I promised, I’m really trying this time.
I’m still in the process of rewriting the “Saber Rider” script and I thought I could share some insights into that project.
It startet in July 2012 in San Diego during the Comic Con. We sat at the bar in Hilton Bayfront after a long day of nerdgasm….what could possibly go wrong?
The answer is nothing. Sitting there, thinking about the great day we just had and discussing the sci-fi movie we decided to write. We wanted to write a cool sci-fi movie. Nothing too fancy, no big mythology, just a cool story and some cool space fights. We had some interesting ideas and we tried to figure at the story when we caught ourselves referencing the same old TV show over and over again.
A few drinks later we were ready to admit what we both knew what really wanted to do. So we scraped our generic sci-fi idea and started work on “Saber Rider and the Star Sheriffs”.
We loved that show when we were kids and even though we know that it is a long shoot we tried to write the best possible movie version we could think of. We decided to take the story of the pilot episode and expanded the story and filled the plot holes. We got rid of some of the dated stuff in the story and toned down the western elements a little bit (you know, Lone Ranger and so…). We looked at some of the classics of the sci-fi space adventure genre and we decided that a “chase movie” is probably the best structure for it. We knew we had to change a few things but this structure allowed us to incorporate what we really loved about the show in a way that doesn’t feel outdated.
The first draft turned out quite well and I’m currently in the process of rewriting it. There are a few things I need to clear up and I have to work on something I like to call “information flow” – when does which character know what and why? It’s really important that this makes sense in the movie and I think it enriches the the story and the characters when a writer pays attention to this. I don’t want to go too much into details (spoilers and so) but by limiting the flow of information we managed to achieve some great reveals in the story and changed some of the character dynamics in an interesting ways.
I hope to complete my rewrite until the end of december.
