All entries for Sunday 23 March 2008

Recipe for ruination

Take one book by Terry Pratchett. Condense to one thin plot line that can be can be acted out by a group of people in approx 60 minutes. Find a group of people off the street to read the lines of the various characters aloud whilst dressed up. Ability to act is not important, just as long as they have a physical presence. Add a couple of big name actors, doesn’t matter if one of them around twice as old as the character is portrayed in the book or exhibits none of the described physical characteristics, just adjust dialogue to compensate. Have group act out remaining plot over a period of approx 90 minutes. You may need to have them talk slowly in a stilted manner and frequently cut to tedious stupid facial expressions to fill the time. Make sure none of the cast try and inject any sense of excitement or interest in to the proceedings. Cover with music. Don’t worry if you’ve only got two main pieces, just use them repeatedly. Take care to ensure that the music sometimes renders the dialogue almost inaudible. Add mediocre CGI and some obviously blue/green screen sequences. Ensure product is generally dull all the way through and impossible to favourably compare to the source material. Hype for several months, then serve on Sky One in a primetime slot broken in to five roughly equal chunks interspersed with random advertisements sufficient to pad out to 120 minutes and garnish with persistent reminder that multistart is available by pressing the red button.

Mike Willis : 23 Mar 2008 23:37 |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem