Going Rogue

There absolutely IS room for more Star Wars stories. 

Tonally different side-steps into other planets and cultures? Yes please. In an era where every movie studio is desperate to create their own series of linked Marvel-esque movies Star Wars is a ready-made galaxy far, far away ripe for exploration. 

I just don’t think Rogue One is the best example of how to do it.

On the plus side, it feels like a different kind of movie. No opening crawl this time, but a flashback to a young Jyn. By the time we see her rescued from an Imperial prison we can surmise the troubled journey she’s been on. So far so good.

It’s the other characters that need some help.

Ok, looking them up on IMDB Chirrut Imwe and Baze Malbus
don’t seem so unpronounceable but if you’d asked me their names
straight after the movie I'd have been clueless.

Star Wars has a history of throwing together a disparate band of misfits that overcome their differences to achieve the heroic. Rogue One certainly has its merry band and full marks for different ethnicities and accents. But backstories are non-existent and names are just a step too far from the norm to be instantly comprehensible.

As such, I found it really hard to engage with these people or care what happens to them. And if it was in the dialogue, the reason for Imwe and Malbus being on Jedha was lost on me.

With all the rumours of reshoots and rewrites buzzing in my head and with awesome bits from the trailer simply not there I wonder if we’re not getting the film as it was originally intended. Have the characters been softened? There is a lot of deliciously grey morality about. Jyn has been to prison, her dad helped build the death star, Ando kills a comrade within moments of his intro and Jyn’s mentor figure (while lacking any great story function) is acknowledged as a terrorist.

None of the characters get a particularly heroic death, another reason to suppose that they should all have been morally ambiguous. Would I have engaged more if they had more grit?

There’s a lot to love about Rogue One

but it’s a film that didn’t have to be made.

I sound like I hated it, I didn’t. As an old school fan there is a LOT to love about Rogue One. It really does flesh out the Empire era of the Star Wars galaxy and show planets and people beyond the main conflict.

It’s undeniably a Star Wars film with plenty of laser guns, spectacular space battles, glorious visuals (the death star hanging in the sky above Skarif is beautiful) and crazy architecture with consoles at the end of precarious gantries – no place for vertigo in the Empire! 

It’s just that I expect, no, we deserve better.

While it seems generally accepted that Uncle George’s prequels were a bad lot, it’s strange to go back and mine the same territory again unless you’re going to do something different or improve on it. Rogue One does neither.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nothing like the bland CG-fests of Episodes 1-3 but while Lucas peppered his prequels with new characters that fired the imagination and potentially outshone the main protagonists (Step forward Jango Fett, Zam Wessel, Mace Windu and even Yoda) here the heroes seem to be playing second fiddle to the main saga with too many ‘for the fans’ cameos and references and villains upon villains that only indirectly impact on our main cast.

Given that we’ve never heard of these characters beyond Rogue One and go in assuming none of them are getting out alive, it’s a disappointment that none of them do. What better way to surprise and subvert our expectations?

Instead Rogue One has an inevitability about it that’s almost mechanical in its execution right up to its CGI Princess Leia who’s so placid and chipper, it’s like she’s been dropped in from another movie rather than caught up in the massive space battle that’s just occurred. And while I’m thinking about it, just what was the Tantive V doing docked inside a Mon Calimari capital ship rather than out there fighting? Did someone say ‘contrived’?

More than that, with the death star plans randomly beamed into space where any of the rebel ships could have received them, including those that escaped doesn’t it rather take away the sense of urgency from Princess Leia’s subsequent mission?

What it all amounts to is that as nice, cosy and nostalgic as it may be to see the death star firing sequence recreated, Peter Cushing resurrected and Darth Vader swishing his lightsabre, Rogue One is a film that absolutely didn’t need to be made.

In fandom, it’s commonly known as fanwank, an obsessive need to fill in every continuity gap. This is Space Opera, not Soap Opera. We don’t need to see the moment Bail Organa decides to send for Obi Wan Kenobi. In fact, the more of these self-indulgent moments we see, the more it takes away from the original.

So the rebel boffins didn’t find a way to destroy the death star, it was designed that way by Galen Erso. I know he needed to keep it hidden but couldn’t he have made it easier? At least design fewer gun turrets along that trench.

Luke Skywalker looking to the horizon, yesterday.

And when the pros are serving up fanwank, where is there for fans to go? What stories are left for the 8 year olds to dream up with their Christmas action figures? Maybe better ones than are being served to them.

This makes me somewhat reticent about further spin-offs that try to plunder the ghost of Star Wars past. What further nods and cameos will be shoehorned into the Han Solo or (rumoured) Boba Fett movies. Surely it’s better and more exciting to make companion pieces to the latest trilogy? What if Po Dameron had a side adventure between chapters? How about a story that fleshes out the woefully underused Captain Phasma?

I grew up with a Star Wars that looked to the horizon. The future. Excitement. Come on Star Wars, enough naval gazing. You’re better than this.

The Writer Bubble

 
For a long while I’ve been going to networking dos for writers. They’re great. Vital, even. Catching up with friends, forming new relationships. Sometimes writers at the same level, sometimes a bit further along the path willing to shine a torch on the road ahead of you, other times writers just starting out to whom you can pass the benefit of your experience thus far.

But hanging out with only writers can in itself be a comfort zone and that’s a one way ticket to Rutsville.



Yes, many of us writers also produce, script edit and get stuff made but we do also need to find dedicated producers that want to work with us, connect with other people in the industry, script editors, TV execs, commissioners.

We need to stop thinking of these people as gate keepers trying to keep us out and more like, well… people. Friends, colleagues that you are going to have a fabulous time working with.

“Oh, I can’t talk to them, I’m only a writer.”

I was very lucky. My ticket to the International Drama Summit at Content London 2016 came to me free as a finalist in the C21 Drama script competition. At nearly £400 it’s not cheap. But getting out of the writer bubble gives you a different perspective on the business and makes it seem less scary and impenetrable.



So began three amazing days of sessions and speakers from across the globe, all about the gogglebox. Many of them were on the creative side – Tony Jordan, Jed Mercurio, Marnie Dickens, Tom Basden and Anna Winger ON THE SAME PANEL!!! - while others were more business-skewed like the session on Drama finance after “Brexit”.

Polly Hill from ITV. Not keeping you out.

And it was a level playing field. No us and them. No green room. Everyone in the business together. No egoes, no “oh, I can’t talk to them, I’m only a writer.” Everyone friendly, good natured and receptive. One minute you’re on the escalator with a showrunner from South Africa, the next you’re chatting in the coffee queue to an American producer with $$$ burning a hole in his pocket, desperate for a good script.

As a writer trying to knock on the door of telly, I came away feeling there ISN’T someone trying to keep us out. Sure, we have to have a certain level of skill and that comes with time and hard work. But if you’ve got stories to tell, people want to hear them.

These are my top tips based on the things I was hearing at C21.

• Don’t be afraid to tell YOUR story. It’s unique to you and that’s what they want. Don’t try and skew it to fit an existing formula. Producers, program makers and ultimately audiences want to be surprised. But whatever you do, tell it with PASSION.
"Avoid the middle at all costs. Go for extremes."
Jane Tranter (Producer, Bad Wolf Productions)

• We all have something to say. The wounds in our lives that we’re trying work through in our writing. Drill down and find yours. Go to the places you don’t want to go within yourself to find what you’re really about. Then write that. 

"If you want to be universal, be specific."

Sarah Phelps (Writer, And Then There Were None)

• “Auteur driven” was on everyone’s lips. They want the next Fleabag – but that doesn’t mean you have to star in it or have your main character talk to the camera (see point 1 above). They want dramas that are so specific to that writer’s voice, experience and worldview. Intimacy and specificity are the key.

"Small, intimate, worthy can still be big in scope.

Universal themes in International Shows."

Sharon Tal Yguado (EVP, Fox Networks Group)

• Think of your audience. Given what’s going on politically it’s clear that great swathes of people feel unrepresented and this applies to TV too. It’s an image of Britain we like to export but not everyone lives in Downton Abbey. Not everyone is middle class and owns their own home. Not every woman is Olivia Coleman. If you’re worried you’ve got nothing to say because you grew up on a housing estate, didn’t get a media degree and you’re not a white heterosexual man, stop worrying and get writing.

"Entertain the people who have been missed out."

Greg Brennan (Producer, Drama Republic)

Above all, the main message from C21 was "Make great content and audiences will come."

Philip is the winner of the C21 Drama Script competition and was mentored for his final pitch by Tony Jordan.

 

Mad man in a blue box. With a pen.

 

I once met Steven Moffat in 2001 when he was able to be just a regular fan. Doctor Who had been off the air pretty much for 12 years. We argued.

Now in 2016, Doctor Who’s a massive BBC flagship show, back on our screens for over a decade and Steven’s been in charge for the last six years or so. In that time, I’ve notched up four Big Finish Doctor Who adventures. I’m practically catching him up.

I’ve seen this guy on TV, read interviews, heard him wax lyrical at the British Screenwriters Awards last year (“Writing is HARD!” he declared) but here today, in the BBC Radio Theatre at an event orgainised by BBC Writersroom, Steven knows he’s among writers. There’s no show runner bravado, no trying to hide behind funny anecdotes, no trying to please an audience of fans. He seems very comfortable here. There’s a real honesty to his answers. I’m very pleasantly surprised. And I’m not arguing.

Next to him is endearing and impossibly youthful script editor Nick Lambon and expertly guided by Gavin Collinson we’re given a warts-n-all glimpse into writing for this prime time show. It sounds chaotic, frenetic but great fun.

Big thanks to Gavin, Celia and Anne at the
Writers Room for organising this event

But you’re here for the scoop aren’t you. How do you, as a new writer get to work on Doctor Who? We’ll get to that in a sec.

The biggest thing I took from this talk was hearing about Steven’s process. Turns out we’re not that dissimilar. “Accept that you know nothing.” he says. When someone of his longevity and profile says he starts every new script feeling like an amateur, struggling to remember how to do it, it makes you feel better that you do the same, right?

Discipline. He writes rigidly in chronological order. He thinks up a brilliant scene, the kind of scene that will blow the audience away. The kind of scene you want to write first. Does he jump to it? Have his pudding before his mains? No. It has to be earned. So he makes sure he has an “unbreakable iron chain of good scenes” to get there. And you know what? Once you reach that ‘brilliant’ scene, it’s been upstaged by the excellent scenes you ‘ve just written and it has to up its game.

Rough first drafts? Absolutely not. Only hand in something that you would be happy for them to go away and make NOW. Have the attitude that “It’s perfect and I’m prepared to change it all.”

Steven doesn't think Blink counts as a Doctor
Who adventure: the Doctor's hardly in it.

OK, so what about us newbie Whoie writers?

The trouble with Doctor Who, where the only constant is ‘alien humanoid travels in time machine’ (and even that isn’t true of EVERY episode!) is that there is no typical Doctor Who script. No magic formula. Many submissions “don’t get it” or aren’t interesting. Others throw in every idea at once. The best advice from Steven: “Treat it as if you own it. Don’t revere it.” The main thing is keeping people entertained for 45 minutes on a Saturday night.

Apparently, “being good at pitching will make you bad at writing.” Don’t be too prescriptive about what you’re pitching. Give the idea rather than “a scale model of your script”. A writer should always change their mind. A pitch like “what if the Ice Warriors took over a nuclear sub in the 1980s?” puts across the exciting idea but is general enough on plot to give the writer freedom. Don’t be tied to your pitch, you need to be always thinking of something better.

And when you get that commission, write as explicitly as possible and be precise about action. Never censor your scenes according to what you think is or isn’t achievable. It’s the sequence you least expect that causes the trouble. It’s not the space battle between the Autons and the Slitheen, it’s the fact that the TARDIS can’t land in a low ceilinged room!

You have three/four weeks to do your script by the way. Bags of time.

Over all, it sounds like writing Doctor Who is just as seat-of-your-pants as the good Doctor’s adventures themselves.

 

 

 

Is this a good time to mention my next Big Finish audio THE FIFTH TRAVELLER is out this month?

Can I help you?

NETWORKING! ARRGHH! SCARY.

I used to have a big fear of ‘Networking’ and convinced myself I was useless at it.
Scarily driven people with agendas, surgically working the room, performing hit and run manoeuvres on the influential folk to get their business card before heading off to the next party/ function/ bar. All very clinical and not my sort of thing at all.

As an actor, I always found it hard to be self promoting. As a fundamentally self effacing person (as brilliant an actor as I may be- ok self effacing only applies in person) I found it hard to push myself forward as a product.

It was only as a writer that I started to find my networking feet. With a script, I had something to promote. A tangible object which, even though it very much came from me, was able to stand on its own merits. Here was something I could express great self belief in without feeling like I was a conceited, self obsessed dick.

And this afforded me a new perspective on the whole networking thing. Once I was able to scrape away the nerves and start to see beyond my own insecurities, it wasn’t scary at all. There’s nothing wrong or cynical about being focussed and driven. But networking can and should be more friendly than the surgical approach and doesn’t have to be conducted constantly looking over the person’s head to see if there’s someone more useful to talk to.
Suddenly it became obvious that networking wasn’t about ‘what can these people to for me’ and much more of about ‘what can I do for them?’

I went on to run a monthly creative networking night and loved smashing that ice, introducing people to someone that might be able to help them, whether with advice or as a collaborator. When you take yourself, your fears and your ego out of the equation, amazing things happen. And that’s an ethos I’ve carried into my dealings at the London Screenwriters Festival, various writing courses and associated drinks/ meet ups leading to me making some wonderful friends which in turn has led to leads and vital industry contacts for all of us.

Tonight I will be at the Black List Happy Hour in London catching up with some of those lovely people and meeting fabulous new ones. It's a great, relaxed place to recharge the creative batteries and remind yourself you're part of a creative industry, not some loner sat in front of a screen. 

If you’re there, say hello, it'd be great to meet you.

So what CAN I do for you? 

Philip is a script writer, editor, reader, illustrator, creative good egg.