The Genus of Mankind
You’re busy, right? You’ve got a lot on your plate. So if you had to choose, would you rather read a 90 page script or check out a full colour comic book?
Exactly.
I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire these days. That’s writer-speak for having a lot of scripts lying in a lot of inboxes waiting on a lot of producers (assistants) to do the unspeakable and actually read an original story.
And that’s all well and good. But I’m not a wait by the phone type of guy. I like to actually do things. Create things. New things. But after a while – a dozen screenplays in three years or so, as it turns out – you kind of get tired of pushing the same boulder up the same hill. And after pushing the most recent boulder up the most recent hill I sort of got to thinking; maybe I’ll try something different. Maybe I’ll experiment a little.
Now a screenplay is a screenplay. You can’t really mess with the format. It’s the blueprint to make a film. But what good is that little blueprint if it’s sitting in some inbox somewhere being avoided by a neophobic executive? Short of it being an adaptation that brings with it a built-in track record, there’s nothing that sets one screenplay apart from the next, except the pitch.
I’ve already relayed the power of the visual presentation in a previous post and that was really where I started when thinking about what to do about a project called Mankind.
Mankind is a genre script. Post-apocalyptic / zombie-but-not-really sort of thing with a unique spin. It’s the kind of visceral material that begs to be more than just words on a page.
After considering illustrations I started thinking about storyboarding some key scenes. Anything that could exploit the visual cortex of film executives rather than trying to get them to read. Then I figured, if I’m going to do storyboards, I may as well make them nice. Add colour… Dialogue… By the end of the thought process I’d turned Mankind the screenplay into Mankind the six part graphic novel.
I get carried away, gimme a break; it’s why I’m good at what I do.
So what is Mankind? It’s all of the above. And I want to share it with you. What’s the point in making a bunch of cool stuff if I’m not going to put it out there. Like the good old days.
And I’m going to do more with these social media tooly things too. To the best of my abilities anyway. That’s the long and the short of it. So unless you have an aversion to horror, disease, the apocalypse, rampant killing, rape, cannibalism, arson, guns, knives, explosions, diesel engines, inter-racial lesbian pregnancy, sex-toys, gallows humour, full frontal male nudity or chicks in bikinis then by all means: Friend, fan, follow; do whatever it is you do to get strapped in…
The journey of Mankind begins now.
