Valle Crucis and the Grail

A new book by Ian Pegler exploring the links between the mediaeval monastery of Valle Crucis in North Wales and the legend of the Holy Grail
This book has now been published, price 12 pounds and 1st edition, autographed copies are available directly from me.

Writing

Latest developments
Valle Crucis and the Grail
This book is now available for purchase!

I have recently written a book on Valle Crucis abbey in North Wales and its links to the Grail legend, published by Llanerch. for more information.
Screenplays by Ian Pegler
One-page synopses for both of these screenplays are available by clicking on the links below.

Treatments are also available for both of the projects. E-mail me about your film-making credentials and I'll send you the treatments.

PLEASE NOTE: Please do not send me your screenplay/treatment unless you're prepared to pay me to review it. I am not interested in turning your screenplay or treatment into a film.

Camlan is a feature length screenplay currently in First Draft. The story is a gritty Arthurian adventure with strong characters and action, combining themes from a number of traditional sources with a fresh, original perspective based on the notion of the holy grail as a real relic which brings greed and evil in its wake at tarif disneyland Paris. This is not by any means a "timeless romance" but a real story, set in a world which is part historical, part legend.

Le Sourcier is an historical drama set in late 17th century France, based on the true but incredible story of Jaques Aymar Vernay. First draft is now complete.

Both of the above were developed using my own software , some of which I give away for FREE.

Screenwriting, Storyboarding and Story writing software

Windows 7 users PLEASE

JStoryboard Tools - beta version available NOW

Storyboard Tools JAVA rewrite - update

Can't open the Help file?
FREE Screenwriting software
ScriptMaker is screenwriting software which formats your screenplay to professional standards. Freeware. DOWNLOAD
FREE story-development software
SLang is software for story-development. You develop your story on "virtual index-cards", which you can print. You can also export your story to ScriptMaker. DOWNLOAD
FREE movie storyboarding software
Storyboard Tools is software for drawing and organising movie storyboards. You can keep all your storyboards together as a single project-file, print the project, import images and clipart, number and caption your images, store more text with the images, produce checklists for shooting and generate a web-page.

Here is my music/writing CV.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for ScriptMaker, Storyboard Tools, and SLang

General questions ScriptMaker Storyboard Tools SLang

General:
Q: Will there be a Macintosh version available?

A: No, alas. You could try using an emulator like Virtual PC, but I haven't tried it. You'll need to install it on a PC first and then copy the files across. Let me know if you have any success, and if so, how you managed it.

Some people seem to have had some success with this. See the HotNews page for more information.

In the not too distant future Windows may become available to Mac users(!) so the situation may improve.
Q: I'm having problems unzipping/downloading the files.

A: Make sure the files have downloaded in their entirety. The file sizes are:

ScriptMaker2.02.ZIP - 3480 KB

ScriptMaker1.18.ZIP - 1047 KB

StoryboardTools1.7R2.ZIP - 1498 KB

SLang2.2.ZIP - 1011 KB

Axe.ZIP - 1907 KB

If you're having problems downloading the file in its entirety the problem may be a browser/modem properties time-outs issue with your computer. I doubt it though.
Q: If I download a new version will it load in my previous work?

A: The file formats for ScriptMaker and Storyboard Tools are SET IN STONE, they will not be changed unless there is a major upgrade. The file format for SLang changed with version 2.0 but no more changes are planned.
Q: The program(s) seem to hang when I run them. What's going wrong?

A: A VERY FEW people seem to have this problem. I'm not sure of the cause, it may be the graphics card you're using, the make of processor, or even a problem with the version of the O/S you're using. Try reducing the number of colours displayed on your screen, and/or reducing the graphics acceleration. Try also downloading newer drivers for your graphics-card from the manufacturer's website. Also, look at the sections below.

Q: When I try to install it I get an error message saying:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications. Choose Close to terminate the application

What's gone wrong?

A: This may be due to a file called autoexec.nt being missing from your Windows/System32 directory. You may take the following steps to try and solve this problem (PLEASE NOTE Here I am relying on information passed on to me from a Windows NT user, I haven't tried it myself, so you do this at your own risk! Let me know if you have a better solution. You'll find a lot of info on this problem on the web.):

Click the START button at the bottom left of your screen, and then click on RUN.
Type c:\windows\repair
Find the file autoexec.nt, right click on it and select Copy
Click the START button, and click on RUN
Type c:\windows\system32
Right-click (inside the system32 folder) and select Paste
Right-click on the file you just pasted (autoexec.nt) and click Properties
Select Read only and click Apply
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ScriptMaker:
Q: Some scripts cause the program to hang but others don't / Changing the margin settings has caused it to hang

A: The settings for the margins must be sensible and must fit the page. The left-margins should ALWAYS be less than the right-margins. The measurements are always taken from the left-hand edge of the page. The margins for the top and bottom are different and should both be set to about one inch or thereabouts. To solve this problem you should take the following steps:
Run ScriptMaker.
Open one of your older scripts that you know works, or use the example file, ONS.OOS, which you will find in the folder where you installed ScriptMaker.
Select Script Settings | Margins from the main menu
Click Save as default settings NOW
Click OK
Close the script and begin a new one.
Write some new material and try to save it.
In version 1.15 extra error-checking has been introduced to try and deal with this problem.
Q: When I print my script, the text on the right-hand side is clipped. When I display a chunk, the white area isn't wide enough to display all the text, and part of it disappears off the right-hand edge of the white area. What's gone wrong?

A: ScriptMaker has no internal concept of a Page-width.

Instead it takes the dimensions of the page from your printer-driver software.

That way if your printer driver settings are for U.S. letter, the width of the white area will reflect this.

The thing to do is to go into Control Panel (under the Start menu) and edit your printer driver settings. If you've recently been printing stuff out on some special narrow stationary recently, like index cards or CD labels, this would explain everything.
Q: Help! I can't get to the lower-level! / All I see in the main window is grey

A: Make sure you have a printer-driver installed under Windows. Do this by selecting the Printer-settings from the Start-Menu. Choose any printer-driver and set it to an appropriate Paper-size. You don't need a printer attached to the computer. This problem is most common with laptop-users.
Q: I get an error message saying '1.5 is not a valid float value.'. Then when I try to add elements to the script the program hangs. What's gone wrong?

A: You are probably in a country which uses a comma "," as the decimal symbol rather than a period ".". You need to change the Regional Settings on your computer to make the decimal symbol a period "." (with no quotes). Then open the supplied example script file Ons.OOS (in the directory in which you installed ScriptMaker) or any OOS which has valid margin settings. From the Script Settings menu select Margins. Now click on the A4 button and then click on the button Save as default settings NOW then click on OK. Please NOTE this bug has been fixed with version 1.14.
Q: I pressed the delete-key to remove a script-item, and the program SEEMs to hang. What's gone wrong?

A: It hasn't hung. For some strange reason, some versions of Windows OCCASIONALLY put the confirmation dialog-box behind ScriptMaker's main window. You can rectify this by pressing ALT+TAB, to bring it to the front.
Q: I get an error saying "The parameter is incorrect". What's happened?

A: The most probable cause of this error is that one of your chunks is too big. This typically happens if you try to put several scenes within the same chunk instead of creating separate scenes. File corruption is another source of this error. The white area that contains the text in the main window is a GRAPHIC IMAGE, not a text-window. As you add more text to it, this graphic gets larger and larger. This is why you are advised NOT to use the "slug-line" element, except for short cut-aways etc. If it is a file corruption error, send me your OOS file and I will try my best to un-corrupt it for you (no guarantees, mind). Best of all MAKE REGULAR BACK-UPS OF YOUR WORK ONTO A SEPARATE MEDIUM. If you do this, you will save yourself a lot of problems. It is, after all, standard practice. Some people occassionally get this message when trying to open the ZIP file. If this happens, try downloading the ZIP file again.
Q: What's the best way of getting started?

A: Download the ScriptMaker tutorial file from this website! There's no fixed order in which you should do things. If you're into using index cards and planning everything in advance you can use the "index-card features" first, but you don't have to do it that way. You could go about things in a completely ad-hoc fashion. You can always swap things around with drag and drop.

Please note that within the context of the program I actually discriminate between the terms "slug-line" and "scene-heading", which sounds odd but there's a reason for it. A scene-heading is specifically tied to a particular scene. A slug-line I use for something like a "flash-back", i.e. where you would consider it to be a short snippet WITHIN a scene.

e.g. you might have a scene in a pub with two bars, where the action briefly switches to the other bar and then back again. You could denote this by having three separate scenes or you could put it all in one scene, in which case you would use a couple of sluglines.

Generally speaking, you don't use the slugline feature. Instead, you right-click on a scene and up pops a dialog box where you edit the scene heading and the scene's synopsis at the same time.

You are allowed to have directions between scenes e.g. you might have:

FADE OUT:

Title: Nine months later...

FADE IN:

but usually you use directions within chunks.

Q: There's no spell-checker. What can I do?

A: There IS a spelling checker with version 2 of ScriptMaker! Why not upgrade to ScriptMaker 2 today!

If you really are so poor you can't afford $20 (aaaaawww, and you're trying to make a MOVIE?!?!!??) and you still want to stick with the free version of ScriptMaker, there is still something you can do:

A: Export it to an XML file, then open this new XML file with Microsoft Word or some other word-processor to spell-check it BEING VERY CAREFUL only to change the actual content of your script, and not the XML code. Then save the changes and re-import it into ScriptMaker. If you've changed any of the XML, it will fail to re-import, and you'll have to export it to XML again from scratch.
Q: Is there a way of viewing and writing the script as a whole rather than in chunks?

A: You can export the script to RTF format and edit it using a conventional word-processor, such as Microsoft Word 97. There's no RTF import though. If you're really brave you can edit the XML file with a text-editor, but you might have problems importing it back into ScriptMaker if you mess things up!
Q: Is there a way of creating keyboard shortcuts for frequently used functions?

A: Certain standard key functions work, e.g.

Delete key - deletes something e.g. a scene.
CTRL-X - cut
CTRL-C - copy
CTRL-V - paste - these can be used for directions, dialog, scenes, chunks. You can also copy and paste bits of text around in the dialog boxes using ctrl-c, ctrl-v etc. but no you can't create shortcut keys. With version 1.12 ("one point twelve") there are shortcut keys which may be viewed via the Script Functions menu.

Right-click on something to edit it's synopsis. This works within the index card form as well. Note that if you have XML text in the clipboard, you only need to select an item in the list and press CTRL-V in order to paste it back in again. DON'T double-click on something in the list and then paste, or you'll be pasting garbage.

Q: What Import/Export features are there?

A: You can export the script to RTF. There is no RTF import. The freeware tool CutePDF may be used to "print" scripts as PDF files from within ScriptMaker.

In addition you can export/import to/from XML. XML is an internationally recognised standard which allows you define "mark-up" languages to represent structured documents. In ScriptMaker it is used for web pages but it would be perfectly possible for another programmer, experienced with XML to write something which would translate the XML output from ScriptMaker into ANY word-processor format. Moreover, XML uses a separate XSL file which specifies how the XML code is transformed into HTML, so you can alter the appearance of the web-page without touching the XML file generated by ScriptMaker. See Microsoft's web-pages for more info on XML/XSL.

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Storyboard Tools:
Q: How do I get started?

A: To get started with using ST, try the following steps:
Start a New Project, from the Project Menu, fill in the details and select OK. You will see that a tab has been created, labelled "Scene 1"
Use CTRL+N to create a new image object (you can also achieve this from the Image menu: Image | New)
Hold down CTRL and click on the image object. The Drawing Tool should now appear.
Click on the button marked Begin new image
Click on the "Huge" setting, and set the aspect-ratio to "Normal (4:3)" and click OK.
You should now see a large white rectangle in the drawing tool. This is the area within which you can draw.
Experiment with the drawing buttons at the top right of the drawing tool window.
Press OK to save the changes.
You should now see the drawing you just made within the image-object. Don't worry if the quality looks a bit poor.
To change the caption, Right-click on the image object
Click on CTRL+N to create another image
Note that changing the scene number of an image moves it to the tab with that scene number. If the tab doesn't exist, it is created automatically. If the original scene is left with no images in it, the scene tab is deleted automatically.
There is an example of a hand-drawn storyboard project which you can download from the website: .

You may also find extra information on the website under FAQs and Storyboarding Tips
Q: Is there a space to store directions and dialog with an image?

A: Within the Viewer utility you can RIGHT-CLICK on an image, which brings up the Properties information for that image. Type in any information you like in the Continuity information block. It doesn't get displayed with the image, but it gets printed when you print the Continuity check-list.
Q: When I try to print a storyboard project, only empty boxes with captions appear. What's gone wrong?

A: This is a problem with your printer-driver software, but there ways around this problem. The first thing you should try should be to download updated printer-drivers from your printer manufacturer's website and install them, making sure you have followed all the instructions. A second thing you can do is to just alter the printer properties. Sometimes it will come right, but this is a process of trial and error. AS A LAST RESORT, you can try the following:

Save your project.
From the Image menu select Image settings, and change the colour resolution to 24-bit colour.
If it doesn't work, reload the project.

Note that if you use this method, you will have to re-do it whenever you add new images, just prior to printing.

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SLang:
Q: What is SLang?

A: SLang is a story-creation tool, primarily of interest to writers. SLang stands for "Story-Language". It is a story-creation tool, similar to an index-card tool but much more sophisticated. It allows you to break your story down into "events", each of which will have a block of text describing the event.

In addition you can have any number of alternative versions of these text blocks for each event. SLang allows you to mark an event as "excluded" rather than having to delete it from the project, so you can come back to it later.

SLang allows you to define special rules for each event called dependency-relationships. These define which events depend on which others. SLang can then examine all the rules, and then put all the events in a sensible order automatically, and show you how it made its decisions.

Alternatively you can put the events in order manually. Either way, you can then generate an RTF or TXT file containing the whole story. Because of the way SLang allows you to specify dependency-relationships between events, SLang allows you to experiment with which events get included in the story and which don't, so you can experiment, generating alternative routes through your story.

The "Find shortest/longest path" utility finds out what events are required to reach a specified event in the story, and lists them in chronological order, thereby enabling you to deal with individual threads.

Music

My past clients include Mike Wallwork (now Wales Screen Commissioner), Guy Passmore (works in Derwen in Cardiff), Phil Moran (Ffab productions, Aberystwyth) Peter Morgan (writer and former broadcast journalist) and ITN. Please note: I don't work for free.
Musical Instruments
As you've gathered by now I'm something of a musician. My range of instruments includes South American pan-pipes, Australian didjeridus, synth, tenor and alto saxophone and various ethnic flutes, guitars and drums. Most of my work is instrumental and composed, performed and engineered by me.
Music clips
Here are some more MP3 clips of my music for you to listen to.
Cacharpaya (traditional - 577K)
Big Band (213K)
The News (87K)
Big Sax (210K)
Orchestral 1 (199K)
Space (224K)
Oz One (503K)
Romantic (299K)
Polka (304K)
Peece (455K)
Dominatrix (492K)
I have a demo CD available for anyone interested in doing business.

Curriculum Vitae

Here's a link to my music/writing CV. For the contact details see the Contact page.
Bands and other musical groups
Here is a list of the various musical groups I've played with over the years:

The Bogie-men-A one time excellent R&B; band based in Presteigne, I played tenor sax. Some of their members went on to form Steaming Cornflakes.

Billy Muldoon and the Celtic Twisters-Another one time local soul (?) group, which featured Rob Spragg (alias Larry Love of Alabama 3!!!). I played alto sax.

Aber Jazz-I've played clarinet with this local jazz group.

Aberystwyth Philomusica-a local orchestra comprising students and locals. I played clarinet, e-flat clarinet and alto sax with this lot.

I've also played with a variety of local wind-bands, dance-bands etc. and for a while I had my own "Music of the Andes" group. I've recorded material with Nigel Johnston , possibly one of the best exponents of the electric guitar in the UK.