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Creators of Stan series Watching You on adaptations, writing tips, and crafting a propulsive thriller for TV
52 Plays3 days ago
We're joined on Breaking Screen by Alexei Mizin and Ryan van Dijk, the creators, writers and script producers of Stan’s original six-part series Watching You, which is based on the J.P. Pomare novel 'The Last Guests’ and is produced by Lingo Pictures in association with ITV Studios. The series stars Aisha Dee as Lina, who, after her affair is captured by hidden cameras, sets out to unmask an insidious voyeur that threatens to destroy her life. All episodes are available to stream now.
Throughout the podcast, Alexei and Ryan talk about the positives of being a writing duo, how they navigate conflict if it does arise, the process of adapting a novel for the screen, writing advice and much more.
Alexei and Ryan’s writing partnership began over a decade ago while completing a Master of Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts. Together they have won the prestigious Monte Miller Award at the AWGIE Awards, partnered with The Fleming Agency and sold original IP to Apple, been attached to a sci-fi series for Animal Logic and Truant, secured a development deal with the AMC Network, developed projects for Apple TV+ and Disney, are part of the writing team for upcoming Apple series The Dispatcher, and authored all six episodes of Watching You.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Breaking Screen'
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Breaking Screen, a podcast about the Australian screen industry and the creative people within it. I'm your host, Caris Bizzaca, and I'm recording this podcast from the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, where I'm very grateful to be a visitor and be able to work on these lands.
00:00:19
Speaker
Always was, always will be.
Spotlight on 'Watching You'
00:00:22
Speaker
Today's episode will feature Alexei Mizin and Ryan van Dijk, the creators, writers and script producers of Stan's new original series, Watching You.
00:00:31
Speaker
But before we get to that chat, here's some news from the Australian screen industry. SBS, NITV and Screen Australia have announced the 10 projects shortlisted for the Digital Originals Short Form Initiative, which is now in its sixth year and designed to support rising talent from underrepresented communities in the sector.
00:00:52
Speaker
The 10 projects were chosen from more than 200 applications from across the country, with the teams currently participating in development workshops in Sydney. From there, up to five projects will be selected for further development funding, and from these, up to three scripted series will advance to receive production funding and premiere on SBS On Demand, SBS Viceland and NITV.
Industry Updates: Initiatives and Festivals
00:01:16
Speaker
In other news, former SBS head of scripted Julie Eckersley has joined Screen Queensland in the newly created role of executive director Screen Content. And lastly, this year's Adelaide Film Festival has wrapped.
00:01:30
Speaker
Prize winners include the 80s set family drama Vanilla, which won the $10,000 Feature Fiction Award, Documentary She, which received the $10,000 Feature Documentary Award,
00:01:41
Speaker
Australian filmmaker Abraham Joffe won the $5,000 Change Award and The Eating of an Orange was awarded the $3,000 Shorts Award. And that's your news wrap-up, but remember to head over to any of the Australian trade publications for more.
00:01:56
Speaker
Now to the chat with today's guests.
Meet the Creators: Alexi Mizzen and Ryan Van Dyke
00:01:59
Speaker
We're joined on breaking screen by award-winning screenwriting team Alexi Mizzen and Ryan Van Dyke, who are the creators, writers and script producers of Stan's new original series, Watching You, which is based on the J.P. Pomer novel, The Last Guests, and is produced by Lingo Pictures in association with ITV Studios.
00:02:19
Speaker
The series stars Aisha Dee as Lina, who, after her affair is captured by hidden cameras, sets out to unmask an insidious foyer that threatens to destroy her life.
00:02:30
Speaker
All six episodes are available to stream now. Alexei and Ryan's writing partnership began over a decade ago while completing a Master of Film and Television at the Victorian College of the Arts.
00:02:42
Speaker
Together they have won the prestigious Monty Miller Award at the Augie Awards. They partnered with the Fleming Agency and sold original IP to Apple. They've been attached to a sci-fi series for Animal Logic Truant, secured a development deal with the AMC Network, have developed projects for Apple TV Plus and Disney, and are part of the writing team for upcoming Apple series The Dispatcher.
00:03:05
Speaker
Throughout the podcast, Alexei and Ryan talk about the positives of being a writing duo, how they navigate conflict if it does arise, the process of adapting a novel for the screen, writing advice, and much more.
00:03:18
Speaker
Here's that chat.
Collaborative Beginnings and Successes
00:03:23
Speaker
So a really tough one to begin with. um Can you tell me your name names and role in the industry? So ryan you first. My name is Ryan van Dijk. I'm a writer, creator, and producer.
00:03:39
Speaker
Great. And my name is Alexei Mizin, and I am also a writer, creator, and producer working with this guy, working with Ryan. Nice. And so, yeah on this podcast, we always begin by talking about inciting incidents because in screenwriting, we, we talk about inciting incidents all the time. Um, but what would be the inciting incident for your career then?
00:04:04
Speaker
So Alexi, you first. Me first. I mean, I think literally the inciting incident for my start in the industry was meeting Ryan on the first day of film school ah where literally we're at the mixer at the VCA, you know,
00:04:22
Speaker
filming TV building and I saw him and we started talking and that was probably the first person that i talked to to in the entire film school and the person that I continued talking the most, you know, 12 years later.
00:04:35
Speaker
That was basically it, kind of meeting my future collaborator right after that. It's probably like the the luckiest thing that's ever happened to me in terms of this industry. Ryan, are you going to say something different? You'll like, nah. No, mine was talking a very different story.
00:04:51
Speaker
No, it was definitely the same same thing. um I feel like we, through film school, ah you know, we were making our own films. We went to VCA. were making our own shorts. We were writing and directing and editing.
00:05:04
Speaker
And very quickly, we realized that we had similar tastes. And most importantly, is that we trusted each other's judgment and trusted each other's notes. And I think that's probably the like kind of the most important thing for a collaborator that you're on the same wavelength.
00:05:20
Speaker
And, um, so we helped each other all through film school. And then when we got out of film school, we started sort of broaching the industry and, and trying to figure out how to crack it. oh Yeah, cool. And so did you always kind of think then going into the industry, like that you would work together as a team?
00:05:38
Speaker
Did you want to keep that kind of writing team collaboration? Uh, Alexi. You know, like I think it took us time to figure out that like we could do this as a team. Basically the first thing that we did after film school is A, we travelled together. We went to ah film, that well, we went to Cannes, funnily enough, together. Oh, cool. And so that was like step number one in any fledgling relationship. Can you travel together?
00:06:02
Speaker
um And then. Can the friendship survive? with being oversizeds yeah And then we wrote our first feature together. You know, it was called Vanished. It was this horror film and the reason that we wrote it together was because writing 90 pages just felt too hard by one person when you've only they ever a written shorts.
00:06:22
Speaker
And so in writing that, you know, that kind of got us our first little bit of recognition and we realized, okay, you know, like this, this can work. This is cool. We're enjoying ourselves and we've just sort of been doing it ever since.
00:06:35
Speaker
So that feature ah Script then went on to win the Monty Miller Award for Unproduced Screenplay at the Augies. And so that basically helped us to figure out that, okay, this is working on some level. You know, this is a successful collaboration.
00:06:50
Speaker
We've traveled together. We've written something together. And I guess, yeah, we're an effective partnership. And that was really what got the ball rolling in terms of us getting into the industry. o And Ryan, what's your process of writing together like? Are you kind of like, do you figure out the whole plot and then you together and then you split up scenes and swap them? Like what's the process?
00:07:12
Speaker
I guess when you're working with a partner, outlining becomes so important and that's really fundamental to our process and has been since that first script. Normally, one of us will come up with an idea and we'll come together and gather around it and interrogate it and and push and pull and look at it from different angles and figure out is this something, is is there some is there meat on the bone here that we can see a feature or a TV show? Yeah.
00:07:35
Speaker
And then as soon as we start throwing those ideas around, it feels like a very organic process to then developing characters and and outlining a pilot or or the feature. And then ultimately, I guess, once we move into scripting that outline, we we really know where we're going.
00:07:51
Speaker
We know what's going to happen. There'll be little divergences along the way, but pretty much any one of us could, could write that script and it turned out pretty much the same. yeah And I guess like day to day,
00:08:02
Speaker
you know, like practically, you know, doing the writing, it's kind of changes depending on what we' what we're working on. So if it is outlining, we're just in Google Docs all the time, moving each other's dot points around, changing each other each other's sentences.
00:08:15
Speaker
When it actually comes to the script sort of process, you know, sometimes we split up scenes, you know, like Ryan would start halfway through, i would start halfway through, and I would start at the beginning of the script.
00:08:26
Speaker
And then we're basically sort of trade
The Writing Process: Trust and Creativity
00:08:28
Speaker
passes and sweep each other up. So by the time we both do a full pass on the script, it's going to have two passes on the script. So our drafts tend to be sort of quite well polished.
00:08:37
Speaker
And sometimes when you're really short on time, like you're in production, you're literally sitting at the same computer and you're typing the same words into the one document and one is dictating and one is editing and you take turns.
00:08:49
Speaker
So it kind of just changes on how much you've got going on. Yeah, how much time pressure. Yeah, that makes sense. And Alexi, so thinking about that first feature film script, was there ever any challenges in terms of getting the ah voice um even? Because, you know, you've got two different people.
00:09:11
Speaker
Is that a challenge then to kind of make sure that the voice is singular in the script? Or was that always just something that came very naturally to both of you? good question. I think on that first one, I'm sure there was a bit of push and pull. You know, I think I tend to generally be like a little bit more minimalist at the time with and a bit more sparse with just words on the page. And over the time, I've sort of indulged in a little bit more verbose descriptions and dialogue and things like that. And, you know, I think Ryan's brought that out of me a little bit more, you know, because I think sometimes I tended to
00:09:52
Speaker
underexplained things to the point where confusion became a little bit of an obstacle. But now I think because of our system, because of our passes on each other's work, and because of our tastes that are so sort of aligned, we often get told by producers, it's impossible to tell where one starts and where the other one finishes. So by the time the script comes out, it's a very sort of homogenized but specific product. And I think if there are If you can tell the difference in in the script, then probably we haven't sort of done enough work on it just yet. It's actually just such a beautiful thing that we've really grown as as individual writers and as individuals in the in the decade plus since film school. And we've sort of grown together and and I think our voices have sort of emerged together almost as a combined voice.
00:10:43
Speaker
and And, yeah, it's ah it's interesting when you go back and you review scripts, like every now and then we'll go and go and read an old script. It's really encouraging because you look look at a piece of work and go, I can't remember who wrote that. I can't remember where that particular, even, you know, down to an idea level. I can't remember who came up with that great solve.
00:11:01
Speaker
It's really, yeah, really kind of a ah total, yeah a bit of a hive mind, I guess, between the two of us. Yeah, it's always really cool where like I go, oh man, that thing that you wrote in that script is like, it's so cool or I love that line. And Ryan goes, I thought you did that, you know, and you're like, yeah, just literally don't know where it came from. But that's probably a good thing because then you're not counting who came up with the most brilliant bit of dialogue. and Yeah, that's so cool.
00:11:28
Speaker
And so... Ryan, what do you think is the benefits of being in a writing team as opposed to being a solo writer? I think just the, firstly, the fact that you, every idea that you put into the world has kind of gone through one level of of filtering, you know.
00:11:49
Speaker
I have a lot of friends, you know, the majority of writers that we know are individuals and they really rely quite heavily on their little reading circle. You know, they give drafts to other writers and we really are that for each other. and Yeah, like – The idea of putting something into the world or into the industry that isn't as refined as you want it to is probably a ah fear that all the writers have.
00:12:10
Speaker
that's That's just the best thing. I'll come to Alex with an idea or something like that. And that first little bit of interrogation, I think, is just so crucial. It's really when you kind of go from this big blue sky ideation to something of, is this something that is is touching on something topical or is this, you know, a really cool, fresh concept?
00:12:30
Speaker
Hasn't been done before? That's, you know, that's also another really early question. And I think that's, yeah, that's just kind of the best. Yeah. And Alexi, so if there are, you know, disagreements or things that come up, healthy arguments, um how do you resolve conflict or things like that when it arises between the two of you?
00:12:53
Speaker
No, usually if we're, if we can't agree on a particular point in the story, it probably means that neither of us is exactly correct. It just means that there's a third idea that is out there that's better, that kind of serves both functions.
00:13:08
Speaker
You know, like our tastes are very similar, but obviously sometimes we diverge a little bit. You know, I prefer someone to say something that way and and vice versa, or for a plot to happen in this nonlinear way or,
00:13:22
Speaker
or whatever. And when something just like kind of sticks in the back of the throat for someone else, it just means that we haven't worked it enough. And if it sticks for one of us, then it probably means that it'll stick for someone else. And we just need to kind of figure out why it's not working.
00:13:37
Speaker
And once we figure out why it's not working, i think that's kind of like we're off to the races because we do come up with something that's a little bit fresher and something that works both of us. It's funny how you can really hold on to an idea and you know really be passionate about it and and defend it as as strongly as you possibly can. And you know when it gets questioned, you can sort of, sometimes even through kind of insecurity, you can really hold on to something.
00:14:02
Speaker
And i guess the big lesson for us as a partnership has been from from day one, um we've learned to not be precious about how ideas, not be precious about our dialogue, ah particular of phrasing in big print or you know any of it.
00:14:17
Speaker
And it is so encouraging when you finally do let go of that idea and go, okay, is there something better out there? If I can just take a step back, how often you discover, like Alex said, that third way of doing things that is just infinitely better than than what you as individuals could have come up with.
00:14:33
Speaker
And I think that served us so well moving into writers rooms and writing is such a collaborative process. Learning to let go of the ego a bit, learning to not be too precious is, it actually really is a sort of a skill set and something that helps you so much, I think, in in improving your work.
00:14:50
Speaker
o Yeah, totally. It's almost like you also working together, you're having like many writers rooms, but just with the two of you, like. A hundred percent. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, ah feel like we're in the writers room every single day. know, we'll, we'll, um you know, we, we call each other at eight or 9am every morning and sort of lay out what we have to do, what deadlines we're looking at, what we,
00:15:11
Speaker
what we need to get done by the end of the day. And um quite often we'll jump into story straight away. And it is it is really fun. I mean, it's the best part of the process, I think, is is kind of working together and and um gathering around ah an idea or an outline.
00:15:29
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, totally. And something that I learnt at the beginning of this call before we started recording was that you are both in different states in Australia, Victoria and New South Wales. Like how do you balance then or how do you manage kind of being a writing team but in completely different locations? I mean Zoom is obviously very helpful. um but Yeah. yeah had How does that change things, not being in the same location?
00:15:57
Speaker
Alexi? Yeah, I mean, it's never been sort of an issue for us, like when we need to be in the same place, if it's in a writer's room, or if we need to be writing on the same script at the same time, we do come together. So we actually see each other quite a lot.
00:16:10
Speaker
But a lot of the time, you know, it's, it's Zooms, it's Google Docs, and it's remote work. You know, we like to say that we were doing remote work 10 years before we had to do remote work, there was tried every bit of software, every bit of pipeline that we can figure out to sort of streamline our process and so really it's never sort of felt like a handicap in any way because yeah you can just work on the same document at the same time and you can speak face to face or on the phone so i don't know like it's been pretty straightforward really
00:16:44
Speaker
It's just so normal for us. Yeah. yeah People ask us all the time, like, how he how do you do And we're like, yeah, I don't think there's any other way. Even if we were in the same city, I feel like, you know, we'd still ride in our tracksuits, in our studies and just, you know, get on the flight together.
00:16:58
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. fair And
Crafting 'Watching You': Inspirations and Twists
00:17:01
Speaker
okay. So, uh, also wanted to talk about your new show, which is, ah on Stan now, by the time people are listening to this, all six episodes will be released. So go binge them all.
00:17:15
Speaker
First of all, congratulations. You're both the creators and writers, uh, and script producers. Is that correct? Yeah. Yeah. So the series is watching you.
00:17:25
Speaker
How did you get involved? From what I understand, Stan approached you to partner with Lingo Pictures. But yeah, how did how did it come about? Alexi?
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, we've been. looking to work with Amanda Duffy at Stan, who was at Stan at the time, for ages. And she read a lot of our projects and a lot of them, because we came from a genre sci-fi space, were just a little bit too big to try to accomplish here.
00:17:52
Speaker
So we never kind of found what our thing was, but we knew we wanted it to work together. And she knew that Lingo had this book and that they were looking for writers. And she basically match made us and put us together. And we never met Lingo before that point, but we really sort of liked the book and also really liked the people there.
00:18:13
Speaker
And we kind of went away and just like thought about what we'd like to do with the concept of, the you know, the premise inside the book. And basically came back to them with a take and they liked it and Stan liked it. And we kind of off we went from there.
00:18:28
Speaker
And Ryan, as Alexi was just saying, you did a lot of sci-fi and things before. Was this because this is kind of more like a tense thriller. ah Was this a genre you'd worked in before? Was it something that you'd wanted to work in?
00:18:42
Speaker
We absolutely something when we'd wanted to work in, you know, we we dabbled in in thrillers a little bit. um And I like to think that all of our sci-fi, because it was you know so grounded, all of our sci-fi was basically character dramas and and thrillers as well.
00:18:58
Speaker
But it was ah it was a ah new kind of a new experience for us and it was so exciting that we got to do something so grounded. you know We went back and watched all of our favorite psychological thrillers and you know basically our pitch for the the show was like, let's take this novel and kind of draw on the erotic thrillers of the 90s and the psychological thrillers of the 90s and infuse that into this super exciting, super topical premise.
00:19:22
Speaker
And that was awesome to be able to to reference the things that we'd grown up with and things that we loved. And really, we looked at as an opportunity to to do something quite unique and and to really play with the audience's expectations of what was going to happen in this story, you know, to to credit the audience with being really savvy in terms of the tropes of these genres and try and try and really give them something that that would surprise them at every at every turn, at the end of every episode.
00:19:47
Speaker
And that was something we've loved and basically want to keep doing. Oh, great. And so, Alexi, yeah, with the matchmaking, so do you then pitch to Lingo what you think the show could be? Do you create a pitch deck? Like, what did you need to kind of produce?
00:20:05
Speaker
think it was a pretty short document. We basically read the book, we put a couple of pages together and sort of said, you know, this is what sort of, this is the genius kernel inside the book that everyone loves and why it's so timely and fantastic. And it's about these cameras being put into these Airbnb type sort of shed apartments. That's what's really scary about it.
00:20:24
Speaker
You know novels tend to be a little bit more internal. They don't sort of have that sort of like external plot engine that you need for a really propulsive thriller. So our take was basically, this is how we can turn it into ah an erotic thriller. And so it was just a couple of pages that went to lingo.
00:20:41
Speaker
then went to Stan and off that we went into our first couple of brainstorms where we put together ah bit more of the story and a bit more of the characters and sort of created a more polished deck that ultimately went to Stan and ITV and everyone else who needed it So watching you is based on the book, The Last Guest by J.P. Pomer.
00:21:02
Speaker
How did you approach adapting a book to screen? So in terms of like, what are the steps? Do you read the book and you break the story down into cards or um scenes or what's the kind of process for you? so Ryan. Ryan.
00:21:20
Speaker
So we both went away independently, read the book, and then came back together. And think for me and Alex, whenever we approach an adaptation, and we've had a couple of opportunities to do them in the past, we start at the highest possible level.
00:21:34
Speaker
We start with a essentially the logline, I guess. Like just what is the core premise? What is the core concept? um And what is it tapping into in terms of fears? Why is it...
00:21:45
Speaker
Why is it a story that needs to be told? What makes it exciting if it's a thriller? So that's where we start. And I guess for us on this one, we looked at that and then we looked at this big question of, okay, this is a story about a woman being blackmailed after this affair is captured on camera.
00:21:59
Speaker
Who is our villain was an equally important question as as who is our protagonist. And that question of who our villain is really drove a lot of those early conversations in terms of, okay, what is the motive of the villain?
00:22:11
Speaker
How is that playing out? How is that putting our main character, Lena, in a pressure cooker? And how is that sort of forcing her into action? And the answer that we arrived to was a different villain to the one that was in the book.
00:22:24
Speaker
And that was kind of our first indication that we were going to take this in a slightly different direction, in a direction that really scratched our creative itch. And was something that we could really believe and something that we found really intellectually interesting.
00:22:39
Speaker
oh And so then, Alexi, do you have anything to add? Like you have the villain then. So what are kind of your next steps or do you figure those out then once you're in writers rooms? Like, you know, we have the goal for this room. We want to achieve this.
00:22:55
Speaker
Yeah, I think before sort of even that, you educate yourself on what else is out there, what people are doing. So you watch all the movies from the 90s, but you also look at all the TV shows in the same genre that are coming out right now to just figure out, okay, what are people interested in? How are audiences responding to that? Like, are those shows successful? Basically, have we heard of them and have our friends heard of them?
00:23:18
Speaker
And then finding the the learnings from all those series and really one of the things that we saw is that there's this lull in a lot of those shows where you kind of get hit really hard with really exciting stuff at the beginning and then there's a lull for a couple episodes before you wait for the inevitable conclusion and so our sort of and mo was to go okay let's try to not hold on to plot that you would normally say for an episode five or six for example let's let's see if we can get to it earlier and if we do
00:23:50
Speaker
Sometimes you don't know what's going to happen next, but like, that's an exciting part of the challenge. You know, like you kind of go into the room and go, okay, we aren't saving stuff for later. What happens if we bring it all forward?
00:24:03
Speaker
And I think that was a really exciting prospect for Stan because they, you know, they wanted something that's obviously very engaging, has a lot of cliffhangers, but it's also a really cool, exciting challenge because you just have to figure out, okay, what's the story afterwards, you know, and, and it's,
00:24:19
Speaker
That can be hard, but that's also really fun when you kind of figure out what it could be. it's that It's that dialogue that you have with an audience. And I feel like horror movies and whodunits more than anything else are genres that you're in this conversation and you're playing with the audience's expectations.
00:24:35
Speaker
And the audience is always really game because the audience wants to try and outsmart you and you're trying to outsmart the audience. It's so much fun. And, you know, we start the series as as a whodunit. And audiences have seen lots of whodunits, particularly whodunits on television where you interrogate a new suspect every episode for six or eight episodes and then arrive at your villain in the last episode.
00:24:55
Speaker
And we thought, what if we pull the rug out from under the audience really early? What if we challenge their expectations and and around a whodunit? And if you've seen the series, you'll know that At the end of episode two, there's a fairly major event that happens or a couple of major events that make you go, I'm not 100% sure where this show is going to go now. Like, I'm not sure this isn't playing out how I expected.
00:25:15
Speaker
And that's so exciting for us. That's what we want to see as as viewers. And so exciting for us as writers engaging with the audience, trying to, yeah, just just give them something surprising, something that they haven't seen before.
00:25:27
Speaker
So in terms of adaptations then, what do you think are the positives and the challenges of working in adaptations, Alexi?
00:25:38
Speaker
The positives, i mean, the positives are if you get given something that's incredible. so You've got like such an amazing starting off point. ah to tell a story.
00:25:49
Speaker
you know like The dream is to be given a book that can be copied and pasted into script form and it's phenomenal. It doesn't quite always happen that way, but like when you read something that makes you go, this is awesome, um it it just gets you excited.
00:26:03
Speaker
and The big thing about like books and IP is that it gets everyone on the team sort of around it as well. So you ah able to figure out what the show is and what the show that you want to make quite quicker than just sort of starting from a complete blank slate. We have to position people and bring them down to your vision to a certain extent.
00:26:24
Speaker
With a book, you kind of all know what the product is initially, and then you can kind of like build out from there. So that's really, really great. Challenging, you know, like books are just a different format, you know, they're a different way to tell a story. So unless you're Dennis Lehane, who writes books, like you write scripts, you know, they ah tend to be a little bit more internal, they tend to be little bit more introspective. And so drawing that out into plot and action can be a challenge.
00:26:52
Speaker
And some of the ideas and books take a long time to express themselves, they can be quite complex. And again, for an audience that's really short on time and attention span, you kind of have to I think a lot of the time tell them exactly what show they're signing up for and what they're watching.
00:27:10
Speaker
Otherwise they'll sort of meander and swim and probably disengage at some point. So that can be it. Yeah. Finding that through line can be challenging. There's a really practical advantage of of adapting a book as well. This is sort of the producer hat on, and that is just the chances that it's going to get made.
00:27:30
Speaker
Having IP is such a huge asset, and we've for years have developed a lot of material that's that's our own original material, and we love that. But we have seen that there has been a real push for so IP and being able to being able to use a novel in its entirety or in in piecemeal or just the inciting incident or or whatever, it really does increase your chances of getting a ah broadcaster on board and reaching the audience, which ultimately I guess is is why we why we're doing this.
00:27:58
Speaker
It's ultimately what we want. oh And Ryan, from what I understand, you are both working on some other adaptations at the moment, so you're not out of this world just yet. Yeah.
00:28:11
Speaker
Yeah, we're kind of working on a couple of things right now. So one of them that we've been working on for a while is a novel by one of my favorite authors of all time, John Windham. It's one of his lesser known novels called Web, and it's basically about killer spiders.
00:28:25
Speaker
um but it has but it But it taps into some really interesting history to do with nuclear testing. It's got a lot to say about colonization, which is also really cool. And that's another novel where we have been given a bit of latitude to, to take the concept and take what we find interesting about it and then run with that and do kind of approach it like we would one of our ideas and have the freedom to, yeah, to, to sort of push and pull and and invent new characters and figure out what's going to work for this, for the screen.
00:28:55
Speaker
Oh, great. So back more in, um, genre.
Advice for Aspiring Screenwriters
00:29:00
Speaker
that's it Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, which is which is nice. A bit of genre horror, which is also an itch that we're we're really excited to scratch. Yeah, great.
00:29:09
Speaker
And so I also wanted to ask just, you know broad advice for any writers who are listening out there. what What would be a piece of advice that you would give them, Alexi?
00:29:20
Speaker
Alexi? um I mean, I think building a career takes time, you know, like very few people ah are able to get out of film school or write their first script or whatever and land a job. Some people can, and I'm amazed by those people and I'm always very jealous.
00:29:36
Speaker
But for the most part, I think it takes time to build a body of work that's good enough to build networks to find your champions, whether it's your writing partner, your agent, your life partner, you know, your producer, director, like all that takes a while. And so, you know, like I think a lot of people come out of film school and think that if they just make a short that goes to a massive festival or, you know, write their first spec, that's going to be their calling card into the industry.
00:30:05
Speaker
And you put so much pressure on yourself to achieve that right away. And a lot of the time that work isn't quite there yet. And it can be really sort of destabilizing when you feel like you've done this thing and it hasn't achieved anything, but really just means that you need to do it 10 more times and then it'll probably start getting somewhere.
00:30:24
Speaker
So yeah, perseverance and time and application of your skills. I think that's really important. One of the great gifts that Alex gave me early on was um was structure, not in the storytelling sense, but just in terms of how you approach writing as ah as a craft and as a skill that you're developing.
00:30:44
Speaker
And we are both morning people. We get up and we start work and we're at the desk every day And we would, we were doing that even when we had other jobs, you know, even when we were working in retail, the days that we had off were writing days and we were at the desk at 8am or whatever to, to work for the day. And that is so important. I think we all as writers struggle to, to actually do the thing that we love to actually sit down and write.
00:31:09
Speaker
And yet. You know, the best bit of advice I guess that we can give is just keep just keep doing it. Just keep writing, keep developing new ideas, keep working on the old ideas. and And like Alex said, build up that body of work.
00:31:21
Speaker
But it's that, yeah, commitment to sitting at the desk that is really the thing that's going to help you develop your craft and get you those gigs. Yeah, definitely. Well, we're at the last segment, which is, um, the pay it forward segment. So I'm going to ask you a question from our previous guest.
00:31:40
Speaker
And if you can come up with a question for the next guest, that would be great. Um, so the question from our previous guests, it's from Nikki Tran, who's the producer of vertical series, Siebs.
Alternative Career Paths
00:31:53
Speaker
Uh, and she asked if they weren't doing anything in screen. what would have been their career what would have they been doing if not in film and television?
00:32:06
Speaker
That's a great question. um My normal response to this is um that I'm really passionate about film like restoration and and preserving the history of film. And I have this, I have none of these skills by the way, but I would love to be involved in restoring like old film prints of oh yeah old classic movies.
00:32:25
Speaker
You'd work at National Film and Sound Archive. Exactly. I'm an obsessive um Blu-ray collector, as Alex knows. you know i just I really worry that we're going to like lose loses kind of this rich history of film at some point. It's going to you know fall off a server somewhere.
00:32:39
Speaker
um So film restoration, I guess, would be, if that's not too tangentially related to the film industry, would be what I would want to be doing, I think. Great. Alexi? um I don't know. I never really had a backup plan, so you know I'm sort of Lucky that I'm doing this, but I think generally i just like working with my hands when I'm not working at the computer. So whether that's building furniture or working, you know, something, you know building bikes or whatever it is, I think something like that that you can look at at the end of the day and kind of see the progress. I think that could be, yeah, that could be something that I would enjoy doing and ah and outdoors as well.
00:33:17
Speaker
think would be fun. Yeah, cool. Well, those are my questions. ah We will leave it there. But thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and congratulations on watching you.
00:33:29
Speaker
Thank you so much. This has been awesome. Thanks.
00:33:33
Speaker
That was Alexei Mizzen and Ryan van Dijk. Thanks so much to them for chatting on the podcast. And remember, you can catch all six episodes of Watching You on Stand Now. This episode was produced and edited by myself with logo design by Shara Parsons and music by Seb Sebotage Gavrilovic.
00:33:50
Speaker
If you enjoyed listening, please hit that subscribe button and leave us a review. See you in a fortnight.