Wednesday 18 August 2010

"... Right, now here's the situation..."

The project has been on-going for the last year in script development, from the inspirations of the main contributing writers; Adam as an ex-copper and actor, myself as a filmmaker and the two other contributing writer-actors Ed Corrie and Darren Lightbody.
Inspired by American shows like The Wire, Cracker, The Shield, many other cop genre films and the unrealistic perception of the British police force from say, The Bill, we had wanted to produce something that changed that perception that we could all be a part of. We wanted a series about people who were cops; a series about cops without an emphasis on the dredgery of the crime.

The script had gone through an intense overhaul before the end of the year ending as a feature film draft at 100-pages long. Recently, we had held an actor read-through at our old University, The Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow, of the current first draft to see how the script played out initially in its first stages which proved to be a massive success. From there we had collectively decided to go back to the original model of making it a 5-part TV serial. Now the project is being re-drafted with an eventual script date of mid-August for the first episode (pilot) with the remaining episodes being written in conjunction.

In the pipeline, whilst we concentrate on the writing, I have planned a number of adverts in the form of virals. The first as two cheap virals to be played online to gather interest and the second, a high-production value teaser trailer to illustrate the mood, tone and essence of the project.

The second ad has been dubbed the “Red-Tape” trailer that shows two plain-clothed officers waiting on a man let off on a DTO (drug treatment order) by the Judge.... The remainder of the trailer plays out with a final tagline that reads, “Think you know the police?”. The advert has been storyboarded and looking for a shoot date of end of September.

We are hoping to shoot on RED ONE; a format I have had previous experience with as a DoP and Director. In addition, there is a selection of photographers who are willing to come on board to shoot some initial promotional material and possibly some on-set photography at a later date. Also, a friend of mine, who writes for a Scottish film website, is wanting to do a piece on The Job for some added small publicity, once we have shot the trailer. In the mean time, I have produced paintings and drawings to conjure up the various cinematic frames that will signify The Job, like the image posted below.

We have been excited about this for a while and with the added encouragement of the people around us, we are determined to make this happen and do it extremely well. More than not, this project will be self-funded so we can attain the creative freedom we started with on this project, knowing fine well that particular high-powered involvement could bring the project to a place neither want to be or taken from us comepletely. Although skeptical, we can't ignore the the fact that things like that can happen but overall, we are working within an industry that should welcome projects like this.

At the end of the day we are hoping for something we are ultimately proud of but, as the main goal, have a product that can be sold, screened / televised and developed further as well as furthering our own careers in our chosen fields.
Keep yourself posted on the various updates that will spring on here. Most obvious one being, from today, that episode 1 "Bourac" has been fully written, with the remaining 4 episodes in first draft, hopefully, by the end of September.

Anyway, thanks again,


Ryan Jon Amey Henderson
Co-Creator/Co-writer