Edwin James Lynch

It's in! Or at least - the screenplay is finished and we've submitted it to the AFC's Indivision initiative (strand I) asking for $750K towards the $1.8m budget. I can hardly believe it's over. To some degree. Phil and I are happy with it, but we've yet to involve distributors, actors etc. I recently saw some notes for this script dated 1992 and almost none of the same characters were in it. I dunno what to say. Fifteen years.

It's been hot here in Perth, Western Australia. 104 degrees in the old money. With no aircon and the damp, sultry weather, I'm amazed I got another good pass in on Beware the Stingray . A pass? A pass is when a writer goes right through the screenplay again. It's not a spell-checking session. Usually it's a fine tooth comb looking for; structural problems, character inconsistencies and other believability issues. Phil read my pass and we're going to podcast about it next week. Once we're totally happy with the script, it goes off to our producer (who has already targeted actors and possible financiers etc.) and the rolling stone tries to gather some moss. So - barring a few minor fixes - Beware the Stingray (final draft) is finished and shoot-ready. Carmelo (of CM Films fame) just gotta raise the $2m now . . . Easy ;) Which leaves a great vacuum. Y'know the one. You're all apace and then ... nothing but the sound of wind whistling through the trees...

Hi, this is Phil Jeng Kane, I asked Mr Trivia (now M. Le Trivia for some reason) for a bit of space on this blog to provide a lightning sketch of Edwin Lynch. Yes, true to his last posting, Edwin is indeed a jock-wearing, shut-in weirdo who constantly peers through peepholes looking for a Godot-like postie. But he’s also a writer-director who studies performance and screenwriting; he networks with actors and filmmakers and has always kept up with filmmaking technology; he has a strong grasp on filmmaking skills, like how to break down and choreograph a scene. Why the resume? Because it occurred to me that his self-portrait was an ATOMISED version of Edwin Lynch the writer and director. I probably wouldn’t work with Underpants Man and yet, in reality, I have worked with Ed for more than a decade. Filmmakers are great storytellers. I realised recently that I’ve learnt to take most of what film people say, with a grain of salt. Not because they have lax moral or ethical standards, but...

Throughout my life, when I'm lucky enough to get a film into a festival, a certificate like this arrives in the mail. A participation certificate , an award or receipt of in-competition selection into this or that international film festival. I'm usually indoors when it comes - working on a screenplay. Sometimes it's arrives in a quiet email. Sometimes it's a letter which comes with great pizza deals and white good sales. Other times it's registered mail and I don't hear the knock (I check my peep-hole regularly but always seem to miss the knock ). This particular certificate is from Germany. It's nice. Maybe it's worth a frame. It arrived with a well-produced booklet, stills from A Stone Throw and a short synopsis. I always have to haul out myWorld Atlas to see where the city is. Sometimes I get the country wrong. It's always interesting to read how other cultures summarise a film you've been working on for years. I'm probably in bed - o...

Just uploaded a podcast with Gordy Hoffman - director of the Bluecat Screenplay Competition . Rather than putting my efforts into this BLOG this weekend, his talk was so inspiring, that I've decided to write my screenplay. I hope you don't mind. Also, I put up a rough site for our feature film, Beware the Stingray . Not quite sure what to do with it yet, but I guess I'll use it as a repository for all things related to the movie. It's a good year away from being shot, so I'm taking my queue from Richard E. Grant's Wah Wah Diaries : the making of a film , and I'm self-publishing the diary before the film is made. Had technical difficulties You-Tubing Indy Nile Investigates the other day. So stay tuned for that fun, 7 minute cartoon pilot (which screened on ABC TV in 2004).

This week, A Stone Throw was awarded Best Short Film at the Chennai International Film Festival in India. Chennai is home to the international headquarters of The Theosophical Society. The Theosophical Society (emblem pictured), founded in 1875, is a worldwide body whose primary object is Universal Brotherhood based on the realization that life, and all its diverse forms, human and non-human, is indivisibly One. The Society imposes no belief on its members, who are united by a common search for Truth and desire to learn the meaning and purpose of existence by engaging themselves in study, reflection, purity of life and loving service. While my stuff has sold and been shortlisted internationally, I have never actually won an award (other than encouragement awards and special mentions) outside of Australia. I'm very pleased about this particular win for two reasons: After making films since I was but a wee child, I can finally replace "has sold and screend his short films i...

Possibly nothing. Maybe there are too many w**kers complaining that there's something wrong with the Australian film industry. Often you'll discover these people write columns in the trouble-free, profitable, circulation-on-the-rise world of newspapers. Attacking the ABC or the AFI, AFC or FFC is so much simpler than admitting you're on a sinking ship that is also on fire. No comparison? Maybe. What seems to irk the newspaper experts is that public broadcasters and the state and national funding bodies are not as market-driven as newspapers have to be, by their nature. These public institutions often get it wrong. Newspapers often get it wrong. But no public money is expended when that happens. So I guess the answer is to make The Oz Film Industry solely market-driven. Then all the films would be good like KENNY and not artsy, depressing, out of touch and terrible. We should be as successful as Bollywood and Hollywood, obviously. Or at least other nations whose populations...

I just uploaded Bertolt. More people will seeing it via YouTube than will ever see it in cinemas. It's been up there for 5 hours and so far 5 people have seen it. I'm posting it here because I'd like your comments and feedback. Good and bad. So, please - don't be shy. Some great Open Source software has just been released for screenwriters, poets and novelists. It's called CELTX and seems to have mroe functionality than the much more expensive, Final Draft. Despite the focus on "creative contribution" (writers can upload a piece of writing, insert images, work with other writers and get feedback) it has a Hollywood standard, easy-to-use fully functioning FREE screenplay formatting software. I've been pulling my hair out with Word for the last two weeks. Download it writers!

In an effort to win a bit of our old presence on the web, a new podcast has been added, so be sure to check it out. I've started writing something very strange. Yellow Lipstick, Yellow Hair is the title of a new screenplay I'm writing - by myself. Phil is to script edit it when I have a rough draft. Carmelo (the producer of Beware the Stingray) is keen to do a no-budget feature and has offered his HD equipment so I will be shooting the movie before the end of March and editing throughout the year (between websites). In a futuristic world where more than 10 minutes of sunlight spells certain death, 3 strangers; an animist, a naturist and a paranoid neurotic spend their 4 week government-allocated holiday mooching around indoors. There's a little bit more to mooching around, but in the present draft - it's mooching around. I'll be podcasting a script session soon. So stay tuned.

Not to sound jaded, but I can but agree with Edwin. A good idea is nothing until it is turned into some kind of document. Only at outline, treatment or script stage, have you created something that other people (with money) can look at. Before that point, it is all locked in your mind where it's shiny and brilliant. The lighting, editing, performances, locations, dialogue and music are perfect. Note that only one of these elements - dialogue - will actually be in your script. If you see the film unfolding in your mind, with all the above elements working together in perfect unison, you may in fact, be a potential director rather than a writer. I remember saying in a room full of screenwriters, that it is the writer's job to create a blueprint for the film. This idea was not exactly greeted with applause or joy. I believe if you want to control all the elements, then you'd better get hyphenated and add "-director" to your title. Because no matter how excellent you...

I run a filmmaker's website and most of the queries I get about screenwriting (or even filmmaking) amount to roughly the same thing . . . "I have a really good idea for a screenplay". It's not what I want to hear because I know myself, in the early days, I said exactly the same thing - and often. I now know that basically - it's meaningless warm air . I dread the day someone tells me their idea and it's a good one and I go away and write it down - legally claiming all copyright to an idea they may have had in their family for generations . That's right. Your idea is only legally an idea if it is written. Of course, I wouldn't take someone's idea like that - not without telling them. But legally , I would be well within my rights. After all, I have reams and reams of evidence to say that I write screenplays. And for every screenwriter, life is research. Conversations are the best research. The "I have a really great idea for a film" sta...

I looked at my diary. I've recently started recording my time spent doing stuff (and not doing stuff) and I've always been under the impression that my day job (as a web designer /tutor) has always been at loggerheads with my passion (filmmaking). I don't think I'm the first creative person to have anxiety over this . However, according to time, it seemed that the opposite was the case. Out of 5 work days last week, I spent; 2.5 days working on my screenplay with Phil 1 day collating the information necessary for a SPAAmart application 1 full day doing websites and 0.5 days tutoring (or as I like see it - sharing knowledge acquired from above) I was an almost perfect balance. Try doing it. Record your hours for a week (or minutes if you're a lawyer) and see what the passion Vs. day job ratio is.

Films in Australia are mostly financed by the government. You need a distributor and around 40% of your budget sourced from the private sector before you can make a $2m+ feature film here. In an effort to keep the riff-raff out, the FFC have added another requirement to their list - a very high quality, developed screenplay. To this end, they employ a team of readers (usually writers) to vet scripts which ultimately land on the desks of two assessors. In other words - your screenplay had better be tight . . . and interesting. But do you think the private sector know any of this? Do the Mums and Dads of Australia know that by investing in Australia's film industry, they can write off 100% of their tax bill under the Taxation Department's 10BA tax-incentive scheme? No. But lawyers do and it's probably why the film industry is suffused with them. That and intellectual property protection . As you know, I had someone approach me recently with a whole lot of cash - like this l...

Phil Jang Kane (screenwriter), Carmello Musca (Producer) and myself (director) have a 20 minute meet-n-greet market briefing with the Film Finance Corporation and a major Oz film distributor this afternoon. Based on our synopsis, they will advise us of sales opportunities in today's marketplace. Should be interesting. We're going about things the traditional, Australian way. Which isn't a bad thing. The Australian way of raising feature film finance isn't a bad one. We have limited funds and fewer good scripts than the US (where everybody in LA is working on a feature screenplay). In Australia, screenplays are thoroughly scrutinised by industry professionals before they are even allowed to jump through a series of hoops. You also need private cash, a distributor and the FFC on board for budgets over about $2m. The system only allows scripts which have been thoroughly vetted to make it to the screen. And for writers, it adds to their growing pile of rejection letters...

If you are getting paid to write - even if it's as little as $500 for a script - you are probably going to be working with a script producer or script editor - especially if it's a TV show with episodes. That's because - whoever is giving you the money - is being told to deliver a certain thing to the broadcaster and your script needs to bend like a reed, Grasshopper in an effort to make it consistent with other epoisodes. This is writing to house style . More often than not, the script editor (and sometimes the TV producer) will rewrite your piece wholesale. It's not a bad thing - but a lot of people don't know this going in and new writers get burnt (read hurt ). House style means to a writer pretty much the same thing as result-oriented direction means to a director. At some point, you are going to be told what to write. You are not going to be left to your own devices a you are when writing your feature film screenplay. If you're writing TV, you can b...

I just heard that A Stone Throw is a finalist in the Frankfurt Children's Film Festival (Germany). It seems that somewhere in Germany and India is an Edwin James Lynch fan-club. They've certainly bought films I've directed in the past. But there are just so many bloody filmmakers in the world today. I'm beginning to understand that AST ain't a crowd-pleaser. How could it be when it was ever-so-loosely based on Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment (set in a school). I guess it's a bit dark. In fact, pretty much everything I write with Phil (or by myself for that matter) is a bit dark or creepy. More good news (for us) is that Phil, Carmelo (producer) and I are having a casual meeting with Tait Brady (Feature Film Evaluation Manager, Film Finance Corporation ) and Ashley Luke (Vice President, Development & Acquisitions, Fortissimo Films ) to receive informal feedback on our feature film synopsis. Marx & Venus update I don't know who the success...

Here's another approach to writing your screenplay. The screenwriter's friend. Introducing the infamous Three by Five Card Index System . Wow! How can I get one? In my case - I made it. What it amounts to is this: Three 90cm x 40cm sheets of chipboard hinged together so that the whole thing stands like a concertina on a table or floor. Every 5cm or so down, I have drawing-pinned small cardboard hinges (triangles if you will) made from old file dividers. These become placeholders for your cards. A couple of bunches of 3 inch by 5 inch index cards (available in packs of 100 at any newsagency) and there you have it. A sure fire way to make your screenplay bubble to the top of the pile . . . Not. But it's a tool and writers need their tools. Cool. How does it work? As you can see - each act has three mini-acts in it (fitting in with Australian script theorist Linda Heys' Second Act Story ). Or rather - going one step further and suggesting that all three acts have a begi...

One gets to a point - in the second act - when one hits the blues . Phil and I fear it as we write. As we edge closer to the midpoint. The second act is doing a lot of stuff. It's more than 60 pages long. It's the new world and its midpoint . . . the belly of the beast . That's if you wanna quote the Syd Fields, Chris Voglers or the Bobby McKees of this world. We prefer not to at this stage. So far we haven't hit it. Maybe it's coming - maybe not - but we are treading very carefully (p55) as we go . . . Everything seems to be in order. Katy is having some very interesting moments of self-discovery. She is certainly finding herself. That's clear. But where will she go next? We wonder (we actually know because this is a 4th draft not a rough draft - but we wonder anyway). We've nearly finished our synopsis. 3 drafts of that so far. 5 and it will be ready to send. The AWG want synopses by Tuesday. Later . . .

The more one plods along, the more one understands that the gap between feature filmmaking and short film production is one gaping big canyon. A Stone Throw was finalist in an LA festival this month called Moondance . But that has little or no impact on the feature film we were writing last night. If it had won an award, it would make no difference to what we are doing right now (there is only now , people). I remember Australian filmmaker, Shirley Barret's Love Serenade (Two sisters will do anything to hook the right man) winning the Camera D'or at Cannes in 1996 . . . "Notably, the stuntman used in the final sequences died while shooting the scene, and this scene was retained for the finished product: consequently Barrett, distraught, did not make another film for four years, and then it was the major disappointment WALK THE TALK" ( leask81 review on IMDB) What a thing to happen - and then to make Walk the Talk years after. It must have been heart-breaking. G...

As a newbie, one may ask, "How do I get into the film industry here in Australia?" What do I have to do? Writing and organising a team of like-minded individuals towards the common goal of actually making a movie is being in the industry. All you do is write and put together submissions or proposals. Once you are writing - you are in the film industry . You don't need anybody else to tell you otherwise. Over 95% of your time will be spent writing scripts, auditioning for a gig or meeting with actors, producers and financiers. In the last two years, I have been lucky. I was actually on set, directing . . . for nearly two whole weeks! ( A Stone Throw and Streetsmartz ). The rest of my time was spent: Writing (I'm pleased to report . . . most wannabes talk about writing. Don't be a wannabe! ). Earning a living ( building websites ). Teaching others how to write, direct and build websites (at Curtin University). Meeting with producers and greater mortals who may ...