December 2002 | Screenwriters Lab
Lab Mentor, the eminent screenwriter and director Roy Battersby’s report following this Lab is an eloquent testament to the process:
"The live-in PAL Screenwriters Lab is a profound and unique process.
“With an ‘executive producer’ Susan Benn, who has assembled near perfect circumstances for creative work, a ‘producer’ Corinne Cartier who first picks the talent and then devotes her entire energy and limited budget to supporting and facilitating it, the Lab was deeply productive and a model of how production must be (the other of what it has so widely become) if our currently arid, and so often imitative film ‘industry is to change for the better.
Nourishing the talent of the ten writers, putting it first, not knowing better than it, trusting it, understanding that finding and growing new babies into exciting illuminative adults is not easy, being devoted to the delicate, robust processes of the craft of writing, the Lab saw so much splendid development, in the work and in all of us who took part.
No top down ‘solutions’, no quick fixes or applying the latest trendy formula, no attempt to second guess what this or that powerful money bags might require, just eyes wide open, fixed firmly on the thing itself and what it is trying to become.
We were all delighted to welcome everyone to the Visitors’ Lunch and every writer present noted the difference in being the host and not the beggar at the gates, who will have to do anything he’s told if he’s not to go home hungry.
I know that if every project we worked on became a properly made film, the British film industry would be utterly changed for the better. I know the originating talent is there to sustain and deepen such a change. The Lab is one of the very few places where everyone present knows the so-called realities very well but persists in the task of expanding that awareness and not just accommodating to it. It was a privilege to be there.”
Lab director
Corinne Cartier
Lab mentors
Roy Battersby - writer
Simon Beaufoy - writer
Terry Gross - director
Lab participants
Daisy Beaumont - actor
Jes Benstock - writer
Brian Bovell - actor
Valerie Edwards - writer
Ellis Freeman - writer
Peter Gilpin - PAL Chef
Shahrukh Husain - writer
Bryony Lavery - writer
John Lightbody - actor
Emil Marwa - actor
Owen Matthews - Lab runner
James Mavor - writer
Tania Ama Reddin - writer
Becky Shaw - Lab co-ordinator
Mia Soteriou - actor
Marcel Theroux - writer
Jim Threapleton - writer
Judy Upton - writer
Brigid Zengeni - actor
Guest speakers
Shekhar Kapur - director
Roger Smith - writer
Colin Vaines - producer
Visitors
Chris Auty - Chief Executive, The Film Consortium
Nick Bingham - Chairman, First 4 Internet
Robert Buckler - Producer, Renegade Films
Hannah Charlton - Co-director, PAL NESTA FutureLab
Emilyn Claid - Director, PAL Dance Lab
Emma Clarke - senior executive, New Cinema Fund, Film Council
Pippa Cross - Head of Films, Granada Films
Viv Harris - Director, PAL Labs of Learning
Dixie Linder - producer, Little Bird
Coilin Ludlow - producer, Mosaic Films
Angeli MacFarlane - Head of Orange FilmFour Prize
Ivana MacKinnon - story editor, Celador Films
Jo Nolan - Director, Kent Hothouse
Brock Norman Brock - Premiere Fund Executive, Film Council
Rebecca O’Brien - producer, Sixteen Films
Simon Relph - MD, Skreba Films
Carole Sheridan - development executive, Scottish Film
Kate Swann - Development Producer, BBC Scotland Drama
Alan Taylor - producer, The Front Room
Angela Topping - film consultant
John Wolstenholme - producer/writer, Film & Television Entertainment
Natalie Wreyford - development executive, Film Council
Anna Wulff - Head of Development, Scala Productions
Funded by
UK Film Council
Sony Pictures Entertainment
Southern and South East Arts
