You hear that, Mr Andersen?

48 hour writing

Okay, I'm not sure whether I remember how to do this right, but I'm going to attempt to hide part of this post behind a cut, since it's likely to be quite long, and not necessarily of interest to most people. :)

The writing team of Talula's 48 Hour Film entry got together last night for a practice run. Overall, I'm optimistic - I think we'd benefit from having a couple more practices, and possibly going through to a completed script, but I think the chances of the process breaking down completely and dysfunctionally are fairly slim. (I daresay that can be reserved for the end of the process.)

I feel I should give an outline of the second-draft script we came up with. We talked about what genre we thought we might have trouble with, and picked "Superhero". I grabbed three constraints from Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable, and we got "Nutmeg", "Beltway" and "The Grapes of Wrath". What emerged was a 1940s-style fascist society, where Diana was an operative of a governmental organization who hunted down and killed superheroes (but concealed her true job from her husband), and Josef sought a way to escape before he revealed his nascent superpowers to society (and his wife). "Nutmeg" was the slang word for the compound used by the government on superheroes; "The Beltway" was the name of the bar where Josef met Dr Hammet to buy letters of transit for him and his wife; and the book was the code by which he identified himself to Dr Hammet -- he put it down on the counter, and the money to pay for the letters was inside the cover.

Anyway... I thought it might be useful to me if I went through all eighteen genres, got a random set of three constraints for each, and try to come up with at least one script synopsis or jumping off point for each. I'd be very surprised if any of these gave me anything useful for the actual event, but that's not the point -- it's more about me getting a feel for each of the genres. The main reasons that I want to practice are:

(a) it's the main thing I've said I'll do

(b) there are 74 teams in Wellington (and so 4-5 in our genre with the same constraints), and another 202 in other centers (which translates to another 11-12 teams), so we want to be distinctive

(c) coming up with story synopses is kinda fun.

So, let's get started, shall we?

Genre 1: The Mockumentary
Constraints: Animatronics, Beulah, Blade Runner

Okay, this seems like the constraints are too close together. I mean, there's an obvious story - Blade Runner in the Deep South, with the happy black housekeeper (who's actually clockwork, though she doesn't know it) keeping an eye on the clockwork slaves - but we'd have a problem filming that, since we have no appropriate actress, nor sets that seem useable. So... since it's a pseudo-documentary, how about, "B.Eu.L.A.H. - Government Enabling Business!" It'd be a docmentary on the government bureau responsible for replacing the blue-collar workforce with cheap electronic labour. Lots of cheerful plucked-string background music and falsely hearty narration.

Alternately - it's a documentary about how many science fiction fans are actually automata, created specifically to boost sales of science fiction merchandise. "Beulah" could be the fake name of a "real" fan who is being interviewed (in silhouette, to preserve their annonymity) about how crappy SciFi is being pawned off on the unsuspecting public - if we use the same speech patterns as The Comicbook Guy from the Simpsons, it could work quite well. The tricky thing would be to avoid references to real franchises with real money who might really sue us - but then again, that's probably why "Blade Runner" wouldn't be an actual constraint. (Or "The Grapes of Wrath", for that matter - Steinbeck only died in 1968, so the work is still firmly in copyright.)

Anyway, that's two potentially filmable set-ups; on to the next!

Genre 2: The Silent Film
Constraints: "To usher in violins", "To cop a plea", "If you knows of a better 'ole, go to it."

Hmm. I don't think we're going to get out of using title cards. The trickiest thing here, I think, is the constraint "to cop a plea" - how do you convey a character agreeing to a lesser charge in order to avoid a greater one without (or with very little) dialogue? And even trickier, how do you make it funny?

The last constraint and the genre seem to be pushing really hard for a WWI movie, perhaps with a sour veteran pessimist Sarge and the innocent who the Sarge initially dislikes, but ends up defending against the big brass - possibly there'd be a scene where the Sarge uses the last constraint as a line, and the innocent ends up in the general's quarters, and comes happily back with cigars, claiming, "I found the better hole, Sarge!" However, I'd be worried that this was too obvious a tack to take.

So, an alternate? Okay, I have two possibilities, though I'm not convinced by either of them. In the first, the actors are in mouse suits... though how I'm going to do "cop a plea" in this setting, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it's a couple of bumbling mice before a judge, and we hear about how a caper they were trying went horribly/hilariously wrong? The other possibility is an email romance - both the actors are in their bedrooms, and we see them typing back and forth, jumping up from their keyboard, and so on - but they never talk. Lots of possibilities for physical comedy, and the IRC window replaces the title cards. You might even imply at the beginning that it's late at night, and they have to keep quiet so as not to disturb other people - or maybe one's in a internet cafe/library, and one has someone sleeping in a bed in the background? :) Actually, the more I think about this, the more I like it.

Moving on:

Genre 3: The Cop Movie
Constraints: Battleship Potemkin, "Up for it", Central Powers

And I couldn't get these constraints for the War Movie genre? Bah.

Okay, the first thing that springs into my head is a sci-fi piece - set in space, the Battleship Potemkin of the bolshevik Central Powers, with a story set around the Military Police of the ship. To Bring the Funny, play up the ridiculous bureaucracy, and the way people simply skirt it. Hmm, it might be too Bureaucracy Movie and not Cop Movie enough - maybe if we include the older captain who yells at them, and the mayor who wants to look good for the media, and other cop movie cliches?

Another take - the film revolves around a game of Risk (or something similar), and is actually all about the people who are playing reconnecting after leaving university or college. Maybe it's a fake boardgame, so we can do things like, "Bringing the Revolution, huh? Well, I play my Violent Suppression card - peasants dying, prams rolling down stairs, it's Battleship Potempkin all over again! Bwhah hah hah!" It would be nice if it could be about how people who've grown apart can still connect - not in the same way that they used to, but in a different, maybe better way. How is it a cop movie? Well... make one of them a cop, and one of the others have a problem with that.

Next!

Genre 4: The Science Fiction Film
Constraints: Krazy Kat, "Keep your chin up", The Darling Buds of May

I think I'll let the last constraint refer to the sonnet, rather than the book/TV series. The sonnet, for reference, is no. 18:

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date.

Okay, there's lots of scope here. The first constraint can be the location - a bar, a ship, a cafe. Since it's science fiction, I'm tempted to go with a reversal - the situation is static, because someone wants to keep things as they are. Here's one version - you have quite a short scene in a cafe, with a woman talking about some horrible problem, and the person she's talking to telling her something like, "Keep your chin up - it hurts like hell now, but it will get better as time passes." Then we replay the scene, but from a slightly different angle or something - the only thing that changes is the man in the background, who comes in and orders something different. And then we have the final pass, with the man who changes coming in with a friend, and raving about how cool this moment was, and how he knew he wanted to come back to it, so he caught it a few years ago, and uses it a couple of times a week to relax. Then make sure to get a shot of the woman with the problem from the first pass, who's in exactly the same position (and facing away from the visiting guys), but is obviously weeping terribly (mascara running, etc).

Whoops. Okay, that didn't Bring the Funny. Let's try again.

Here's an idea - we could use Frank and Nick Pitt, and go for a "recapturing your youth" kind of thing. How about this - Frank's character is in "The Darling Buds of May Clinic", which reverses aging, and he asks to be made 17. The doctor tries to talk him out of it, and tries to push various other ages, and points out that this will be his legal age, but he's adamant, and we transition to Nick. Then we find out that the whole reason that he's made this change is to get out of going with his wife to a terribly pretentious ballet "The Krazy Kat", which happens to be R18.

Hmm. Well, no-one else is likely to copy the idea, are they? :)

Moving on...

Genre 5: The Pretentious Foreign Film
Constraints: Bucket Shop, Rough Guides, "Rushed off my feet"

Okay, a "Bucket Shop" was originally a place that sold alcohol of dubious quality that had been brewed in buckets, and was then investment firms that played fast and loose with their investor's money, and now refers to travel shops that sell cheap (and especially illegal) airfares. But presumably a literal shop that sells buckets is also acceptable. :)

This is probably the hardest to do well, because pretty much anything will do. Like, you could have a black & white shot of a Rough Guide book to, say, Africa, intercut with really grainy handheld shots of a woman sitting behind the counter, drinking coffee, staring into space with animal noises in the background; a customer comes in, and it cuts to street noise. He says, "So, what do you sell, then?" "Buckets," she replies listlessly, obviously lying. "Much call for those, then?" "Rushed off me feet." The customer leaves, and the shop assistant goes back to dreaming of Africa...

Yeah, that's pretty crappy. Really, the only thing I can think of is to pretend to be doing a version of some well-known big-budget movie, but in a pretentious art film way, and incorporating the constraints fairly randomly. For example:

Les Anges De Jenni.
presente
Oeufs et jambon verts (Green Eggs And Ham).

"Would you, could you - with a goat?"
"Bucket."

Um... next!

Genre 6: The War Film
Constraints: "It makes you feel like the man you are.", Helpline, Identikit

The first constraint is an old Buick slogan, which I think is pretty awesome. :)

Which leads to my first idea - use the War movie motif's, but it's actually a competition between ad companies who're taking things way too seriously. The Identikit will be them trying to find the perfect person to front their campaign (which will go disasterously wrong), and one of them will get some sort of lame executive-related problem ("My god - he's got the caffine jitters!" "Call the helpline!" "I need 50ccs of camomile and a whalesong tape, stat!").

The other obvious idea is the propoganda/recruitment film. "Join the armed forces! Turn in Communists and other traitors to our way of life!" etc.

It's getting late, I'll try to hustle through the rest.

Genre 7: The Heist Movie
Constraints: "Cabbages and Kings", Nancy boy, Euroland

"Euroland" is apparently some American commentators' term for the emerging unification of Europe, as evidenced by the European Union.

I think the key thing in the heist movie is the switch: there needs to be a reveal near the end that puts what's gone before in a different light. First idea - a shop, "Euroland", which is along the lines of "Cool Britannia". The Nancy Boy is apparently trying to impress the shop assistant with stories of various capers he's pulled, speaking with a very affected air (and obviously quoting Alice In Wonderland at some point). However, it'll turn out in the end that this was all distracting patter, and he's actually pulled a con as he's been talking.

Second idea - it appears to be the heist planning scene, with tension between the loud non-European and the nancy-boy Euro. "Well, that may be how you do things over in Euro-land, but it ain't how we do things around here!" The first constraint can either be a quote, or... there's a hotel called the King's Arms that is smuggling in drugs inside cabbages. Hey, if they'll put them in breast implants, why wouldn't they take the time to grow cabbage leaves over them? :) The heist is to grab the drugs & drug money. But what would the twist be? Maybe they're both undercover agents (one international, one local) thinking they're going to be part of a big sting? Maybe one is blackmailing the other with threats to his daughter (who's involved with the blackmailer, unbeknowst to her father), but the father neatly turns tables somehow?

Genre 8: The Musical
Constraints: Golden Farewell, Men Behaving Badly, Black paper

Hmm. A black paper, by the way, is meant to be analogous to a white paper - except it's secret and internal to the organization. But in this context, maybe it's just paper that's black.

The obvious scenario is the office goodby party, with lots of songs that start out praising the person who's going, but end up whinging and slagging them off. Maybe it's a paper-making firm, and the guy going patented the TruBlack paper process - and the real creator is still there, moaning about how they were cheated out of their rightful recognition. I think that these songs would be really fun to write. :)

However, it might be too obvious - it seems likely that others will do a leaving party if one of the constraints is a "Golden farewell". So - how about a group of unscrupulous stockbrokers singing about how they're gutting the company and running for the Bahamas. "And since someone may tell, our accounts are a shell, it is time for our golden farewell!" And then, of course, the IRD break in and take them away... "Been arraigned to a cell, all our plans gone to hell, it's farewell to our golden farewell! Yes, it's farewell, to our gold-den, fare....well!" [clang]

I know that there are problems with synching and getting music - but writing lyrics is just so much fun! :)

Genre 9: The Soap Opera
Constraints: Ministry of Fun, Brain Gain, "Walkies!"

Okay, "Ministry of Fun" was "Ministry of National Heritage" in Britain.

I'd be tempted to do a more or less literal "soap opera" - make it a radio play ("Brought to you by Milkbone, the wacky chewbone from the Ministry of Fun Company!"), with the actors narrating into big microphones, and an installment of a some melodrama being broadcast (presumably live). Meanwhile, have something else going on - say, a lovers spat between two of the actors, which they're trying to do silently - and the others trying to adapt the play and account for the noises to the radio listeners. Product placement is really old, and used to be much more blatant, so we could easily work in other phrases. "You know what they say - get on the Brain Gain Train with Boffo-plus! For when you need IQ, I-quick!"

Otherwise... I suppose you could have an episode of a soap set in the Ministry of Fun's Department of Dog Care, with the crisis du jour being fresh blood being brought in to revitalise the department (and, the current staff believes, clear away the deadwood).

Genre 10: The Religious Film
Constraints: Java, Action man, League of Nations

Wargh. This is another one I suspect I'll have trouble with. In this context, I'd probably go with the Computer Language religious wars - Java, C++, Perl, Python... maybe newsreel footage of the League of Nations called upon to intervene in the increasingly bloody feuding between the different groups. I think we could make it funny for non-programmers - though I'll admit that most of the gags I thought up off the top of my head were pretty obscure.

Another possible conflict which might resonate more with the audience is Coffee. It could be a parable movie, all about how to get the perfect brew. "The Action Man is impatient, and sets the grind too large - weak and flavourless will his brew become. The Thoughtless Man is inattentive, and sets his grind too small - though he tamps and smooths perfectly, his brew will be imperfect. But the Righteous Man notes his grind and adjusts it if needed, not grinding more than is needful unto his brew thereof."

Genre 11: The Horror Movie
Constraints: The Toff, Bulldog Drummond, Buck Rogers

Uh. Other people have claimed that they are quite comfortable with this genre, so I'm simply going to note that anything with Bulldog Drummond in it is going to contain elements of horror.

Okay, so a quick stab - the toff works out a way to make characters from books he owns come into the real world. This doesn't work out quite as well as he'd like.

Genre 12: The Superhero Movie
Constraints: Kirlian Photography, Lazy Eye, Big Four

Um - superheroes Lazy Eye (can demotivate with a glance!) and Big Four (has a really big "4" on the front of his costume!) are called on to bust a fake Kirlian Photography ring!

Or - the Big Four, a superhero team, face off their nemesis, Kirlian Photography Inc., in a showdown at the Lazy Eye corral!

Or - a couple of beat cops are in a bar, bitching about their jobs in a superhero world. The "Big Four" are the four main types of villain they have to face (bricks, blasters, m.a.s, and weirdoes), Kirlian photography is one of the standard bits of police procedure, that sort of thing. "Man, Blasters are the worst. At least with Bricks and M.A.s, you can stay out of reach. Hey, didn't you have to deal with Withering Glance, like, a month ago? Why're you still standing?" "I got lucky. Plus, y'know, she's got a lazy eye - Mudman got her in the good one, and then it was just a case of staying the hell out of the way."

I think we've established that we can write in this genre.

Genre 13: The Fairytale
Constraints: Melvin, Quick Anger, "Join up the dots"

Here's what I'd like to do with this genre - take an existing fairytale, preferably something old and mildly exotic (like the Anansi stories), but have the visuals be modern and incorporating any of the elements that aren't already in the story. I'd also suggest having the elements appear to be plucked out of the air - you know: Start with an empty room with a window to outside, and then - "Once upon a time, there was a boy." [boy appears with a big badge that says 'Melvin']. "He lived with his mother..." [mother appears] "in a cottage in the woods." [trees appear outside the window] "They were happy..." [big tv appears in the background, they're grinning] "but poor." [tv replaced with much smaller tv, smiling a bit less] "Very poor." [replace tv with a copy of TV Guide; they appear despondent]

Another possibility is a just-so story. For this set of constraints, I'd be tempted to go with something like, "Why the Panther has no spots."

Genre 14: The Monster Movie
Constraints: "Swings and Roundabouts", Air guitar, Kid brother

Okay, this pretty much writes itself - playground, younger brother, feckless older brother, and monster and chase until done.

Or maybe something about the younger brother being ignored, but we learn that he can make things he believes in real (plays air guitar and we hear a guitar, stuff like that - and the older sibling yells at him to keep the noise down). The elder sibling gets fed up, and tells him a scary monster story to shut him up - a story that the younger brother believes...

Genre 15: The Educational Film
Constraints: Heavy Metal, Mae West, "Saved by the bell"

I don't think I need to write anything here, except to note that the American airforce called their life-jackets "Mae Wests", which apparently tickled the fancy of the woman in question. :)

Oh, all right - it's a film about how listening to bad music and looking at salacious pictures can send a student down the dark spiral to madness and addiction, and how you should just say no if you're pressured into looking at naughty pictures of Mae West or listening to Led Zepplin. The good student might be being pressured by the naughty ones, but luckly the end of lunchtime bell saves them from having to make a moral choice!

Genre 16: The Buddy Flick
Constraints: Caffe latte, Industrial action, Dullsville

Cafe bolsheviks plan to turn this town upside-down by rallying the proleteriat around their banner. (Proleteriat unimpressed by black-clad bolsheviks.)

Or - locked out of their office (and espresso machine) by striking cleaners, two office buddies decide to go on a (walking) "road trip" to find a decent cup of coffee. We discover that, despite being friends at the office for ten years, they don't really know each other at all...

Genre 17: The Romance Film
Constraints: Vanity plate, Evel Knievel, "Ee bah gum"

Okay, I don't know quite what's going on here, but it sounds like a jolly interesting film. Maybe - motorcycle/stunt nut called Eve and country boy getting together, but the girl is worried that he doesn't understand her - his gift of the license-plate "EVE KNVL" cements their romance, and they jump a bus into the blazing sunset...

Genre 18: The Action Movie
Constraints: Downing Street, Exhibit A, Red Dwarf

A British spy called upon to stop a villain from collapsing the sun, maybe?

Okay, now it's way later than I intended it to be, so I apologise if I've left any typos. But I did, indeed, find this a useful exercise - it made me think more deeply about the genres, and there might even be one or two things I can use. Yay. :)

Posted by svend at May 11, 2005 7:59 PM