Writing Team-Up
The biggest inspiration for the story was DC Comics’ ‘Countdown to Infinite Crisis’ written by Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka, and Judd Winick. It is the story of a lesser-known superhero, the Blue Beetle, who is thought of as a bit of a clown. When he investigates a conspiracy, none of his peers take him seriously. He proceeds on his own and gets in deeper trouble than he can handle.
The story introduced a number of characters to me that I had never come across before and it acted as the concluding story to a part of the Justice League’s history I had not been aware of. I went back and read the first ‘Justice League International’ stories that inspired Countdown to Infinite Crisis, I liked the characters and saw a lot of potential in them.
So, I came up with my own origin story for the Justice League International, a group that would go on to become the Justice League that we would recognise today. I had the idea that the reason the Justice League ended up attracting the World’s Greatest Superheroes was because they had teleportation. For the members that aren’t faster than a speeding bullet, a teleporter would make worldwide crime-fighting much easier. And that would mean the original members may not have been the greatest, most powerful heroes, but were more likely a bunch of tech geeks that met over the Internet.
The original Glasgow Film Crew were a group of tech geeks that met over the Internet, and in the few months it had been running I had helped the group’s founder Ryan Pasi produce a music video and a short film. He told me that he wanted me to produce a project myself. He assigned it to me as a task. This is rare for Ryan; he doesn’t like telling people what to do.
I decided if I had my pick I should make something I’d written myself. I took my Justice League International story and I changed the names of the characters so that I didn’t violate any copyrights, and to avoid having to stick too rigidly to the costumes or personalities from the source material.
It became a story about potential. Stewart Carter is an alien and he knows he has the potential to change the world for the better, if he can figure out how to get this technology from his home world working. The Yellow Dart has the potential to form the world’s first superhero team if he can get them to work together. The Shadow has the potential to expand her mission further than she thought possible if she can learn to trust a stranger. Big Blue has the most potential. He can do anything imaginable but he chooses not to. Glasgow Film Crew had the potential to create a really great independent superhero short film by “teaming up”, but only if they had a strong leader to step up and lead the charge. That was my potential.
I wrote Team-up in the summer of 2013 in the backseat of a car heading to Camber Sands, East Sussex for All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival and brought the first draft to the next weekly meetup. We started filming that same year.
Myke Hall is one of the organisers of Glasgow Film Crew, and a screenwriter, producer, and sound recordist for short films. Myke’s background includes music performance and promotion, internet radio and podcast presenting and producing, and music journalism. He was the Technical Producer of Boulder International Film Festival in 2015, and he has professional skills in content marketing and project management.
