Well, the deadline for the Red Planet Prize came and went, so I hope you got your submission in on time. Great to see so much blog reaction and people getting motivated to write, which, regardless of winning the competition, has to got to be worth something. It’s all by post this year so any late entries by email or fax or carrier pigeon won’t get a look in, I’m afraid. I’ll post updates on how things are going as soon as there’s any relevant info, so stay tuned.
I haven’t been giving the RPP much thought up until the deadline, to be honest, as I’ve been busy working on a few kids’ shows. One of them is a series called Badly Drawn Roy for CBBC. It’s about a cartoon boy growing up with a working class Dublin family in the real world, kind of like Who Frames Roger Rabbit meets The Commitments (but without the swearing). It’s shooting right now in Dublin and I went over recently to watch some of my episode being filmed.
This was actually the very first time I’d ever been on location to watch stuff wot I wrote being filmed, and it was typically exciting and illuminating. I’m really proud of my episode and can’t wait to see how it all turns out (should be ready for broadcast next autumn). The show is based on an hilarious short film, produced by Jam Media, which you can check out below (it’s about 20 mins long, divided into two parts for You Tube). The kids’ version for CBBC sees Roy as a ten year-old animated kid rather than a thirtysomething cartoon. It’s gonna be a hoot.
Now that my script has been signed off and they’re nearly finished filming, I can focus on the RPP submissions with the rest of the RP team. I think we’ve received about 1,000 entries, roughly half of what we received last year, but that’s understandable given that we were much more specific about what we wanted for this year’s set-up. But with that amount of entries, I'd say we're the most popular (and best!) screenwriting competition in the UK. Not sure when the call for 2nd round scripts will be (at least a couple of months I reckon) but good luck to everyone who’s entered and I’ll keep you posted on any breaking developments.
11 comments:
1,000 entries??? Dammit, I had my bet down at 647. I now owe another blogger a fiver thanks to my incessant, compulsive ill-advised gambling habit. DAMN YOU STACK!
Grand news on the episode tho, nice one!
PS. Are you playing out tomorrow?
Congrats on the episode Danny! Sounds great!
Hurray, so we still have time to write the other 50+ pages! ;-) Beautiful sunny day here, that means I can go to the beach!
Danny, as a fan of the Cheltenham (writer's) festival, what do you make of that other competition? The pitching competition.
I only recently heard about it, got quite excited, and then started worrying about putting my best ideas out there with no protection. Not wanting to get all newbie what's-to-stop-them-nicking-my-ideas, but I've got a lot more ideas than completed scripts at the moment, and you can't protect your ideas.
My first instinct was submit a whole batch of -- great -- ideas, now I'm not quite so sure.
congrats Danny!
Looking good...
Anyone can nick your idea Terraling, but no one can write it like YOU would - that's why there are plenty of movies, series etc with the same idea, but they're executed differently, hence them being... Different. Just imagine if someone copyrighted police/pathology drama when they came up with Silent Witness: there would be no CSI. Nightmare!
The short version: Don't worry about copyright. Or if you do worry anyway, buy a copyright bundle and shove your pitches in there since they take ideas, scripts, blog posts, whatever:
www.dulynoted.co.uk
CSI: Nightmare.
That's my favourite CSI yet!
It's on C5 every week, BT. CSIs battle to get nightmare serial killers who can change into dogs and candlesticks and your Aunty Marjorie*. Woooooh!
*These are not representative of the nightmares of Lucy Vee. Honest.
COngrats on your ep. I loved the original Badly Drawn Roy. Looking forward to seeing the TV version. And on an entirely unrelated note, seeing as they've just launched this years Tony Doyle bursary, I wondered if you had any thoughts or insight into the process or your experience of the scheme?
Hi Jennifer
I won the TDB in 2004. There was a shortlist/winner party in BBC Belfast where they announced the winner, and then a month later we had an intensive weekend workshop with BBC NI Drama and a few other BBC bods (which has changed to six seminars for this year's winners!).
Shortly afterwards, I managed to get my winning script optioned and developed with Liam Cunningham and Parallel Films but nothing came of it in the end. It was a great experience, and confidence boost, to win the prize. I bumped into this year's winner at Cheltenham (actually there were two winners), and it's definitely a competition worth entering, especially as it's free, just like the RPP.
Cheers Danny - always good to hear from someone who's been through it!
I saw that programme this morning on BBC2 - it is very funny, an absolute gem.
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