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Octocon 2010
This weekend I’ll be a guest at the 2010 Octocon convention in the Camden Court Hotel, Dublin. The Guest of Honour is George R.R. Martin, best known as the author of the A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels. The first novel in the series, Game of Thrones, is currently being filmed in Northern Ireland as a HBO mini-series. Its tone has been described as ‘Sopranos with Swords’, and since HBO rarely does anything badly, this could be the fantasy television series of a generation. Here’s the teaser trailer that HBO has released: It’s a considerable coup for an Irish convention to have such an established author as a…
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Golden Blasters 2010
The Irish national science fiction convention, Octocon (October 16-17), has issued a call for scripts for its inaugural short script competition. It’s looking for fantasy, science fiction or horror short scripts, less than twenty pages, and in the usual format. The fees for the competition are on a sliding scale depending on when the script is submitted: May 31, 2010Earlybird Deadline €10.00 July 31, 2010Regular Deadline €15.00 August 31, 2010Late Deadline €20.00 It has also issued a call for submissions for fantasy, science fiction and horror short films (under 15 minutes) for its second Short Film Competition. The films that are short-listed will be screened at this year’s convention, and…
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monstrous women are rarely rewarded
I’ve been meaning to write something for Women in Horror Recognition Month, which is a campaign to promote women who work within the horror genre during the month of February. I’m going to look at two films that I think deserve some attention and discussion: Ginger Snaps (2000) and Jennifer’s Body (2009). These two films serve as a useful balance, since the first is smart and thought-provoking, while the second is interesting but muddled. Ginger Snaps is based on a story by Karen Walton and John Fawcett, the screenplay was written by Walton, and directed by Fawcett. It’s a film about two sisters, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigette (Emily Perkins),…
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death and taxes
It’s been a strange week. There have been two deaths, and I’ve attended one funeral (neither of the deceased were close to me, so don’t proffer sympathies), and a major row erupted in the Irish sf scene that involved a lot of people I know. My mother had been away on holiday, and she called me on Tuesday evening and asked if I wanted to go see a film. I couldn’t really spare the time. Not only did I have a funeral that was going to take up most of the following day, I was really late on sorting out my taxes. I’d been brooding on the Internet fracas going…
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on set
Wednesday’s shoot of my script “Hotel Training” went well. This is one of the longer scripts that will be part of the Hotel Darklight anthology film (there will be eleven short films in total). It’s ten and a half pages long, which will probably translate into 10 – 11 minutes, although a number of factors can affect the final running time. It was a demanding task for the director, Conor McMahon, to shoot all the scenes in one day. He, and his crew, began quickly and locked down the exterior shots. The protagonist of “Hotel Training” is called Glenn, and actor Chris Gallagher played the role. Chris was in almost…
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a sale, and a shoot
Chris Fletcher, editor of M-Brane SF, informed me yesterday that he wanted to buy my near-future sf short story “The Secret Names of Buildings”. So I said yes! It will appear in issue 12, which is being guest edited by Rick Novy. Again, this is a story I wrote at Clarion West. It was during week six, my last week at the workshop, and we were being mentored by sf legend Vernor Vinge. Vernor is a hard sf writer, so I wrote something I thought might benefit from his expertise. Vernor, by the way, was very generous with his time, and enjoyed geeking out with us – all his conferences…
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building Hotel Darklight
The Hotel Darklight anthology film is racing ahead at a furious pace. My short script is titled “Hotel Training”, and is being directed by Conor McMahon. Conor is best known as the writer/director of the horror short film “Baineater”, and the feature-length zombie flick, Dead Meat. The casting is complete, and Conor has been scouting the location this weekend. The shoot will take place on Wednesday, and it’s going to be tight to get all the scenes completed in one day. An early start, and a late finish I think. There’s a Hotel Darklight fan page on Facebook now, if any of you fancy keeping up with what’s happening. Although…
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making a short film
So, some good news. A script I wrote for a weird short film is being made. Darklight Festival is Ireland’s annual festival for filmmakers, animators and artists whose work explores the convergence of art, film and technology. It’s taking place in Dublin from October 8 -10. For its tenth anniversary it is organising an anthology film that will consist of 8-10 short films themed around one location: Hotel Darklight. The producers Marie Caffrey, Alan Keane and Declan Lynch are doing a super job of putting together a challenging genre project on minuscule funding. It’s mostly fuelled by passion, enthusiasm, and hard graft. The shoot is taking place next week, and…
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blogging screenwriters
I’ve been busy lately working on a new project. This coming November the frst World Conference of Screenwriters will be taking place in Athens, Greece. I’m running the official blog for the event on behalf of the Federation of Screenwriters Europe, who are co-organising the event with the International Affiliation of Writers Guilds. I’ll also be liveblogging from the conference. It’s already been a fun challenge, and I’m looking forward to travelling to Athens, a city I’ve never visited before. Although, I suspect I’ll be too busy working at the conference to sample many of the city’s phenomenal historic attractions. I would love to see the new Acropolis Museum, however.…
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a weekend of horrors
I’m back from my trip to London for the horror film festival FrightFest, and I had a lovely time. The weather was great, mostly, and I avoided the occasional showers. When I wasn’t watching movies, I strolled around Soho in the sun, bought a bowler hat, and met up with mates who’ve moved to the city. This year I tried a new strategy in relation to the festival: don’t watch everything. There have been FrighFests in the past where I have attended every single screening over the five days. It’s not recommended, and impossible now since there are two streams of programming. This year I skipped all the late films,…
