The first draft of the script was an interesting mix (I thought, anyway) of all the ideas that I'd come up with, and a completely improvised story-in-a-story. You'll probably notice that I kept all the players gender-neutral. In fact, I wrote all the characters for friends of mine who I'd hoped would be able to be in the film, but tried to keep it general enough so that *anyone* could play the parts. I particularly didn't want to restrict the number of actors - I figured I'd have enough trouble getting four interested and committed actors anyway.

The four people I initially figured for the parts were Jon Blum as Player A, Dave Versace as Player B, Simon Abernethy as Player C, and Alistair Rigg as Player D. I wrote the parts to try and make it as easy as possible for them - not that I considered their personalities anything like those in the script! I simply tried to make sure that the shoot would be as easy as possible for them. On the whole, there isn't a great deal of emotion in the script except annoyance and anger, and they come at the end. I figured after three days of film shooting, that would come pretty easily. I certainly didn't want to press my luck by requiring big emotional moments from amateur actors who had been press-ganged into making the sucker.

There were several major themes that I'd thought through before I even started writing the script.

Player A was to be the games enthusiast, the person with all the theories and the most straightforward motivation - she wants as good a story as can be told. She always tries to bring the story back on course, to tie up plot threads and make connections between characters, and keep it within the one genre. This character is actually most like me, I'm embarassed to admit (but heck, if you're reading this and you know me, it should be fairly obvious.) Each of the four characters had her own theme, and Player A's was... well, I forget now. It was a while ago and I can't find the notes I first made. The character represented by Player A within the story was Alfred.

Player B was sarcastic, with a wild improvisational script. She would push the story out of genre and bring in personal elements of each character. She had the theories about the way stories should be told, which I later decided would be better suited to Player A. Part way through the script, I also had Player B realise that she was within a story herself, something that fell by the wayside in later versions of the script. Player B's character was Bob, the Cabin Boy, who's character is perverted by Player D.

Player C was the new player. At first I planned to make her fairly plodding and unimaginative, but as the script went on I made her more nervous and stage-struck. Her theme was that of the hero, based on my rather limited knowledge of the stereotype. She went through learning, being tested, failing, then triumphing against the odds. I wanted her triumph to be due to the character notes that initially made her such a poor storyteller, too - plodding and methodical - but that element fell by the wayside, of course. Still, there are elements of that remaining in the script. Her character was Christine.

Player D was the one who delighted in twisting the story around. I figured that D was having a bad day, and had decided to take it out on the story. D would provide the dramatic conflict, be the bad guy, and lose in a suitably ironic fashion at the end. Her themes were Arson, Murder, Rape, and Pillage. Her character was David, named by A.

All the players were fairly aware of the link between their names and the names of the characters, which is why Player D had such fun with Bob - player B had done the most to piss off Player D.

I was pretty pleased with the first draft, and handed it around to a lot of people for comment. On the whole, the responses were encouraging, and I got tentative acceptance from each of the actors I had in mind. We got together fairly soon after for a read-through, at which point I realised that the script was loose and flabby, and so started work on the second draft, which, in the process of tightening it, made it approximately twice as long.

Ah, but a *tight* twice as long.

Well... bloody hell, the first draft is particularly difficult to reread now. But that's the thing. If you worry too much about getting the script perfect, you'll never finish the bugger. And this was meant to be a quick-and-dirty, something to get the experience... well, enough excuses, we've been through this bit before, haven't we? Yes we have. As you'll notice, it isn't formatted well, it is overly complicated, and it has some very lame jokes in it, several of which unfortunately made it to the final cut.

Here's the first draft. Go on, read it anyway - you'll figure that you could do better, and you'll be right.