Sorry for the lack of updates. Warren delivered the revised draft of the script in early June. It has generated inquiries from some interested in releasing Castlevania as an animated feature film instead of a direct to DVD. Discussions are ongoing.

Well, the notes on the screenplay came in this week. And I’m happy to say that they’re minimal, and easily dealt with. (And no-one’s said a thing about the swearing, the violence or the now-infamous Goat-Fucking Scene.)

In real terms, this means that we’ll have a locked script in five weeks or so. And that’s the point at which we commence the visual development in earnest. We all said from the beginning that everything has to emanate from the script, and our original conception of a videogame-derived film that was 1) a film for adults and 2) a good film first and a videogame-movie second.

Also, a film where bastards explode when they get whipped, people get set on fire, and Alucard has no clothes on. Because girls and gay men need fan service too.

Anyway, I’ll be back next month after we’ve got the script locked, and I guess we’ll get into the subject of visual development from there. Happy new year, and I’ll see you on the other side.

– W

Nothing new to report. I’m actually still waiting on a complete set of notes on the script from all concerned — I look at notes both from the producers both inside and outside the CASTLEVANIA production entity itself.

The “notes” phase is an entire production step in itself. I look at everything the various players at this point have to say, and address each of them in one of two ways. Either I agree with the change, and add it to the script. Or I disagree with the change and want to stab the person who suggested it with broken bottles until they die. Since I’m in England and they’re in America, that gets difficult, and the bad exchange rate makes it harder, these days, to hire people in America who could do it for me. So I have to argue the point and explain in a coherent fashion why their note is bad for the script. And then they will tell me that I’m drunk and they don’t recognise the language I wrote my argument in and could I please stop sending the weird little drawings of them being raped by hoboes?

So…yeah. A whole phase in and of itself.

More soon.

– W

Screenplay completed and delivered.

Historic Cinematic Innovations therein include coining of the phrase “snake-fuckingly crazy.”

Now begins the real horror.

– W

I’ll have this beast finished by the weekend if it kills me.

Or preferably someone else.

Maybe my producer.

– W

(And, yes, I’ve chosen to show this excerpt for a reason. And, for the more rabid of our readership, please note this piece is not up for editing or rewriting. Thanks. — W)

EXT. VILLAGE - NIGHT

The village of MURDENU, as denoted by the wooden signpost hammered into the dirt track in front of an INN. Under it, a sign points left for GRESIT (15m) and right for TÂRGOVISTE (70m).

It’s a cloudy night, no stars or moon. The only lights in the shot come from the lamps burning in the windows of the inn, from which we hear:

INT. INN - NIGHT

And TREVOR BELMONT, the last of the legendary vampire hunters, sitting alone in the back of the drinking-house, wrapped in a heavy cloak and nursing a flagon of watery beer while, at the bar counter, BOSHA, a burly middle-aged farmer, blusters at KOB, a narrow man still wearing a blacksmith’s apron. The INNKEEPER is trying hard not to listen.

Bosha pauses to down his beer.

Bosha clumps the beer pot down on the bar.

Warren Ellis will be making a rare appearance at the San Diego Comic Con coming up July 25th through the 29th. He’ll be there promoting his work with Avatar Press and his first novel, CROOKED LITTLE VEIN. Check out his site for appearance locations and times. Don’t forget to wear your best Grant DaNasty costume.

Warren Ellis - graphic novelist, author, journalist, screenwriter, and double O agent? That’s my theory. He’s still hard at work on the script, but there have been some delays over the last few weeks that have strangely coincided with the failed UK and Scotland terror attacks and investigation. Once the suspects were all rounded up, Warren was back to work. Coincidence? I doubt it. Warren Ellis, writing Castlevania and smashing Al Qaeda. Thanks Warren.

Things will be sparse here for a couple of weeks, now. I’m deep into the writing process, aiming to have the first draft of the script written by the end of the first week in June. It would have been done by now, but I lost three weeks to illness, which, given my other deadlines, put me solidly one month behind.

The outline, thankfully, is pretty much airtight, which speeds up the scripting process: I just expand it section by section, and then blend in the joins when I go back and turn it into screenplay format.

It also helps that I’d done the historical research already. Not that much of it will show up in the film, I’m sure, but I find it’s good to have it in my head. 1370s Wallachia was, of course, an incredible shithole, with all the hallmarks of an energetic feudal society — beautiful buildings, constant internal strife and a life expectancy of about ten minutes.

I’d researched Vlad Tepes pretty thoroughly for another job some eight or ten years back, and I may apply some of his ideas on exterior decor to the Curse Castle. He did, after all, have very devious and knowing reasons for decorating the outside of his own keep with impaled bodies.

As I said before, all the changes and new stuff (including new characters like the Bishop of Gresit) have been approved by IGA. This also covers a new background for Sypha. I knew going in that I wanted to weave a richer backdrop for the story, essential for verisimilitude if you’re writing something set in a near-Dark Ages feudal society, which is also defined by its clans, tribes, houses and peoples.

Which leads me to the themes of the work. Which I’ll talk about later, as I need to work up the scene where Trevor gains entry to the walled city of Gresit now.

– W

There are probably two different kinds of screenwriters. The kind who start with a blank sheet of paper and just bull through to the end of the thing, and the expanders, like me.

People like me work as if they’re applying coats of paint to the same surface. The only blank sheet of paper is the original premise document. When it comes to writing the outline, I paste the original premise document into a new file and start writing over the top of it: expanding it, rewording it, moving scenes around. And when it comes to the screenplay, I paste the outline into a new document, and start writing over the top of it.

It lets me control the shape of the thing exactly — which is vital when you’re working to a hard runtime, as we are with CASTLEVANIA. Stops me getting too extemporaneous, and it also lets me see where I’m running short and might be able to lengthen a scene after all. (The trick to this kind of writing is entering a scene as late as possible and getting out as quickly as possible, which involves killing a lot of your darlings, as they say. So it’s nice to be able to see where you might be able to bring one or two back from the dead.)

So, at the top of the outline, there is the line:

1475: DR LISA FARENHEIGHTS is working in her keep on the edge of WALLACHIA’s CAPITAL CITY.

The outline goes straight from there to activation of the plot. But that’s not how you write a story. For one thing, the top of a film is the only point at which you have time. You’ve got five minutes of the audience’s indulgence, so you can take a little bit to look around. For another, story is not plot. Even the most superficial reading of Shakespeare will show you the characters doing things unrelated to the needs of the plot, talking, being people, being real, before they get around to activating their bit of plot.

So I start with that line, and I start making notes. This isn’t screenplay. I put myself through two drafts of the official First Draft — I nail down the rough action and dialogue in note form, and then rewrite as I go back and convert everything into screenplay format. So that one line turned into a few pages of notes that started like this:

FADE IN:

on rolling storm clouds, dark and evil.

We push down through them, emerging into rain over EUROPE.

SUPER
(date)

We drop down with the rain, down over Eastern Europe, the dark forested territories of Wallachia.

SUPER
Wallachia

LIGHTNING crashes down past us, filling our POV with a WHITE-OUT:

CUT TO

Our vision returning as we find ourselves in front of LISA TEPES’ HOUSE, a wooden structure outside a village. We see the rooves of the village in the mid-distance beyond the house, lit up by a lightning strike on a day twilit by heavy cloud. The rain drizzles down on the carefully-tended herb and vegetable garden at the front of the house.

LISA (O.S.)
You stay right there, Mrs ***. I’m just going to get something for your cough.

SUPER denotes text superimposed on the screen, and O.S. denotes a voice issuing from off-screen.

How much of this survives to the screenplay? Well, despite the requests of people in the comments sections, I’m not going to be posting the screenplay to this production blog. As ever with this blog, we’re just giving you a look at the process. And this is how a screenplay starts.