Ep 6: Comedy director/producer/writer Saima Ferdows

Featuring Saima Ferdows, comedy director, producer, writer and force behind https://shows.acast.com/creatives-of-colour-podcast, talking about how she got into comedy, directing standup shows, and how scriptwriters can consider issues of diversity at the script level rather than punting it out to the casting director. Mentioned in the episode: Standup Sukh Ojla, whose tour begins in September: https://www.sukhojla.com Screening of The Damned PES United (Weds 18 August): https://riocinema.org.uk/RioCinema.dll/Booking?Booking=TSelectItems.waSelectItemsPrompt.TcsWebMenuItem_0.TcsWebTab_0.TcsPerformance_13618803 September meet-up for Creatives of Colour: https://www.tickettext.co.uk/2FbS8H9q3x

James (sans Matthew, who's in Bristol) talking with Falmouth School of Film and Television lecturer and Cinematologist podcaster Dr. Neil Fox, about his indie feature 'Wilderness', due out April 5th 2021 on most platforms, accompanied by Bailey the dog. This walk repeats the Flushing to Mylor route that nearly killed both James and Matthew on a previous excursion with less dramatic results apart from the brief appearance of an owl.

Matthew and James walk around the historic Cornish village of Devoran and discuss how comedy scriptwriting differs from straight drama, how many drama writers are able to use comedy to enhance their scripts and how the US and UK scriptwriting systems differ. They are also thanked sarcastically by a lady walking her dogs,  encounter some horses, and see a house which may or may not belong to Pierce Brosnan.

Matthew and James either travel to Asia Minor to search for the source of the Bosporus, or do the walk from Flushing to Mylor and back again, depending on how cynical you're feeling. With them is Matthews creative and business partner Emma Frost (The White Queen, The Spanish Princess, Jamaica Inn and many others), who talks about the process of adapting literary works to screen, as well as the new production company she's set up with Matthew, 'Watford & Essex'. In the most dramatic excursion yet, only one of the participants remains uninjured by the journey's end...

Matthew and James walk around Trelissick, discussing the difficulties in translating the genre of science fiction to screen, including Matthew's experiences with writing episodes of Doctor Who, Star Wars, adapting Arthur C. Clarke and Philip K. Dick as well as original post-apocalyptic series The Last Train, as well as James' experience getting an Akira reference into pre-school CBeebies show Hey Duggee.  Worth noting that a swear has crept into this episode, hence its 'explicit' rating, but it is only the one. 

On their return journey, fuelled by poached eggs and (decaf) coffee, Matthew and James discuss getting an agent, being eaten by owls, William Friedkin, the greatest script title of all time, and how much we're all going to end up writing about Covid.

In the first part of the expedition, our travellers set out from the small Cornish village of Flushing, round the headland to the even smaller Cornish village of Mylor, discussing along the way the making of Green Wing, how involved writers are, or should be, in the editing process, making up background dialogue no-one will hear anyway and adapting Philip K. Dick for the small screen. Featuring guest appearances from Madonna (kind of) and Tori Amos (ish).