April update

Update
Where have a I been?
My regrets that I have not been writing these past few weeks. I just decided that if I had nothing to write that I was better silent.
I have not been idle. I have been busy developing the short film, Reconciliation.
First I have approached an actor to play she. We had our first meeting last week and she already asked me some tough questions, which I was not yet prepared to answer.
The questions revolve around a scene I wrote involving he, in the bedroom, as he packs to leave. His actions (that is packing) are detailed. This begins as one of the everyday scenes, of surface-reality. But then I needed some decisive action from this. In the last draft he fills the suitcase with precision, but then, without pausing empties it again. My actor queried this. Myself, I have never been certain that this was right. I think I was trying to show how his decision to stay was directly connected to his action of parting. Or something like that. It really didn't make an sense.
So I began to think of something else that is happening in the story, in that they are parting, but they are not acting normally. That is they are not acknowledging this event. I put some of this down to pride, but more fundamental is the idea of alienation and disconnection. From what? Nature? Themselves? I am not sure, I only knew there is an imbalance. And that is what I needed to show in this scene in the bedroom. So I thought of the idea of the gesture, a movement, that follows hard on his precise, detailed packing. It comes out of nowhere. An aberration.
(The idea of movement sits comfortably with me: movement was a large part of the work I did in theatre. I was always interested in the emotional values possible with movement)

An update and new projects

Just a short note to say that since finishing the first draft of the script I have been busy working on a few short film ideas. Basically, I want to experiment with some of the ideas I have been discussing here before I commit to a feature.
I have to say that I basically don't like short films. Fundamentally, I believe they are another form from features. There are a few things you can learn from them, but much more that you don't, such as building a character and sustaining a story over 90 minutes plus.
But the main problem I have with short films is my own lack of short-film ideas. I really don't think in those terms.
It was seeing Haneke's film 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance that changed my outlook. I decided that I could use this form to generate ideas. It is really a contrivance.
I have three short scripts, one of which I feel is ready to shoot. I conceived of it over Christmas, which I spend in Berlin. I went with a friend. We would wander about for most of the morning and afternoon, and then being tired and cold we would retire to our rooms to recover before the evenings. I took advantage of the large bathtub to work. I find, like many before me, that the combination of heat, and water to be conducive to working.
The second script is probably the weakest, though I did make some progress with it over this weekend.
The third needs fleshing out.
The plan is to shoot all three before the summer is done, while developing the feature project further. More on these scripts later.