"Out damn script, out I say!"

A picture speaks a thousand words, right?  One single photograph in a Cleo magazine captured my heart and imagination when I was at high school, and has gone on to speak tens of thousands of words to me since that time.

The image was of a girl wearing an Arran sweater and sitting amongst beautiful tussock-like beach grass.  She had her back to the camera, was hugging her knees and her stunning long brown hair was windswept.  The photo was part of a series of winter wear, and other images showed her with her boyfriend and other friends.  Everyone at school bought a copy of that magazine, and we all cut out THE picture and hung it on our bedroom walls.  Eventually the picture must have made way for something a bit more "mature", and it was lost.

During my teenage angst, I'd gaze at that photo for hours and wish I was that girl (either literally her or who she was representing).  And after hours of gazing, a story began to form in my mind, a story so compelling to me about why she was on that beach, who she was, and who she was pining for, that I HAD to write it down. 

The words tumbled easily through the end of my biro and began to fill up an exercise book.  I also wrote notes on other scraps of paper and soon had a scrapbook full to the brim that needed to be molded into a novel.  A family friend gave me an old laptop just before I finished university and I started to type the novel into Microsoft word.

Uh oh. This is where the problem began.  For some strange reason when I was no longer handwriting my story, I began to see camera angles.  I could hear music in my head and I could see more than clothes, they were costumes; ends of sentences became ends of scenes. 

The opening scene became apparent, and so real that I could literally feel the icy grass crunching beneath my feet as the mist swirled around the group of people I was with.  The titles, the music...everything...this was no longer a novel, it wanted to be a screenplay.

Damn.  I tried to ignore the screenplay issue.  But then Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for Good Will Hunting.  At that moment, the dream could not be denied.  My story born from a picture in a teenage magazine, which had developed through novel form and was morphing into a screenplay now had a goal.  An Oscar.  I needed to win for me, for all the heartbroken, forlorn and angsty teenagers, and for my country New Zealand.

The next step was to research screenplay layout, and I painstakingly "tabbed" for all I was worth to put in dialogue, scene changes and action into Microsoft word.  Courier New 12pt became my best friend.

What next?  Acting class, of course.  I successfully enrolled in Michael Saccente's Meisner class in Auckland.  The two year course was brilliant, and I devoured every script that I was presented with and learnt more about script construction and indeed me, than at any other time during my life.  If you don't know about the Meisner technique, Google it.  Fascinating and extraordinary.

Then I discovered the script formatting software "Final Draft".  The order arrived from the Writers Store in Los Angeles within a week, and tabbing became a thing of the past.  Final Draft is so damn clever!  It can almost anticipate who is going to speak next and where the scene is set.  Best of all, you can assign voices to your characters and have your script read back so you can ascertain the flow of language and check that conversations actually sound like conversations in real life.

Unfortunately, without the pleasure of being able to write full-time, boring stuff like work and study has inevitably held up the final push needed to complete the script.  But, two weeks ago a competition was launched, and now I have that final kick in the pants that I need.  I'm entering the script into http://www.makemymovie.co.nz/

A requirement of entry is to produce a movie poster.  A dear friend was happy to become my "star" on the poster, and via facebook, I was put in touch with an incredibly talented young photographer who leapt at the chance to be involved.  We were supposed to shoot the poster yesterday, but the weather wasn't playing nicely.  Hopefully, we'll get it shot next weekend, and then my entry will be complete.

I’ll let you know when the entry has been loaded, then if you like the idea, I’d be thrilled to receive your vote so I make it into the next round of judging.

If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, right?  And maybe, just maybe this story will stop gnawing at my soul, and begin to stir other people's souls as they watch the tale unfold on the silver screen. Just maybe.