From Garston to Hollywood

On the Writers' Guild website, Roy Boulter explains how he led a community writing project that created a feature film, Under The Mud.

The story really started to take shape over three residential writing weekends. We sat around the table discussing, arguing about and laughing through every scene, character and plotline. Eventually we had a 60-page treatment and a story that we were all happy with.

The problem was how to write dialogue with 15 writers. Improvisation worked well for some scenes and characters, but not others. We tried working in groups of two or three on individual scenes, which I would then give notes on. After countless rewrites, our production line eventually delivered a final draft that the actor and director Kathy Burke, an avid supporter of the project, described as the most enjoyable script she’d read in a long time.

Roy Boulter (right) in Hollywood with American actor Zac Efron (Photo by Solon Papadopoulos)