Sheffield Hallam University screenwriting graduate Lee Whitelock talks about the TV, film & stage projects he has in development
Screenwriting graduate Lee Whitelock
It's great your TV drama, Musk, has been optioned. Tell us about the journey it took to secure this?
Musk’s journey has been a rocky one—make no mistake, but the option itself came about by chance. A meeting with a production company about a separate project led to a casual conversation about future projects that Jack Murray (my writing partner) and myself were working on. This then led to developing a treatment, then a little over a year after that first meeting we had the option, but negotiations are still taking place—it takes a lot of patience to secure an option.
Huge congratulations for your feature film, Justboy, being in development. Tell us how long it took to get it industry-ready and how development is going?
The script itself for Justboy has had various rewrites and drafts over two-years, but that being said - the most important piece of paper is the initial one page outline that comes before the script - that is the golden ticket. The first draft of that outline took nearly as long as it took to write the first draft of the script - because it is so important.
I enjoyed your industry showcase for Che, the new musical you're developing. How did this project come about?
Studying History at A-Level: The Cold War - and whilst reading one particular textbook I saw the photo Guerrillero Heroico, the image of Che that we have all come to know. Ever since then I’ve been obsessed, not just about Che himself but the idea of Che, the idea that his image is so prevalent around the world, but many don’t know what he did. So my obsession, I guess, has been trying to understand him, trying to deconstruct the iconography that camouflages the man. The idea itself started life as a TV series, but after I went to see Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In the Heights at the Kings Cross Theatre; a show full of Latino vibrancy and energy, I had that light bulb moment. Che was a musical. But that terrified me, because musicals are so colossal, and take so much time to develop - but luckily I’m not alone, I have another wonderful three writers that keep me grounded.
Besides all the aforementioned projects, what else are you working on at the moment?
I spent my four years away from university frantically writing, and currently have seven completed full-length scripts that I’m now pushing into development. Amongst them a dystopian jet-black-satire play on the way the American right-wing media portray gun control called, Network Ammunition. I never actually thought I’d ever want to be a playwright as film was always my passion, but SHU Drama society and the annual Playwrights Festival gave me a wonderful platform to be able to write and see my work performed almost instantaneously, a commodity I lost when university was over, because things start to cost money.
We look forward to seeing Lee's work on our screens (and stages) soon.
Sheffield Hallam University BA (Hons) Screenwriting and Film graduate Oscar Reed gives us an insight on how he secured a meeting with the BBC...whilst still at Sheffield Hallam!
If you'd have said to me a year ago that I'd have ended up discussing my first sitcom script with the BBC Writersroom, I'd have found you much funnier than my script. It all started with seeing an opportunity that was being offered by BBC Three. Applying for it I got a surprise phone call offering an expenses-paid trip to London to meet the team and take part in the scheme.
Screenwriting graduate Oscar Reed
At the launch event I met all sorts of people, from the channel controller to commissioning editors. Over the following twelve weeks, we were given a weekly brief and asked to create short-form and online content for them in our own unique styles. People submitted blogs, documentaries, vlogs, but for me it was screenplays. As the project drew to a close we were given our final brief – our passion project, which for me was the sitcom script I wrote in a screenwriting module at Sheffield Hallam.
The feedback I received was positive. I was over the moon someone from the BBC had read my script and thought it was good. It could've been the receptionist for all I cared, but things got even better when a few days later I got an email inviting me down to BBC Writersroom to meet and discuss my script.
So there I was in London once more, armed with my script and a series of back pocket ideas. I was incredibly nervous, awaiting the brutal pitching session I had seen so frequently on film and TV. The reality couldn't have been further from this. A half hour session quickly turned into an hour, as the producer sat me down and talked me through how to improve on my script, schemes to look out for, and gave me lots of advice concerning writer development.
As I stood up to leave, she said “make it a story no one else could tell, make your personality come through in your writing”. As I left I realised that the half-joking email application I'd originally sent did exactly that, and letting my personality show in my writing is exactly how I got into this situation in the first place.
Written by Oscar Reed