Developing the Team

Last Friday saw an amazing occurrence. Apart from the fact Piers Beckley was up and communicating before midday (quite coherently, I'll add), our five other intrepid 0110 adventurers - Alan Mckenna, Dan Hall, Helen Smith, Laurence Timms and Michelle Lipton - had battled their way across London Town (Michelle having already walked barefoot from Brighton) to arrive fresh as daisies at the gates of Tenacious Towers - 0110 HQ for the day.

After Dusty the Maid had mistaken them for mere tradesfolk and encouraged them to warm their hands by the kitchen Aga, Billson (new Butler) apologetically rescued them and brought them to the Drawing Room. Here, we plotted, planned and schemed our way through the 0110 avenue of trees, thus enabling us clear vision of the Twisted Tales & Glorious wood lying before us. Oh yes, indeed it did.

We gallantly charged our way through marshy bogs and zombie infested enclosures and emerged in a vast clearing just in time to pop back for a spot of lunch: the seven of us looked quite a neat little package sat at the Southernmost end of the Grand Hall Dining Table. We filled our faces, swigged mead and chatted nonchalantly as Mrs B, the Housekeeper, screeched orders from the kitchens in the distance, often overtaking the dulcet tones of the Monks and lyre playing to us from the corner.

Once we had partaken of a brandy to warm our cockles, it was back into the wild - plagued by spectres and decisions. Which path did we take? We knew we had to decide as a Team - an Army - and we made it. We chose the correct trail through the choking fog but just as we thought the end was in sight we caught our breath: a huge beast emerged from a primordial swamp for the final showdown. We all looked at each other and immediately knew how to proceed. Fortunately for us we had an old Ghostbuster backpack kicking around and we zapped that blighter down to size in no time.

That, my dears, was our "0110:Twisted Tales & Glorious" Story/Pilot/Series Development Day.

Team works - in fact it works so well, two story first drafts are completed.

0110 - Scribe Diary 1

Our first "0110: Twisted Tales & Glorious" diary entry from a Scribe is now online. Read how Laurence Timms is doing...

Clicky linky here.

0110 - Part Five Point Five

A brief respite from "0110: Twisted Tales & Glorious" over the weekend - normal service will resume next week...

Indeed there are a few more announcements to be made, and it's not 'just' Writer No. 6...

Until then.

Broadcasting 0110 - Part One

Hello you

I've been having a mighty busy few days since I last dropped by to check on you all, but boy has it been good.

First of all, a belated thank you to Conor Dignam (Director, Emap's media group), Lisa Campbell (Editor, Broadcast) and their lovely Marketing & Editorial team at Broadcast who very kindly asked me to join in for a light lunch in order to discuss the contents - past, current and future - of that very shiny trade weekly and website. For those of you who aren't subscribers, you really should be. If you want to know your market - as a writer, director, producer, technical genius - then the pages of this weekly should be regularly digested. In fact, just the access to the online Commissioning Index alone is worth it's weight in megabytes and will soon become a subscriber-only section.

From my point of view it was refreshing to be able to put one's tuppence-worth forward and then listen to the challenges and ideas the Broadcast team have bubbling. At the best of times, both film and TV are challenging industries, but at the moment the bar has been raised with regards to 'challenging', with finance being pulled and budgets being slashed everywhere you go. Trade press, such as Broadcast and Screen International can have an enormous amount of influence on the reporting of stories as they break and so to actually sit back, take the time, and assess how they can best help the industries can only be a good thing. Well done!

And so for the rest of my week: taken up with the final tweaks and preparations for "0110: Twisted Tales & Glorious". We had our initial Writing Team meeting and believe me, there was something mighty special going on. The ideas were buzzing and the air was sheer electricity. I am thrilled to be working with so many exceptional people and this is just the beginning of it all.

Every day this week, we will be announcing a new 0110 writer on the main "0110" website and with that in mind, I am totally and utterly pleased to tell you that Writer No 1 is Laurence Timms. Well done, Laurence - it's great to have you on board and to finally be able to work together.

Get on over to the 0110 site every day and see the Team grow!