JANNE PULKKILA
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JANNE PULKKILA

Where do you live (City, State, or Country)?
I live in southern Finland.

Your script stood out among hundreds of others. What was the inspiration for your story and why did you write a script instead of a short story or a novel?
Thomas Edison's company was one of the most iconic and productive innovation labs in the world. A quirky place with plenty of opportunities for humor. I'm some sort of an inventor of electronics and automation myself. Also, my grandfather developed early sound film technology and scientific solar eclipse cameras, and owned a film production and post-production company. I'm very familiar with technology and the psychology of invention.
I started by directing short films and only gradually became a screenwriter when I immersed myself more and more into filmmaking. This is why the idea of writing a novel never came up.
 
How long did it take you to write your script...and what is your writing process? Do you outline...use index cards...white board...or just start with FADE IN?
 I tend to work on a script for awhile, then leave it aside and continue working on another script and then another, before coming back to the original one again. It's a great way to get to see the script with fresh eyes, but it might take a few years before the script is completed.
Outlining works best for me. In addition, sometimes I use index cards when I struggle with sequencing.
 
What is your ultimate ambition as a writer?
I'm highly visual and less literary-oriented so my goal is to become a writer-director. But I'm always open to all kinds of projects.
 
Which film or television writers inspire you? Why?
Let me focus on comedies. I like to use movies that have withstood the test of time as a source of inspiration.
I think the writers of Airplane!, Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker gave comedy writers license to really go over the top with absurdist humor. I guess Mel Brooks did that too.
It's inspiring to see how Jacques Tati combines comedy with his critique of modern technology. His voice is extremely unique but never preachy. Similarly, Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David make fun of strange habits of our species.
 
What’s your all-time favorite movie or television show?
2001: A Space Odyssey. But what on Earth or Jupiter can you learn from this movie? The main character (played by William Sylvester) disappears at the end of Act One never to be seen again. If this was a spec script it would get a strong pass.
I believe the screenwriting rules are not really rules. They're tools. Ultimately there's only one non-negotiable rule in screenwriting: keep things moving forward.
 
What advice do you have for writers hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have?
You must learn the craft before you start breaking too many rules. It will take an insane amount of drafts. Nobody believes how much rewriting it takes until they've seen it with their own eyes. It might help if you can write two or more scripts instead of spending all your time and energy on just one. You'll learn from all the scripts you're writing because the same principles of storytelling apply despite the genre.
 
What else are you working on that the world needs to know about? (be sure to include any links you want the world to check out)
I specialize in two genres or points of view. Comedy and sci-fi/sci-fact. The line between scientific and supernatural can be quite blurred in fiction.
I've written an absurdist action-comedy feature called Invent Hard. It reminds me of The Naked Gun but the lead character is a scientist.
I'm working on a sci-fi comedy feature with a strong us versus them theme. In the story, skateboarders fight a councilman for control of the streets until an alien invasion compels them to join forces. It's loosely based on a 16 mm experimental short documentary I made a number of years ago. The story is new but it shares some of the creative cinematic elements with the short film. My showreel uses footage from that short:
https://vimeo.com/jannep/showreel
 
There's another pilot called Retrievers. It's a light-hearted, one-hour buddy show. A scientist and a politician retrieve dangerous alien artifacts that fall into the hands of wrongdoers and use them for good instead. The series poses a question, how do you know what's good?
 
I'm a big fan of The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. I'm working on a somewhat similar anthology series.
 
Industry members can download some of these scripts on Coverfly: https://writers.coverfly.com/profile/JannePulkkila

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