How writing Inside the Piano Shop helped my work, by Lisa Parry
27 April 2022 · 2 min read
Inside the Piano Shop – the story of a woman who, upon hearing news an asteroid is about to wipe out life on Earth heads to a piano shop to use her talent one last time – has taught me far more about myself as a writer and how others see my work than anything else I’ve written; which is truly bizarre given it’s a two-page script.
Like every other writer on the film, it helped me hone my screenwriting skills and the feedback from the community was invaluable. But more than that, it taught me to keep going. When I wrote the initial draft and entered it, I had a very young baby. I was struggling to find time to write. And much as everything pretty much had to take a backseat at that time to enable me to survive the sleep-deprived haze that is early motherhood, I felt I was losing part of myself. A full-length spec or a full-length play felt too daunting but I came up with the idea at 3am and remember thinking – it’s two pages, I only have to write two pages, I can definitely write two pages.
It’s a story I’ve since told in writing workshops: how this script taught me to break down the daunting. Yes, Inside the Piano Shop was self-contained, but since writing it I have planned more; I have told myself to just finish the one scene that week, to keep momentum and to not become overwhelmed.
In addition, the script taught me heaps about how others see my work, the different perspectives directors can bring to it. Three companies made the film and each take on it was unique; each team had a different vision. My background is in theatre and I’m used to being in the room and influencing production so it was fascinating for me to see the different takes from afar. It’s made me think far more about how my words can be interpreted rather than simply running a scene in my head and also how different elements of my writing appeal to different directing styles.
I can’t wait to see how it fits into the wider film now and what it contributes to and gains from the feature format. So exciting…
Lisa’s new audio play, Tremolo, can be streamed (for free!) here – https://anchor.fm/tremolo-english – and on all major streaming platforms.
www.lisaparry.com
http://www.twitter.com/lisafparry
Written by
Chris JonesPassionate about all things film, I have spent my life watching movies, making movies and helping others make their movies too. Most recently I have been directing Splinter Unit on 'Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning', parts 1 and 2 for Paramount. I also executive-produced 'The Enfield Poltergeist' for Apple TV+. Deeper into my past, my early major projects include action thriller 'The Runner', serial killer thriller 'White Angel' and paranormal horror 'Urban Ghost Story'. I co-created and authored The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook series, published by Bloomsbury. There are now eight books in the series. More recently I have run a series of London-based festivals, kicking off with the London Screenwriters Festival which attracts over 1,000 professional screenwriters from around the globe annually. I also set up and run TEDxEaling, an annual TEDx conference on storytelling and human communication. In 2009, I made the multi-award-winning and Oscar-shortlisted 'Gone Fishing', the whole process being heavily documented on my blog. In 2014 I completed my fourth feature film, the crowd-created 50 Kisses which entered the Guinness Book Of Records for most screenwriters on a feature film. Following this success, I founded Create50 to continue the idea of crowd-created projects. Twisted50, our first book, was published on Halloween 2016 and immediately toppled Stephen King from the top spot on Amazon. Five books have followed in the Twisted50 series and we are working on the sixth now. During the summer of 2016 I trained to become a master Firewalk instructor and now regularly take people across the hot coals for charity. Late 2017 I directed the short film 'Seeing Him' which collected a ton of awards too. Over the following years I continued to make award-winning shorts, such as Meet The Nativity and Never Too Late. In the summer of 2022 I premiered Impact 50, the second feature-length movie from Create50. This time I directed the segment at the start of the film, with Olivia Williams as the President, and written by Joe Eszterhas. In the summer of 2022, I also joined the Mission: Impossible 7 and 8 productions as Splinter Unit director. At Halloween 2023, the Apple TV+ show that I co-executive-produced, 'The Enfield Poltergeist', premiered. I run regular filmmaking workshops for filmmakers both online and in person. Some people ask how I began making films? Like most filmmakers of my generation, it was with a Super 8mm camera, summertime and school friends, usually after watching a behind-the-scenes TV programme on a Hollywood movie like Star Wars. My first film was a zombie horror called Necronomicon, heavily influenced by John Carpenter's The Fog. And I was hooked for life. Contact me at Ealing Film Studios, Ealing Green, London, W5 5EP, UK
