As good a place as any, I guess.

C

Call_Me_Kurt

Member
Hi folks,

I'm Kurt. New here, a complete amateur, and wanting to learn more about all aspects of film making. I'm currently working on a screenplay and having a great time brainstorming it at another screenwriter's site. The more, the merrier, so, I'll be talking to you.

Cheers, :smile:
Kurt.

By the way, my subject heading meant "this particular forum is as good a place as any, to intoduce myself at this site..." I read it again and realised it could be taken the wrong way!!! ;)
 
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Thanks, Nektonic.

I've been picking the brains of the good folk over at Goldmine, and I'm pretty happy with my script now.

But, two hundred heads are better than one, so.... see below.

Kurt.
 
Hi, Charli,

I'll set out my premise shortly. Just ran out of time for the moment, have to run an errand.

Back soon.

Cheers,
Kurt.
 
Here you go.

Here you go.

This is more like War and Peace than a premise. But this spares you the trouble of having to ask a bunch of questions. This is just the rough outline of the draft of the idea of the notion of the story.....

I expect it to be about one hour long, and in more-or-less short film format. It could be expanded, but I've always liked the Twilight Zone episode format myself, (which is another way of saying, I'm not confident enough to make a feature screenplay yet.)

The story is about a man who survives a global bird flu pandemic. It begins after the disaster has passed. He lives alone at his original home, with a pet canary for company.

When he realised he was the last human being in existence, the knowledge was utterly unacceptable to him. To him, it was The Intolerable. So, in order to retain some semblance of sanity, his mind denied it. He gradually formed the delusion that This-Is-The-Way-Things-Are-Supposed-To-Be. He convinces himself that the world is, and always was, empty, except for him.

He comes to believe totally that Reality is a world with only one person in it, himself.

Thus he is able to function, after a fashion, and not succumb to total despair.

His chief activity is wandering the empty streets, collecting trash and debris, and compulsively "tidying up". At home, he thoroughly cleans his canary's cage every single day, replacing the cage paper every morning with newspaper that he's collected in the street, (in this way, the audience is given the backstory of the pandemic via old headlines.) He is obsessive about the cleanliness of the cage, using bottles of hand sanitizer from his very large supply, (the excessive quantity of which puzzles him because he's forgotten that his deceased wife desperately bought cases of it during the crisis). He has no recollection of the disaster. To him, there was no disaster. He talks to the bird, but in terms that suggest that he truly believes himself to be alone, and that this is the normal state of affairs in the universe.

Meanwhile....

On a country road, a small group of survivors from a farming community is making its way to the city, hoping to find food, bottled water, and perhaps even other survivors with whom to restart a society. On the way, they see evidence of mass death and chaos, but they press on because they have no option. At one point, a scavenging crow appears close by, and their extreme reactions tell us about their individual personalities, fears and doubts.

Finally, they arrive at the city and begin to search the empty streets. As they roam, they happen to come closer to the protag's home. Finally, they are in his street, and they see that this street is orderly and clean, unlike the rest of the streets that they've seen. Obviously, someone lives in that nice clean house over there, the one that stands out from the rest. Overjoyed, they make for the house, calling out to whoever might be there.

Inside, the man hears them. Astonished, unbelieving, like a man who has just seen something that he knows cannot possibly exist, he goes outside. He sees them. They are waving, laughing, crying, joyfully stumbling towards his house...

In that moment, he is like a man who finds a cockroach in his hamburger, or a worm in his apple. To his deranged mind, This Is Not Right. There are no Other People. There cannot be Other People. This is Against Nature. His insane mind has to restore its own distorted vision of Reality, otherwise he will have to (face The Intolerable) all over again.

So, he turns back inside, strides to his living room, and takes a pistol from a drawer. Without hesitation, he goes outside, and in the absent-minded manner of a man straightening a picture on the wall, he shoots them all.

The next day, while doing his street-cleaning rounds, he vaguely remembers the shooting. The memory distracts him, because he's not sure whether or not it really happened. He wanders towards the place where he thought he saw Other People. He finds them, dead bodies. He stands looking at them for a very long time, like someone who has just woken from a bad dream and is still not sure he was dreaming.

Suddenly, he hears a low noise - a frightened gasp. Looking towards some nearby bushes, he sees a young woman lying on the ground, her hands pressed to her mouth, as if she's been trying to stifle a cry of fear. She's slightly wounded. She stares at him, and he gazes back, impassive. She's absolutely certain that he's going to kill her.
................

At this stage, I've not completely decided on an ending. There are many choices, most of them tragic, but I'd prefer some kind of "happy ending". He might have a flash of sanity, and spare the girl and take her home, (but then he'd have to live with his murders). Or, he might kill her and simply wander back to his home, and in a daze, begin to clean the canary's cage as usual, (but that's a downer). He might realise what he's done, spare the girl, and shoot himself, (also a downer, because then he dooms the girl to live in the same terrible situation that he was in.)

If I was okay with tragic endings, I'd choose to have her die at the last minute anyway, thus sparing him the choice. But given that audiences like happy endings, I lean towards him sparing her, taking her home, but continuing to believe his delusion, except with the small amendment that Reality is actually two people in an empty world.

I haven't decided what the girl's opinion of all this will be. I need some female input here!

Suggestions are very welcome. It's taken me several months just to get to this stage, and I've barely begun to draft it out as a proper screenplay, except as sketchy scenes. I have many pages of notes and many fantastic suggestions from the guys at Goldmine. At one point I had an entire opening scene written and even blocked etc, but I scrapped it. I suspect this little film is going to take much more time than it actually will rate in the end...


Kurt.

PS. As a title, how do you like "God's In His Heaven" (y'know.. "and all's right with the world...") I'd love to use "The Lark's on the Wing", (which is from the same poem! That would be perfect!!), but unfortunately some people today would probably think I meant "many larks", and had made that common mistake of putting an apostrophe where it's not needed!!
 
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