Pacific Rim: Aftermath

<center><big>Exclusive Interview – Writer Cavan Scott on Pacific Rim: Aftermath, his interest in ordinary people in extraordinary worlds, and more</big></center> <table class="cquote" style="margin:auto; border-collapse: collapse; border: none; background-color:transparent; width:auto;"><tr><td style="vertical-align: top; width:20px; font-size:36px; font-family:'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight:bold; text-align:left; padding:3px;"> “ </td><td style="vertical-align: top; padding:3px; font-style:italic;"> So, how did you first come to be involved with the Pacific Rim: Aftermath comics?
<p>Scott Cavan: Basically, I was put in touch with Robert Napton at Legendary by a mutual friend, Paul Cornell, and I started a bit of a campaign, because I’m a massive fan of the first film, and I knew there was a sequel coming, so I threw my hat into the ring quite forcefully! After a while they came back and asked if I was still interested, and I was asked to put forward some ideas. It went from there really. </p><p>Did you have much latitude in terms of where to take the comics, or was what they had to be quite clear from the start, set by the movies?
Because of things that happen in the film, either, there’s only certain things that we could do, and certain things we couldn’t. What Legendary did was come to me with this sort of general idea for the mini-series, and then left it to me to spin-out those ideas, really, which I then went back to them and there were conversations back and forth. I had a chance to read the script for Uprising, so I could tie into that. But yeah, it was quite a lot of freedom in the early days of how we were going to take the story; it was sort of a joint effort, the story of the mini-series, between Robert, myself and Barnaby at Legendary, who works on a lot of the mythology of pursuant work behind the scenes. </p><p>Could you walk me through their development – from your initial idea, to the finished product? Were there any big changes you made along the way?
Um, not so many big changes. I think one of the things that we developed was Hannibal Chau’s part of the story, I don’t think about the beginning he was such an integral part of it. But as time went on, we realised there were things we could do with him, so his role in the entire story grew. I can’t give away too much, because it would unfortunately spoil the future issues, but with Hannibal a bigger part in the story, that meant we could do things that weren’t possible before. So, it was one of those moments where actually it helped in the end, and it opened up new possibilities for Aftermath. Definitely he was involved, but he wasn’t as involved, I think in the early conversations. </p><p>You’ve got a lot of experience writing comics, prose stories, audio plays, so on. How do you adapt your approach for each, or do you find you tackle them in a fairly similar way each time?
I started out writing radio and audio dramas, and so the crossover into comics – I’ve loved comics since I was a kid, so it’s a media I know really well, but both are dialogue based, and the two disciplines are quite easy to move from one to another. Just as in an audio play you’re writing for the actors and giving them a world that they can act within and interpret what you’ve given them, in the same way when you’re working with comics, you’re working with an artist, and the script is meant for them, not meant for the final reader. </p><p>So, the script lays out what you’re thinking about for the story and again, the artist then takes those ideas and interprets them into what we finally get. Just like with a script, you then sort of work it back and forth together, so like in an audio script it’s quite a team effort working with a director and similarly with a comic. Obviously, when you’re writing a novel, when you’re writing prose, it’s pretty much you and the computer screen, or a notepad. I think even when I write prose, I’m very dialogue led at first any, so I always start with the dialogue and sketch it out. </p><p>So actually, across the three medium, I pretty much always start with dialogue first. When I’m writing a comic strip, I will write the dialogue for the page and then break it up into panels, most of the time. Sometimes it doesn’t work like that, sometimes I do block it out first, but most of the time it’s dialogue first. So yeah, I think in all three, I think I am pretty much dialogue led. </p> </td><td style="vertical-align: bottom; width:20px; font-size:36px; font-family:'Times New Roman', serif; font-weight:bold; text-align:right; padding:3px;"> ” </td></tr></table>