If I lose the car, can I have a proper cape?

Robin Kelly asked: at this stage ar you writing what you want and let other people worry about the budget or do you have to keep the budget in mind?

Interestingly, the concept of how big a budget this movie would be hasn't arisen - I suspect because the first draft is already quite clearly a biggish studio film rather than a cute indie movie (although that was the feel I was going for), so any changes are just going to make it more of the same, rather than taking it into a completely different league.

When I started writing feature scripts, all the advice was to write something that could be made with a small budget, preferably in the UK. I started writing my first script with this in mind, but as the story got bigger and more fantastic, I decided to stop worrying and go as big as I wanted. Both scripts have lots of effects in them as well, which if you're using CGI, get cheaper by the day, so I decided not to fret too much about this.

I also though that the chances of my script ever getting near to being made were so slim, I may as well go mental and write whatever I wanted. Sounds horribly cynical, but these first scripts were more likely to be a calling card than anything else, so I might as well have a blast writing them.

The original plan for the superhero movie though, was to start off with a standard superhero setup (costumed hero saves city from villain) then take it somewhere else: having established a world where people with amazing powers and funny clothes are taken for granted, it might be interesting to see how the same people react when they're not in their traditional environment.

My script editor is great, by the way, I'm a bit worried it looked like I was having a go in the last post, but in fact she's suggested a number of ways of beefing up the story by bringing out ideas that were already in the first draft (writers like this kind of thing because it looks like they Meant To Do That All Along). The satisfying thing is, I can make the story stronger, and give the characters more depth, but then reach into the toolbox of superhero effects (amazing cars! forcefields! killer satellites!) to illustrate this.

Mmm... forcefields....