There’s not a whole lot to say about the first two development weekends that hasn’t been covered already – it felt like a few weeks of intensive production training squeezed into four days, with a whole host of special guests, workshops and ideas to take into consideration as we embark properly on our own projects. Of the many lessons I’ll be taking away, the main one right now is to not be afraid of language and terms against which I instinctively have knee-jerk reactions. I have quite recently left an academic environment, where terms like ‘target audiences’, ‘brand identity’, ‘content dissemination’, and of course, ‘storytelling‘ are seen as anathema to good work, a sign of popularizing or monetizing art and culture. After these two weekends, it’s clear that those terms are as useful or as hollow as the purposes they are put to, and they are not always a signpost for empty rhetoric. I will probably never fully lose that prejudice, but knowing that it’s there has been an essential lesson for me.

It was also good to learn about the structures through which many producers devise and develop projects – if there was one unspoken theme across each of the presentations, it was the importance of a planning process. Taking the BFI Days Of Fear And Wonder brief as an example, I think that we, as a group,  felt a bit overwhelmed by the possibilities on our first planning meeting. However, by the second, after the last of the presentations and workshops had time to be absorbed, it was easier for us to define our ideas, and to start knocking them into something workable.

One of the fantastic things about Sci-Fi as a genre is that the best work is built on ideas – as a producing group, are first major hurdle will be to whittle down all of our potential development opportunities into a single plan. There are just too many good themes and strands to explore, too many films to screen and too many good ideas for bringing audiences into Watershed.

But there’s one important question that really needs an answer now, before I can move on to the next stage of development: Sci-Fi or Sci Fi? To hyphen or not to hyphen?