Heist script is finished!

Well, I at least have a completed draft.

It came in at 101 pages. I think there's some trimming that will get it down a few pages. I may even discover that entire scenes can be removed.

For now though, I'm just going to wallow a bit in the satisfaction of having completed another feature length screenplay. I've sent the finished draft to James, and though he seemed pretty happy with the first 75 pages, I'm prepared to deal with the fact that he may not like the ending, but as I've said before, that's not a tragedy - there's a lot of ways that it could have gone, and I tried to pick the one that provided some emotional satisfaction, a bit of redemption and a fresh start for one of the principals. We can always rework it. I'm not scared of doing that at all.

This is the first film where I've tried to delve heavily in the development of themes throughout. It was fun and I think that it helps provide a richness to the story.

There were a few thematic elements that I feel good about that go with the film that carry across all the characters. The one of the heist for example is one that carries across just about all the principals. The main characters all seem to be looking for a quick solution to a problem which they're solving or planning to solve through some nefarious means.

One of the other themes that I play around with a bit is this notion of something being right under your nose that you're completely unaware of being there. Still another, is this idea of how seemingly simply mistakes or actions can result in situations that can dramatically change the entire landscape of a situation - or someone's life.

There are other themes that I play with - themes with dialog, etc. and I have to say that it was a great exercise as a writer. Whether or not I pulled this thematic development off remains to be seen, but I have to say that I did enjoy it.

Regardless of its success, it was a great exercise. I'm pretty confident that whatever might be wrong with it can be fixed. I feel that I've created some strong, well defined characters. While it is every bit a crime/suspense/thriller it's also an interesting character piece on a number of levels. Still, it will be interesting to start getting the outside views on what I've done.

So the plan is to get notes back from James, incorporate those, then have my initial review by my "English major neighbor" friend. She'll do all the clean up work on it grammatically, look for good structure and provide a good initial set of story basic story and structure notes.

Once these are incorporated, I'll send the script out for its first coverage report, which I may decide to publish parts of in this blog.

Work on planning and pre-production will hopefully will pick up considerably from here.