Pressures

Last Contact : Blog 6 : Pressures

I thought I’d share with you the stress I’ve felt in creating and filming Last Contact. I hope sharing it helps. Me.

Pressure 1: Am I going to finish writing the first script?

This isn’t confined to Last Contact; any script I start has a precarious journey to the final page. My brain is fantastic at distracting me when I have something I need to do, but since I need it to survive (or so they tell me) I have to stick with it. Last Contact was easier than most because of the way I wrote it, and the fact that I enjoyed what stupid things the characters would come up with next. Some writing is simply creating the characters, and then shepherding everything they come up with.

Pressure 2: Is anyone going to like the script?

I’ve written lots of stuff. That happens when writing is a passion. And it is. I have to write. I don’t do it for the money or fame (although I don’t not do it for that either), I do it because I have to. And some of the stuff I’ve written isn’t good enough. It either requires (more) reworking, or it requires a match and somewhere to watch it burn. Last Contact didn’t seem to suffer from any of that. It was liked in its initial outing. No one smiled nicely that way that says ‘It’s tosh, and you wasted my life’, instead just saying ‘Go for it’ and that’s as good a compliment as I could have hoped for.

Pressure 3: What am I going to do with the script?

So, after having a script that people like, I had to worry about what to do with it. The normal way of things is to send to production companies or agents and see if anyone is interested. That’s the normal way. Of course, I went and started recruiting people to help produce it myself. The first person involved was Martin Gooch, a director who contacted me through Shooting People website. He liked the script, and we went to his agent who agreed to send it out to the production companies. Knowing that this sort of thing takes time, I sat back, relaxed and waited. Anxiously.

To be continued…