Fright Shorts are 6 spooky new Halloween comedies developed by Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Writersroom for Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Northern Ireland. They launched on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ iPlayer on Friday 13th October. Martha Keith-Barnett is one of the writers...
About four years ago I found myself smiling half-heartedly at a beige sofa on the set of a TV ad. I’d spent ten years working as an actor and although I’d done a few decent theatre and screen jobs my career had been, for the most part, dominated by doing ads and I was a bit frustrated.
I must point out this wasn’t the sofa’s fault. It was a lovely sofa. Plump cushioned and everything. It was just a sofa too far and the tipping point that made me decide to write a play – a play with a gritty part in it for me.
I soon discovered that I was very bad at writing for myself. It came out utterly hammy and disingenuous. Some people are great at it, I was not. However, I’d also discovered that I loved writing and that, as a writer, the possibilities for all the things I was missing in my average acting career - storytelling, complex characters and engaging emotional journeys - were endless. Plus, I could do it in my jammies while drinking tea (which doesn’t always go down well at auditions).
I wrote the hammy character out of the story, finished the play, ditched the acting and since then have been writing for theatre: from full-length plays developed at , to shorts for and and some intense verbatim theatre for based on 24 very strange hours in Hammersmith bus station. I’ve had an absolute ball. Not a beige sofa in sight.
Obviously, I love theatre but I also really love telly. After a couple of years of playwriting I wanted to have a go at screenwriting but it seemed elusive and intimidating and I expected it would be a bit of a closed shop. Plus, the formatting terrified me. A friend nudged me in the direction of and on my first time on the site I saw . I was all prepped to gather information, read scripts, learn things that needed to be learned then go away and think about screenwriting for a month or six. Thinking about it was safe. Doing it was scary. But the Fright Shorts post was there; an open script call for 5 minute comedy shorts on a Halloween theme, specifically from Northern Irishers like me.
Martha Keith-Barnett
I’d never written a comedy let alone a comedy short for screen - but it was worth a punt - I wrote a weird wee script about an evil Halloween pigeon and sent it in. I assumed that that was it, I’d get no further, I might find evil pigeons funny but the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ sure won’t, I should go back to writing for theatre or possibly staring at sofas… and then a month later I got invited to a development day in Belfast.
I turned up at the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, gripping my notepad, determined to make the most of the day but sure I’d be outed as an inexperienced screen-writing imposter. When I met the other writers I immediately relaxed. There were screenwriters, stand-up comics, sketch writers, playwrights and poets - everyone had a different background and experiences and everyone brought something different to the table – for several people it was their first go at screenwriting too.
During the development day, we had talks and Q&As with a line-up of industry professionals (, , and ), discovered that the first episode of is nigh on perfect, dissected comedy sketches to see what makes them tick, learned about making characters active not passive and promised never to pitch a script set at a wake (and then learned that every rule can be broken) before wrapping up with individual script surgeries.
What came across in the development day and especially in the script surgeries with Keith and Vanessa, is that not only did these guys want to support, challenge and help us develop, they were also incredibly respectful of the work we’d all done so far and were genuinely excited to meet new writers - like a couple of kids who just found where the sweets had been hidden.
Brains and notepads filled, off we all went to work on our scripts for the next round of submissions. During the following month, there were Skype notes sessions with Vanessa, emails back and forth about whether a severed foot bouncing off an umbrella is funny or not and, ‘I have an idea but I’m not sure about it, whadoyathink?!’ phone calls to Keith; a safe, judgement free space to try things out, watch them fall flat, try something else, get excited because it nearly works, tweak it, hone it and polish it ‘til it does.
With each draft being sent for notes to your comedy writing crush and mine, ’s , you’d think there was pressure to get it ‘right’. Obviously, there were deadlines and tight turnarounds and scripts did need to get locked down but we were also encouraged to keep the playfulness and keep trying new ideas throughout the process.
And then, after two and a half months of notes sessions, rewriting and editing, my job was done. Final draft delivered into the hands of a director .
Fright Shorts: Derek Vs The Evil Halloween Pigeon by Martha Barnett with Gerard Mc Cabe as Derek and Tara Lynn O Neill as Gina
A few things I learned along the road:
- Deadlines are a good thing. Suddenly my terrible pre-writing procrastination of standing in front of the fridge and wondering if I’m hungry dissipated. It’s amazing how much you can get done when there’s a tight turnaround.
- Don’t drink 12 cups of coffee before you go into a script surgery. It’ll give you the sweats and a twitch.
- Rewrites! There will be many.
- In comparison to the development process for theatre, development for screen was more direct and there were more voices and opinions to take on board. I couldn’t afford to be precious about the work – and there was no need – everyone was there to make it the best that it could be.
- If you’re not sure you agree with a note, trying it out in the script anyway is great practice. I was swayed many a-time by writing something into the script that I hadn’t necessarily thought would work. (Followed by a ‘you were right dammit!’ email to Keith.)
- Layers. Is there room for another joke in there? She’s saying something funny but could she be doing something that’s funny too? We were encouraged to keep adding layers to the comedy. As someone who hadn’t written any physical comedy into their original script, this was a bit of a revelation.
- Having the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Writersroom guys as your cheerleading team as you work on your script is amazing. They want you to succeed, they want you to go on and write that sitcom/ kids TV series/ thriller comedy drama - they really, properly, 100% champion their writers.
- The biggest thing I’ve learned is not to just think about writing - get on and do it. Writersroom script calls are a wonderful boot up the backside to give yourself a deadline and get the next script written.
- The sofa really was a lovely sofa. I feel bad I couldn’t muster up an appropriately warm, longing smile. Maybe, one day, I’ll see it again and get to explain to it what was going on. I’d like to thank it for being the tipping point that sent me off on a new path.