Whew.  I literally finished this rewrite of Redress a few minutes ago, but I am so stoked about it, I had to keep writing…which brings me to this.

As of this moment, the script is at 134 pages; the single largest screenplay I have ever completed.  I know there are some “pros” out there that can scoff at that, but F**k You.  This is my story to tell, my damn near two years of development and my celebration to enjoy – and you know you were once there in your humble careers as well. For some of you out there, I know you are still wishing you could get to this point. Trust me, I know the struggle, and if you keep pressing forward it will happen for you.

While I am at a very celebratory point with the script,  I can’t take all of the credit however. My friend Kreg contributed a number of twists and turns to this grand story arc and I wouldn’t be here if he hadn’t shared his ideas for the script with me. As I have been rewriting, I think I have only further worked those ideas into the story and reinforced them with other bits. While I may have changes the order of things, I feel I served my characters with just cause and realistic situations.

My writing style, as I have learned, is very “organic” in nature. Some writers outline every detail and they are crippled without it. I just start coming up with ideas. Some of them I write down. Others I let swirl around in my head for a while and eventually they find their way out. That is the way it was with this rewrite. I basically skimmed over my notes on the last draft and then I sat down and started writing.  I knew the story already in my head and where I wanted to go with it, so I just wrote. Occasionally I looked at the old draft, but I hardly ever copied anything directly from it.  While the new story may read like some of the original script, there was no copy and pasting.

As I started getting into more heated scenes I found myself having to go back and insert small details into the story. I mainly did this because I’m one of those people that watches a movie and says “How the hell did that happen?” or “Why did that idiot just go into that dark alley?” I feel fairly confident that the story is resolved, the characters are resolved and while I don’t leave anything open for a dreaded sequel, I think the story ends in a way that viewers will be able to carry the story forward in their own minds and be happy with however they see it ending.

There were even a couple of times when I was writing this version when I had to just trust my characters.  We got into a tug of war here and there, and any writer know what I mean. I wanted to push the story in one direction, but my characters would never do some of the things I wanted, so I had to trust them.  I’m glad I did because in the end they surprised me.  The main villain became more sick and twisted that I could have ever imagined, the rogue cop began taking matters into this own hands and blatantly stretching the law to get his man, and the hero, if he is a flawed hero, well, he went off the deep end, but in the end he swam back to the shore to live another day.

So, what’s next for this story? Unfortunately I have one more rewrite left, really just to hammer out some structure issues I brushed off and make sure the continuity flows. I want to pass it around to a few people for a read and then maybe let a script doctor give it a read. There is a Screenwriter’s Conference in October up in Los Angeles. It is my goal to have the script polished and ready for a pitchfest they are having.

In my heart I know this is a good story. It is an original story. And if I have it my way, it’s going to make a damn good movie one day.

-DQ

Ahhhhh…. It’s that time of year again: Comic-Con in San Diego (aka Uber Geek Christmas). I don’t think you can find any other single place in the world where so many people, who are fans of so many different things, are gathered under one roof in almost perfect harmony. Granted, you get the really fat people, the really smelly people and that one stupid f**king asshole who stands directly in front of a 1200 foot line of people dressed in black robes holding wands and says, “Oh, this is the line for the Harry Potter panel?”

I have a booth again this year, although this time I think it’s just so I can get into the convention hall early. We’re not really selling anything this year, more doing some shameless self promotion and trying to network with people slightly more influential than ourselves.

Personally, I really wish I had a new film to promote. This is my second year to host a booth and not have something brand spanking new, other than our Podcast. Hopefully next year will be different. I always find it weird when hundreds of people run up to me to see what the new film is. I’m not a famous filmmaker by any means, but the amount of people who enjoy my work can be a little intimidating at times.

I’ll never forget the first Fangoria Weekend of Horrors I went to a few years ago and this guy came running up to me screaming, “Dude, dude, dude, you’re David Quitmeyer!”, and I took two steps back and looked at him. I didn’t know if he was going to hug me or shoot me. Thank God all I got was a handshake and a new friend rather than a chest full of lead pellets.

While I detest the seas of people, especially the greedy bastards who grab handfuls of SWAG, I do enjoy the panels, seeing the creative personalities I admire and occasionally brushing shoulders with a celebrity. I don’t know what it is about Comic-Con, but I never want it to end and I never want to leave the convention center at night. I like wondering around the halls, observing all of the other people crashed out on benches and thumbing through their event guides.

I will have to say, since I’m not selling anything, this is the one year I’m not racing at the last minute to print out fliers or edit a trailer. After coming to Comic-Con for 7 years, four of them as a vendor, I have to say I am finally learning the ropes.

If you find your way to Comic-Con, please stop by the Steel Web Studios Booth at #H-07 and say “Hi”. It’s always nice to know somebody else is reading this other than the demons in my head.

It has taken a while, but the screenplay for Redress finally crept across the 100 page mark last night. My target length for the script is about 130 pages for this draft and then I plan to go back and trim the fat back to about 115 pages.

For those of you following me on Twitter you may recall I posted a photo of a book called How Not to Write a Screenplay. I bought the book mainly as a reference for scripting items like flashbacks and dream sequences. It also has some great tips for trimming the fat and rewording scenes into the basics while using examples from other screenplays. I tend to be extremely descriptive when I write, so it was a good booster for me and really drove home a few points.

Now that I have my head wrapped around the story more, I’m starting to make things a little more uniform and adding explanations for things that were initially kind of like WTF? I have been having fun adding new frights and gore to the story and developing the characters further along the way. I’m at the point where my characters are starting to control the story so I find myself saying “Oh, Henry wouldn’t do that…” so then I have to forcibly push him in the direction I want with violence or horror. One thing the first draft lacked was a high enough body count for my satisfaction. I don’t want to start dropping corpses like Jason Voorhees on a mushroom bender, but there is an underlying crime story plot, so I’ve started showing glimpses of the violent nature of the crimes rather than lightly eluding to them after the fact. We see the girl get murdered rather than simply mention it in a news report; stuff like that.

The final piece of the puzzle I have plugged in are some the physical manifestations of the main tormented spirit. I never wanted to come out and say there is a haunting going on, but I wanted to explore how somebody battling with stress and nightmares may easily brush of some of the more subtle tendencies of a haunting as coincidence.

-DQ

I have been working quite a bit on Redress lately, and it feels good to get my hands dirty again. As I work on developing the story more and more, I am considering changing the name to “Old Mill Road”. All of the major parts of the story happen on, you guessed it, “Old Mill Road”. Plus, I’m starting to get a little sick and tired of having to explain what “Redress” means. I think I was pushed over the edge when somebody linked the title of the film to a page on Wikipedia for redressing a theatrical set. For the record, my definition of Redress is: The setting right of what is wrong.

Personally, the more I think about it, Old Mill Road can have a creepy ring to it…you know.. never go out to Old Mill Road alone after dark…etc. I’ll play with it a little more before I make it final though. Hell, if I manage to sell the screenplay rather than make it myself, they can call it whatever they want.

As far as script updates, the script was just over 62 pages from beginning to end when I started on this last rewrite. There were number of vague descriptions, location shots were not broken down correctly and, quite frankly, there just wasn’t enough spooky stuff going on. With this new version of the rewrite I am about 1/4 through and the script has already grown to 88 pages. I want to have at least a 120 page script by the time I am done. Hopefully I’m adding some more tension and a couple more scares as well. It all depends how it is finalyl shot and edited, but I think this is a pretty original story we have going here.

Enough hot air for now…back to the grind…

-DQ

I am currently seeking cash contributions to help me make a new short film, Hospital Hill. There are several levels of contributions available and each one comes with a perk.

Please check out my project on IndieGoGo where you can contribute funds and learn more: http://www.indiegogo.com/Hospital-Hill

If you are a fan of my work, then you will love this next project I have to offer.

-DQ

Well, after unintentionally shelving the script for 10 months, I have finally pulled it back out to begin reworking it. It’s not that I intentionally wanted to keep my eyes off the project for this long; just pone thing happened after another and sooner or later I was like,”Shit…I really need to start working on this again.”

The fires in San Diego back in October 2007 really set the project back because I had wanted to start filming bits for a trailer and playing with makeup for the main ghost character. I had hope to have the film nearly completed by now, but this economic hill we are all climbing had not been making it the easiest. I think somewhere in there I definitely lost focus on the project and I had a few other items taking precedent.

I wanted to shoot Hospital Hill to try and test some effects I was going to use in Redress, but once I had to shelve that project for numerous reasons, Redress seemed to get thrown in to an open grave and have a few shovels full of dirt tossed over it. Then my brain kept teasing me with story ideas for Ghost Lights, so I finally had to sit down and write out that treatment. I started on the script, but Redress keeps whispering in my ear now… I guess that’s one of the things that torments me most right now: I have a tone of great ideas flying around my head, but since I have no actual commitment to any of them now, they all keep trading places in line. One moment it seems like this project will be my next big thing, and then it seems like another.

Just because I have not been actively typing on the actual script doesn’t mean I have not been working on the story at all. My writing partner and I have had several meetings to discuss plot points, camera angles and locations for filming. I have also been giving a lot of thought to the overall ghost design and some of the other elements in the story.

One thing that I have previously touched upon in the story is a roadside memorial for one of the characters that is killed. The more I have thought about it, the more I want to make this shrine a little more of a focal point for a few scenes in the story. Seriously, what if you accidentally killed somebody and everyday on your way to work you had to pass by this shrine on the side of the road reminding you of your sins? I think it would begin to eat at your soul after a while.

I have been spending some time researching the various makeups of roadside memorials. I have an image of this white cross by the side of the road with a name neatly written on it. Someone, we don’t quite know who yet, always makes sure this cross has a fresh bouquet of pink tulips tucked neatly in its vase. Even though it’s been several years since the tragedy, a candle is always burning at the base of the shrine, rain or shine… can make a person start to wonder

Damn…I need to get back to the script!

-DQ

As some of you know, I had a little fat tumor growing in my arm which is called a Lipoma. It has been there for a few years but recently it started hurting, so I opted to have it removed. My doctor was able to cut it out in the office, so I didn’t have to worry about all the bills associated with a general surgeon.

After a few injections of local anesthetic he made an approximately one inch incision in my arm, all the way through the skin and down into the fat layer where he carved out the lipoma. Then he stitched me back up with three sutures. The whole procedure took about 30 minutes from the time he injected me to the time I was headed out the door.

It has been about 24 hours since I had the procedure. The wound is periodically sore, kind of feels like somebody punched in arm really, really hard. Other than that it only hurts if you poke the wound directly.

Part of me was worried, as you never know what you are going to find when you start cutting something out of somebody, but luckily for me every thing went OK. I really shouldn’t be typing this, as it makes the arm a little sore, but f**k it. I’ll take it easy tonight. But tomorrow, I have some more writing to do

After 8 hours of deciphering my chicken-scratch, I am happy to announce that the first draft of the film treatment for Ghost Lights has been completed.

It feels good to start writing again and the promise of making a new film – especially one that is (I hope) as terrifying as this one. usually when I start writing a story, I know where I want it begin, how I want it to end and then I have a few visions sprinkled here and there along the plot that I know I want to include.

As I pounded down cup after cup of coffee while typing away, I began expanding the story based on my first hand-written draft. My characters started becoming a little more fleshed out and I was able to do some additional research to help tie this piece of fiction into the history of the area.

I have been working hard to create one of those legends, which you could have heard in any small town about a certain building or a creepy house or a particular stretch of the road. I think I have crafted something that will leave people scratching their heads wondering where they have heard this story before as the story unveils itself as if it is based on an actual legend, which is my own personal nod the film like The Blair Witch Project. All of this has spawned from my own personal love for local ghost stories and regional paranormal phenomena, such as ‘ghost lights‘.

When I was younger I was a Boy Scout and we would always stay up late and tell ghost stories around the campfire. Some were legendary, some were completely made up on the spot, but they always made you walk back yo your tent worried to look over your shoulder if something moved in the woods. There are a few elements from those stories from my youth that I am going to try and incorporate into this new film along with a few local California legends.

When I was in 8th grade and living in Santa Paula, California, I stumbled across a book called Ghosts of the Haunted Coast by Richard Senate. For some reason, for my entire adult life, I have always looked back fondly on that book as I believe it was the first “local” type of ghost book I had actually ever encountered. I don’t know if it is because of the first hand accounts told by witnesses or the tales of investigative trips taken by Mr. Senate himself, but I have always been bound and determined to bring a few of the mentioned in this book to life on the screen, and I know there are others out there as well. One of the ghosts mentioned in the book is “Char Man” (a.k.a.: Charman or Char-Man), a horrendously disfigured ghost of a man who was burnt to death in a catastrophic fire and who haunts a spot by Ojai, California.

While this Ghost Lights story of mine does not center around the legend of Char Man specifically, I am making a direct reference to history in the script and hopefully I’ll be able to give people a glimpse of what Char Man looks like in my minds eye.

So many times I start on a project I can only see glimpses of it through the fog in my brain. There are flashes of characters and scenes all jumbled up and scattered around. Often they come into view when I least expect it, like when I’m eating dinner with the family or deciding which deodorant to buy. Eventually I start writing all of this stuff down and then begin crafting a story on how to link it all together.

After sitting on my ass for the better part of a year – well not really sitting, but getting kicked down on my ass and then just sitting there and taking it while the confusion passes – I am starting to focus on “Ghost Lights” again.

The beginning, middle and end are all there. I have been spending the last week brainstorming about the characters and fleshing them out. I have also been trying to figure out how much money it is all going to cost in the end, as I really want to make the jump to HD with this one.