Faintheart at Edinburgh

It's been announced that Faintheart, written by Guild member David Lemon, will premiere on the closing night of the Edinburgh Film Festival on 28 June.

As David says on his blog, it's great news - although a shame that the idea that the film was essentially written by MySpace users seems to be taking hold.

The truth, as David explained in an article for the Guild, is slightly different. The film was written and well developed before it won the £1 million MySpace competition.

I must admit that when we won I became worried that the interactive element would mean people I never met being allowed to change the story out of recognition. I felt that with all the extra producers now on board, I’d have more than enough script notes to be dealing with without some 16-year-old from Arkansas e-mailing me to say “U suk and so duz ur script”.

Fortunately, I was allowed to suggest the scenes which would be made open to MySpace, so the changes suggested were of the genuinely helpful dialogue polish variety rather than the sort of radical structural change that gives writers ulcers.