I worked as a Copy Writer and Art Director in the Scottish Advertising Industry from the late eighties to the mid nineties, where I produced a great deal of successful press, radio and television campaigns, for a wide variety of very different clients. In this period, I won many new accounts for the Advertising and Design companies that I worked for and several advertising awards as well.
I started teaching in Colleges of Further and Higher Education across Scotland around 1994. I teach and lecturer in Drawing, Painting, Design, Advertising and Illustration and I’m currently employed by Cumbernauld College as a full-time lecturer, and Course Team Leader in Art and Design.
I’ve written many dry, academic essays and reports in my time in education, mainly to qualify for formal teaching qualifications and also to gain a Post Graduate Diploma in Art, Design and Architecture in Education. I must admit that, while this was a challenging experience, I didn’t find it particularly inspiring, or indeed, that much fun at all, so I decided to write a screenplay to fire up my own creativity again.
At the end of 2007 I finished the very first draft of my screenplay, Overwhelming Darkness. This was an extremely positive, rewarding and enjoyable experience for me and after several re-writes and many polishes I believe that I have made my script a much better and more commercial piece of work. In this time, I’ve also received some very favourable coverage from The BlueCat Screenplay Competition, the Austin Film Festival Coverage Service and the StoryPros Awards and this I feel, more than anything, has helped me to drastically improve the quality of my screenplay. My script has also received an Honorable Mention from the LA Movie Awards and was in the top 25% of the Page International Awards.
I was delighted to hear that my screenplay was a winner in the ReelHeART International Film Festival 2011 and I went over to Toronto at the end of June that year to receive my award and see a table read of my script by professional actors, which was an incredible experience.
I am currently turning the screenplay into a film novel, and I am enjoying this process immensely.
Presently I am also turning Overwhelming Darkness in to a graphic novel with an illustrator/artist friend of mine and we are both finding this to be an extremely creative and rewarding experience.
