I feel like I should really be kicking myself for worrying about this when I'm a bit behind on Script Frenzy but I'm really not. The truth is this book has been around for quite some time and I just haven't gotten around to posting it. So here it is.

'The First Draft Done' was written with struggling writers in mind. Any screenwriter who has had significant issues in completing a first draft of anything are really the target audience here. This book outlines my own methods and tools for getting to the end of a first draft.

The First Draft Done - non-fiction - 65 pages

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.

david shute - Apr 23, 2009 at 12:58 AM

Down On The Farm - 43 pages down for Script Frenzy.

I, regrettably, haven't been on top of much the past few days. Between family obligations over the long weekend and running right in to a very nasty sinus/throat cold there hasn't been much in the way of available useful time. By the end of day on the 15th I should be on page 50 of 'Down on the Farm' to stay on the minimum page count requirements. I really don't think that's going to be an issue. I have a lot of ideas on where to go next. It's going to be fun trying to get there and seeing where the less substantial, less fleshed out ideas end up going. It's a small story but I feel like it's just starting to get interesting. A lot happens in the most recent 10 pages.

My wife is out of town shopping this coming weekend and I've taken Friday off from work. I'm going to be putting quite a bit of time in to getting caught up. I have pages for Script Frenzy to get on top of, editing my Celtx forums project I filmed awhile ago, prepping for my next shoot and possibly doing some rewrites on the material, and potentially shooting something very short on my own. I have a small idea and if for no other reason than the exercise I may very well do it.

I had passed along the 'A Brand New Hell' video to a horror podcast that I quite like. It was more of sharing something I made with them to say thanks for all the material they've shared with me (and the Internet at large). At last email it looks like they're going to be reviewing it as part of their podcast in the near future. Cool. Once it's up, and I believe it to be mostly favourable, I'll post a link.

Looking for a location for 'Diggin' A Hole' in the Kitchener-Waterloo area. Need a large field, perferrably out on a farm where there is significantly less chance of digging in to water/electric lines. I'm hoping to shoot this in the summer.

If you have a BlackBerry I seriously suggest getting Mobipocket Reader, a free e-book reader, and then start searching through the archives at gutenberg.org. I'm currently reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein on my BlackBerry when I have free time and loving it.

david shute - Apr 15, 2009 at 12:18 AM

Down On The Farm - 34 pages down for Script Frenzy.

After taking the weekend off for filming I'm glad that I was able to jump back in to it and get some more pages down tonight. My attention will be split over the next little while but as long as I can put a couple of hours in to this each day I should be good. I think it's just about to get interesting but since I'm not sure where I'm going with it yet I don't know for sure.

Filming this weekend was definitely a learning experience. I don't know how we'll it's going to turn out as of yet. I simply won't know until I've got a rough cut together. My major concerns are that the footage is going to be uneven and that I'm going to have too much background noise in my audio. On my list of things that I've learned in the past two days.

• If I'm going to shoot outdoors I need to scout the location on the same day of the week at the same times that I am intending to shoot.
• Working near an airport seemed okay since my scouting indicated very little air traffic. Apparently being on location a couple hours earlier made a huge difference. The first 90 minutes of shooting had half of that plagued with planes flying overhead.
• Between 10 AM and noon the birds in the area were singing up a storm. After noon it was dead silent.
• Always hold on to the camera when changing mounts.
• I need to understand the equipment before I go to use it. I was not nearly familiar enough with the camera for it to be effortless on location.
• I need to pay attention to lighting considerations before they become an issue.
• I need to pay more attention to reflections, especially when shooting toward a car.
• A polarizing filter and a UV filter are probably both good ideas.
• A monitor is a good idea since I couldn't really see reflections or issues on the tiny, dark LCD or viewfinder.
• I should probably have done up storyboards. The shot list helped but my terse descriptions occasionally worked against me. A visual aide would have been very useful.
• I need a better mic mounting solution. The one we were using made a lot of noise any time it moved.
• Need a better windscreen solution. Not a major issue but noticeable in a couple of takes.
• Need to record on a more sensitive level. The audio is alright but not nearly loud enough and boosting is just going to amplify the noise.

Yeah. A lot of lessons learned and I'm not even done sorting through my audio yet. Likely to be a laundry list of shit when I get to editing.

david shute - Apr 6, 2009 at 11:30 PM

Down On The Farm - 28 pages down for Script Frenzy. Again, this is zero edits. From my brain to your tortured eyes.

Unfortunately, I'm not really going to get a chance to dig in to this much over the next two days. I have a lot of last minute stuff I need to take care of with filming and I need to get to bed early tomorrow. Then comes the actual shoot itself. My eagerness to edit is going to be hard to balance with my ridiculous compulsion to write.

As much as I find the process of stream of consciousness writing to be ultimately counter productive I have to admit that I'm quite fond of it. I like the adventure, the contrast against my usual writing.

I always know exactly where I'm going at any given time with other projects. Everything has been plotted and outlined thoroughly. This is a good thing. I produce more completed works and material that I actually enjoy this way.

Conversely there's something very liberating about the Script Frenzy keyboard mash. I enjoying being in the moment trying to figure out my characters and their motivations while they're in the middle of actions. I love only having the vaguest idea of where the story is going while knowing that it'll never get there. I'm sure the direction will change and I'll end up miles away from my intended destination.

More than anything I love the fact that it doesn't matter. This particular script is a passing exercise. Writing in this manner invigorates me. It drives me to continue pushing and working through the rest of the year. I may never come back to this script to hammer out the dings and make it a slick, polish screenplay. It doesn't matter. I'm enjoying the time I spend with my ass in the chair. That's all I really care about.

david shute - Apr 3, 2009 at 1:09 AM

An odd thing happened last night. My every intention was to stay up until midnight so I could dig in to Script Frenzy right when it started. The plan was simple; all you can eat sushi, a couple hours of rest and prep, and then a couple hours of writing before bed. That's not what happened.

I distinctly remember stopping eating before I reached that uncomfortably full phase. Apparently I didn't stop soon enough. About fifteen minutes after leaving the restaurant I was terrified to burp because I didn't think it would be coming up all alone. Arriving home incredibly uncomfortable I laid down. My general thought was that I should just relax and let my body digest and I'd be okay in a couple of hours. That was 8:30 PM. A short three and a half hours away from Script Frenzy starting.

I fell asleep. I'm not sure when but it wasn't long after laying down. I woke up at 8:50... in the morning. Yeah. Apparently it was more sushi than I thought.

A little over 24 hours into Script Frenzy and I'm 18 pages down. Not a bad first day at all. I have no clue where I'm going with this but I like the set up so far. I'm curious as to what kind of hell I'm actually going to end up sending these poor bastards through.

Last year around Script Frenzy time I created a simple name generator application in Ruby using scraped census data. I'm quite happy that it's still around and I'm still using it.

I'm hoping I can stay on track over the next two weeks. I have filming this weekend to complete and then editing after that. It's entirely feasible that this could pull me completely off of this. I really hope that's not the case. I'd like to finish early and have some time to polish up the first draft before April is up. Not rewrite but just clean up.

To close out I want to seriously pimp Dropbox. I work across three computers very frequently. I switch off between my laptop and desktop computer all the time. Dropbox has been phenomenal in keeping my materials synced across all three systems. Completely cross platform and offering 2 GB of storage for free it's such a nice addition to my tools. Even if I wasn't using it to sync across multiple computers I'd be using for the online back up of all my materials. It even keeps track of revisions. You can roll back to an earlier version whenever you want. So awesome. My only gripe is the conflict system. Currently it just creates multiple versions of the same file if two different systems try to upload the same file with different changes. Other than that? Amazing software that has made my life so much easier.

Here's what I've been working on, warts and all. Zero edits done at this point.. Down On The Farm. Chances are I'll keep overwriting the same file so just cause this post says 18 pages doesn't mean that will continue to be true.

david shute - Apr 2, 2009 at 12:16 AM

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