Short 5 Page Comedy About Pacman

RyanT

RyanT

Veteran
I've had this idea for a while and have been really interested in making a film with some heavy narration. It's a short about pacman and his life after he's been released from the maze.

Click here

The only thing I'm not too happy about is my narrations are too specific, so the visual is just kind of there and not providing you with more information. Maybe that's how it's supposed to be though, maybe you'll like it like that? No idea.

Tell me what you think! Constructive Criticism is always welcome.
 
Hmm. Well, on the plus side, I kept reading, I usually don't with stuff like this. At first I was like, this could be funny. I envisioned these guys in those big foam costumes, you know, like those jerks on city corners dressed up like cell phones, twirling signs. That could be pretty hillarious, but then I kept reading...

I guess I couldn't get my arms around the story. I wanted to laugh, but failed to do so. Question. Is this a comedy? I then thought maybe you were going for the 'this is a dramatic story with absurd characters', kinda like a Wes Anderson thing, where the comedy is a bi-product of outrageous characters, but...that didn't ring true either as I read on.

I would re-visit the story. Let me try to lay out the beats as I remember them...

Pac man is ousted from the maze. He has a roomate, blinky, a guy who he doesn't like obviously but shacks up with. Eh. Okay. I thought that it would have been a cool idea if Ms. Pac-man was his reason for being ousted from the maze, because she became the more popular game you know, but whatever.

Then it get's weird. He rambles on in VO forever about pretty much nothing. I mean he goes on and on about blinky being kinda strange and slowly turning bad (which he is anyway, right?) then blinky flips and goes after him (expected, we've all played the game). Then, he gets a power pill and gets blinky....again, we've all played the game, so what's the deal? What's the spin on this? I couldn't quite find your story, beginning, middle or end. The pay-off here was obviously expected, you're not telling us anything new. The set-up was almost interesting, but then it fell flat. The 'wacka wacka' thing was played out, I mean it seemed to be the only joke you had in there, over and over again.

What did I miss here? Maybe I need to read this again.

I did however enjoy your writing, don't get me wrong. I think you have talent, and that's half the battle. You simply need to refine the story and flesh it out. Make it yours somehow. Don't just take the concept of the game and rewrite it for film. Good luck.
 
You should add this quote to the end:

"Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if PacMan affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music." - Kristian Wilson, Nintendo, Inc, 1989

:grin:
 
I thought it was funny. It'd probably have been funnier if I'd played pacman. I haven't. Blinky is one of the characters in the game I assume.
If you had good performers, This could be really amusing as a 3 or 4 minute short.
 
alveraz said:
Hmm. Well, on the plus side, I kept reading, I usually don't with stuff like this. At first I was like, this could be funny. I envisioned these guys in those big foam costumes, you know, like those jerks on city corners dressed up like cell phones, twirling signs. That could be pretty hillarious, but then I kept reading...

I guess I couldn't get my arms around the story. I wanted to laugh, but failed to do so. Question. Is this a comedy? I then thought maybe you were going for the 'this is a dramatic story with absurd characters', kinda like a Wes Anderson thing, where the comedy is a bi-product of outrageous characters, but...that didn't ring true either as I read on.

I would re-visit the story. Let me try to lay out the beats as I remember them...

Pac man is ousted from the maze. He has a roomate, blinky, a guy who he doesn't like obviously but shacks up with. Eh. Okay. I thought that it would have been a cool idea if Ms. Pac-man was his reason for being ousted from the maze, because she became the more popular game you know, but whatever.

Then it get's weird. He rambles on in VO forever about pretty much nothing. I mean he goes on and on about blinky being kinda strange and slowly turning bad (which he is anyway, right?) then blinky flips and goes after him (expected, we've all played the game). Then, he gets a power pill and gets blinky....again, we've all played the game, so what's the deal? What's the spin on this? I couldn't quite find your story, beginning, middle or end. The pay-off here was obviously expected, you're not telling us anything new. The set-up was almost interesting, but then it fell flat. The 'wacka wacka' thing was played out, I mean it seemed to be the only joke you had in there, over and over again.

What did I miss here? Maybe I need to read this again.

I did however enjoy your writing, don't get me wrong. I think you have talent, and that's half the battle. You simply need to refine the story and flesh it out. Make it yours somehow. Don't just take the concept of the game and rewrite it for film. Good luck.
Click to expand...

I do plan on having the huge foam costumes, which is obviously going to be a plus to all of it. I really am going for the "it's funny because the characters/everything is outrageous", but I guess I didn't really capture that as I wanted to. Honestly, I haven't done any revisions to the story so I think it DEFINITELY needs some refining to the story as well as other things.

I was thinking about pacman getting ousted from the maze because of ms. Pac man, but considering that pacmans in the game with Ms. Pacman I wasn't really sure if I should stay true to the game or just make it my own. I agree that it'd be more interesting if he was ousted because of that and I think I may add that in.

I'll probably go over it with a few of my friends, hopefully I can make it a little more interesting. Thank you for the advice though, it helps.
 
If I was developing this I'd have pacman more depressed and despondeant. I'd have him hitting the bottle or something or maybe seeing a shrink. seeing a shrink would cut down on the v/o and provide a little more visual info.
 
I just re-read it and I'm starting to see what you mean with the wakka wakka stuff. I'm also going to try and combine a few parts and add a little more here and there. I'll post up the revision when I'm done. As for making it my own though...oh god, that'll take a while.
 
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Just read this and had an idea for a different path:

PacMan gets the boot (along with Mrs. Pac and the baby).

Shot of the office through a glass window. Fade in the audio in time to hear the boss tell him that he just isn't in demand anymore. While the dejection is sinking in, the boss adds, "I hate to add to do this to you, what with the newborn and all, but I have to let your wife go, too." Upon leaving, he can see Laura Croft sitting at his desk in the office. He picks up a box with his personal effect on the way out - a couple bobble head ghosts, large sculture of cherries and a plaque with 9 key on it are visible in the box, along with the joystick from an Atari 2600.

Next scene:

PacMan is in the unemployment line with Donkey Kong. They are obviously discussing their troubles, commisserating. Pac-Man glances over and the camera focus changed to the welfare line where Mrs. Pacman is looking like she came from the trailer-park with her baby pac in tow getting food stamps and those WIC packs to help women with infant children.

Next scenes:

PacMan is seen walking into Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft buildings with a resume in hand, only to come out with his head held low while sad music from the 70's plays, maybe dreamweaver or something.

While walking home, he passes a thrift store with some old games in the window. He looks at them and feels sad for them, but out of the corner of his eye he sees some 40-something year old guys excitedly loading a Galaga game into the back of a pick-up. An expression on his face shows an idea has formed.

Next scene

Finally, we see PacMan in a nice office. In the waiting room, there is a line of all the classic arcade heros - Dig Dug, The Ikari Warriors, Wizard of Wor, the 4 characters from Gauntlet. Outside the window you can see the car from Pole Position and the Defender ship in the parking lot.

As we pan out, we can see the entire building in a widescreen shot. various characters are lined up down the block - Centipede taking up much of the space. At the other end, trucks are being loaded with game machines. The MAME logo is above the window. Fade out while music plays - something like "Back in the Saddle Again"

I would think that could actually work really well for a commercial for MAME. It probably could stand to be polished up quite a bit - I only put about 10 minutes into it so there isn't much dialog but I don't think there needs to be. After all, none of those characters really spoke.
 
Mike Poindexter said:
Just read this and had an idea for a different path:

PacMan gets the boot (along with Mrs. Pac and the baby).

Shot of the office through a glass window. Fade in the audio in time to hear the boss tell him that he just isn't in demand anymore. While the dejection is sinking in, the boss adds, "I hate to add to do this to you, what with the newborn and all, but I have to let your wife go, too." Upon leaving, he can see Laura Croft sitting at his desk in the office. He picks up a box with his personal effect on the way out - a couple bobble head ghosts, large sculture of cherries and a plaque with 9 key on it are visible in the box, along with the joystick from an Atari 2600.

Next scene:

PacMan is in the unemployment line with Donkey Kong. They are obviously discussing their troubles, commisserating. Pac-Man glances over and the camera focus changed to the welfare line where Mrs. Pacman is looking like she came from the trailer-park with her baby pac in tow getting food stamps and those WIC packs to help women with infant children.

Next scenes:

PacMan is seen walking into Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft buildings with a resume in hand, only to come out with his head held low while sad music from the 70's plays, maybe dreamweaver or something.

While walking home, he passes a thrift store with some old games in the window. He looks at them and feels sad for them, but out of the corner of his eye he sees some 40-something year old guys excitedly loading a Galaga game into the back of a pick-up. An expression on his face shows an idea has formed.

Next scene

Finally, we see PacMan in a nice office. In the waiting room, there is a line of all the classic arcade heros - Dig Dug, The Ikari Warriors, Wizard of Wor, the 4 characters from Gauntlet. Outside the window you can see the car from Pole Position and the Defender ship in the parking lot.

As we pan out, we can see the entire building in a widescreen shot. various characters are lined up down the block - Centipede taking up much of the space. At the other end, trucks are being loaded with game machines. The MAME logo is above the window. Fade out while music plays - something like "Back in the Saddle Again"

I would think that could actually work really well for a commercial for MAME. It probably could stand to be polished up quite a bit - I only put about 10 minutes into it so there isn't much dialog but I don't think there needs to be. After all, none of those characters really spoke.
Click to expand...

That's actually not a bad idea for a commercial, as a movie I don't think enough people would know what Mame is, that could really work out though.
 
Actually, I was thinking about that after I posted it and if it wasn't a commercial for MAME, you could have the company name "Vintage Arcade Company" and have a NOW HIRING sign in the window at the head of the line.

I think I will talk to a local animator and see about doing a live action animation for this a la Roger Rabbit. We wouldn't even need high resolution renders for the video game guys - fat bits and stair stepping would probably be OK and just add to the charm.
 
brianluce said:
I thought it was funny. It'd probably have been funnier if I'd played pacman. I haven't. Blinky is one of the characters in the game I assume.
If you had good performers, This could be really amusing as a 3 or 4 minute short.
Click to expand...

What!? You haven't played Pac-Man! I didn't know that was possible.
 
Anthem78 said:
What!? You haven't played Pac-Man! I didn't know that was possible.
Click to expand...

I was a neglected child--deprived of the things most kids take for granted like food, water, oxygen. It was tough.
 
And here I was on the opposite end of the spectrum - I actually owned Pac Man Fever on vinyl! Not the single, but the whole album. I can remember a couple of the songs, Ode to a Centipede (crap) and Do The Donkey Kong (not that bad). I suppose that should be in Pac Man's box of personal effects, too.
 
I guess I was left with..... so where does Pacman go from here? He is depressed, felt better cause he ate Blinky... then? I did like the visualisation of Pacman day dreaming and running into the car. I think your story has some really good points.

Also, I dont want to be a grammer cop but this is a script and IMO any script should be grammatically correct.

For example:

Blinky sits in his room with the radio as his red body reaches over and turns his
radio up.

As this is the first time we hear or see the radio it should be referred to as "a radio". And also we don't know that is HIS radio. The sentence also has two actions.
Blinky sits in his room with a radio beside him. He manouvres his red body to turn up the volume.

This way we know there's A radio, where it is and no longer are concerened with whose radio it is. We will assume it's his.

Then there's my re-write:

Blinky is sitting in his room. A song fades out on the radio beside him.

Radio Announcer
And now the biggest hit of the summer. The one youv'e all been waiting for...

Blinky looks at it excitedly. The theme from Ghostbuster's begins playing.

Blinky
Wakaaaaaaaaaa

He attacks it. The radio still playing dissapears inside him. He wretches, his body convulses. The shattered remains of the radio spew from his mouth onto the floor. The speaker still manages to emit a disparate tone. Blinky, enraged, begins bouncing of the walls.


Hmm then again Ghostbuster,s wasnt released until 8 June 1984.
 
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Get rid of Blinky and use the dum dum Orange ghost, Clyde. Kind of like an Odd Couple kind of thing. Maybe Clyde finally got tossed out of the maze because he kept screwing up. Now the two have to face the cold hard world alone? But at least they have each other! (Queue Midnight Cowboy theme.)

John G.
 
cinealma said:
Get rid of Blinky and use the dum dum Orange ghost, Clyde. Kind of like an Odd Couple kind of thing. Maybe Clyde finally got tossed out of the maze because he kept screwing up. Now the two have to face the cold hard world alone? But at least they have each other! (Queue Midnight Cowboy theme.)

John G.
Click to expand...

Also, Clyde got replaced by Sue in Ms. Pac-Man. It was probably a nepotism thing - Inky, Blinky and Pinky were all siblings. Clyde must have been the red-headed stepchild of the group.
 
cinealma said:
Get rid of Blinky and use the dum dum Orange ghost, Clyde. Kind of like an Odd Couple kind of thing. Maybe Clyde finally got tossed out of the maze because he kept screwing up. Now the two have to face the cold hard world alone? But at least they have each other! (Queue Midnight Cowboy theme.)

John G.
Click to expand...


I have to say you are the smartest man alive. I think I'll use clyde instead, thanks a lot.

NCJE, I've changed the script a tad bit and made it so at the end he eats blinky, but still feels bad because he still doesn't have control of his life. He then figures out how to relive his memories, by playing pacman of course! If you really wish I can reupload my revisions.

Thank you all so much for your help. Me and my friends are going to have a pacman costume building party next week and the weekend we're going to shoot it. I can't wait.
 
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