storyboard a poem

The news is out! Edinburgh UNESCO City of Literature Trust has announced their 2010 reading campaign: Carry a Poem. In February 2010 we'll all be challenged to carry a poem, with the help of free books, events, activities and the Scottish Poetry Library.

All very exciting! And, it means I can finally tell you what we're working on. EUCL have commissioned us to produce an animated trailer for the campaign. The trailer will show what might happen when poems are carried around the city and will be released in January.

We finished the storyboards yesterday - here are a couple that don't give too much away:





The bag is inspired by ee cummings' "i carry your heart with me".

@FableHelen

I've finally set up my own Twitter account, @FableHelen, after tweeting for quite a while on behalf of Watson the Dog. Watson hasn't gone into retirement, but if you want to know what I'm up to and what's going on here at Binary Fable Towers, @FableHelen is the twitterer for you.

setting the (street) scene

I still can’t tell you much about our new project, but here are a few sketches of the set. It’s designed to be an Edinburgh-esque street, without actually being a real location. Adam spent a lot of time sketching different elements and working out what made them look like Edinburgh. It turns out the style of the street lamps is quite important (Narnia-style lamps in the early sketches didn't work at all) and the distinctive Edinburgh police box is helpful.

To complicate things, the scale is intentionally more intimate than most of the New Town. We want to keep things quite personal, so we’ve gone with a little cobbled street that in real life would probably be a mews.







From the sketches, we’ve developed production drawings. I’ll be using these to build the 3D computer model of the set this week.

the joys of not knowing

I'm clearing pinboard space for our next project (of which more anon), so I've been taking down some of my Lost Book related notes and scraps. These are a couple of quotes that I found reassuring during the collaborative writing process:

"I had sent my heroine down a rabbit-hole without the idea what was to happen next."

(Lewis Carroll speaking about Alice. I felt rather the same about Aileen - I'd set her up in episode 1 and hadn't a scoobie where she'd go from there.)

"Taking a leap but not knowing where you're going to land is a really respectable way to write."

(Shameless writer Paul Abbott, scrawled down as a I watched a programme about screenwriting. It was inspiring to know that great writing sometimes results when a writer doesn't map out all the details in advance.)

BAFTA night

Wow, BAFTA night was fun! It was quite some party - here we are arriving with Lost Book composer Michael Ferguson, just about to head up to the champagne reception (well, actually, it was more of a whisky reception).

The big winner of the night was Armando Ianucci and In the Loop, bagging best director, best writing, and best film actor for Peter Capaldi. The person we were all most excited to see was Bill Forsyth, who got a well-deserved "Outstanding Contribution to Film" gong. Our biggest cheer was reserved for Mick Cooke and Gili Dolev who collected best animated short for The Happy Duckling.

And, commiserations to both us (Cybraphon pipped The Lost Book in the interactive category) and David Tennant (who was beaten to best TV actor by Robert Carlyle).

BAFTA Scotland nomination

It's lovely to have news so big and exciting that you're still bouncing around two weeks later! The Lost Book has been nominated in the Interactive category of the BAFTA Scotland Awards 2009.

The award ceremony is this Sunday, 8th November, so please keep your fingers crossed for us. Not just to win (although that would be nice), but to get down the red carpet in one piece despite the insanely vertiginous new shoes I've bought for the occasion.

Congratulations go to everyone involved - including the global team of storywriters who took part - for getting the nomination. Well done, all of us!