Sandstone Press

Never Say No

Posted by Ron McMillan on 24th October 2009

Never say no to a challenge, since only if you fail will you realise that perhaps you ought not to have taken it on in the first place. And by then it will be too late.

Not particularly wise words, but I did just bash them out on a whim.

Something of a whim on the part of a TV director friend sees me approaching a journey deep into the unknown world of writing for film. About nine months ago, Jim emailed me saying he had an oilman in Aberdeen who had money burning a hole in his pocket, fancied being in the film industry, and was enchanted with the vision of himself in a flash suit treading long red carpets at glitzy awards ceremonies in ritzy capitals. The man was actively seeking a film project to fund. There really is one born every minute.

Jim wanted me to produce a ‘treatment’ - film/TV-speak for a detailed plot summary - for a feature film. As one does, seemingly.

On what topic?

‘How about Shetland?’ said Jim.

How about it indeed. In the space of a few days I came up with the bones of a premise that I quickly expanded until I had three or four pages of story outline about the people on a (fictitious) Shetland island who faced the very real spectre of de-population, falling resident figures threatening the island’s five-millennia-long history. Jim liked the idea, our pet oilman made similarly positive noises (he had been to Shetland on business many times, so by now he was surely thinking that this was his idea all along) and I set to work on improving the treatment, on building in plot elements upon which Jim, as director, might hang a full-length feature.

I wanted the film, if it ever happened (face it: Ross County have more chance of winning the Champion’s League), to reflect well on Shetland and Shetlanders, and to showcase its stunning coastal landscapes. So of course I wrote in forbidding, three-hundred-foot cliff faces darkened by giant cathedral-like sea caves, conveniently navigable by small dinghy. And I set about creating a narrative plot line that cast Shetlanders as tough, imaginative, resourceful - and, crucially, far removed from the usual one-eyed baby-consuming madcap sun-worshipping nutjobs who typically inhabit storylines set in remote British locations (think if you will, of Wickerman; I rest my case).

Unable to quickly come up with anything better, we called the nascent notion BETWEEN WEATHERS, after my travel book on Shetland.

At its very first hurdle, BETWEEN WEATHERS stumbled over the figure of an oilman with cold feet, retreating hurriedly for reasons unstated; but an enthused Jim quickly took the idea to Lerwick, where local council and arts figures received the notion with characteristic Shetland receptiveness. This, it transpired, was at least in part because the story did not cast Shetlanders as one-eyed, baby-consuming madcap sun-worshipping nutjobs.

Jim’s next move was to approach a national organisation whose remit is the promotion of all things film-related, and the reaction experienced there surprised us once more. Anyone who has ever pitched a creative idea, be it a television programme or a magazine article or a play or even a book, will know that recipients of said ideas have at the ever-ready a ‘default’ reaction, one born of suffering thousands of ill-devised notions over the years and that involves instinctively weary head-shaking, much eye-rolling and brutally plain expressions of negativity. The default ‘No thanks; it’ll never work’ is the greatest barrier to creative output – and what surprised us so profoundly was how the film organisation welcomed the idea with open arms.

After subjecting this to endless analysis, I concluded that my plot manages to push all the right buttons by NOT being predictable. It is not set in the squalid council schemes of urban Central Scotland. It features not a single pregnant teenager, drug dealer, drug addict, loan shark, psycho sex fiend or bent copper. Its language is not peppered with profanity, it is absent of blood-spattered violence, and has no references whatsoever to football or football fans, sectarian or otherwise.

A few months later, and we have yet to experience anyone reaching for the default ‘No thanks’. In early November Jim and I re-visit Shetland to talk once more with local powers and attempt to take the game up to the next level. The one where a screenplay gets commissioned and a production scheduled.

Excited? Bet your boots I am. Daunted? Of course, but as a wise man once said, we’re a long time dead. It might never happen, but that will not be for want of trying.