"Zero" re-drafting complete!

Earlier today I finished a fresh batch of re-drafting on "Zero" - formally known as "Generation Procrastination". It's a comedy script that I plan to send out with the aim of getting it commissioned.

If you don't put yourself out there, you're never going to get a shot at the big time, are you?

Anyway, I'm rather chuffed with this script, and it's changed quite a bit since the draft I started with. Originally 91 pages, it now stands at 118 pages, and that's with a lot of excess dialogue and description whittled out too. So it's a net increase of 27 pages, but all told there must be 40 to 50 pages of new content, with a lot of the other stuff tweaked and polished and generally improved upon.

I'll qualify this by saying that the 91 page draft was started in 2007, and was completed in very early 2008. After that I then went on to write my most ambitious script to date - "The End" (my zombie epic), and then "From The Inside Out" (my low budget, quick and simple British horror movie tale). So those two scripts provided a lot of new script writing skills, ideas and methods that really came to the fore on this newest draft(s) of "Zero" - which is now standing as Draft 2.2 - so I'm feeling really good about this script.

I've gotten my head around the characters, I know them inside out, and it's as if I actually know them in real life. Sure, they're all based in ways and parts on elements of various people I know (in all cases the five protagonists are based on multiple elements of multiple people, and then I exaggerate or tweak or step-off-from said elements and they become their own people, albeit only in the text on screen).

Having been over the script repeatedly, I can see a movie version of it clearly in my head, and it makes me genuinely laugh. I'm not just saying that because I wrote it, but because I have actually forgotten whilst reading it that I wrote it and just began enjoying it for what it actually is - as if reading it through a fresh pair of eyes - and it made me laugh.

So hopefully those who I submit it to will see it the same way. To say I'm ready for the next step in becoming a filmmaker is an understatement, and I honestly think I've written a good, solid, tight and funny script that would make a good comedy film.

Fingers crossed.