My treatment for the story as it now stands...
Not having read the previous story-related posts until today, I've developed the story in another direction and would like to get your feedback.
We only have 15 minutes. 15 minutes in which to introduce our protagonist, put him up in a tree, throw rocks at him, and get him down. I like the idea of sculpting a socio-political landscape, but in 15 minutes it should be rather difficult given all the story beats that must be hit. So here's what I was thinking...
We open on narration. Our protagonist introduces himself as a member of the idle rich. Well, perhaps without the wealth. Who's to say that idleness should be enjoyed exclusively by the wealthy? We discover that he's a master of disguise. This plays out in conjunction with his narration: we see a man walking toward an old Victorian building. "The Fontiane Street Social Club for Gentlemen of Leisure." Posing as a messenger, our protagonist stops the man before he enters the club. He produces a note with an urgent message written on it. "Barnes, we're ruined! Lost every penny! Come at once. My messenger will escort you. Leopold." Barnes follows our protagonist into the alley, where he is then rendered unconscious. Our master of disguise then hastily changes into his Barnes costume and enters the club, where he proceeds to pick the pockets of every member inside. He periodically checks his watch as we cut to shots of the real Barnes blearily coming to. A little bell on the watch tinkles. We see the real Barnes stand up. Our protagonist pulls a tiny lever on his watch, and a mechanical arm affixed to the alley wall brings a mallet onto Barnes' head, returning him to his state of unconsciousness. On his way out, the protagonist produces the note again in front of everyone. "I'm ruined!" he shouts, for everyone to hear. His fellow members offer sympathy. A few offer loans on the spot, which he gladly accepts. He then returns to the alley, dons his messenger costume, and helps a very dizzy, confused Barnes to his feet. He escorts him up the steps to the social club and lets him loose at the door. Stumbling into the club, Barnes mumbles something about being ruined, and the messenger offers sympathies as he clicks back down the front steps toward the sidewalk. The whole sequence is done with quick cuts, as his narrations establishes his character and does a bit of world-building. His speech is very florid, and his manner is cavalier. He enjoys the art of disguise immensely and has never really had to work because of it.
As he reaches the bottom step, a large hook descends from the sky. Grabbing the back of his coat, it then lifts him into the air. We see him struggling a bit on the end of the hook before he's enveloped by a large airship. Mechanical arms bind him to a chair. Then we meet the Twins. Whether they're real twins really isn't important. As long as they dress alike and finish each other's sentences. I've also toyed with the idea of making one of them a black woman dressed in white and a white woman dressed in black. Same costume but inverse color. The Twins ask him if he has the component. They remind him that they have evidence against him for untold crimes, that they own the police, and that they can make things very bad for him.
He asks why they just can't take the component for themselves. And they say because he's the only one in the inventor's confidence. Our first mention of the inventor, who used to work for their boss, the Magnate, and whose invention is actually the Magnate's property since it was invented while the inventor was in the Magnate's service. The protagonist asks what the component does. They tell him that the magnate will not permit them to share that information. But they're interrupted by a voice from behind them. A large porcelain doll's head with a painted-on moustache and an eyepatch over one eye. The other eye glows. There is a Victrola cone protruding from its mouth. It's the voice of the Magnate, and tells the Twins to shut up, to which they respond, "yes daddy."
The doll's head goes on to explain that there's no danger in sharing his plan with a powerless little shit like our protagonist. He explains that the component has the ability to transmit knowledge, a sort of transmitter of brainwaves. In the course of the conversation we discover that he wishes to use it to transmit noise, addictive noise. Noise that will control the population while at the same time prevent them from thinking for themselves. They tell the protagonist that he has 24 hours to bring them the component or else.
The airship drops him into a pile of rubbish. Nearby a mute little boy covered in soot picks through the garbage for his supper. The protagonist tells him to go away, that he hates children. He dusts himself off and then angrily stomps off to the lair of the inventor, but the boy secretly follows.
He must traverse all manner of security contraptions to reach the door of the inventor's lair. With a final secret knock, the inventor opens the door, wearing some convoluted machine on his head. Something he's testing.
He motions behind the protagonist. "Who's that?" he says.
The protagonist turns around. "You followed me, you little criminal!"
"I hate children," says the inventor grumpily, and disappears into his lair.
"That's what I tried to tell him," says the protagonist, following him in, "but he insists on being eight years old!"
The inventor returns with a plate of food and hands it gruffly to the boy.
"Eat," he says. "Or you'll waste away, and we'll have to find another little boy to hate."
They allow the little boy inside, and he eats his sandwich, looking on as the inventor shows the protagonist what he's been working on. The inventor asks him how his wristwatch-controlled mallet worked, and he said that it worked a treat, producing the inventor's share of the take from his trip to the social club.
The protagonist inquires about the Component, and the inventor offers a demonstration. He opens a dusty old book and holds a light over it. Another light he aims at the protagonist.
"Act One, Scene One of Macbeth," the inventor says, and begins to turn a crank. The light illuminates the words on the page, and as it does, the protagonist begins to recite the opening lines of the play.
"That's remarkable," he says, "I've just memorized the first scene!"
"And with a more powerful crank, you could transmit that knowledge to an entire city," says the inventor. "But I don't dare let it out of this room. It might too easily fall into the wrong hands."
As the inventor turns his back, the protagonist hits him over the head with the mallet from opening scene. He then takes the Component and makes for the door. Outside he's met by the boy, who scowls at him reproachfully.
"Don't look at me like that! I'm in trouble with some very powerful people, and if I don't hand this over I'll... But I don't owe you an explanation. Who made you the voice of my conscience?" he says. "You don't even have a voice!" And with this, he storms past the little boy, knocking him to the ground. He gets a few steps away, and in closeup we can see a change of heart visibly reflected on his face. He's angry and reluctant.
He returns to the boy, picks him up off the ground, crouches down in his face and says (like a rebellious teenager to his scolding parent), "Fine! But I want you to know that I hate you now the most that I've ever hated anyone!"
He returns to the inventor's lair. Inside we see that he's helped him into a chair and given him an ice pack for the bump on his head. He explains his situation and the inventor, who, though still a bit angry, agrees to help him. But no sooner does he agree than a few uniformed troops march in and apprehend the protagonist and the inventor, followed by the twins, who fight over who gets to take the Component.
We're next aboard the airship. Both protagonist and inventor are bound in chairs. The Magnate cackles with laughter through the Victorian doll's head. They demand to know where the other light is. It seems they found only the bit you aim at the person's head. The rest of the component, the bit with the crank, is missing. The protagonist explains that he has no idea what happened to it, insulting the Magnate as he does. The twins beat him and begin to torture the inventor. In the commotion, the Component is knocked over. It's now facing the protagonist's head. The light comes on. We cut to a shot of the boy, down below, turning the crank on the Component as it illuminates another book: Harry Houdini's "The Art of Escape". We watch as the protagonist receives the information contained in the book. He is able to remove his bonds and grabs the Component, hitting one of the Twins over the head. The other twin grabs her own head in response–a play on the old Corsican brothers sympathetic pain thing–and falls to the floor. He releases the inventor. The pair of them jump behind a control panel as uniformed guards storm into the room. The inventor explains quickly which building the magnate is headquartered in, and reveals that the magnate himself is housed at the top of the building.
"Try to take control of the ship and steer us into the Magnate's headquarters," says the protagonist. "I'll set about securing our escape."
The inventor sneaks off to the control room of the airship as the protagonist fends off the guards. Chaos ensues. One of the twins grabs for the Component, and falls with the protagonist behind a piece of machinery. We can hear a scuffle and she emerges holding the Component.
"He's out cold! Bind and gag him!" she shouts. "Where is the inventor?"
She grabs one of the guard's blunderbusses and storms purposefully into the cockpit. She's had enough. In the cockpit we see that the pilot of the vessel is out cold. The inventor is confidently steering the ship toward a building.
"Let go of the wheel!" she says. The inventor turns around slowly.
In the back of the airship we hear the Magnate say, "Help your sister!" and the other Twin runs hastily toward the cockpit door. The door opens just as she reaches it, and we see the other Twin emerge carrying the inventor, who is wearing a gag and whose hands are bound behind his back.
"Thanks for your help!" she shouts facetiously, and urges the inventor toward the back of the room, toward the seated protagonist. "Did you bind and gag (the protagonist) like you were supposed to or do I have to do that for you too?"
The other twin's eyes burn with a white-hot intensity. The rivalrous nature of their relationship is clear.
"You kill that one and I'll kill the inventor," says the twin who still had the inventor in her grasp. She tosses a gun to her sister, who aims it at the head of the seated protagonist. The protagonist is shouting through his gag, pleading, his eyes bulging as though he has something urgent to tell her. No! he seems to be shouting.
"Quiet!" says the twin, and hits him in the head with the butt of her gun. And to her great surprise it hurts her own head. Just as we saw before, when her twin was hit, she was hurt. And now she discovers that hitting the protagonist hurts her. The camera is close on her face as she realizes that the seated protagonist is actually her sister. In the background we hear shouting. Shouting growing louder. We cut to the doll's head, frantically shouting to turn the ship around. We then see a view of the airship from the top floor of the Magnate's building. And the Magnate is inside, shouting into a large cone, telling them to turn the ship around. We then watch as the airship drifts lazily into the Magnate's office, causing an impressive explosion.
We then dissolve to a shot of the inventor slowly drifting to the earth in a parachuted escape pod with someone who looks to be the other twin. The twin removes her mask to reveal that she's actually the protagonist. He explains via narration that any disguise artist can alter his own appearance to resemble that of someone else, but to be a true master of disguise, one must be able to alter someone else's appearance to resemble himself.
The final shot is that of the little boy, silhouetted against the sky as he watches the parachute drift to earth.
End.
Of course there's room to tweak things. The Component, or whatever it winds up being called, is a two-piece instrument. How it works is open to tweaking and discussion. As long as the little boy can use it to aid the protagonist's escape. Other elements of the story can be changed as well. Let me know if anything is unfeasible. Jean-Jacques has several doll heads in his workshop, and I thought they'd make a great avatar for the Magnate. Something creepy, childlike, emanating the voice of an angry adult male.
For the protagonist I recommend casting Mark Castle. He's a theatre professor at UAB who hails from England. The fewer southern accents we have in this thing, the more credible it becomes, and fake accents should be avoided at all costs. Unless they're convincing. The boy should be mute. This will endear him to the audience and add to his mystique while not mitigating their suspension of disbelief by talking in too modern a voice.
I'm sure my treatment has left many holes and questions. And you may wish to go another route entirely. It may also be unfeasible. I'm open to ideas. I tried to keep the cast small. In the beginning we do a little world-building, we see our hero plying his trade as a disguise artist. We then set up the bad guy and his plan to control minds. Creepy imagery, doll's head. Twins. We get an airship in there. We then meet the grumpy inventor, whose workshop can be populated with all manner of clockwork wotsits. The kid adds that Spielberg factor. The guards I'm picturing in turn-of-the-century stormtrooper type costumes. The climax returns us to the airship and the resolution allows our hero to use his proficiency in the art of disguise that we establish in the beginning. Of course to get it done in a timely manner it would all have to move rather quickly. But I think it can be accomplished with quick cuts and actors who don't labor over their dialogue. Fast, peppy "His Girl Friday"-like exchanges will keep things moving and keep the audience on their toes. Lots of witty interplay between the protagonist and the various other characters. It would need the pacing of an Edgar Wright movie to pull it off within the time allotted, but it can be done.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments!
-Sam
Not having read the previous story-related posts until today, I've developed the story in another direction and would like to get your feedback.
We only have 15 minutes. 15 minutes in which to introduce our protagonist, put him up in a tree, throw rocks at him, and get him down. I like the idea of sculpting a socio-political landscape, but in 15 minutes it should be rather difficult given all the story beats that must be hit. So here's what I was thinking...
We open on narration. Our protagonist introduces himself as a member of the idle rich. Well, perhaps without the wealth. Who's to say that idleness should be enjoyed exclusively by the wealthy? We discover that he's a master of disguise. This plays out in conjunction with his narration: we see a man walking toward an old Victorian building. "The Fontiane Street Social Club for Gentlemen of Leisure." Posing as a messenger, our protagonist stops the man before he enters the club. He produces a note with an urgent message written on it. "Barnes, we're ruined! Lost every penny! Come at once. My messenger will escort you. Leopold." Barnes follows our protagonist into the alley, where he is then rendered unconscious. Our master of disguise then hastily changes into his Barnes costume and enters the club, where he proceeds to pick the pockets of every member inside. He periodically checks his watch as we cut to shots of the real Barnes blearily coming to. A little bell on the watch tinkles. We see the real Barnes stand up. Our protagonist pulls a tiny lever on his watch, and a mechanical arm affixed to the alley wall brings a mallet onto Barnes' head, returning him to his state of unconsciousness. On his way out, the protagonist produces the note again in front of everyone. "I'm ruined!" he shouts, for everyone to hear. His fellow members offer sympathy. A few offer loans on the spot, which he gladly accepts. He then returns to the alley, dons his messenger costume, and helps a very dizzy, confused Barnes to his feet. He escorts him up the steps to the social club and lets him loose at the door. Stumbling into the club, Barnes mumbles something about being ruined, and the messenger offers sympathies as he clicks back down the front steps toward the sidewalk. The whole sequence is done with quick cuts, as his narrations establishes his character and does a bit of world-building. His speech is very florid, and his manner is cavalier. He enjoys the art of disguise immensely and has never really had to work because of it.
As he reaches the bottom step, a large hook descends from the sky. Grabbing the back of his coat, it then lifts him into the air. We see him struggling a bit on the end of the hook before he's enveloped by a large airship. Mechanical arms bind him to a chair. Then we meet the Twins. Whether they're real twins really isn't important. As long as they dress alike and finish each other's sentences. I've also toyed with the idea of making one of them a black woman dressed in white and a white woman dressed in black. Same costume but inverse color. The Twins ask him if he has the component. They remind him that they have evidence against him for untold crimes, that they own the police, and that they can make things very bad for him.
He asks why they just can't take the component for themselves. And they say because he's the only one in the inventor's confidence. Our first mention of the inventor, who used to work for their boss, the Magnate, and whose invention is actually the Magnate's property since it was invented while the inventor was in the Magnate's service. The protagonist asks what the component does. They tell him that the magnate will not permit them to share that information. But they're interrupted by a voice from behind them. A large porcelain doll's head with a painted-on moustache and an eyepatch over one eye. The other eye glows. There is a Victrola cone protruding from its mouth. It's the voice of the Magnate, and tells the Twins to shut up, to which they respond, "yes daddy."
The doll's head goes on to explain that there's no danger in sharing his plan with a powerless little shit like our protagonist. He explains that the component has the ability to transmit knowledge, a sort of transmitter of brainwaves. In the course of the conversation we discover that he wishes to use it to transmit noise, addictive noise. Noise that will control the population while at the same time prevent them from thinking for themselves. They tell the protagonist that he has 24 hours to bring them the component or else.
The airship drops him into a pile of rubbish. Nearby a mute little boy covered in soot picks through the garbage for his supper. The protagonist tells him to go away, that he hates children. He dusts himself off and then angrily stomps off to the lair of the inventor, but the boy secretly follows.
He must traverse all manner of security contraptions to reach the door of the inventor's lair. With a final secret knock, the inventor opens the door, wearing some convoluted machine on his head. Something he's testing.
He motions behind the protagonist. "Who's that?" he says.
The protagonist turns around. "You followed me, you little criminal!"
"I hate children," says the inventor grumpily, and disappears into his lair.
"That's what I tried to tell him," says the protagonist, following him in, "but he insists on being eight years old!"
The inventor returns with a plate of food and hands it gruffly to the boy.
"Eat," he says. "Or you'll waste away, and we'll have to find another little boy to hate."
They allow the little boy inside, and he eats his sandwich, looking on as the inventor shows the protagonist what he's been working on. The inventor asks him how his wristwatch-controlled mallet worked, and he said that it worked a treat, producing the inventor's share of the take from his trip to the social club.
The protagonist inquires about the Component, and the inventor offers a demonstration. He opens a dusty old book and holds a light over it. Another light he aims at the protagonist.
"Act One, Scene One of Macbeth," the inventor says, and begins to turn a crank. The light illuminates the words on the page, and as it does, the protagonist begins to recite the opening lines of the play.
"That's remarkable," he says, "I've just memorized the first scene!"
"And with a more powerful crank, you could transmit that knowledge to an entire city," says the inventor. "But I don't dare let it out of this room. It might too easily fall into the wrong hands."
As the inventor turns his back, the protagonist hits him over the head with the mallet from opening scene. He then takes the Component and makes for the door. Outside he's met by the boy, who scowls at him reproachfully.
"Don't look at me like that! I'm in trouble with some very powerful people, and if I don't hand this over I'll... But I don't owe you an explanation. Who made you the voice of my conscience?" he says. "You don't even have a voice!" And with this, he storms past the little boy, knocking him to the ground. He gets a few steps away, and in closeup we can see a change of heart visibly reflected on his face. He's angry and reluctant.
He returns to the boy, picks him up off the ground, crouches down in his face and says (like a rebellious teenager to his scolding parent), "Fine! But I want you to know that I hate you now the most that I've ever hated anyone!"
He returns to the inventor's lair. Inside we see that he's helped him into a chair and given him an ice pack for the bump on his head. He explains his situation and the inventor, who, though still a bit angry, agrees to help him. But no sooner does he agree than a few uniformed troops march in and apprehend the protagonist and the inventor, followed by the twins, who fight over who gets to take the Component.
We're next aboard the airship. Both protagonist and inventor are bound in chairs. The Magnate cackles with laughter through the Victorian doll's head. They demand to know where the other light is. It seems they found only the bit you aim at the person's head. The rest of the component, the bit with the crank, is missing. The protagonist explains that he has no idea what happened to it, insulting the Magnate as he does. The twins beat him and begin to torture the inventor. In the commotion, the Component is knocked over. It's now facing the protagonist's head. The light comes on. We cut to a shot of the boy, down below, turning the crank on the Component as it illuminates another book: Harry Houdini's "The Art of Escape". We watch as the protagonist receives the information contained in the book. He is able to remove his bonds and grabs the Component, hitting one of the Twins over the head. The other twin grabs her own head in response–a play on the old Corsican brothers sympathetic pain thing–and falls to the floor. He releases the inventor. The pair of them jump behind a control panel as uniformed guards storm into the room. The inventor explains quickly which building the magnate is headquartered in, and reveals that the magnate himself is housed at the top of the building.
"Try to take control of the ship and steer us into the Magnate's headquarters," says the protagonist. "I'll set about securing our escape."
The inventor sneaks off to the control room of the airship as the protagonist fends off the guards. Chaos ensues. One of the twins grabs for the Component, and falls with the protagonist behind a piece of machinery. We can hear a scuffle and she emerges holding the Component.
"He's out cold! Bind and gag him!" she shouts. "Where is the inventor?"
She grabs one of the guard's blunderbusses and storms purposefully into the cockpit. She's had enough. In the cockpit we see that the pilot of the vessel is out cold. The inventor is confidently steering the ship toward a building.
"Let go of the wheel!" she says. The inventor turns around slowly.
In the back of the airship we hear the Magnate say, "Help your sister!" and the other Twin runs hastily toward the cockpit door. The door opens just as she reaches it, and we see the other Twin emerge carrying the inventor, who is wearing a gag and whose hands are bound behind his back.
"Thanks for your help!" she shouts facetiously, and urges the inventor toward the back of the room, toward the seated protagonist. "Did you bind and gag (the protagonist) like you were supposed to or do I have to do that for you too?"
The other twin's eyes burn with a white-hot intensity. The rivalrous nature of their relationship is clear.
"You kill that one and I'll kill the inventor," says the twin who still had the inventor in her grasp. She tosses a gun to her sister, who aims it at the head of the seated protagonist. The protagonist is shouting through his gag, pleading, his eyes bulging as though he has something urgent to tell her. No! he seems to be shouting.
"Quiet!" says the twin, and hits him in the head with the butt of her gun. And to her great surprise it hurts her own head. Just as we saw before, when her twin was hit, she was hurt. And now she discovers that hitting the protagonist hurts her. The camera is close on her face as she realizes that the seated protagonist is actually her sister. In the background we hear shouting. Shouting growing louder. We cut to the doll's head, frantically shouting to turn the ship around. We then see a view of the airship from the top floor of the Magnate's building. And the Magnate is inside, shouting into a large cone, telling them to turn the ship around. We then watch as the airship drifts lazily into the Magnate's office, causing an impressive explosion.
We then dissolve to a shot of the inventor slowly drifting to the earth in a parachuted escape pod with someone who looks to be the other twin. The twin removes her mask to reveal that she's actually the protagonist. He explains via narration that any disguise artist can alter his own appearance to resemble that of someone else, but to be a true master of disguise, one must be able to alter someone else's appearance to resemble himself.
The final shot is that of the little boy, silhouetted against the sky as he watches the parachute drift to earth.
End.
Of course there's room to tweak things. The Component, or whatever it winds up being called, is a two-piece instrument. How it works is open to tweaking and discussion. As long as the little boy can use it to aid the protagonist's escape. Other elements of the story can be changed as well. Let me know if anything is unfeasible. Jean-Jacques has several doll heads in his workshop, and I thought they'd make a great avatar for the Magnate. Something creepy, childlike, emanating the voice of an angry adult male.
For the protagonist I recommend casting Mark Castle. He's a theatre professor at UAB who hails from England. The fewer southern accents we have in this thing, the more credible it becomes, and fake accents should be avoided at all costs. Unless they're convincing. The boy should be mute. This will endear him to the audience and add to his mystique while not mitigating their suspension of disbelief by talking in too modern a voice.
I'm sure my treatment has left many holes and questions. And you may wish to go another route entirely. It may also be unfeasible. I'm open to ideas. I tried to keep the cast small. In the beginning we do a little world-building, we see our hero plying his trade as a disguise artist. We then set up the bad guy and his plan to control minds. Creepy imagery, doll's head. Twins. We get an airship in there. We then meet the grumpy inventor, whose workshop can be populated with all manner of clockwork wotsits. The kid adds that Spielberg factor. The guards I'm picturing in turn-of-the-century stormtrooper type costumes. The climax returns us to the airship and the resolution allows our hero to use his proficiency in the art of disguise that we establish in the beginning. Of course to get it done in a timely manner it would all have to move rather quickly. But I think it can be accomplished with quick cuts and actors who don't labor over their dialogue. Fast, peppy "His Girl Friday"-like exchanges will keep things moving and keep the audience on their toes. Lots of witty interplay between the protagonist and the various other characters. It would need the pacing of an Edgar Wright movie to pull it off within the time allotted, but it can be done.
Let me know if you have any questions or comments!
-Sam
