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best of british
twice knightly
zero in
on the script
“At the beginning of a project we’re looking far more at the sto- ries and the overall structure. Then we’ll look at characterisa- tion, then we’ll look at the over all plotting and dramatic param- eters of the piece. Then finally we’ll move on to dialogue and style polishes.
“We’re not trying to throw everything in or out of the project at each stage. The thing about an unfinished project is that, inevitably, you have three or four options if not more about how you proceed with it. If you have no strategy for dealing with that – and no experience either – then you’re really just stumbling for- ward. The aim of Draft Zero is to stop some of that stumbling.”
In addition to the main body of their work, Draft Zero is also run- ning a series of short courses for industry executives and person- nel, the better to help them understand the writing and devel- opment process.
Guest speakers with wide rang- ing experience across the industry will help devise and run these courses which, if all goes well, could become redundant in time.
“In an ideal world that would be great,” Parker enthuses, “because we would have built a body of knowledge that’s out there, and we can then move on. But it’s about people in power actually starting to have faith in scripts, and that’s really what we’re concerned with.” Anwar Brett
Knighthoods for talent on either side of the camera led the way in the latest New Year Honours’ List.
Back home from shooting his 14th feature, The Life Of David Gale, in Texas, Alan Parker joins very short list of British directors, among them David Lean, Carol Reed and Richard Attenborough, who have been knighted.
Since making his feature debut in 1976 with Bugsy Malone, Parker, 58, has won three BAFTA awards for credits which include The Commitments, Evita, Midnight Express and Mississippi Burning. For the past two years, Parker has also been chairman of the Film Council.
Also knighted is Ben Kingsley, 58, who exactly 20 years ago won the Best Actor Oscar and BAFTA for Gandhi. His second British Academy Award that year was for Best Newcomer which perhaps encapsulated the star- tling nature of his triumphant film- starring debut.
Since then Kingsley, born Krishna Bhanji, has accumulated a string of acclaimed roles in Schindler’s List, Betrayal, Bugsy, Testimony and, most recently, as a psychotic gangster in Sexy Beast which has already earned
him a number of awards includ- ing Best European Film Actor.
“For services to film and televi- sion production” is the citation for Verity Lambert who has been awarded the OBE. Her 40-year- career spans the earliest days of Dr Who to running her own com- pany, Cinema Verity, responsible for series like Coasting, GBH, Class Act and The Cazalets. In between she has been head of drama at Thames, a top execu- tive at Euston Films and produc- tion chief for Thorn EMI Films.
OBEs also go to actresses Lynn Redgrave and Miriam Margolyes, actor Denis Quilley and Last Of The Summer Wine writer Roy Clarke.
Production designer Martin Childs, twice BAFTA-nominated for his work on Quills and Shakespeare In Love (which earned him an Oscar), receives the MBE along with BBC corre- spondent Sue Lloyd-Roberts and cinema projectionist Peter Bayley. Currently celebrating his 50th year as a projectionist, Bayley has worked at The Phoenix, East Finchley for nearly 42 years. Quentin Falk
Photos: (l-r) Alan Parker; Draft Zero’s co-founder and joint director Phil Parker; Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast
T
he frequent gripe about British films is their lack of develop- ment. All too often projects
are green lit that have every ele- ment in place, except the solid foundation that should have been the first priority. A new initia- tive, Draft Zero, aims to help resolve this problem.
Providing a series of Project Development Workshops for budding and more experienced writers, it aims to guide them through each element in the process of screenwriting from concept through to pre-produc- tion. And while film looms largest in the great scheme of things, Draft Zero is also aiming its servic- es at television, radio and multi- media projects.
A core team of 12 experi- enced screenwriters – including Lin Coghlan, Nick Crittenden, Peter Mills and Gary Sutton – is already in place, funding has been provided by the Lottery through The Film Council’s Training Fund, and courses are already being booked for the coming year. One major incen- tive is the bursary that will be awarded to the project the team thinks would most benefit from it.
“All of Draft Zero’s work is aimed as increasing the overall quality of work,” explains co- founder and joint director Phil Parker. “But that’s very much in the context of trying to build a commercially sustainable indus- try. We have an understanding of the process of development, so that we don’t try to fix everything in one go.
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