Wednesday 23 July 2008

Script ideas

Probably the hardest part of this whole Scriptwriting business is actually coming up an idea that's not just got plenty to write about and explore, but is also sustainable in terms of research and logic of the world and characters.

I've had a couple of ideas so far, but i'm not happy with either as of yet. Anyway, here they are.

IDEA 1- The future. Due to the wholly consumerist nature of society over the past 30 years, the world has turned into a supposed utopia of pleasure- everywhere you look, new nightclubs are being built, fancy restaurants are being built in place of post offices, shopping centres sprawl in cubic miles. It is all there to enjoy, but there's just one catch- it all comes at a price. In order to afford this life of pleasure and greed, you must work 9-5 every day. Not a big deal you say, and it's not. Everyone slaves away during the day, and gets fucked off their heads at nights. There is balance in the world of CityA. But there's also no personality- everybody wants perfection. The girls all want the best bodies, the biggest boobs, the pornstar pout, because this how they will attact the well groomed, six-packed six foot alpha males that prowl the city in their Fashion cut suits. This is the story of Craig, the man who falls for the out of city bounds ditz of Lucy, with all her flaws and imperfections, and his eventual realisation of the lie that is CityA.

Now, i like this idea a lot- it's got romance, a political message and a city which will allow me to run free in terms of cityscape creativity. However, i am wary that crating a city in it's entirety through just a script is a tall order, especially if i want to nail the feel of the city. One way that this could be done is through lots of sweeping city shots, a la Lost in Translation, but it's still a tall that i'm not sure i'd be able to acheive adequately.

Although, by typing all that just then, it has just reinvigorated my will to try and take this idea further. Hmm.

IDEA 2- Not so focussed this one, but i had vague ideas about writing a creative piece about the Nazi Germany wartime experiments they did to try make superhumans. The idea was to write a fiction about what would have happened if they had succeeded in their plans, and actually made the superhuman SS- a bit like a comic book hero story gone horribly wrong. There's a lot of foibles by doing this though- through their testing, they killed huge amounts of people, mostly jews from concentration camps, which brings the holocaust, a very serious matter to what would otherwise be a piece of 'what-if' fantasy fluff. Also, I would have to do a hell of a lot of research in order to make it believeable and bring in luine with the actual Nazi experiments- there's no point writing something like this if it's not based at least partially in truth. Finally, and this is a big one, how could you end a film like this? The Nazi's would only go and bloody win!

I do like the idea, but it seems like there's just a bit too much going against it for me to get any really good potential out of it.

So there we go. I'll post more ideas as i have them.

1 comment:

Jack Spratski said...

Both ideas have some substance to them. For Idea 1, you mentioned that it would be hard to find ways to capture the essence of the city spirit. It would be stupid to just have someone explain the atmosphere of the city, so some suggestions I have are: Have a scene wherein a character (possibly Craig) is watching T.V. and there are some advertisements that explain small parts of the world. E.g. An advert for plastic surgery that implies that it's commonplace and almost essential. "Did your friend just get a new lift and is wowing the fellas? Well now, with new Ultrabeauty technology, you can be even more perfect." To imply that plastic surgery commercials have replaced commercials for beauty products. Another method would be to have the protagonist walking through the city, and having the script linger on certain aspects that show the audience what the city is like. Things like billboards, conversations, marketstalls, nightclubs, etc.

I'll ponder on how the second Idea could be utilized or ended for you.

Good ideas though.