Story Stub
1.
The Devil comes to Seattle. He puts on a play with the help of his assistants for the public, which defies both space and time. People start disappearing as they investigate the case. One of the disappeared happens to be the lover of our main character who deigns to demystify the Devil's charade.
2.
Martial law is declared across the nation. Many civilians opt to enter the FEMA camps stationed around isolated territory to escape the turmoil between NSA soldiers and the resistance. As casualties increase on both ends, one small group decides to level the playing field and disable the Grid.
3.
John spends his life traveling. He would struggle with loneliness if it wasn't for the face that John's travel suitcase is self-aware and talks. The only issue is that during a flight, the suitcase was dropped and thrown off kilter, now John and suitcase must travel the world in search for the missing parts and get suitcase back on track.
The trick with number one (for our purposes) would be to condense the action: There's likely not time in a short film to depict successive disappearances over the course of an investigation.... So the question is, how to viably stage this story structure in a short-form context... A central present-tense conversation with flashbacks of key moments? Another question: what's the tone/genre? I.e. what kind of mood are you feeling when you reflect on this idea--what kind of music do you hear when you picture the opening, and in combination with what kinds of images? Comic? Dramatic/tragic? Horror? A mix? (What kind of film evokes similar moods to those you'd currently associate with this story?)
ReplyDeleteRegarding the second story, the scope would tend to be too much for our purposes. So if you were going to develop this into a synopsis for next week, you'd need to solve this problem--perhaps by figuring out an analogous set of circumstances that could plausibly be staged in/around Cornish. Or perhaps by building the story around a central conversation in, say, the basement of an abandoned building (a setting that could conceivably be created in, say, the Centennial Lab building--up on the second floor, with all the bare pipes and concrete). There'd also be the question of whose story this and how they change.... (as with any story).
Third story idea would be a similar challenge, but even more so (if pitching this as an idea for our ensemble). You'd pretty much have to come up with an analogous circumstance (by listing circumstances/scenarios that could be executed in compelling fashion in a compressed time frame, either without the benefit of an international setting or through a creative means of recurring a common, easily staged element across different imaginary locales.....
Chuck
Regarding your third idea: perhaps, for some reason, the protagonist has to search various theaters around the world..... (which we depict using Raisbeck, 102, Poncho, and the Playhouse....).
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