Wednesday, January 30, 2013

The Castoffs - State of things / L'estat de les coses

After a long time, two days ago I eventually managed to finish The Castoffs' third draft! And when I say a long time I REALLY mean it. The second version of the script dates back to March 2011 so it's taken nearly two years to rewrite it. Not that I've been working on it all this time -there have been many things that have kept me away from it- but it feels good to have it finished at last. It somehow means that, despite the latest setbacks, the project's moving forward.

Well, "setbacks" may be too harsh. Let's just say that during the last couple of months we -that's Xavier Ren and me- had been thinking of and starting developing a side project -about which I wanted to tell you soon-. I had already done some attempts and drafts on the story and I was looking forward to start properly working on it. However, some professional issues have forced us to postpone it until further notice. I have no idea about when are we going to get back to it, but I want to believe it will be in a relatively short period of time. The ideas we had were good, we were on the right path... I think that by June we could have had something really cool and that could had been commercially successful... but we'll have to leave it on hold and wait for the right time to keep on with it.

Back to the script... I've got quite a long and boring work ahead. When we first started with the whole The Castoffs thing we didn't know how much it would grow, and so I didn't consider writing it in English. I don't think it was good enough then but anyway I didn't even think about it. So since then on I've been writing most of The Castoffs' stuff in Catalan, with only some bits and pieces -mostly from older drafts- translated into English for pitching purposes. So now I'll have to take my 88-page script and start going through it once again to translate it and work it in English from then on. As it happens when you're translating your own stuff I'll probably change things here and there on the way so I'll end up with a sort of 3.5 version of the script... which is not bad but can be tiring when you've just finished redrafting. I guess I should also translate the rest of the documents (e.g character bible, environment descriptions, synopses...) but I don't want to think about it. By now I'll focus on this and on the Old Folks Project, that's going all right but I think needs an impulse. See you soon!



The Castoffs. Illustration by / Il·lustració de Xavier Ren.


Després de molt de temps fa un parell de dies que, per fi, vaig aconseguir acabar el tercer esborrany de The Castoffs! I quan dic "molt de temps" vull dir MOLT de temps. La segona versió del guió és de març del 2011 o sigui que m'ha costat gairebé dos anys reescriure'l. No és que hi hagi estat treballant durant tot aquest temps -hi ha hagut moltes coses que me n'han mantingut apartat- però haver-ho acabat per fi és molt agradable. D'alguna manera vol dir que, tot i els darrers contratemps, el projecte segueix endavant.

Bé, potser "contratemps" son massa fort. Diguem que durant els darrers dos mesos hem -en Xavier Ren i jo- estat pensant i començant a desenvolupar un projecte paral·lel -del qual us volia parlar ben aviat-. Ja havia fet algunes proves i esborranys sobre la història i estava desitjant poder començar a treballar-hi seriosament, però afers professionals ens han obligat a postposar-ho fins a nova ordre. No tinc ni idea de quan ens hi tornarem a posar, però vull creure que serà ben aviat. Les idees eren bones, estavem en el camí correcte... crec que al juny hauriem pogut tenir quelcom realment bo i que podria haver tingut èxit comercial... però ho haurem de deixar en espera i esperar el moment indicat per seguir.

Tornant al guió... tinc una feina bastant llarga i avorrida per endavant. Quan vam començar amb tot això de The Castoffs no sabiem com podia arribar a créixer, o sigui que ni tan sols em vaig plantejar escriure-ho en anglès. No crec que llavors fos prou bo però de tota manera no em va ni passar pel cap. O sigui que des d'aleshores he estat escrivint la majoria de material per The Castoffs en català, amb només algunes parts and mostres -la majoria provinents d'esborranys antics- traduits a l'anglès de cara a pitchs. O sigui que ara he d'agafar el meu guió de 88 pàgines i tornar a mirar-me'l de dalt a baix una altra vegada per traduir-lo i treballar-hi en anglès d'ara endavant. Com passa sempre que tradueixes el teu propi material, segurament canviaré tot de petites coses i acabaré amb una mena de versió 3.5 del guió... cosa que no és dolenta però que pot ser esgotadora quan tot just has acabat de refer l'esborrany. Suposo que també hauria de traduir la resta de documentació (bíblia de personatges, descripcions d'escenaris, sinopsis...) però ara mateix no hi vull pensar. De moment em concentraré en això i en l'Old Folks Project, que de moment va bé però crec que necessita una empenteta. Fins aviat!

1 comment:

  1. Nice post and soon we'll have more views from Desbia!

    ReplyDelete