Category Archives: about me

2017 In Film

This year, for the first time, I kept a list of every film I saw at the cinema. Because I always get to the end of the year and think “I know I saw some good films this year, but what were they…?” And now I’ve got the data, I may as well analyse it a bit…

In 2017, I saw 78 films. (And two live theatre broadcasts, Amadeus and Follies.)  I feel that’s a little lower than usual: there were several big franchises I simply didn’t bother with, either through boredom or because of their insistence on casting known abusers. On the other hand, I now have an unlimited cinema pass, and there are several movies I saw because they were basically free, movies I might not have risked money on in previous years. So it may just even out.

Splitting them down roughly into my preferred genres, that’s 26 science fiction, fantasy and horror (including superheroes), 25 action, adventure and thrillers, and 27 other genres (mostly arthouse drama, to my slight surprise!)

Five of the movies were animated, with Captain Underpants and Paddington 2 the stand-outs in this rather small field. Twenty were sequels, prequels and other franchise continuations. Of the ones that weren’t sequels, ten were adaptations of books, video games, myths and legends, and other pre-existing material. Seventeen of the 78 were biopics or true-life stories.

It was a great year for British film, especially films about the countryside and the peculiar stresses of living and working there: God’s Own Country, The Levelling, and the London noir City Of Tiny Lights stood out. A Monster Calls was a difficult watch, but an extraordinary one, and Lion was surprisingly gripping and emotional.

Overlooked gems from the other side of the pond: Loving, The Founder, Battle Of The Sexes, American Made, and Mudbound were all excellent. I had issues with Atomic Blonde and Wind River, but they had a lot going for them nonetheless.

From further afield, Okja, Your Name, The Nile Hilton Incident and In Syria (aka Insyriated) were terrific genre movies that proved popular cinema doesn’t have to be in English.

The well-received movies that just didn’t work for me? Blade Runner 2049, Suburbicon, La La Land and Guardians Of The Galaxy 2 didn’t light any fires, alas.

Movies That Were A Lot Better Than I Expected And I Really Enjoyed? Split, Geostorm, and Beyond Skyline all provided solid entertainment.

And my big movies of the year? Very much the same as everyone’s, I fear. Get Out, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Moonlight, Logan, Baby Driver, Wonder Woman, War For The Planet Of The Apes, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi lead the field.

On to the next crop…

The Real World

In the few days since America inexplicably elected a frequently bankrupt sexual abuser and racist blowhard as their new President, I’ve heard a lot of people say that they don’t want to live in his world, or the world of his alt-right crybaby trolls.

I understand why you’re saying this, I do. I don’t want to belittle your pain, or the problems to come. But let me put it to you that we don’t live in his world. No matter how much he yells and stamps his feet, he still lives in ours.

Because no matter what he says, the facts of human existence have not changed. Women are the equals of men. Black lives do matter. Latinx are as much a part of America as any other race. Sexual assault is wrong. LGBT+ people are as valuable and as “normal” as anyone else. Those are facts, and no amount of speeches, laws and publicity stunts can change that.  And every time he does something that denies those facts, he isn’t changing the world – he’s simply lying about the nature of reality.

Those lies will, of course, cause cause terrible suffering for those that they are turned against. Lies tend to do that. And it’s all of our duties to mitigate that suffering in any way that we can.

But like the cult leader who insists that a UFO is about to descend and ferry the faithful to paradise, he’s living in a fantasy world. The “Great Again” America that he and his followers are looking to create is a bubble of delusions, and eventually it will burst, and everyone will have to face up to the lies he told them, and they told themselves.

There are hard times ahead for the world. That bubble may yet expand far beyond America. But those of us who can see the world as it is still have that much to cling to. Human lives still have the value they have always had, and a single act of kindness, however small, is more valuable than all the political posturing and hatred he can muster.

It’s our world, not his. Let’s live like we believe that.

 

 

 

Wolfblood Secrets

Can’t wait until next year for new episodes of Wolfblood? Well, it’s your lucky day!

Starting on the 21st September CBBC will be broadcasting Wolfblood Secrets, a series of ten mini-episodes bridging the gap between series four and five. Written by Neil Jones, and set just after the secret is revealed to the world, the episodes will introduce a team of government investigators tasked with investigating this new threat, ‘wolfbloods’. One by one, they interview Jana and her friends, trying to find out whether these creatures hiding among us are dangerous…

Five episodes will be broadcast in September, and the final five near the end of February, leading into the next series.

They’re really fun episodes, and I hope you enjoy them!

(NB – if you’re outside the UK and you want to know when/if you can see Wolfblood Secrets, you’ll need to contact CBBC, or your local television channel, and ask them. As always, I don’t know the details of availability in all the different countries Wolfblood is shown in.)

Since a lot of people are asking –  no, Wolfblood Secrets is not happening instead of series five, or replacing the regular series in any way. It’s a one-off extra, just like the secret episode or Jana Bites. Series five will be shown in the spring of 2017, date to be confirmed…

Wolfblood Season Four BAFTA Event

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Excellent day at BAFTA London today, showing the first two episodes of Wolfblood season four to a very excited audience! You can see a lot of the event, including the Q&A, on the BAFTA training site, baftaguru.org, which is full of great information about working in the creative industries.

On Tuesday 8th March, CBBC will be showing the red carpet interviews and the Q&A from the Newcastle event, interspersed with the first two episodes. From the following week, Wolfblood shows two episodes a week, on Mondays and Tuesdays.

Hope you enjoy!

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Wolfblood Season 4 Preview Screening

Though a final transmission date hasn’t been decided yet (we won’t be sure until about a week before transmission) season 4 will probably be hitting your screens some time in March. And if that’s not fast enough for you, you can see the first two episodes at a special screening in London on Saturday 5th March! I’ll be there, with the production team and some of the cast, including Leona Vaughan (Jana), and we’ll be answering questions afterwards.

You can book tickets at http://www.bafta.org/whats-on/bafta-kids-tv-preview-wolfblood-qa . Hope to see some of you there!

Wolfblood BAFTA Nominations

Wolfblood season two has been nominated for two awards at this year’s Children’s BAFTAs – best drama, and I’m nominated for best writer! The awards will be announced at a ceremony in London on Sunday 23rd November.

None of this would have happened without our fantastic team – production staff, crew, cast and writers – and I’m hugely grateful for all the hard work they’ve put into the show.

However, we’re also nominated for another award – and that’s where you can help! The BAFTA Kids Vote is a separate series of awards that are voted on electronically by kids aged 7 – 14. And you can vote for Wolfblood in the TV category! Go to http://www.baftakidsvote.org/vote/ to cast your vote for Wolfblood, and all the other categories too…

August Is The Busiest Month…

… as T.S. Elliot probably didn’t say. Anyway, this is just a brief post to say that I’m having a very busy month writing, and something’s got to give, so I probably won’t be posting anything here until September.

Until I change my mind and post something anyway, that is.

See you in the autumn…

The Blog Tour!

My blog today is part of the blog tour, where writers answer the same four questions about their work and career. Sally Abbott has passed the baton to me – or rather, passed on the four vital questions…

 

What am I working on?

Right now, I’m in the gap between finishing one series of Wolfblood and (hopefully!) starting to write a new one in the autumn – but I’m certainly not short of work! I’m writing an episode of a certain detective series (more will be revealed in due course.) I’m expecting to go pitch again to another existing series in a few weeks time, so I’m preparing story ideas to present to them – always a fun challenge, figuring out which of the many stories you could tell with the characters appeals most to you, and why…

Then there are new projects to be written! I’m starting to pitch ideas in the US now as well as the UK, so I’m working on a new feature script, an espionage thriller, for the US market, as well as ideas for the UK. Combining the two really is the best of both worlds for a writer – different markets, different kinds of stories, different ways of working…

How does my work compare to others of its genre?

I write a lot of different genres – science fiction, supernatural, action, adventure and thrillers – across TV and film, so that’s quite a complicated question. I’m undoubtedly a populist writer, someone who writes for the Saturday night blockbuster audience rather than the arthouse audience, but I still want my work to have depth and resonance. Some of the most profound and human fictional stories in the world are unabashed ‘genre’ pieces, that entertain as well as saying something about human nature, and that’s what I aspire to.

Why do I write what I do?

On a purely practical level, because my mother made the totally uncharacteristic decision to take me to see Star Wars when I was very young. And yes, she’s been regretting it ever since!

But really, I’ve always written to find out what it’s like to be someone else. I already know what ‘everyday’ life is like – now I want to know what it’s like to go into space, to be a soldier or a spy, to have superpowers, to deal with moral dilemmas no human has faced before. And by writing that story, I can live that story for a while.

How does my writing process work?

The more I write, the more convinced I am that careful preparation is the key. Though my process changes slightly from project to project, I usually start with a file box, and throw in everything I find that might relate to the project – photos, newspaper articles, scribbled scraps of dialogue or ideas for a scene. Then I’ll progress to index cards, each with a scene noted on it, and rearrange the order until I have some kind of structure and have filled in the gaps.

Then it’s time for the scene-by-scene outline – an outline so detailed it’s basically a script with no dialogue. This is a technique I’ve learned from writing for television, and now use on all my projects, because it encourages you to tell the story visually, and to iron out story problems before starting the script. Then, maybe after a few polishes of the outline, it’s time to begin the first draft…

I’m A Success, Get Me Out Of Here!

As much as it offends my English sense of modesty to admit it, I seem to be a bit of a success now. Certainly I’m not paying the bills by working in a supermarket any more, and that’s pretty much the definition of being a successful writer, right?
Now, I’m not complaining… Well, all right, I’m a writer, we do nothing but complain! However, I love my job and wouldn’t change it for the world. But what’s interested me over the last year or so is how much actually getting to do what you want changes how you do what you want. And I’ve been noticing a few things.
Something always has to be ’your day job’. Once, I was working the tills at a certain supermarket, and going home to work on Wolfblood evenings and weekends. So writing Wolfblood was the thing I really wanted to be doing. Now I am doing it… And suddenly the other projects I’m trusting to get off the ground seem a lot more exciting and attractive than doing yet another draft of episode five!
Part of that is the attraction of the new, of course. The only script that’s ever perfect is the one you’re just about to start writing, so that’s the one that seems the most fun. But also, to an extent, Wolfblood is my day job now. I love every second of it, but it’s somehow not quite the same experience.
There’s more to writing a TV series than just writing a TV series. There are public appearances, invitations to speak to students or at festivals, meetings, visits to the set, possibilities of spin-offs and merchandise to be dealt with, and of course, endless questions on the blog and on Twitter. Writing the show only takes about six months of the year, but non-writing stuff devours a surprising amount of the rest…
It’s harder to impose your own deadlines once you’ve got used to having them imposed for you. On Wolfblood, of course, when outlines and drafts are handed in is dictated by the production schedule – and there’s always a script editor eagerly awaiting the episode you know you should be working on. But it’s fatally easy to get used to that, and to think of any day when you don’t have an externally-imposed deadline as a potential day off!
Writing anything that isn’t Wolfblood is… odd. Working on a TV series, you’re constantly handing in versions of your work and getting feedback. Reactions are immediate and honest. Ideas are shaped collaboratively. And then you return to something you’re writing on spec, and there’s just you. No feedback, no one to share ideas with, no one to remind you not to blow the budget. It feels a bit weird – and frankly, rather scary…
In other words, however much of a “success” you become, you always go back to square one for the next project. That new idea doesn’t come pre-approved, there’s no one to force you to work on it, and there’s no one rooting for it but you.
And surely that’s a good thing?