Making King's Ransom

Currently in post-production is a script by Tina Walker, a ten minute short called King's Ransom. It was written by Tina as part of her MA screenwriting studies and has been extensively workshopped to reach its current, fourth, draft. It is an amusing tale.

King's Ransom tells the story of an elderly couple, ripped off by a con man, who have to use alternative methods to regain what was stolen from them. There are only about a dozen words of dialogue in the whole script, so it is determinedly visual. This is one of the story's attractions, but it also means it will be universally understood. This is important in reaching a world market with the completed film.

An added layer of humour is achieved by the suggested shooting style, a spaghetti western, set in a run-down windy British terrace instead of a dusty wind-blown desert shanty town. Clint Eastwood arrives in Coronation Street and all the net curtains start twitching!

As a virtually-no-dialogue film, King's Ransom makes very good use of dramatic music to support the narrative on screen. This means that music will be very important in this production. We agreed at the outset that we would try and find a composer who wanted to work with us, but without requiring that we hire the London Symphony Orchestra for a week to lay the score.

How We Found Kings Ransom.
The script came to us in response to a brief we placed on Mandy's web page, which is a jobs and opportunities clearing house for the film industry. We urged writers to pay particular attention to the brief, but most of those who responded did not. The brief is very important, because it was written to lay out parameters within which the script had to fall if it was to fit the market we had targeted for the film. The writer may start with a script, but we have to sell the film to a market. Market forces prevail. Writers take note.

We asked for a treatment, or synopsis to be sent to us in the first instance. This tells you if the story is good, or no good. A film drama is simply a story, so if it does not work as a story it is unlikely to work as a film. This synopsis worked well. It had three acts, beginning, middle and end. It was a strong narrative. It had conflicts, plot twists and resolution, all packed into ten minutes. It did not need expensive sets, large cast or elaborate costumes. Locations required were relatively simple to find. All these factors are important because they help keep down costs and we are talking low budget here.

We called in Tina's script to study it in detail. We were impressed by its freshness and by its subtle humour and a purchase deal was set up based on Writers' Guild recognised rate.

Our choice of script was backed by Southern Arts in Winchester, happy to support a writer resident in their area who has clear screen potential. They gave us a grant to develop the script and appointed Sarah Golding as script editor, to work with Tina on further refinements.

How We Found Our Composer
We had found our writer, Tina, through the internet. That is where we went for a composer too. We came across a web page where Miller Williams of Sony UK said his company wanted to foster good relationships with film makers. He offered his services in brokering recorded music at lowest possible cost from his company's back catalogue. He also suggested a self-contained composer/producer could provide an original score at the sort of cost a low budget film maker could afford, recording directly onto an edited master, to timecode.

We called Miller and he put us on to Marco Sabiu. Marco is a pianoforte and composition graduate, currently working in pop music as a composer/producer. He was the man behind Take That for their hit cover of the Barry Mannilow classic "Could It Be Magic?" He has also written and produced for artists like Kylie Minogue, Tanita Tikaram, Kim Mazelle and Filippa Gordiano. And yes, Marco is Italian... tailor made you might say, for a spaghetti western.

Like most Italians, Marco loves the movies, lives breathes and sings them. He had sent us a good demo tape, of songs he has written or produced, or both, set down alongside some of his film theme ideas. We met him over Lunch at Mezzo in Soho, talked through the project, talked movies and he convinced us he was our music man long before we got as far as the ice cream.