Just finished my Screenplay!

**Tom Lowe** · 10-24-2007, 01:01 PM

Well it's been a year in the planning. Finally finished my screenplay for my first full-length feature to direct myself, to be shot on the RED late next summer. It's called Solace. Tons of reading, research, many long trips scouting locations and gathering ideas for the story. I definitely will say that I wrote the script slightly differently knowing how much the RED will free me up in certain ways to get spectacular images I would simply not be able to afford to get if I was shooting on 35.

There is always an odd, hollow feeling you get when you finish a creative writing project like this, in which you have been so heavily invested. On the one hand, you feel exhilarated to finish your labor of love, on the other, you feel kind of empty because the story is over.

**P Andersson** · 10-24-2007, 01:09 PM

congratulations

**Jeremy Torrie** · 10-24-2007, 01:27 PM

Well Tom, I can say the story is not quite over. It is good to step back for a week or more and let it rattle around in your brain. There is definitely a sense of accomplishment -I've finished three screenplays since last year and a Bible for a drama series. It's great to believe this particular step is done...

However, get coverage on it, and don't be too protective -i.e. believing the story is perfect...when I took creative writing in college (many years ago now) they told us we must be able to 'kill our babies' for the sake of making it better. I've had outside readers on projects really help refine the story even when I thought it was as good as it could get. But don't you know, one or two drafts later it is better than the script you thought was ready to go to picture.

I've written and story edited a number of scripts and it is really a long haul with the first or second draft still one or two away from being ready to shoot.

Even one of our best feature projects...the script was as good and tight as we could make it and been getting fairly positive reactions, until we were told by a major distributor that it would be much more saleable to incorporate a contemporary angle that I had been playing with...this script is a fantastic period piece along the lines of The Illusionist and The Prestige, but with the modern day angle, the distrib feels they can get the presales they need to invest in the picture.

**Tom Lowe** · 10-24-2007, 01:51 PM

Torrie, of course. I will edit this script a hundred or even a thousand times before shooting it. I'm a writer and novelist by profession, so editing is an obsession for me. I've got a bunch of writer/editor friends reading it right now.

I might also submit it over at Zoetrope's virtual studio, which is place where other writers critique your screenplay and give you feedback, and in exchange you have to critique the works of three others. I have found it helpful in the past.

**C.H.Haskell** · 10-24-2007, 02:04 PM

Congrats TOM...woohoo! Wow, well done...you have done what I have been trying to do for a very long time. PM when your ready to shoot cause you know I would love to help.

best

**Tom Lowe** · 10-24-2007, 02:12 PM

We'd love to have you, Haskell, I can tell you that right now!

I pm'd you about that timelapse thing. Anything you need for the doc, you got.

**Jason Francois** · 10-24-2007, 02:20 PM

Congrats Tom. Whether you've done it once or a hundred times it's still a great accomplishment.

**Rudi Herbert** · 10-24-2007, 02:54 PM

Tom,

Congrats!!! I had my script finished AND sold about a year ago, then I realized that with RED, if it was half as good as it appeared it could be, I could actually resurrect a lot of my "baby" scenes and retake a couple of subplots that I loved but were impractical. I've been in revisions ever since and close, once again, to finishing. And all I can say is that right now I envy you, I'm drained and still spending hours fussing over a single line or word... All hail the creative process!

Congrats again!

Rudi Herbert

**Thom Steinhoff** · 10-24-2007, 03:11 PM

Tom,

Congratulations! Now, could you finish mine?

**Dexter Gregoire** · 10-24-2007, 04:10 PM

We just finished doing a group reading with actors of a screenplay I will be producing next year.

A Group reading is the most powerful experience. Far more powerful than one person quietly reading then critiquing. So many things came to surface that needs to be corrected. I also recorded the whole session and also the discussion afterwards.

I learned that from a Hollywood Producer.

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