Monday 16 January 2017

@Phil: From Script to Screen: Outline of Story (Any feedback appreciated)

Time Period+Location:

Victorian London.

Characters:

Brain surgeon, surgeon assistants, 10 year old boy, joke shop owner, Boys mother?, Boys father.?

Outline:

Experimental brain surgeon aspires to be young again, finding the key to eternal life by transplanting his brain into a younger body.

Surgeon spends his time trying to find the perfect host body for himself, travelling to the local joke shop, where most of the kids hang out. He then finds the perfect boy, and takes him for his experiments.

He then prepares everything he needs for the transplantation. He looks in a mirror, looking at himself, trapped inside his old body for the very last time,

The surgeons assistants carry out the brain transplant.

The transplant is successful, the surgeon is now within a younger body. Feeling empowered, he enters the outside world, ready to life a whole new life.

The surgeon then notices missing posters for the boy around town. Worried, he tries to make it back to the lab, realising what he has done. He pushes through crowds of people to get back, trying to not be noticed he covers his face.

He notices the boys parents, so he runs the other way.

He gets back to the lab and begs the assistants to put him back in his own body, but gets told that the boy has left and they have no idea where he is.

He goes out, desperate to find this boy, desperate to find his old body. With no luck, he remembers the joke shop he initially found the boy in, and speeds to it, desperate to find him.

The boy is there and so is his old body. He again manages to get the boy to follow him to the lab, as the boy begins to recognise his old body.

They carry out the transplant once again, returning each of them back into their own bodies.


Hi Phil, just wondered if you could have a look at what I have so far? I feel like there is something still missing, but maybe you could point me in the right direction? My words were (Surgeon, Joke Shop and a Mirror). 






1 comment:

  1. My first instinct is simply your story is too long - too much to communicate and resolve - it also doesn't really make use of the joke shop either - it's just a place where kids hang out, so it could be any kind of shop. Joke shops are special shops because they're about illusion and pranks, and I wonder if you need to think more proactively about its role/function/potential to get the most out of it. For example, at a joke shop, you might find fancy dress, so someone could dress up as a brain surgeon (who isn't one); let's say a character wants to woo or impress another character, so they decide to pretend to be a brain surgeon to impress this other person...

    ... or maybe there's a magical joke shop where you go to have your heart's desire granted - I can imagine how the magical joke shop - place of illusions and pranks - might have a changing room, where you become who you want to be... I don't know if you're aware of the concept of the 'Faustian Pact' - which is when you offer your soul up to the devil in order to achieve fame or fortune or whatever - but the problem with these arrangements is that the devil always collects - it's always a trick, and the human always loses, and is somehow punished for their vanity...

    I can see therefore some kind of thing whereby someone wishes they could be a brain surgeon in order to impress someone; so they go to the 'Joke Shop', which is full of costumes and fake props etc. where the mysterious shopkeeper grants the wish... but with some terrible twist? I guess for me, the joke shop as a concept is too rich 'not' to use more proactively...

    (just remember that Brain surgeons equate with being mega rich, mega clever and part of the societal elite, so there's an implied status there).

    That said, the idea of a mad brain surgeon is always fun:

    what happens if mad brain surgeon as a joke shop as a front - i.e. he is indeed luring children into his 'jokeshop' where he stuns them with itching powder or whatever, and then removes their brains to create from them some kind of 'elixir of youth' - but one child character out smarts him, and this somehow involves a mirror or mirrors...?

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