About Kira-Anne Pelican

Kira-Anne is a script consultant, a researcher and a lecturer in screenwriting, with 25 years of experience working in the British, American and Chinese film and TV industries.
She began her career assisting director Stanley Kubrick in the production of Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Next followed a stint working within the BBC's groundbreaking Virtual Studios department, after which Kira-Anne took posts as a Visual Effects Technical Director and then VFX Producer for ESC Entertainment, a Warner Bros company. After assisting in the production of The Matrix Revolutions (2003), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), Catwoman (2004) and The Ladykillers(2004), Kira-Anne retrained in screenwriting at UCLA. She wrote two original TV series which were optioned and developed by the BBC and ITV, before founding filmscribe.co.uk, her screenplay consultancy, in 2006. Since then she has worked with hundreds of writers and producers across the world and specialises in character development, transnational story consultancy and box office forecasting.
In 2017, Kira-Anne was awarded a PhD for her research into forecasting a film’s box office from its narrative.
by Kira-Anne Pelican | 30 December, 2019 | Filmmaking, Screenwriting
With New Year and a new decade around the corner, many of us are thinking about our resolutions. Maybe they’ll be to finish that screenplay, get your film made, or live a more environmentally-friendly life. Whatever your resolution, it’s almost certainly going to...
by Kira-Anne Pelican | 16 August, 2018 | Filmmaking, Filmmaking Career, Promotion, Marketing and Distribution
“Nobody knows anything,” wrote William Goldman in 1983. “Not one person in the motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess, and if you’re lucky an educated one.” Strong words from the Academy Award winning writer of All...
by Kira-Anne Pelican | 6 June, 2018 | In Our Opinion, Producing, Promotion, Marketing and Distribution, Screenwriting
In my last post I wrote about how one of the most common script notes given to writers is that their main character isn’t engaging or believable, and how using approaches from personality psychology (which I call “Deep Characterisation”) can help solve this problem...
by Kira-Anne Pelican | 26 April, 2018 | Filmmaking Career, Producing, Promotion, Marketing and Distribution
As a result of a high profile celebrity court case earlier this year, a new law governing EIS investments means that investing in UK-produced films has become even riskier. But with good intuition, due diligence and insights gained from data science, you’ll give...
by Kira-Anne Pelican | 16 April, 2018 | Filmmaking, Screenwriting
One of the notes that writers are most frequently given is that their characters are underdeveloped, and because of this they feel unengaging and unbelievable. We all know that the main characters in films and novels need to be compelling and complex, but for many...