that I don't even presume that it was interesting, nor good. Just saying.)

Until the next time I have something mindlessly simple to blabber on about,
   Professor Pisces

ZFTSOI: The Plot, Pretty Much

I've decided to go with Pipistrelle's idea and write a synopsis of the plot for 'Zombies For The Sake Of It' (ZFTSOI). Unfortunately for me, I'm not terribly in love with the plot and everyone knows it. Still, I cannot simply insult Zombies. That would be terrible; an evil thing that would probably earn me a rap on the knuckles with a several mile long ruler. It would have to be fairly large; I'm not where I should be, and that is something that they know.

This is the 'plotting phase', the bit where ideas are strung together and fleshed out. It's the long-anticipated sequel to the ideas phase. Expect both of those terms to crop up in the tags section at the bottom of certain posts; click on them to check out the other ideas that are stuck in development. (Technically ZFTSOI is past ideas and plotting, but it all needs to be said anyway. It's even past casting; but then again, each character was tailor made for a specific actor anyway. Soon we'll be into production.)

Without further ado, a paragraph or two on the plot of ZFTSOI, written expressly to attract more attention than is strictly required.

When the zombie apocalypse arrives a little sooner than is expected, a group of camping teens find themselves to be the target of the undead hordes. But when you're armed with perpetual motion guns rather conveniently gifted to you by the future you, you tend to be fairly prepared for all eventualities. Well, almost.
   When zombies, guns and a fairly predictable romance collide, who shall survive when the apocalypse occurs... for the sake of it?

(Pipistrelle, you have the rights to this film. Do feel free to tell me whether anything should be changed. This particular clause of our agreement only applies to the above synopsis rather than any of my expressed opinions. Just so you know.)

The script contained some rather classic instances of deus ex machina. If you who know Latin or a bit of English theory, you'll ken my meaning. If you don't then you should look it up. It tends to crop up in a lot of things. It's not necessarily bad, but it's a little convenient. It betrays a lack of background, methinks. This is, of course, why it happens in my tales all the time. The fact that the character happens to knock over a chemistry set containing a weird set of chemicals that creates life in shoes... When a character travels back in time despite an apparent lack of the necessary technology in order to hand off some guns that never run out of ammo, therefore destroying the axiom of zombie films and endorsing a renowned paradox, and then skips off into the woods to disappear. It's all the same.

Well, ranting aside, it should make for an interesting short film. Now you know the plot. I'll talk about casting at some other point.

Attack of the Killer Shoes: Organising Ideas

'Attack of the Killer Shoes' continues to take shape, I'm glad to say. I even have a pretty complete plot for it, though the plot isn't terribly complex. Then again, considering what sort of film this shall be, it doesn't really have to be.

I can now reveal a short plot synopsis for 'Attack of the Killer Shoes'.

When David's older sister Anna buys new shoes, the consequences are severe. A stabbing, a chemistry set and an elbow all conspire to bring about an unusual evil: a living shoe, hungry for revenge. As the shoe amasses an army of footwear, they find themselves trapped inside their home. Can they survive the attack of the killer shoes?

That pretty much sums it up for you. So far, the production requires a cast of three (two males, one female). I have ideas for filming it, and casting can be expected to go ahead within a week or two. I have not, unlike with ZFTSOI, tailor-made each character for a specific actor. But I'm sure that I'll speak of the specifics for Zombies later on. You can be all but sure of it.

Regards - for now.
   Professor Pisces

Zombies For The Sake Of It

It's been referred to and talked about for a while on the Kettle, but few people actually know what it is. I'm here to put that to rest, because I know what it is and I like to be the guy who answers the questions around here.

'Zombies For The Sake Of It' (abbreviated to ZFTSOI for sanity's sake) is the first short film currently being produced by Random Panda Productions, a close collaborator with Dead Fish. The script was written by members of RPP for personal gratification, but after some time they decided that it would be a good idea to produce it as a short film. This event actually led to the beginning of RPP. The formation of Dead Fish happened to coincide with RPP's request that I act in the film. This has possibly led to it being a collaboration between Random Panda and Dead Fish, but it's still a matter for discussion as to whether it may be considered such.

The idea is that the zombie apocalypse comes early, namely while a group of teenagers are out camping. At this point, it becomes your classic zombie thriller: people out to survive, kill zombies and just generally live life as per usual. And then there's the romantic side too. (That's what you get when someone who reads too many Jane Austen novels and Bronte Sisters books gets their teeth into scriptwriting. Sigh.) It's an interesting concept, with a bit of time travel thrown in and some paradoxes that have nothing to do with time, too. It should be a riot to film.

I suppose I shall speak often of ZFTSOI over the next few weeks, as we're supposed to start filming in four weeks or so. Until then, though, I'll leave the subject be - we may well have a number of Random Panda people joining us fairly soon.

Attack of the Killer Shoes: Ideas Phase

For our first short, I, Professor Pisces, decided to try out an unusual idea that's been asking for my attention for a while now. The idea is a strange one, but it's those films that are weird that catch the attention, no?

The general idea is: shoes come alive and kill people. That's it. However, that's just the premise rather than the entire story. No, more than that should happen. I tend to subscribe to the idea that the story's at least as important as the actual filming of the thing, and when you've got next to no budget like us, you need to make better what is within your power to improve.

So, what's happening with 'Attack of the Killer Shoes'? Well, I can't really reveal that much, but the script's well under way and we're discussing filming it later. First, though, I'll need to find at least three actors for it. Actors are important. They make the world go round. What else can I say? Oh yes! We'll be requiring a large number of shoes, some of which we can cut up and make ragged. We're already stabbing one shoe to death and pumping at least another three full of foam. Is there any limit to our madness?

Stay tuned for more on our latest short, 'Attack of the Killer Shoes', and follow it through the different stages as it progresses towards becoming an actual movie.