It has been a while since Azhur and I wrote on the blog. As our previous post mentioned, we haven’t forgotten about the project or our amazing fans. We have been working very hard on the feature script for The Marionette Unit. Azhur, Paul and myself cannot wait to tell the story and make the film, so look forward to lots of exciting news very soon….

In the meantime, we have some exciting news to tell now. The Marionette Unit is going to be appearing at two festivals in Sept!

On the 4th of Sept, The Marionette Unit will be appearing at the Festival Des Arts Visuels De Vevey – Images 10 in Switzerland
These were the guys who supported the film during the very early stages. We will be screening the trailer along with brand new concept artwork that hasn’t been revealed online. We will also get a chance to talk on stage to the festival goers about the film.

www.images.ch/2010/

Then on the 11th Sept, we will be at The Asylum, the Premier UK Steampunk gathering run by the Victorian Steampunk Society in the historic city of Lincoln. We will have a specific booth there to promote the film and to talk to people who are interested in finding out more.

http://steampunk.synthasite.com/

You’ll have noticed we’ve been a bit quiet on the blogging front and rest assured, it means we’re hard at work on the feature script. We’ve had some great feedback on the trailer, from the public, Steampunk enthusiasts and industry members alike.

It may be quiet on the site a little while longer as we put the finishing touches on our draft and we’ll get some news out to everyone as soon as we start sending the script out to our contacts here in London and LA.

In the meantime, keep spreading the word of the film to as many people as you can!

Thanks

The process has been amazing though. It’s important to us to try and get as much of the idea nailed before we sit down at our laptops on Final Draft and start putting it together. The reason for this is just to get the overall idea organised in our heads – and it’s MUCH easier to change things at this stage. You don’t want to get to page 90 and realise there’s a logic problem making you have to go back to page 1. Also, working on index cards, where each card represents a turning point or scene, means you don’t worry about the details or dialogue, even characterisation. You just work out the structure of the film.

A lot of time was spent discussing the idea, what kind of film we wanted to make and what we wanted to say as filmmakers. All of this is changeable, so it’s a case of moving around and slowly narrowing down our choices till we’ve refined our idea. At times though it did feel like we were circling this concept and trying to find the right way in. We must’ve come up with five different versions of the film; some were too huge and over-blown, some were too plot-driven, another idea had amazing antagonists but a weak protagonist who we had no idea how to write. Little things like changing what characters did for a living suddenly coloured the rest of the script – in a good or bad way.

Basically at the end of it this idea is one mercurial beast and pinning it down is based purely on gut-instinct and if this film is something that we would like to see. It’s so destructive to try and imagine what executive producers, or managers or financiers want to see out of it as you’ll water down the story. Another thing I’ve also had to remind myself is that it’s a work-in-progress. At university I always thought the first draft should be perfect and if it wasn’t there was something wrong with the idea and/or my writing. But you have to force your way through it and FIND the idea that serves the concept best.

When we couldn’t see the wood for the trees we always went back to our log-line (which even itself could change). It was more of a philosophical statement which would then inform us on our decisions. We debated each choice, making sure there were no plot or logic holes. If it didn’t make sense, we tried to make it make sense. Sometimes that worked, sometimes not. Other times you’d get towards the end of the film and realise the set up for the finale just didn’t work. That’s when you realise there aren’t any sacred cows. Even if we loved the first act and it was ‘perfect’ it would have to go if the ending wasn’t working. The setup has to be right and feel natural and believable.

Once we had the structure sorted on the index cards we wrote up the treatment, which was a little more detailed version of the cards and then onto writing the script. As using the index cards was for structure, when it gets to the script stage, we can concentrate on the little details and not worry about where the film is going. That’s already been worked out. In fact it makes the scriptwriting quite fun, you get to the meat of the scene.

I can’t wait for people to start reading it. I think there’s moments in the film that are really interesting and quite dark, set-pieces that visually reflect the philosophical statement at the heart of the film and really what I can’t wait for is to put on my directing hat and start visualising the film and designing all the elements!

I’ll try and update once we’re done and wrap up my experience on writing the first draft, then after that it’s brand new territory!

So there have been some changes in the world of The Marionette Unit. Firstly you may have noticed the website has changed… a lot! In fact it has been slimmed down. There are numerous reasons for this, but the main reason is because The Marionette Unit is now going to be a Feature Film. Yes our Victorian Sci Fi film is now being made into a full length film coming to a cinema near you.

As we mentioned a few weeks ago, the director Azhur Saleem and I went to Los Angeles for meetings and promotion of our film. We also went ideally to secure funding for the short film. What turned out to be one type of trip, quickly changed into another. Everyone we showed the trailer to, industry members as well, told us this would make a great feature film. So after some discussion between Azhur, Paul and I, we decided to forgot about making a short film and go straight to making it into a feature!

We are now busy writing the feature script in London and organising our next steps in regards to the feature film. One of those steps is related to the website. While we work on the expanded and new story, we decided best to remove all elements which relate to the short film version. The website will return, and it will be better than ever.

If you would like any more information about The Marionette Unit, please feel free to contact me on info@funsizestudios.com

Till next time

Happy Filmmaking

This is fantastic exposure for us within the growing Steampunk community and will hopefully generate even more fans for our film!

Executive Producer Jett Dunlap will be in attendance to present the trailer and talk about the film.

Last night at the O-Bar in Hollywood starting at 8 pm, a real buzz started to arise. People from all over the world were coming to see a trailer for a film that had not even been made.

What right did these young filmmakers have to make a film backwards, and why by 9:30 were over a hundred people fixated on a 200 inch projection screen to watch a 2 min trailer, which many had already seen?

My name is Jett Dunlap and I am an Executive Producer on this film. I saw this same little teaser trailer in October. My girlfriend had gotten home late and asked me to look at a preview to a film. She tells the story better, but needless to say I was not excited to see another “help me make my movie” pitch, though I watched it anyway to humor her. Then I saw IT. IT is something I looked for in movies, in women, and in products I represented. IT is the indescribable quality which separates greatness from oblivion that we too rarely see. This little glimpse, presented through the eyes of James Boyle and Azhur Saleem, hooked me.

I was born with severe dyslexia, and didn’t read my first full book until I was 28 years old. Perhaps that is why, like famously dyslexic Richard Branson, I like projects that are not made linearly. It’s one of the many reasons that I was so attracted to the concept for this film project.

Last night I stood in the wings of the screening room, listening to the chatter of our guests as they talked about this glimpse of a film. Through the general hum of excitement, I heard plenty of “wow”, “what happens next?”, “when do we get to see more?”, “that was cool”, and “I’ve never seen anything like that before”.

While it was exciting to hear such overwhelmingly sincere praise and interest, I feel it is important to realize what the future will bring. There will be a day when you the fans (whether you have seen this humble little preview from your own computer or at the O-Bar in Hollywood last night) will encounter an experience similar to this: While seeing a movie at your local theater, perhaps with the family or your friends or a partner, the room will fade to black, a familiar production symbol will come up, and then you’ll see some words flash across the screen, something like: “In a world where steam instruments power and control our lives…” An odd sense of Deja Vu may rumble in your soul, or a regretful realization may be felt in the pit of your stomach, before the title comes up: “The Marionette Unit”… “Coming this Christmas”. And you can’t eat your popcorn anymore, because you had your chance. You met James and Az a year and a half before, and you did not jump on their vision.

Now is the time, this is the place, you are the one; let’s see if you qualify to be a a part of a movie-making revolution.

Find me on Facebook
http://www.facebook.com/people/Jett-M-Dunlap/625755080

Now to have the chance to talk across a table is going to be great. It’ll give us the much-needed time to nail down the feature script.

It’s exciting and pretty nerve-wracking at the same time as we’re going to be road-testing the trailer with a lot of people who do this purely for a living!

Keep up with all the news as it happens either on this blog.

Hopefully there’ll be some pretty good news coming out of the next two weeks here!

Azhur recently was interviewed by the website www.behindballet.com.au. They are based in Melbourne, Australia and it is the blog of The Australian Ballet. Looking at dance through the prism of fashion, music, art and literature, they unravel the stories behind their productions and mine ballet’s juicy past to find the new in the old and the old in the new.

They took an interest in The Marionette Unit because of our central character Georgette being a ballet dancer. It is a great interview. Azhur talks about how the original idea came about with myself. He also mentions his inspirations for the dance scene in the movie as well as some of his film inspirations.

Read it at : http://www.behindballet.com/making-the-marionette-unit/

When Azhur sent me the first draft of The Marionette Unit, I had already been collaborating with him and James for about 12 months on other film and TV writing projects. We had established a rapport, which is essential in any enterprise, but especially so in creative projects. Our first creative meeting was for another feature-length idea, which we are still developing.  We met in a Starbucks on friday night after work and hashed out the initial plot in a couple of hours over cold coffee. The process was incredibly easy and organic. Ideas flowed and were assessed on one criterion only:

Does it make the story better?

I have had a number of writing collaborations in the past, but they have been ego driven: one party will feel strongly about something they had contributed and would fight for its inclusion in the final draft, to the detriment of the work itself. What I discovered in Starbucks that night was another writer who cared enough about story to check his ego at the door.

Shortly after, Azhur asked me to pitch my ideas to James — also in the same Starbucks — and he liked what he heard. Not long after, all three of us began work creating a high-concept TV show, more of which I will write about when appropriate. Again, all three of us worked easily and organically and stuck to the golden rule - “Does it make the story better?”

(Un)fortunately, timing is everything, and at the time I was just in the process of emigrating to Canada, which with other people and times past, would have been the end of out collaborations. Luckily, we are all very technically engaged, so instead of Starbucks, we began using video chat and email.

So it was in January 2009 that Azhur sent me his first draft of The Marionette Unit screenplay, which was based on a story he and James had created (Not in Starbucks this time - but that’s another blog posting!) and asked me for comments. I responded and he re-drafted, and this continued for a couple of weeks, with me acting as script editor.

Eventually Azhur invited me to become co-writer on the project, and for the last 11 months we have worked as a tag team: Azhur will write, I will re-write, we video chat and evaluate what works for the story and what doesn’t, then we repeat the process.

This finished around the middle of 2009, when we locked-off the script and began work  on the TV series project and a feature-length treatment for The Marionette Unit.

But with the arrival of 2010 and all the viral interest in the inception trailer, we had some industry insiders review our short script. With their input, Azhur and I have once again been writing, reviewing and re-writing the script, and we are especially pleased with the results. The cuts and the new additions really make the characters shine. Each re-write cycle adds more depth and quality, without having to resort to gimmickry or SFX (much to James’ relief)!

We hope to have this new version of the The Marionette Unit script locked-off this week, at which point we pass it to James for break-down and budgeting.

That, however, will not be the end of the process for me. Shooting may bring additional, last-minute, script changes. A script is a living, breathing thing. It changes from the moment it leaves my head as I type it out. It evolves through re-writing, and pre-production, as the realities of budget and constraints kick-in. Finally, even on the day of shooting, as the words are channeled by the actors who bring them to life, their insights and performance will shape them even more.

All of which make the finished product, a collaboration of many talented people that transforms the solitary process of writing into a very humbling experience.

This is really great as it means HUGE exposure for our film as that site gets read by millions of people across the world.

The posting is AICN & Twitch Present International Eye Candy so thanks again to the guys at Twitch Film for including us in their roundup of films across the world.

Scroll down halfway on the page to read the blurb: (http://www.aintitcool.com/node/43632)

“Steam punk? We got some of that. Coming soon out of the UK is THE MARIONETTE UNIT, a Victorian-era steam punk picture revolving around theatre performers manipulated and controlled by a massive steam-driven organ, the project currently gathering – if you’ll pardon the horrible pun – steam. Producers are putting together funding for both short and feature versions of the concept and, to sell the concept, have put together a fantastic proof-of-concept trailer.”