LSWF - A Weekend to Remember

It’s been three days since the London Screenwriters’Festival wrapped and I still have a stupid grin on my face.

I was planning on writing a long review of the weekend, but all I really need to say is:

“Wow! That was amazing!” Yes, with all the exclamation marks included, and more!!!

Chris Jones

So thank you to Chris Jones and all members of staff and volunteers that worked incredibly hard; thank you to all the speakers and guests that made time to contribute to the festival; and thank you to all other delegates whether writer, producer, director, agent, other or sympathizer. The knowledge and confidence boost I gained from joining in on the sessions, the workshops, script chat, speedpitching, general yattering and controlled binging is invaluable.

In Conversation with David Reynolds

My highlight – Pitching Dead End Job to David Reynolds and have him brainstorm ideas on how I could develop the sitcom further. He even gave one of the characters 12 children. Most of all, he encouraged me to keep on working on the script and topped it all by adding that he really liked the setting.

My lowlight – Having to sneak out of the Joe Cornish session to make my way home very early due to other commitments. I definitely made up for it on the second and third days.

The main lesson learned this weekend is that you can make your own luck. Work hard, go for it, don’t stop at the first hurdle and just keep writing!

The festival may be over, but this is just the beginning.

LSWF DAY 1 - A Mini Adventure

And so it begins! I'm home from a great 1st day at the London Screenwriters' Festival.

Today has been a short day for me, so I made the most of it. After walking around the building for half an hour, completely lost, I finally found my bearings and the main room where Chris Jones, the festival director, was saying a final word and welcome.

From that point on, there were about four sessions taking place at the same time, a tough choice at times. The first session I headed for was Cut! Cut! Cut! with Ellin Stein. It was an interesting session where we all got a chance to read a few pages of someone else's script and together understand what did or didn't work and why.

An hour later and I was headed to my script surgery session with The Doctor - Paul Gallagher. The Euroscript clinic set up at the festival was fantastic. Paul was really good at helping me view Dead End Job, the latest sitcom Taro and I have been writing together, from a different perspective. Together we talked about what worked, what didn't and all the different options, including a change in character gender. I have much work to do on it now and extra preparation for my speedpitching session on Sunday.

After lunch I had the luck of getting into the very popular session with Edgar Wright. That's right, Edgar Wright! A funny and inspiring man, who's making it happen. Not long after he had his 1st feature A Fistful of Fingers started showing at the Prince Charles cinema, he met Matt Lucas and David Walliams. After watching his movie, they asked him to work with them as director. He ended up directing TV and not long after got involved with Spaced. He started talks with Simon Pegg about Shaun of the Dead in 1999, and it took another 3 years after they wrapped on Spaced to get it made. Meanwhile, Danny Boyle made 28 Days Later and Dawn of the Dead was going to be re-made, a set-back but thankfully not a deterrent. I could go on and on. But let's just say, I'm a fan! Towards the end of his session Joe Cornish walked in to join the audience, and I caught a glimpse of the man I would be watching next.

Many of you may have heard of Joe Cornish from his appearances on TV and radio with Adam Buxton. Together they did The Adam and Joe Show which was always very funny. During his session, Joe talked mainly about his debut feature Attack the Block. Not being down with the kids, he had to do extensive research into how they spoke, acted, lived and also how they relate to others in different situations. He also talked about different type of monster movies and decided he wanted to do one where they scare you due to volume, rather than looks. It was interesting to hear about all the research that went into the movie before he even wrote it all down. We then got to hear a little about Tintin and his involvement in it as well as working with Stephen Spielberg. Overall Joe came across as a very humble person, which made him even more likeable and admirable.

Sadly I had to leave before the end of that session missing out on the rest of the day and the networking drinks, but that's ok, I'll be back for more tomorrow. For now I'll be carving some pumpkins.

Virtually There

This past weekend Chris Jones, filmmaker and writer of The Guerrila Film Makers Handbook, held a Guerilla Film Makers Masterclass at Regents College. Having got a ticket with one of the discount codes available, it seemed great value for money, a weekend fully packed with talks on all aspects of filmmaking and to top it all up, it started on Friday night with a talk by Gareth Unwin and David Seidler, producer and writer for "The King’s Speech", respectively.

There was just one problem: the ticket I bought wasn’t for me but for my husband. Having recently attended a Raindance course, it only seemed fair that I did the babysitting instead. So whilst Taro was off to acquire invaluable knowledge, I put on Pulp Fiction and sulked. Every once in a while though I thought I’d see if anyone was tweeting from the event.        

I was very pleased to see that whilst some people were tweeting about getting a Mexican wave going, Leilani Holmes (@momentsoffilm) was busy transcribing key moments 140 characters at a time and even though it wasn’t the same as being there, Twitter was the place to be for those of us who were unable to attend.

The weekend followed in much the same style and I have actually learned a few things virtually.

I could copy and paste all the tweets, but it would be a very long post, so instead you can check it out on #GFilm

Here are some of my favourite tweets:

momentsoffilm Leilani Holmes 

#GFilm Advice to new filmmakers Gareth: Just do it. The day you become a Producer is when you produce. A director when you direct.

momentsoffilm Leilani Holmes 

#GFilm Advice to new filmmakers David: Write from your heart. Something that comes from within.

momentsoffilm Leilani Holmes 

#GFilm David: You cannot wait for devine inspiration you just have to turn up and put something on the page.

Lunarcheeseshop Garret Smyth 

Homo sapiens is much more than fifteen thousand years old! (This is a test message, although none the less true.) #GFilm

WandaOpalinska Wanda Opalinska 

Chris Jones>Our subconscious can't distinguish real & imagined emotions, which is why we cry @ films <What do we think, tweeps?#GFilm

momentsoffilm Leilani Holmes 

We're in the business of creating powerful experiences. Movies are emotional training grounds. #GFilm

meddyford Meddy Ford 

'It's about making 10,000 phone calls and getting one result' Too true! #Gfilm

momentsoffilm Leilani Holmes 

#GFilm Nobody really cares if you make your film but you. There's competition and there's people who have more but it never matters. Work.

asylumgiant Mark Lo 

#GFilm BEWARE THE FETISH OF KIT :)

momentsoffilm Leilani Holmes 

#gfilm The material you end up with is your film. You may have to let go of the script and make the best film you can from what you have.

momentsoffilm Leilani Holmes 

#GFilm We're critiqueing a short. Audience a bit brutal here. A good indication of how people react & why to test screen where possible.

momentsoffilm Leilani Holmes 

#GFilm A feature stays around for a long time so you have to love what you do.

Lunarcheeseshop Garret Smyth 

#GFilm CHIPS! Someone is eating chips in the room. They smell delicious...

livingspiritpix Chris Jones 

Exhausted, exhilarated and inspired by the extraordinary people I met at the Guerilla Masterclass. The REAL future of the industry #GFilm

I also got my husband’s account of the weekend and like many people, he’s ready to just do it! He also brought me home a little gift, a DVD copy of Chris Jones’ award winning short “Gone Fishing”. Can’t wait to see it.

Gone Fishing Trailer from Chris Jones on Vimeo.

It is amazing what can be done in this day and age and that one can gather so much information from an event as it’s unfolding but I must emphasize that as thankful as I was for all the live tweets, this is just the next best thing (poor man’s solution) rather than a substitute to physically being there. So unless you had a good excuse, such as babysitting, then I hope you were there.

With 360 delegates, there might have been new friendships starting over the weekend that will last for years, or who knows someone could have met the love of their life? Whatever you got from the event, those are things that I have missed out on, although thankfully I’m already married. Social networking and live streaming can all be invaluable sources of knowledge and exchange of information essential for today’s fast paced lifestyles, but they lack the very important human touch.

Some of the delegates were quick to add their thoughts to a blog and I decided to list the ones I’ve come across. If you too have written down your thoughts and experiences of the weekend, feel free to send me a link and I’ll add it to the list.

What did we learn from Oscar Winning Producer Gareth Unwin and Oscar winning writer David Seidler? - by Chris Jones

Gareth Unwin, David Seidler & The History of The King's Speech – by Leilani Holmes


The Guerilla Film Masterclass #GFilm - by Leilani Holmes

Start Doing It, Stop Talking About It ~ Gareth Unwin – by Meddy Ford

Reality Bites: How The Guerilla Film Masterclass Bit Me Hard… - by Stuart Elms


Back to Life, back to Reality - by evermorefilms


Guerilla Filmmakers Masterclass in London - by Christopher Bevan


Things I Learnt this Weekend - by Alli Parker