The Big Pitch :: The Big Pitch is a dynamic competition where the UKs most talented, up and coming filmmakers pitch their film ideas to win the largest feature film production prize in the UK. Who wins - You decide.

We're still alive... and oh, by the way, WE WON!

Right so, we won The Big Pitch! (im guessing you probably worked this out by the oh so 'cryptic' headline. If not, you probably should stop reading as I reckon you won't be able to make sense of our film anyways. Hell, I can't even make sense of our film and I wrote the damn thing...)

So yeah, all the hard work and sleepless afternoons paid off. And now we've got a pile of money to make our movie with. Well, we don't actually have a physical pile. In fact we don't actually have the money in any non-pile form at all. See the organisers of The Big Pitch, those clever folks at Moxie Makers, know full well that if they gave us the money now, before the weekend was out we would have spent the cash, destroyed our livers, and made a whole lot of new friends. So we're still working our day jobs and avoiding phone calls from our banks at all costs.

It looks like we're going to be shooting DSOG in the summer. We've just brought on an extremely talented up and coming screenwriter by the name of Philip Gawthorne who will bring our screenplay up to the standard that it needs to be for shooting. He's going to be starting work on it soon and we're all extremely excited to see what he does with it.

You should be seeing more posts from the lot of us over the coming months as we work towards getting everything in place to make our movie.

We do hope y'all will stick around for the ride...

Keith

VOTING OPEN NOW!

 

Guys & Girls, Ladies & Gents, and all those inbetween, it is officially on like donkey kong!

 

The voting kicked off at midday today and I think everyone's very excited to see how this pans out!

 

There'll be more to come about our film over the next few weeks, but in the mean time please spread the word and vote for Different Shades of Graham!!!

 

Good luck to the other teams Blackout, Til Jihad Do Us Part and The Brightness - it's been a hell of a journey and has been a pleasure to share it with you. Final stretch now everyone!

 

Your friendly neighbourhood Dave x

The art of writing a fractured personality....or how to make a first draft even more difficult!

 

So, as mentioned below we decided on a unique approach to our movie about a man with multiple personalities. Three personalities. Three Writer/Directors. Three unique styles and visions. This is all good and well in theory, but how the bloody hell do you write it?

Well, we settled on a pretty unconventional, some might say suicidal method to writing our first draft.  We wrote it in isolation from one another. By this I mean myself, Keith and Brad had little or no idea as to what was happening in each other’s story lines. Having created our basis for the three personalities together, we were then given free rein to colour our particular shade of Graham as we saw fit. Gray, Graham and G have no idea what goes on in each others lives except for messages they leave for one another on a Dictaphone. We applied this to our writing technique in the following way: I might be writing G to start with, then when I got to a point of my choosing in my story I would stop. I would then flip a coin to decide who to pass the writing duties to next. I would not give them what I had written so far. All they would receive from me would be a brief description of where the character is when they switch in, what they are wearing, what time of day it is, who else is the in the room and what sort of condition they are in. I would also give them the Dictaphone messages that G had left for the other personalities.

Now, of course the first draft was a bit of crazy and there were countless continuity problems. But, what we got from it were some fantastic moments and story arcs that formed the backbone to our current draft. It really allowed us to capture the confusion and difficulties of multiple personality disorder albeit in very extreme situations!

So that’s how we went about writing the film. More to come about how we’re actually going to tell the story on the big screen…..or little screen….hell an ipod would still be sweet….

I wonder is anyone actually reading these blogs other than us Big Pitch guys?….maybe if someone commented we’d know (wink wink nudge nudge elbow elbow headbutt headbutt)

 

Your friendly neighbourhood Dave.

A little more about our film...

Evening ladies and gentlemen,

Seeing as the voting opens tomorrow I spose it's time for me to tell you a little bit more about our film.

Well our film has three lead characters, Gray, Graham and G. I hope that your brain has deduced that these names share a connection... if not, you may find our film a little confusing...

So here it is, the crux of our movie. All three of our lead characters inhabit the same body. He suffers from multiple personality disorder and Gray, Graham and G are the three elements in this split. Graham is the manifestation of his paranoia, he thinks the whole world is out to get him, including his other personalities. G on the other hand is the very embodiment of confidence. He's a guy who spends a fair bit of his time in the seedy underworld and associates with plenty of untrustworthy characters. Gray on the other hand is just a normal guy who wants to live a normal life but the crazy lives of the other two personalities all too often overspill into his own life which hinders any attempt at normality.

Each writer/director has created a separate personality. I've written and will be directing the character of Gray, David has created G and Brad's character is Graham. We felt that the best way to truly give these personalities an individual voice would be to get different people to write and direct them. So it's a little different to most movies in the way it is constructed but we feel that it could be a very unique experience for the audience (that's you guys...) and one that will hopefully stick in your head once you've left the cinema.

Anyhoo, that's my little bit of brain vomitting for today.

Catch you later

Keith

ps. VOTE FOR US!!!!

The rock and roll lifestyle of a budding filmmaker...

Morning everyone, thought I'd go ahead an post something else on this here blog now that you've met the rest of the team...

On Monday we had a seminar-type thing where some of the guys from Moxie Makers went through finance plans, scheduling and budgeting for our films.  I know what you're thinking, 'we live the lives of rockstars!'...  But it was actually a good day, was all really helpful stuff (if not slightly confusing...) and it was good to see the guys from Moxie and the other teams as well.  On the original four day workshop back in April me, Dave, Brad and Si spent a lot of time debating film (READ:  propping up a bar) with Derek and Shai and it was good to hang out with them and debate more film (READ: go to Wetherspoons).

Got our first pitching workshop tomorrow so plenty to get done for that plus Brad's Red One camera is turning up today (if Customs get their act together...) so I'm sure one of us will be ranting about that sometime soon as well.

Anyway, that's enough of me.

Bye

Keith.

What do you mean finally? Im finally!

 

Right, now those three have “successfully” (and I use that word lightly) introduced themselves I guess it is my turn.  My name is Simon Thomas and I’m the producer of Different Shades of Graham. 

As you can see from the introduction video I claim to have found myself in this role.  This is not entirely true, I actually underwent a huge amount of training in the world of television.  I started as a runner and would like to claim that I worked my way up the ranks.  Unfortunately that would be a lie, I pretty much stayed right where I was.  The lowest of the low, but learnt a shed load.  One advantage of being in the gutter and being told what to do by the stars is that you soon figure out the right and wrong way of getting things done.  The right way of coarse being my way.

 

Now I may not have a be able to make a claim that I have a famous directors name, or an encyclopaedic knowledge of film.  However I can claim to be a machine at making hot drinks.  You name it tall skinny espresso frappucciono grande with a caramel shot I’m your man.  I have spent more time making drinks than all the fussy buggers drinking them combined.  Personally I think caffeine isn’t a toy to be played with but a tool that gets you thru the day, Hot and Brown and lots of it.  

This might however be the reason for me staying low in the ranks, not because I was crap but because I know what I want and say what I think. 

Something a runner should never do is think!

Anyway now I can say what I think as I’m the producer, and I say :

“IM IN CHARGE!  Now get me a cinnamon dolce latte”

    

Welcome to the DSOG team.

Si

 

And finally, checking in...

Hey! It's me... Brad, the third of the writer / director team of this movie. Actually, I could just go ahead and add to the rumour that this movie is actually autobiographical, and that the three directors, Keith, Dave and Brad are three seperate personalities and that we are, in actuality, just one guy! But I won't, cause it's not true... Or maybe it is, and I'm trying to get the truth out in the form of a joke, hoping Keith or Dave are not going to suss... Help me! Please! Ha ha! Just a joke... or is it? Well, if I was a third personality, I'd be mighty ticked off that the other two decided they would share a surname and call themselves brothers. And, I'd have to say, I'd be a little more imaginative, if I wanted to be a film director, than to choose a famous film director's name! Having said that, at least I'm not burdened with two useless and talentless other me's. Because we are forging ahead, whether sharing the same body or not, to make a very unique and entertaining movie. Gawd bless ya'wl. Brad

I curse my mother since the day I escaped her wretched womb...

Actually more accurately since the moment my mum and dad signed the birth certificate with the name David Thomas Lynch. Not the best start to my film career.

Disclosure (for fear of being exiled from family) : In truth I don't curse my mother, or my father for that matter, they are both wonderful caring people and I love them very much.

As mentioned previously my name is David T. Lynch, I am one of the three writer/directors of the non-linear psychological thriller, Different Shades of Graham. Those of you who are film fans will no doubt understand why I choose to include the all important 'T' in my name - for you non film fans (who also were probably quite perplexed by the last sentence of the first paragraph of this blog!) this is not me being pretentious, it's simply a way of distinguishing myself from the Oscar nominated director David Lynch. A little side note, David Lynch's middle name is Keith. As you can see from the post below, my brother and co-writer/director's name is also Keith. Did my parents do this on purpose you ask? No. They picked our names because they wanted names that couldn't be shortened for some reason. Well that makes sense with Keith. I've tried to shorten it, it doesn't work. Seriously, give it a go....See? But David?! Come on! I live in Essex. It's the most commonly shortened name in the county! 'My mate Dave.' - Everyone has one in Essex, it's practically mandatory!

So I've managed to write a Blog dedicated to my name so far - well done David, how very self obsessed. I suppose all there really is to say is I want to make this film, I think it's going to be a fantastic movie. So take pity on me and my all important 'T', and vote for Different Shades of Graham. Then maybe one day I can come top on the mighty Google if you search for 'David Lynch+Film'.

I'll actually be posting stuff about the film next time I promise!

David

And so begins our ramblings...

Welcome to the first post of this brand spanking new blog type thing...

Im Keith, one of the three writer/directors of Different Shades of Graham.  We'll be explaining more about our film in the coming weeks but for now I thought I'd just pop on here and say 'hey'.

So... Hey.

You can check out the video below for a bit more of an introduction to us and our film.  Let us know what you think of it. 

We're going to be starting our online promotion soon and if any of you guys have some ideas on how best to promote our film then please post them in the comments section.

Thanks muchly.

Anyways, just thought i'd keep it short and sweet for the first post.

-Keith-

An introduction to the team behind Different Shades of Graham

• We're still alive... and oh, by the way, WE WON!
• VOTING OPEN NOW!
• The art of writing a fractured personality....or how to make a first draft even more difficult!
• A little more about our film...
• The rock and roll lifestyle of a budding filmmaker...
• What do you mean finally? Im finally!
• And finally, checking in...
• I curse my mother since the day I escaped her wretched womb...
• And so begins our ramblings...
• An introduction to the team behind Different Shades of Graham