New horror movie starts shooting-

Submitted by: Sandy Auden
On: 06.07.2004

British Fantasy Award-winning author Paul Finch dropped us an update about his latest movie project-

"After two years of pre-production, Spirit Trap, a horror movie I've been heavily involved in writing, has now started shooting in North London," he said. "The film stars Billie Piper, and it's a neat bit of casting, in my opinion, as she's very shortly to make a big splash as the new Doctor Who girl. Archangel Films are the production company - up-and-coming, cashed-up, British-based and seriously into horror. What more could we ask for?"

Finch has been involved in re-working the script but is restricted on how much detail he share at this stage. "With Spirit Trap, the producers already had what they clearly felt was an excellent premise," he said. "I can't say any more than that, but I agreed with them about it. As horror films go, this idea was very different from anything I'd seen before.

"At least two quite accomplished script-drafts had already been completed, and the decision was then made to hire a new writer. That was where I came in. I had a week to study it, then joined the exec producer, the director and the senior script-editor for a day-long meeting at Pinewood Studios, where we all gave our opinions, and then thrashed out what we felt needed to be altered. Initially it was streamlining job, chopping out some extraneous material (even some characters), and sharpening up the key elements in the storyline. Movie scripts have to be crisp and fast-moving - that's a vital ingredient and may require ruthlessness - and sometimes a writer who's been involved with the project for some time, and has become proprietorial about it, may not be the best person to do that.

"I got stuck into the rewrites, and as I did, got lots of new ideas of my own, which I felt would complement the existing material; I always put these to the producers first - a couple were rejected but most were incorporated. This means that there's quite a lot of Paul Finch in the final script, but I like to think I've added to the original author's work rather than replaced it."

Picking up someone else's script wasn't a problem for Finch. "It's very much par for the course in movie terms," he said. "I don't mean to sound like I'm already a Hollywood hack in saying that, but even at this stage of my career it's obvious. Most cinema-goers will probably be familiar with movie titles that include half a dozen screen-writer credits. That's not because half a dozen authors all sat down together to work on the script, it's because it will have been sent to one after another until the producers got the finished version that they were happy with."

How does he find the process of re-writing movies? "It's a job, like any other, and that's the only way you can look at it," he said. "In some respects it's easy, because the bones of the characters and storyline are already there. Okay, you may want to change them all drastically, but at least the blueprint exists on paper rather than just in the back of your head. On the other hand, if you're in a particularly creative (and dare I say it, 'precious') state of mind, then it can be problematic.

"The temptation is obviously to put your own spin on everything, regardless of whether what's already there is good or not, and that may not be your function. You might just have been hired to tidy it up, to shorten or lengthen it, or - as in the brief I got - to alter the general emphasis, in which case a complete re-write will do more damage than good.

"What it really boils down to is paying strict attention during the script-meetings with the producers, script-editors etc, and then being so professional that you can execute their requirements to the absolute letter. It may sounds a bit Philistine, but the main emphasis must be on keeping yourself employed rather than hijacking the film for your own aesthetic purposes."

One of Finch's most recent book releases was the novella Cape Wrath, an adrenalin rush of a story, dripping with blood. Was Spirit Trap going to be as gory? "We'd never sell it if it was!" Finch said. "Even by my standards, Cape Wrath was a gore-fest, though having said that, when Cape Wrath was itself optioned for movie development, the writer was keen to include as many of the Viking tortures, in as much graphic detail as he could. Spirit Trap is a different kind of chiller, though. In Cape Wrath the ancient, ritual violence - and the terror it inspired in modern folks marooned in a wild, savage place - was an essential aspect of the story, whereas Spirit Trap started out relying much more on subtle hints of mystery and the unknown in a more familiar environment, and we've kept as much of that in as we could."

So keep an eye on those cinema posters - Spirit Trap starring Billie Piper, aided ably by the creative talents of Mr. Paul Finch. And keep an eye on the Alien Online for more news about Paul Finch's novels, coming soon.

Source: Paul Finch