A really fine film. Anne Hathaway in her finest role that I’ve seen. The characters are well developed and the script is powerfully poignant. As the top note of a perfume, the soundtrack by Zafer Tawil is outstanding. A film to learn from on all levels.

One of the short film concepts I’m working on is one about a woman who finds meaning to her difficult and conflicted life through elaborate rituals at her makeup table. I blogged about this a while back here. [Aside, it's funny - I posted that exactly a year ago. I will really make this film this year! Stop smirking.]

I mentioned in my last post how my process for fleshing out a film used to be going on a single image or phrase or brain-picture, and going with it. With this film – working title right now I Feel Pretty -, it started out just like that.

It was 2007 and I was sitting in the editing suite at Open Window in Pretoria, waiting for the rendering to finish on my first documentary that I had made in London. I was staring at the wall, then the monitor, then the wall. So, I was looking around for a magazine or someone’s assignment that I could read. (You wouldn’t believe the ish people leave around.) So, I found a piece of paper with some random scribbles and then the following line:

“When I put on my makeup, I feel pretty.”

I’ll try to find the original clipping to verify the exact wording. I found the words nevertheless fascinating and my imagination went for a roadtrip, exploring all the possibilities you could on film with a concept like that.

So, with Victor’s process now in my toolbox, I sat in Mugg ‘n’ Bean Rosebank a week or so ago, and started fleshing out the main characters of the story. I wrote pages and pages of backstory. I feel really confident about the film now; I feel I have a much more solid foundation to work with rather than just a single image or word-image.

I’ve got two people already interested in playing the main characters.

Stay tuned!

A couple of weeks ago, I met up with Victor Neusteter to workshop a new script for a project that I was in pre-production for. Yeah. Some background.

So, last year September, a little while before my car accident, I was approached by a young screenwriter studying at a vocational centre for screenwriters. He was looking for a production company to help him produce his film that he had written.

I engaged with him on the project, even as I recovered from the accident and dealt with everything at the time. And so began a long and slow process to transform the script from a sprawling story to something I could put my name and company name on. It wasn’t the best, but I was happy with it as a first project. So, this past January, we officially went into pre-production. We started looking for crew and actors. I started looking for directors.

I had met Victor at an acting workshop earlier this year at Fusion Studio. I got his details and gave him my card. I contacted him later about the project and we met up. I told him about the project and gave him the script. Yeah. He hated it. He wanted to go back to the drawing board with it because he liked the basic idea. I got a second opinion from Suzanne Brenner at ProWrite and she confirmed Victor’s feelings although she felt that we could do something with the basic idea in the original screenplay.

I decided to take the plunge, bring the project back to development stage, and come up with a completely new script.

Background done.

In the quiet and serene silence of Victor’s bachpad, we bashed out the characters and basic plotline. I learnt a lot from him and the time spent. I had gone about my scripts in a far more sporadic fashion before, building it around a single image or idea. Victor’s more methodical and systematic approach gifted me a methodology that I can now apply to any project.  Thanks, Herr Victor!

I don’t want to give away too much right now, but it’s a heist film based in South Africa with a very dark and cynical touch.

Stay tuned!