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Tonight was the Final Draft Short Film Script Competition event here in Auckland where they announced the winners. It closed in the middle of June. I submitted one script. What was the script about? Let’s see:

It started with Hector, a character which I created for a feature script that I wrote earlier this year (a pretty bad one, actually), he started off as a dairy employee under the management of his despicable, living a boring life with a pretty mean wife. All he could dream about was Antartica, he loved the quietness of it, its white coat and the distance it was from his awful wife. He found a thin ray of light Bob the milkman’s statement though: ‘my job, with tihs weather, it’s like that Antartica of yours’. What didn’t he say there. A new job, that’s what Hector needed, something that would give him a little piece of his dream. So there he goes, calling milk delivery companies, looking for a new job… in vain. His dream, even this little little piece, gone. He can’t give up, not now that he can see hope. So he decides to unscrew the shelves of the huge fridge milk, just enough to hold a little and when Bob the milkman comes, the whole shelves filled with milk fall on him, knocking him out inconcious. The job is Hector’s now and as he drives away one morning, burning hot on this summer day while wearing thick clothe, he understands that his dream is just a dream and stays stuck in his boring reality, just somewhere else.

Ok, I know what you’re thinking: it frikkin’ sucks! Well, if you are indeed thinking this, you are being very generous because it’s boring, the character is impossible to simpathyze with and the conclusion is even worst than the character himself. As Pr Unknown would say: ‘the audience doesn’t want to board that character train!’

Fair enough, so I changed it!

I kept Hector who’s the one character I need to give a successful story to, I gave him a nice wife and a proper job. All I needed to figure out is how much of a good or bad guy I wanted him to be. The new script (which is the one I submitted) put Hctor in a totally different situation. I wrote it in back and forth shots (in time, back and forth in time). The sript starts with Hector looking at the babies in a hospital’s nursery. He likes to watch them but soon his expression becomes sad. Then he watches his wife through her hospital bedroom’s door opening, she is resting. The young couple comes home, Marine (Hextor’s wife) is pregnant and happy. Hector? Not so much. He talks to Marine, there is tension in his voice but Marine’s eyes are all for her pregnant tummy, nothing else. Then we see them live a little bit, Hector crying in the bathroom, Marine talking to her tummy, Hector going to work and arguing with his manager who’s his long time friend about how Hector can’t seem to deal with the present situation, he needs to escape, he needs to breathe. In the meantime we can see shots of both Hector and Marine in the delivery room, she screams, he holds her hand, he is by her side, supporting hr with all his might.

Then Hector resigns his job, something needs to change. Marine is happy on her side, her tummy is her whole world right now. Hector comes out of a travel agency, he made his decision. The tension in the delivery room is high, it’s getting harder for Marine. The doctor and the nurses are running around, something’s wrong. Hector’s sits in a cafe, he is writing a letter. A letter for Marine. Hector’s eyes are right into the doctor’s eyes. The latter looks down at what he holds in his hands, then back at Hector, he shakes his head, life hasn’t sparked this time. Hector comes home, Marine is asleep on the couch. He kisses her, takes off the pillow hidden under her jumper, putting down two plane tickets for both of them on the table. They’ll start again, somewhere else.

I will try to put the script up on my ‘Scripy Annexes’ blog. I am just unsure on how it’ll be like to read for you guys with the scrippet. We’ll see.

So Hector made it to a fully completed and submitted script. Sure it was unsuccessful but it was real. To write is about writing. What makes people writers is the act of writing. Successful, good, awful, unknown writers but writers nonetheless. I’ve put myself out there and allowed someone to judge my work, compare it to other works and decide how worthwhile it was according to the results of this comparaison. For that I am proud. For writing I am proud.

It’s not all about success…

… but it’d be great wouldn’t it?