Quote: steve by any other name @ March 1, 2008, 11:31 AMThat all sounds positive Seefacts, well done indeed.
I don't know how long your script is at present, but my advice on trimming it down would be to take out what you think can go, and then take out a whole lot more. It helps, in my experience, to have someone less attached to it to oversee the process if you can trust anyone.
I was recently asked to trim my 67 pages down and I returned 53 pages after changing from 12pt to 11pt font lost 4 pages (as it had been suggested that the large font may be a reason that it took only about 30 mins to read but ran to so many pages) and much soul searching and sacrifice lost me another 9.
I was then given a copy highlighting suggestions as to what else could be removed and, to my horror, it was a lot of my favourite jokes. I dutifully hacked it down to 45 pages to discover that it was actually much better. Despite the loss of jokes, most of which were at the end of a scene after the 'business' had been done and we're added to make the laughter count as high as possible, clearly at the expense of the story.
So, be ruthless and you'll end up with a tighter all together better script. But it is a painful process.
The format change has cut it down a lot, and it's a lot easier taking bits out when you know it's still going to get read/pitched.
Before I'd be agonizing about the best jokes I was told 'they can go in episode 2' so that's a relief.
