Site Update - by Liam R
Hello chumps and chumpettes and how are you all on this (insert your weather conditions and the day it is here)? Good good. Now I know that you are all on tenterhooks as to what my big announcement is, but the first part is a little bit of grovelling on my behalf. Basically, as you will find out in the text somewhere below, I’m looking to ease up on my writing duties for the site. It’s not easy trying to write anywhere between four and eight articles a month while maintaining a stupid working schedule AND cramming quality amounts of beer consumption and socialising (stop laughing at the back!) so I am once again turning to you all.
Could you, or do you know anyone who wants to write anywhere between 1000 and 3000 words of absolute garbage for a website with minimal readership? If the answer is yes, give them this link and get them to send me stuff. I’m also looking for a few people to take up the Hit Parade three times out of four and you don’t even have to write it all yourself. I’m quite willing to dibs it out amongst several people if you so desire. Spelling mistakes and poor grammar are especially welcome. Now I’m deadly serous about this, so if you want to write some rubbish or know someone who wants to write some rubbish LET ME KNOW!
Now on to the important news, news which is so important that I made a flash picture about it:
Yes, Straw Donkeys is going to the movies. At one point last week, I was proof-reading an article at work when it hit me. I’ve been going on for so long about how much the Doji saga could have been if it was severely trimmed and slightly re-written that I thought “Fucking hell that’s it!” So what our big announcement is, is that we here at Straw Donkeys are going to remake the entire Urotsukidoji saga into a movie. Yes you read that right, but in case you didn’t I’ll say it again: We are going to remake the Urotsukidoji saga into a movie.
This won’t be a normal movie however, as to how normal it will be I don’t know as I am the very primary stages of writing the screenplay. But from all the dumb ideas I’ve had over the last seven or so days I can safely declare that the only live action people footage in the film will be from people’s hands moving stuff. That’s the other thing I wanted to mention, in that the whole thing is going to be acted out with toys. Namely Barbies, Kens, Action Men, Playmobil and Lego figures taking the place of humans and anything vaguely evil looking playing the vaguely evil guys. Now even writing this, and also judging by what I’ve gathered together in the screenplay, this is going to be a massive undertaking. I’m going to need to construct a shit load of crappy looking sets, move all the principal characters, blow up London (that’s a spoiler there), work in some ninjas, put some music to it, create some artwork and trailers as well as voicing the bloody thing. Which is why I have emailed you all this morning. Basically I need all your help to pull this off if at some point in the future, around August I guess when the whole script should be nearly complete, I decide to go ahead an make this, this, this thing.
So before we go any further can I divulge any juicy secrets from the script? Erm no, because I haven’t yet decided how far into the saga it’s going to go. At the moment the aim is to cover the first two movies in roughly 100 pages but if I can get most of the major plot points (which if I’m honest, aren’t numerous) covered earlier I might go all the way through to the end. But if I think it’s going to run long by the 80 page mark then that’ll be just the first two movies within and we’ll have to make a sequel (!). That is if I make the deadlines that is. Oh yes, there are deadlines for me to meet and so here is a very rough guide as to what should be happening when for this lovely project of mine.
End of June – Finish first act screenplay and send it to see if it’s any good or viable.
End of August – Finish entire script screenplay. Send it out to get it edited and made not so crap.
End of September – Final screenplay revisions made
October-December – prop and character accumulation. Set construction. A lot of other crap that will need doing to start filming in January
January-March – Film the bugger
April – Record the dialogue/music/sound effects
May-June – editing
First week July 2007 – release.
And yeah, I’m going to sell the bugger as well except to anyone that wants to help make it. So what sort of help do I need? Well who knows because I’m not sure if something this big is even doable. But should it come off I’m going to need a camera, some voice actors, puppeteers, artists (sets, props and box art), some special effects geeks (namely how to blow up and melt toys in relative safety), some video editing software, some pointers on how to record the dialogue, basically anything I can think of. Also, I’m going to need to do the soundtrack which I also suck balls in. I already have an idea for songs I want at some points during the movie but that will all depend on whether this thing gets off the ground.
So to cap it all off, by August I’ll have an idea as to whether we’re going to go ahead with this. If you want to be a part of it, know something about what I might need or someone who might help you know the e-mail address.