Ollie Paterson, School of Arts BA (Hons) Film alumnus has produced an audio drama for BBC Sounds, entitled CLICK!. Ollie will be talking about the pitching and development process of his audio drama at a School of Arts Film and Media Careers talk at 5pm on Wednesday 4 November 2020.
CLICK! is set in the not too distant future. The population are cyborgs with limited access to emotions, and Steve is infected by a sort of consciousness he doesn’t understand.
Ollie explains how he came to be commissioned for the audio drama, and the experience of submitting his project to ScreenSouth : ‘ScreenSouth starts as a competition, and so I entered with an idea, pitched it and fleshed it out further at the different stages of interviews, from concept, moodboards, research to budget. I initially submitted an animated spoken word film idea to ScreenSouth, and passed to the final interview stage. Unfortunately it was unsuccessful, however the producers liked the writing and in particular the spoken word form, so they asked me to submit the concept for an audio format instead, so after feeling sorry for myself I took the opportunity and sent them a totally different idea, and luckily that was successful!’ I think from this I learnt to go beyond the brief, if an opportunity arises, adapt to it, and don’t be scared to throw a curveball and surprise people with your ideas if you think they are better than the original. How excited you are; or how much you believe in your piece is really apparent in its quality, and people will respond to that’.
‘When I got commissioned, my role became writer/director/producer, meaning that I was essentially in charge of each aspect of the production with the guidance of the executive producer I was assigned, as well as people from other organisations and funding bodies. ScreenSouth is a Talent Development Scheme, which is a brilliant format because it gives you the freedom to work out for yourself how each stage of the process works, how you work best, what you like and don’t like, all whilst having the safety net of people who have been doing it for years! So the programme was a perfect transition for me from University to the professional world, it meant that my workflow was guided by industry professionals, from script feedback, social media campaigns, to audio engineers. The scope of responsibility has been extremely engaging and I have gained a lot about all of these different aspects of creating drama from these mentors’. They didn’t beat around the bush when it came to feedback either, meaning that I also learned to swallow my pride and digest it into a better draft, or plan or character moment. Film and Audio drama are collaborative mediums, and being receptive to notes and transcribing them in your own way are imperative to the process of development’.
Ollie also explains the process of bringing his ideas to life: ‘pre-production and script development are by far the longest stretches of time within the process, and in this case, extended further with the advent of Covid. However, as the project grew more and more succinct and matured, it felt increasingly surreal that this thing and these characters brewing in my head for over half a year would actually be realised by real people and they would bring their own ideas and thoughts to the piece. It was an incredibly humbling experience’.
‘If there is one thing I can say I have learned amidst all of it, is to just aim to make whatever project you are working on the best version of itself it can be, and then you can’t go wrong’.
CLICK! will be broadcast soon on BBC Sounds. Ollie will be talking about his audio drama at a Film and Media Careers event on Wednesday 4 November 2020, from 5pm to 6.30pm. The event is free to attend, open to all, and can be accessed via Microsoft Teams, here:
https://tinyurl.com/y47flzpe