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�a prend toujours une premi�re fois.

I finished the last revisions on the new screenplay this weekend and now it’s off to Telefilm Canada and la SODEC to beg for our share of financing. What a crazy ride it’s been, but I’m happy. The producer is excited, the distributor is very confident in the film and they signed up a talented and experienced director who reacted very well to the screenplay. He even called after reading the first 30 pages to say how much he liked it already. I cannot tell you how much that cheered me up. Most directors in Quebec prefer to work on their own screenplays and it’s hard to get them excited about a project they didn’t write or initiate.

And now, the most exciting part: waiting.
And waiting.
And more waiting.

Even though we had to turn in the project today, we won’t find out until March 2006 if we get financing on this round. A loooong winter of uncertainty. Most films don’t get financing on the first round so I might still be working on this project in two years. It’s a good thing I’ve got something else lined up because I’d go crazy. I’ve got a contract for another screenplay (co-written) and another contract to develop a tv series (both in French). 2006 better be the year when one of these projects gets the green light. I’m getting ants in my writer’s pants.

I just found out about a new search tool via Mikel: It’s called Rollyo and it allows you to create your own personal search engine on the Web (it’s actually using Yahoo Search in a customized way). It’s quick and simple, which is refreshing.

As a test, I’ve created a specialized « searchroll » for Screenwriting Blogs. I read a lot of blogs about screenwriting and it can be hard sometimes to remember where I read a specific info. I opened up a new « search roll » on Rollyo, added a list of blogs I read and voil�. If I want to see what other screenwriters have to say about character development for example, I just go to my search roll (which is also available to other people) and do a specific search, which gives me these results (found via Yahoo search).

I also created a searchroll for Montreal Bloggers. (It’s too bad that you can only list 25 URLs per searchroll.)

It’s great to be able to narrow a search to Web sites you already know and trust. I know some RSS feed readers can do this but not everybody uses RSS feeds and it’s nice to be able to share searchrolls with other people. The idea isn’t new, of course and there are many players in the game. So far though, I like the Rollyo interface better than other customized search engine I’ve tried.

A simple interface and easy sharing seem to be the magic combination to predict the success of new applications like this. It will be interesting to see if it catches on. It might have a good chance if the Rollyo people fix the weaknesses mentioned in this review at Search Engine Watch.