Troll Bridge
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Production Diary...

Scripting

This is the part where the film really begins.   Sure, there's always the moment when that tiny particle of inspiration sears across your mind (usually when you're drunk), before you start typing up the story.   Then there are the bits that fill random moments in your day, as you start to think how certain chunks of the story would be accomplished (finding a bridge, figuring out whether you have enough talented people to call in for the task, and sorting out the budget situation), but generally it's the first draft of the script that amounts to any real sort of commitment.   From there you type it up, have a look at it, and then decide whether to follow through or not.

I had wanted to produce a Discworld movie for some time.   Ever since I had directed Wyrd Sisters and Sourcery for the stage, seeing the Discworld in a much larger scope was very important to me.   Anyone who was intimately involved in my adaptation in Sourcery will, I have no doubt, attest to the fact that I think on a ridiculously large scale.  Through the use of sound, lighting, and acting, we were of course able to convey everything that needed to be illustrated on the stage (flying carpets, collapsing buildings, magical missiles, talking hats, and of course the Ice Giants), but it would have been so much more of an experience to have actually seen them.

So I started thinking about Troll Bridge.   Featuring Discworld geography and of course the Discworld's greatest hero, it was a short story that had originally appeared in Tales of the King: Stories in Honour of J. R. R. Tolkien.   It was a solid story, didn't require all that many locations, and would be fun.  Due to budgetary constraints, this short story (as opposed to a full length novel) was certainly feasible.

It wasn't until maybe a year later (after working on a number of short-films, and seeing my fair share of really bad Hollywood movies come in through work (I'm a cinema projectionist by day), that I finally pulled my finger out and sat myself down in front of the computer.   I enjoy writing, and try to do as much as I can - but I loath doing it the traditional pen and paper way.   Maybe it's because I was a child brought up in the 80's, playing the old Sierra adventure games on my stepfathers 286 that I have this preference.   I find computer work to be faster, easier to correct, easier to alter, and easier to reproduce than the old pen and paper method.   Indeed, the pen may be mightier than the sword - but as far as I'm concerned the keyboard can give both a good bollocking.

But each to their own.

Other than the silicon-based fetish, I always put on some appropriately inspirational music (this time it was the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack), and get comfortable with the book open beside me.   This was the third time I had adapted Pratchett into some sort of script (Sourcery has already been mentioned, but I've also written my own adaptation of Mort, which I optimistically plan to direct and produce in a professional theatre environment in the often uncertain future).  What I tend to do, is simply write out the essential dialogue from the story into script formatting.   As I'm going along, I tighten the lines, work in any other gags or important information that appear in the descriptions and non-dialogue text, and if I think of anything amusing as I'm typing (maybe a gag from another Discworld story, or maybe something I came up with on the spot) I'll whack that in too.

The next part of the process usually involves discovering that the scripts run way over time, and that I have to eliminate an awful lot more.   Which I do (whilst making sure it all still flows and makes sense), and pour another Coke.   At this stage I also discover that the flow is a little off, and that things need to be shifted around.   Sometimes dialogue and scenes will appear a lot sooner or a lot later depending on what is important at the time.   Sometimes, for example, a joke about Rincewind just doesn't suit the overall feel of the scene being told at the time, and gets moved forward to a lighter scene.

After I've done this, it's time for me to hand it to someone else to have a look at it - because by now I'm far too close to it to notice any more obvious blemishes.   They'll let me know if a part of the story doesn't make sense, or give me suggestions on even more alterations to flow - letting me know where it lags.   In Sourcery for example, my script wranglers came up with the utterly brilliant idea of bringing the tower building scenes closer together.  In the book, the hat builds a tower, Coin builds a tower, and then Rincewind tries to build a tower.   All these events are actually spread apart some distance in the novel, but now (after some work) they appear one after another, each scene building from the last until we get to the very sad and serious scene of Rincewind trying to build a tower out of driftwood and sandstone.  Because the other two scenes went directly before - the pathetic nature of Rincewind is heightened - and builds a nice solid block for our heroes to realise they really aren't all who they'd like to be.

I guess the point I'm making, is that if I hadn't handed my work over, I would never have noticed that the script could have been improved this way.   It also makes me realise what parts of the story I'm prepared to fight for, and think about why they are important (which comes in very handy when it's time to direct).

Having said all this however, I was very fortunate with Troll Bridge in that there wasn't a heck of a lot that needed to be cut.   As it was a short-story, I didn't have to cut anything due to time - but found myself doing so because it either sounded clumsy read out loud (in which case I tried to reword it), or struck me as being a little out of character.  Cohen has developed a lot since his original appearance in Troll Bridge (and before that, The Light Fantastic), and as such may now comes across as (in some aspects not all) a little contradictory.  The History Monks I imagine would have plenty to say on this subject.

Because Troll Bridge was fairly short, and didn't have much action in it, I made the difficult decision of including an Indiana Jones style opening, dealing with Cohen as a young lad doing the whole rescue the virgin sacrifice and battle guards routine.  From here it launches into the opening lines of the story “The wind blew off the mountains filling the air with fine ice crystals...”, and it becomes apparent that the opening just witnessed is actually a tale being told by a storyteller in a tavern, in front of a fire.   Which of course smoothly fits in, for those of you who know those opening lines to the story.

I did this for a number of reasons.   As said, I felt that it needed some action - but also it helped to establish the kind of character that people believe Cohen to have once been.   From this point, the audience instantly knows the set-up without having to have seen Conan (or any of the other thousands of other barbarian movies).

Of course, I'm aware that introducing characters and scenes into a story is always inviting criticism from the hard-core fans, but I've taken the gamble that it will ultimately pay off in the end.  I have only the utmost respect for Terry Pratchett's work (otherwise I wouldn't be making the film), and I think that the new opening (while bad for a short-story), seamlessly fits in with the rest of the work and does nothing but enhance the story of the film. Thankfully I haven't heard a bad thing about the films opening yet - so I must have got it right.

Look - if you really don't like the opening, you can simply skip ahead (if you're one of the lucky few who have managed to get a DVD), or simply cover your ears and close your eyes until it's over.  From there on in, it's all original Pratchett.

Okay, now that we've dealt with that - let's move along.

So, now we have a completed script that we can be proud of.   Don't get too attached - because it's going to change.   During location scouting, auditions, and finally rehearsal I was tweaking the script to Troll Bridge.   I was unable to find a dungeon for the opening fight scene, so I had to rewrite it for an outdoor campfire location.   When rehearsing, the actors and I found on a couple of occasions that sometimes tweaking the dialogue sounded better, or we came up with entirely new lines that fit in well.  So we added and changed things here and there.   Once again, only improvements were made.

And that was it!   The script pretty much got tweaked up until the weekend before the last day of shooting, including a mammoth speech written in Latin for John Jenkins to learn, and it was all the better for it.

Daniel Knight