Forging ahead

It has been a chaotic week so i'm a little late off the mark for this post. Anyway, we've finally got a script greenlit so we can begin preparing to shoot. There is a collosal amount of work to be done before shooting so I'm taking off my writers hat and putting on my producers hat now (or putting my writers hat aside for now at least - I'll have to tweak some dialogue later).

A few things have helped getting the script finished have been going back to classical genre structures. I found that even though the game/film is set in the future, in a post apocalyptic world, the structure was more like a western. Using, or adapting, the conventions used in a traditional western made it easier for me to gain some clarity on the motivations for certain characters. To be honest, I didn't really have much knowledge on the western genre before I started this project - I've seen a few, but it's not a genre I would normally seek out - although I might now because I've enjoyed finding out more about them. That said, some of my favourite films recently have been westerns: the superb '3:10 to Yuma' with Christian Bale and Russell Crowe and the brilliant 'True Grit' from the Cohen brothers. I really enjoyed the behind the scenes footage from 'True Grit' as well, especially for the insights into costume and art direction.

'True Grit' BTS Featurette

I found a few links that gave me a good summary on the Western genre:

Western Genre (Wikipedia)

Western Genre Lecture

Genre: The Western

Our main character in our game trailer is female, which is not especially common for westerns, but she fit a lot of the conventions of a western protagonist (or one variation of it at least: The western hero walks alone; the hero is reluctant; the hero can be morally ambiguous - usually has a personal moral code he/she adheres to).

In many ways, the post-apocalyptic world elements fit nicely into the genre conventions of a western: Civilization vs the Wild.

Anyway, don't want to give too much away at this point. We will be focusing on art direction and casting next, as well as preparing for the actual shoot which is only two and a half weeks away.