by Lucy V Hay
• Production. Just like some genre screenplays, drama lends itself well to the low- and no-budget model for new filmmakers (depending what it’s about, of course; it’s unlikely guerrilla filmmakers will be able to stage epic battles for your war drama, though certain compromises can be made, especially if the majority of the action takes place in a siege situation, or within a trench). Also, unlike many genre screenplays that call for ‘star power’ (or at least recognisable faces), a spec drama screenplay makes no such demand. In fact, it’s arguably BETTER if your produced drama has unknowns in it, unless you can really score with a genre star who’s desperate to change his or her image; or you’re lucky enough to have a big drama budget to play with that allows you to target heavyweight (read: ‘award-winning’) character actors.
• Sample. For the screenwriter yet to make his or her mark on the industry – either film or television – not to mention the established writer who perhaps has primarily worked to commission on others’ ideas, the spec drama sample screenplay can offer real opportunities to shine. A genre screenplay may be excellent, but it might not suit a producer or filmmaker’s particular sensibilities, leading said industry pro to question why you’ve sent them your blockbuster ‘creature feature’ or high-budget gross-out comedy when s/he specialises in stories achievable on as low a budget as possible (which, let’s face it, is almost always the case in the UK!). Yet a well-written, well-conceived drama screenplay shows a scribe’s ability to write believable characters and authentic scenarios, which are welcome almost everywhere. In addition, it should be noted there is a veritable dearth of good material in the spec pile in terms of realistic and emotional drama screenplays. Additionally, the majority of spec screenwriters at the moment seem to favour genre TV pilots, which seems a shame to me because feature screenplays have great currency in the industry. Many industry pros believe (rightly or wrongly) that 90+ pages is the most difficult format to tackle in terms of structure. In addition, whilst a TV producer may be just as likely to read a sample feature-length screenplay, an indie filmmaker is probably unlikely to read a sample TV pilot, which is why I always recommend features over TV pilots as samples. That said, many spec screenwriters like to flex their muscles on the structural ‘strands’ of returning drama – ‘story of the week’ versus the serial element – and if you can do this well, in an original way with characters who are not ‘the usual’ (i.e. ‘cops ‘n’ docs’), your drama TV pilot is always going to stand out in the pile.
• Catharsis. Many writers attempt drama screenplays because they feel the story they choose will create a powerful psychological release for both them and their audience. Catharsis is definitely one of the strongest pulls of drama, but only if it is not one-sided. There must be a universal quality to one’s work that the reader and viewer are able to access and relate to their own experiences. Otherwise, the writer is simply recounting their own tale of woe to a passive audience, the writing equivalent of the drunk punter going on and on at the weary bartender!
• Prestige. If we consider the produced content that is lauded the most in terms of awards and critics’ praise, it’s obvious drama is a huge winner. The more groundbreaking and ‘worthy’ these productions are, the better; some even achieve box-office success off the back of such acclaim. Yet making drama is still a huge risk for investors and filmmakers, especially in terms of financial return, so we must ask ourselves why they would put themselves through this. Prestige certainly plays its part: attracting awards on the film festival circuit, for example, is always a good selling point for writers and filmmakers when attempting to set up other projects. Similarly, whilst those filmmakers may have made no actual money on their drama, if you type most produced drama titles in IMDb, it soon becomes apparent that ratings are nearly always in excess of 6/10 or higher. Compare that to produced genre content, which is frequently a much patchier affair, even for Hollywood blockbusters, and which gets lower and lower for indie films, with many scoring well below 5/10, regardless of content. So it’s no wonder indie filmmakers in particular are keen to chase prestige, especially via awards and festivals. One way of doing this is to build up one’s reputation as a writer and/or filmmaker with short films first, leading us into our first case study.
CASE STUDY 1: THE SHORT FILM
CANCER HAIR (2014)
Writer/Director: Gail Hackston
Produced by: Isabelle Sieb, Helga Ernudottir
Budget: £15,000
Q: What’s good about it?
A: Combining typical short film and drama subject matters like dating and cancer, Hackston twists audience expectations, yet still creates a story audiences can recognise and relate to. What’s more, the short film brings humour as well as poignancy to a situation all of us can empathise with.
MY LOGLINE: A young woman, in remission from cancer and wearing a wig, attempts to go on a blind date but comes unstuck.
Writing and Selling Cancer Hair
Gail Hackston is a first-time writer/director. She’s also a no-nonsense Scot in possession of an amiable, yet unyielding, focus. For me, she’s the poster girl for ‘getting things done’, even if that’s by luck, rather than design. ‘I wish I could say there was a grand plan all along, but there wasn’t,’ she admits.
Short filmmaking is often a ‘fly by the seat of your pants’ affair for filmmakers, all about grabbing opportunities and running with them, getting experience as a ‘trial run’ for other projects, if nothing else. But Gail’s film is interesting for two reasons. Cancer Hair is a very ambitious and unusual project, which is arguably what makes it so compelling. ‘I wanted to write something that would be relatively easy to make as my first film, was a female story and that combined shades of humour and drama,’ Gail explains. ‘I think so much of life is light and dark… for me, it is only when they are placed side by side that you can really see the contrast.’
Combining a date story with a cancer story may seem a strange choice to some; making it a comedy may seem practically suicidal! The cancer stories audiences most often see tend to be about the actual ‘battle’ with cancer, which is unsurprising. Cancer is probably the biggest adverse life event most people will undergo (especially if they die, though many cancer survivors describe cancer as ‘giving more than it takes’). So depictions of cancer on screen usually focus on treatment and/or what that character must go through either to recover or to come to terms with a terminal diagnosis. Someone ‘wins’ and it’s a triumph, or someone ‘loses’ and it’s a tragedy. Gail’s story, however, is very different: Claire is in remission, a strange time for cancer survivors that many call ‘The Waiting Room’, for obvious reasons, the primary fear for most being recurrence. What’s more, Claire is still coming to terms with, and processing, what has happened to her, all symbolised by the loss of her hair, which is typically especially important for a woman. ‘This is the “what next?”’, says Gail, ‘when the support systems are gone, when the person is back in “real life” and everyone is expecting them to get on with it. In Claire’s case, one of those “getting on with it” things is a date.’
Dates and meetings are very commonly mined aspects of short film productions and spec screenplays. It makes the story world smaller, focusing on just two people and their reactions to each other. It’s not difficult to see why it’s such a popular choice for filmmakers, especially those on a low or micro-budget. ‘A date has a very clear social construct that everyone indulges,’ Gail says. ‘You meet with someone; you have a drink or a meal; you may or may not like each other; you may or may not see each other again… I wanted my protagonist, Claire, to have one of those really godawful dates! Make her really uncomfortable, even mortify her… and watch her grow because of it.’ This notion of character ‘growth’ is notoriously difficult to achieve in short films, especially one as short as Cancer Hair; just ten minutes. In short films of this length, audiences are more likely to be treated to a ‘snapshot’ or moment of a character’s life; it’s not common to see even one charac
ter undergo what I call a ‘transformative arc’ in the way that Claire does. Given that so many short films are autobiographical, I ask Gail whether the project has personal significance for her: are we seeing what dating was like for her, after cancer treatment? ‘I have had a number of friends and family who have [had cancer],’ Gail replies. ‘Some have survived, some have not. Cancer is omnipresent. But it is not the black mark it once was. People survive. Some thrive. I wanted to make a hopeful film.’
So, if Cancer Hair is not autobiographical, I want to know how Gail came up with the idea for combining a cancer story with a date story. Gail describes two fascinating encounters that ‘smashed together’ in her head: ‘I was having lunch with a group of people I didn’t know particularly well and the woman across from me kept fidgeting with her hair,’ Gail remembers. ‘She was fidgeting so much that you couldn’t help but look at it and see it was a wig. She was clearly upset about drawing attention to it. I felt for her and the point she was at in her life. When she went to the bathroom, some of the other women explained she was in treatment and wasn’t coping well with her hair loss.’ Gail goes on: ‘Then, in a staff canteen, I saw another woman whose hair was growing back after chemo. No scarf, no wig, just shoulders back, shaved head and incredibly striking. She had a confidence and presence to her that just turned heads. It was amazing to watch. And massively different from the first woman.’ So, as with so many stories, Cancer Hair for Gail started with such questions as: what causes one person to be one way and someone else another? What impact does hair loss have on a young woman? And how can she get her mojo back if she’s lost it? Research is key: Gail spoke to many female cancer survivors with these questions in mind, including myself. Yet it is not a question of simply writing others’ experiences, either, but combining them and creating a truthful story. Gail, who has not undergone cancer treatment or experienced the impact of hair loss impact, has achieved authenticity.
The distribution opportunities for short films have increased tenfold in the last ten years or so: there are now hundreds of film festivals and initiatives, websites and DVD compilations the low- budget drama screenplay filmmaker can take advantage of; there are even opportunities to showcase short films in pubs and at music festivals, in-between acts. Unfortunately, however, it’s no more likely than it ever was for filmmakers like Gail to actually get paid for their efforts! In fact, chances are they’ll be out of pocket themselves, having had to at least pay festival admin fees to be in with a chance of exhibition and/or exposure. So, with a budget of £15,000, Cancer Hair is an ‘expensive’ short film: there’s a whole subgenre of micro- budget feature-length movies – especially horror and comedy – that are made for less. What’s more, Gail did not access any industry help from screen agencies or similar schemes to make Cancer Hair. Unlike a huge proportion of guerrilla filmmakers, though, Gail did not go down the crowdfunding route. Why not? ‘I hate broke filmmakers hitting up other broke filmmakers for cash,’ Gail says in her usual forthright manner. ‘As a marketer, I believe in creating an audience for a film first through social media, but, given the focus on cancer in the story, I had ethical reservations about asking that audience for money. So it was down to me.’ So how did Gail raise the money? ‘I put my hand in my own pocket,’she confesses. ‘A PPI refund, some credit cards, general belt-tightening and a big push on freelance work got me there, but that route is not for the faint-hearted!’ Unusually, too, Gail insisted on paying her crew and actors wherever she could, which bumped costs up even further. As Gail explains: ‘For me, it was important to start as I mean to go on in the industry.’
My Take on Cancer Hair
As a script editor, I first came into contact with Cancer Hair in January 2013, when Gail Hackston, whom I’d worked with at London Screenwriters’ Festival, sent me an email. She wanted me to do some notes on it, along with another screenplay, a feature-length, coming out drama spec screenplay called The Green Door. Gail wasn’t really sure where she was with the project and had lost enthusiasm for it, she explained; she had had some confusing feedback and she wanted me to read both versions of the script that were in existence, plus the actual notes given by a short film fund. ‘Oh, and by the way,’ the email finished (as Gail knew I was a cancer survivor myself), ‘sorry about the title!’
I don’t mind admitting that, originally, I was a little peeved to receive Cancer Hair. After my own life-changing and traumatic experience, I found myself unusually superstitious, so getting the screenplay less than six months after finishing chemotherapy felt like some kind of bad omen. I had gone out of my way to avoid cancer stories and yet here was one, nestling in my email inbox! I almost mailed back and told Gail I couldn’t read it. Luckily for Gail, however, my husband was unemployed for a short while back then, so I didn’t feel able to turn down paid work… and lucky for me too, because if I had said I felt too fragile to read Cancer Hair I would have missed out on an extraordinary experience.
I read The Green Door first – and, actually, probably all of my submissions that week – before I attempted to read Cancer Hair. Though Gail had a downer on the project (and so did I!), I was surprised to find myself thinking that not only was it not as bad as Gail thought, but that I actively LIKED it! The two versions were quite different, especially in terms of plot beats: in one version, the protagonist’s date did a runner; in the other, Claire effectively does (neither do in the finished film). Like many early drafts, the first version of the screenplay was very dialogue-led, so it felt rather theatrical; in the other draft, the arena, or ‘story world’, felt underserved by what was going on, especially by scene description. But neither of these were particularly problematic craft elements for a writer who is as receptive to constructive criticism as Gail. What struck me was that mysterious je ne sais quoi… the notion that Gail had ‘got it’. The story she had chosen felt true and real to me, even though I had never been on a date when recovering from chemo. I found myself not just giving her notes, but literally telling her all my experiences: the terminal patients I had seen, cracking jokes and having a laugh, yet stopping to CONGRATULATE me on my good prognosis; how sometimes I would go out into town with my own wig on, purposefully and obviously wonky, to see if people would mention it (being British, they didn’t); or how it wasn’t just stares you would get, but real unbridled sympathy too. I told her about the old lady standing behind me in the post office queue who had tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Are you okay now, dearie?’ I had nodded and thanked her, and she had squeezed my arm. ‘Good for you!’ she said.
From there, I asked Gail how Claire felt about her future. That’s what the story of Cancer Hair was about: it wasn’t a story of recovery; it wasn’t even necessarily a story about love or romance or ‘starting over’. For me, it was about learning to appreciate that none of us knows how much time we have, yet still being optimistic. I believe intuition is an important part of storytelling and I trusted Gail to be able to listen to my anecdotes and experiences and ‘translate’ them as she saw fit on screen. This was not so she could tell MY story instead of Claire’s. I think this is an element many writers mishandle when considering their own personal, lived experiences, or those of others: we must write these stories in such a way that audiences can relate to them and see themselves, relatives and/or friends reflected back at them, eliciting that all-important emotional response.
When Gail told me she was forging ahead and making Cancer Hair herself, I wasn’t surprised. I spend a huge amount of time as a script editor counselling many of my female ‘Bang2writers’ to do what Gail does: make a decision and simply go for it, trusting that it will work out. This always interests me, because I don’t find I have to do the same with the male Bang2writers as much… in fact, I’m often trying to hold them back! Wild horses won’t keep them from making their films, whether they’re ready to take the plunge or not. Yet, in comparison, women can be much more reticent about taking their filmmaking destiny into their own hands. I don’t know why that is: a lack of c
onfidence, perhaps, based on a lifetime of internalising sexist messages from society about female leadership being ‘bossy’ or ‘bitchy’. Yet things have arguably never been better: advances in technology, plus schemes and initiatives like Bird’s Eye View, Underwire and, yes, London Screenwriters’ Festival, all of which nurture female talent, mean production costs are down and opportunities are increasing. What did surprise me, though, was how FAST everything was: from casting to shooting to editing to submitting for festivals, it was a matter of just a few months – but why wait around once the decision is made? As I always say on B2W, ‘Want something? Go get it’, and Gail certainly did that!
I was sadly unable to attend the cast and crew screening of the short up in London, so watched the finished film from the comfort of my MacBook. I’m always reticent about watching produced versions of screenplays I’ve consulted on and loved, because what you ‘see’ in your head never matches the reality, and too often this can be a disappointment. This was not the case, however, with Cancer Hair. Interestingly, the story kept evolving right into the edit – something unproduced spec screenwriters also constantly misjudge – and what ended up on screen is rather different from what I envisaged when it only existed on the page (and all the stronger for it). But what struck me most was Gail’s flair for bright colours, aiding the optimism of the story thematically. What’s more, those visuals signified how far she had come on her journey: from an underserved arena in that early draft I read, through to easily one of the most cinematic short films I’d seen in aeons. It’s a massive achievement, and the reason why I’ll be working with Gail Hackston on more shorts (and perhaps a feature!) in the future.