Chris Jones Blog

White Angel 2, Kiss of Death Killer

I just had dinner with actress Harriet Robinson. Harriet played the lead character in White Angel, the serial killer thriller I made in the early nineties that gained so much festival heat at the time. The film also starred Peter Firth as the serial killer - it’s about a writer researching a killers biography and it’s a taught cat and mouse thriller.

Flash forward 20 years and Harriet’s character, Ellen Carter, is now in prison (for reasons we can’t disclose unless you have seen the original film). She is writing the biography of another killer, a female serial killer known as The Kiss of Death Killer…

We are working on the script now and I am delighted to announce that crime writer Rod Duncan is helming it himself. Rod has several crime novels under his belt and is all over WA2 as it’s, in his words and ours, ‘Right up his street…’ He has a blog here too.

Alongside Harriet reprising her role, I will be returning to direct, and Genevieve Jolliffe will also be returning to reprise her role as Producer. This will be a slow burn project and we will only move on it when the script is cracker jack hot.

The theme of the film is that of redemption. What if you had done terrible things? What if you really did change and repent? What if no-one was prepared to give you a second chance? Would you even deserve that second chance? Does anyone? Theses are all ideas that we will be exploring with the characters, while wrapping it around a taut thriller too.

I am very excited to be returning to the characters and themes in White Angel as they are a complex and rich tapestry of human emotions. I also rang sales agent for WA Lise Romanoff who said ‘White Angel does what it says on the tin, it knows exactly what it is, has a great cast and that all makes for a film that is easy to sell…Let’s hope the sequel does the same!’

You can buy White Angel in a double DVD with Urban Ghost Story here…

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Credit Crunch = AMAZING NEW POSSIBILITIES!

As we all knuckle down for the impact of the credit crunch, I have been wondering how film makers will be doing in these so called dark times. Traditionally, film has always done well in times of depression and stress. After all, film is a great escape, it’s local, It’s big and bright, and most of all it’s very good value for money. Where else can you get an immersive 2 hour experience that cost $100,000m for just £7?

This month I have written a feature for Moviescope magazine, about the incredible opportunities that I can see evolving in the film production and distribution arena, and it’s happening right before our very eyes.

Matt Allsopp, the concept artist who created the incredible images for Rocketboy,  supplied a terrific image for the feature, depicting King Kong tearing down the Hollywood sign – but controlled by an emerging film maker using a laptop computer.

You can Download the article here, or you can subscribe to Moviescope via their site here… If you like it, please post comments or even mention it on Shooting People – it would be good to get some debate running.

Onwards and Upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

From Beneath Us, a new project with real BITE!

For a short while now I have been collaborating with two film makers on a project called ‘From Beneath Us’. Judy Goldberg, formerly of Impact Pictures, and Thorsten Hagemann, formerly of Constantin Film, wrote the script over the last year or so, and when he read the script, editor Eddie Hamilton (who had worked with Judy on Resident Evil: Apocalypse) suggest Judy watch ‘Gone Fishing’. She did and within a day we were sat in a pub, chatting about possibilities and getting excited about the future.

The story could be described as ‘Good Will Hunting in a raft’ or as I prefer, ‘Good Will Hunting meets Jaws…’ It’s about some survivors of a plane crash in the Pacific, and how the slowly come to terms with mortality and their past. It is essentially a fascinating story about guilt and forgiveness. Above all though, the REALLY excellent writing is what told me I had to work with Judy and Thorsten.

And so we have been swapping ideas and notes, and I am now attached as director. FANTASTIC! And what makes this project even more exciting is that both Judy and Thorsten are producers too. In fact, they are very experienced in production and turned their hand to writing after being unable to secure the great script for their first feature project together.

Judy is currently in the UK and Thorsten in Mexico, and we all communicate over Skype. It works very well, and I know that when they both sit down for a long writing session, they just hook up over Skype and leave the line open as they work. It’s almost as good as being in the same room together.

I will be flying back to LA in the coming weeks, to begin a series of meetings with studios and production companies in the hope that the project, pardon the pun, floats. So all fingers crossed.

I have to say, it’s really great to be working with guys who have an American ‘ear’ and a desire to really ‘move’ the audience. The script just jumps off the page from word one as it’s VERY simple, telling one story, but telling it very well.

Very exciting!

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Free Xmas Podcast with Screenwriter Stuart Hazeldine

Last year, I hosted a terrific seminar with British screenwriter Stuart Hazeldine. His latest work is out right now, he did a re-write on 'The Day The Earth Stood Still', so you can see just what circles he moves within.

He has also just directed his first feature, a 35mm widescreen psycho thriller called ‘Exam’, which plays in ‘24’ style real time. I was asked to get involved as an Associate Producer, which I happily did as the words just flew of the page when I read the script, and that’s a rare thing.

The Podcast with Stuart covers being a professional writer in Hollywood, while living in the UK – that was the title anyway, but we discussed soooo much more.  You can download, listen to and keep the podcast by clicking here…

Or you can use the player here…

If you enjoyed this Podcast, please join our newsgroup by adding your email below, and we will let you know about our FREE podcasts, courses, books and of course our movies.

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And if you have a friend who would enjoy this podcast, please let them know about the blog – we need every visitor we can get.

Over the next few days I will be releasing more free podcasts, a kind of Best of 2008!

Onwards and upwards!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author

www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Writing for Hollywood - Stuart Hazeldine Event

What an incredible seminar we had last night with Stuart Hazeldine. I think it was one of the very best we have ever held. Stuart talked for two hours about being a professional writer for Hollywood. His insights were candid, entertaining, practical and pragmatic, but most of all, extremely inspiring. I am delighted that we made the effort to record the event, and that Stuart was also good enough to allow us to share this recording with the world (it will take us some time to get it tidied and edited, but watch this space). So you will get the chance to hear it all in due course…

There was so much discussed, it’s impossible to get it all in here, but a few points that resonated with me would be…

Stuart loved ‘Blade Runner’, so without any contract, commitment, even any kind of legal clearance, he went ahead and wrote a sequel (he also wrote a spec script for Alien 4). While some may think this a crazy strategy, and while the film never happened, Stuart shared that of all the scripts he ever wrote, that one generated five times more heat in LA. So while he never sold it, it was a great way of getting into the room as a real player.

Stuart also talked about something that is close to my heart too - which is all about getting as close as you can to the completed film on the page, doing all your work upfront so you don’t have to fix it on set or in post. He shared that on the Nic Cage script he just wrote, when he got the green light and the shoot date, that shifted a gear in his mind and he knew he had to tackle all the stuff in the script that was being left for later… In a few weeks time there would be no later! As writers, I think we can lazily hold onto our favourite moments and scenes that will, in fact, get ditched later. So deal with it now. Stuart talked about how he enjoyed taking five pages out of any script and how it almost always improves it. As he said, 80% of work for the 10,000 writers in Hollywood is actually rewriting, where previous writers had been unable to ‘nail it’. That’s a lot of potential work.

As soon as we get chance to get this podcast up, I will let you know - it’s really worth two hours one evening.

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

It begins at the beginning...

I have been working on my script and reading more and listening to other writing teachers. Aristotle’s name has come up repeatedly, and shamefully, while I knew the broad strokes of his work, I had never read his book on Poetics. Clearly it’s in public domain so I went to the web to find it, and discovered a free download of a reading - so it’s now on my iPod and I am working my way through it.

The most profound bits for me are about the beginning, middle and end.

What resonates most is that I believe that often, I (and having read many scripts I can safely say many others) don’t actually start at the beginning. We start sometime BEFORE the beginning. If we are lucky, this gets addressed in post production when you chop chunks off that are not needed. We usually dress it up as character back story, or the setup, but I fear that most of the time, it’s just dead weight… And it’s not just the script, but every scene has a beginning, middle and end, even every line of dialogue… that’s why in a movie, characters never lock car doors when they park up, the scene ONLY begins when the character arrives and to lock the doors is stuff that happens BEFORE the scene starts - yet we need to establish the location (setting the stage which is something different) thus show the car pulling up.

The original text is pretty hard going I warn you, but if you are into it, there is a free download of the text here… and an audio recording here (in a zip file)…

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Richard Walter's Beyond The Basics DVD Seminar

I have been working my way through a DVD seminar by Richard Walter, called Beyond The Basics, a four disk set that is crammed with inspirational and exceptionally direct and concise advice on screenwriting. No, it’s more than that, it’s about storytelling, agents, managers, film editing and so much more. Richard Walter is an American professor at UCLA and the head of their screenwriting program. He has been tutoring for years and many famous and successful writers have been through his classes. And it shows. He knows his stuff and he doesn ’t mince his words (he is pictured here with Steven de Souza, writer of Die Hard).

What I loved most about this seminar is how he manages to keep technique and instruction fully integrated with his own narrative of tales from the trenches of film making. For me this makes it a great exercise in storytelling in of itself. It makes for an entertaining and instructional experience. I found myself laughing out loud, nodding in agreement, wincing (when I remembered making the same mistakes) and taking notes on what I will do next to my screenplay.

One of the amazing things Richard offers is, he will read your script if you buy his DVD or attend a seminar. Given his immense experience and status, that is an incredible opportunity.

The disk is flag wavingly American, which personally, I respond to in a very favourably way (American in a West Wing sensibility sort of way, not George Bush). I also ripped the audio off the DVD and put it on my iPod so I can listen while travelling, making use of those long tube journeys back and forth from Soho for Gone Fishing.

The Screenwriters store in LA currently has a February Sale where the disk set is reduced from $79.95 to $59.95. You can get it here, though you will need to buy it today to get the discount. I thoroughly recommend it.

On their site, there is also a short but free interview with him here…

Onward and upward!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

Print out and stick in your loo!

As a way to inspire you and us, to write better scripts, we have been working on a number of A4 pages to print, read, and stick in your loo / next to you bed / under your mouse-mat.

We are starting with one that was in part posted on Jurgen Wollf’s Time To Write Blog, which is Mark Twains Rules for Writing (abridged). Clearly written many years ago, but still bang on the money, it’s refreshing to know that even though stories could meander a little more back then, they were still rigidly adhering to the same rules that we do.

This little poster is a PDF, and we aim to supply more in the same vein time. You can download it here. We hope you enjoy it!

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com

FREE Writers Tools!

I just wanted to share with you an amazing little utility I found for writers on a PC. It’s a Dictionary / Thesaurus affair, and much more. It is called WordWeb, and it#s is easy to install and use. It features it’s own dictionaries, and can also link to web based content like WikiPedia. When writing, just put your cursor on the word, hit the hot keys and up pops a window with a writers cornucopia of word information.

Best of all, there is a free version too, so long as you don’t make more than two flights a year or drive a four by four. It’s a first for me, carbon-footprint-ware, and I think we should all support and applaud it.

You can download here, http://wordweb.info

Chris Jones, Film Maker and Author
www.livingspirit.com
mail@livingspirit.com