It's done! But not long ago it was July 23rd, 2009. The rough draft was completed hours before picking up the rental car and heading down to North Carolina to have face time with our principal actors and do some location scouting. After going through a read through the principal actors, I noticed some rough language, clearly of my rush to finish the thing and get the essence of what I wanted to say. There were several places that needed a little more thought and personality to come through in the exchanges between characters. I was also able to see how they both spoke in a way that my memory wasn't able to capture. I can really see these two as the characters and I think it will subsequently inform the writing of their dialog.
This trip played a role in the shaping the first draft, which was completed last night. There are now clearer exchanges between the characters of James and Jenny in a few key moments, and the aggression between the punks and metal heads in the basement shelter. But I also see a few areas that need development: moments, exchanges. And there are also scenes that need to get axed for the sake of pace. So there will be a second draft. This thing has blossomed to 18 pages and I think that's 5 more than I really was willing to go, or thought the audience would be willing to let us go. But nearly everything feels important in setting up the problem at hand and the characters as they are before they go through, for sake of cheap reference, passages.
I hope you'll be interested in reading this as we go along in making what I assume will be an overwhelming, exciting, extremely low-budget, hi-concept film.
Thanks,
John
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