HDC Idol 2008-09

[ferretchucker]

I didn;t know that about the Lycan thing. I had heard Lycanthropy and lycanthrope and thought that Lycan would be a used term. Thanks for the tips.

And thanks Hammerfan.

[bloodrayne]

The briny deep is definitely not my forté, and I know nothing of writing scripts, but I'll give it a shot.


This is a modern-day version of a very old legend.

A man and his girlfriend set out on an adventurous vacation to Acapulco.

They decide to go deep-sea diving...While looking for a place to rent scuba equipment they chance upon a coastal maritime curiosity shop that's run by a creepy looking old man...The old man shows them a treasure map that marks a sunken ship, supposedly sunk by pirates...The story the old man tells them says that the pirates set the ship on fire (as was common) after pillaging it and killing everyone on board, but before they could escape the fire, a keg of gunpowder in the ship's hold exploded, and all of the pirates, except one,died before they could escape.

The one surviving pirate made it back to shore, barely alive, and created the map that was now in the possession of the shop owner...However, the pirate never recovered the treasure (gold dubloons) on the ship because he went crazy (either from exposure while floating adrift before coming to shore, some sort of mental trauma from the entire ordeal, or something else)...Because the pirate was clearly insane, no one really took him seriously, so the treasure was never searched for, and according to the shop owner, could still be there...If the event really happened, and if the treasure even existed...It's all based on the story of a crazy old pirate, so who knows?

Anyway, the man is intrigued and his girlfriend thinks it would be fun even if they don't find any treasure, plus they like the look of the old treasure map and the fact that it has an interesting story to go with it, so even if they find no treasure, they have this awesome map to keep...They buy it and set out, chuckling at the old man's warning that "All pirate treasure is cursed, they say".

In the water, at the correct location, the couple actually DO come across a sunken ship...They explore but find no skeletons, and no treasure...A little disappointing, but still fun...As they are about to swim to the surface the man sees something gleaming in the light of his flashlight...It's a gold coin....He picks it up, examines it, shows it to his girlfriend...They look around the spot for more, find none, and head to the surface...Back on the boat they look at it closer, it looks very old, and it's clearly gold, but neither of them have ever seen anything like it before...They are excited, and they've had a great trip.

They get ready to call it a day...But...the boat won't start (typical, right?)...No big deal, this is modern-day, they pull out their cell phones...No reception...Ship's radio...Static...They try the bright red, blinky mayday beacon, and THAT actually works...So, they decide they'll just wait until someone sees it...They have a galley below deck with some food and bottled water, so they can sit for a whole week if they have to, they are upset but not exactly panicking...Not yet, anyway.

After about an hour, as they sit on the deck eating lunch, they see a ship...It's headed toward them, and they are relieved...3 men board their boat, but, as it turns out, they aren't exactly rescuers...Modern-day pirate story, with modern-day pirates...They kill the man and his girlfriend, quite gruesomely, remove all valuables from the boat and burn it...Right over the very spot where the pirates died many years before.

However, that's not the end of the story...Or the man.

The man 'wakes up' at the bottom of the ocean, inside what he recognizes as the sunken ship that he and his girlfriend had explored earlier...He has no gear on, but he isn't drowning...That's likely because, as he notices, he isn't BREATHING...As he looks around to try to figure out what's going on, he sees his girlfriends mutilated corpse...He freaks out and tries to get out of the ship, but a hellish figure appears in front of him...The figure speaks and identifies himself as Davy Jones...The man is stunned that he can hear the man speak clearly, as if they weren't underwater...He tries to speak as well, and finds that he also is speaking clearly...He asks Davy what is happening and why.

Davy Jones explains that the man is a pirate, and that he (Jones) is the keeper of 'Pirate Hell'...The man insists that he is not a pirate, and Jones points out that the coin he possesses (the man forgot it was still in his pocket) was clearly that of a pirate, as was the map that was also in his pocket (oddly not damaged at all by the water).

The man explained the entire situation, insisted that he was innocent, and also wanted to know why his girlfriend was just a mutilated corpse in the water, instead of ending up like him...Davy explained "She's not a pirate, she will be judged by another".

Anyway, Davy Jones ends up believing that the man is clearly not a pirate, and as such he cannot enter 'Pirate Hell'...Since the man was innocent, Davy made a deal with him (your typical 'deal with the devil')...He told the man that he could release him, but he would still be dead OR he could actually restore the man's life, if he would carry out some tasks...Things that the man would clearly NOT want to do, but restoration to life comes with a steep price.

Davy Jones wanted the souls of 10 pirates' decendents...He gave their names and locations to the man, and told him that he would have to kill them, and remove their hearts...Davy Jones also told him that 2 of the men were the same ones who killed him and his girlfriend...That was enough to make him agree to the deal

The next thing he knew, he was in his hotel room in Acapulco, completely dry...Now he thought he must have just been dreaming or something, but when he looked in the mirror above the bathroom sink, saw that he had blood on his face and shirt, when he reached to touch the blood on his face, he saw that it was also on his hands...He reached in his pocket to see if the coin or map was there, but instead he pulled out the list of names and locations...It wasn't a dream.

He filled the sink to wash his face and hands, and when he looked into the water, he saw Davy Jones's face...He told him, "This time is borrowed, you haven't earned your life back yet. You have only one week to finish the task, or you will be dead"

So, he locates the 10 people (one of whom happens to be the creepy store owner), and also the 2 that killed him and his girlfriend (easy, one was leaving a bar, the other was on a boat at the marina)...He takes pleasure in torturing those 2...He removes all of the hearts and puts them in the freezer, figuring Jones will tell him what to do with them when the week is over...He makes quite a bloody, gutty mess at the scene of each 'soul collection', and of course the police are hot on his trail.

They find him at his hotel, covered in blood, screaming into the sink "Answer me!"...They also find the hearts in the freezer...He tells the police that he's innocent, that he had no choice...As they sit in the hotel room, he tells them everything that happened, and he asks them how they found him...They tell him that they've been looking for him since they found his boat...He said his boat was set on fire and sank...They informed him that his boat was perfectly fine. in the marina, and his girlfriend's mutilated corpse was found on board, as well as the map, which led them to the murdered curiosity shop owner because some of the locals had seen the map at the shop before.

The man was clearly insane...They lead him out of the hotel room...As the door closes, an evil chuckle is heard from the bathroom sink, and water gurgles down the drain.

[neverending]

Originally Posted by bwind22

The challenge specifically states that I am the director. (And technically, I've done 2 shorts so it'd be my first feature, but not my first time directing.)

Ah, you're right- got me for not payingf attention- but I did specify first time FEATURE director. Feature refers to a "feature length" movie. So you eliminated my only objection to your entry- your best so far. High marks.

[neverending]

Ferret- an interesting take on werewolves. A bit muddled and complicated, but you'll have plenty of time to work that out in a novel. Good marks for originality.

Rayne- Plenty of gruesome touches here. Definitely a product of your twisted mind. There's no mention made of the man being concerned about his girlfriend's death- he makes to attempt to bargain for getting her life restored. The man comes off as selfish and unsympathetic. Perhaps this is what you intended in order to make his ultimate punishment more fitting. A good effort.

[bwind22]

Originally Posted by neverending

Ah, you're right- got me for not payingf attention- but I did specify first time FEATURE director. Feature refers to a "feature length" movie. So you eliminated my only objection to your entry- your best so far. High marks.

Thank you.

[ChronoGrl]

Part of what makes Welles' broadcast of War of the Worlds so iconic is that it actually inspired mass hysteria in the American listeners of that 1938 Halloween evening. What was science fiction on the page translated to earnest reporting on the radio waves, and the atmosphere of tense, paranoid, anxious anticipation of World War II, the American public was horrified of the unknown and ready to believe that the next big horror was coming from the skies.

In order to replicate the impact of this broadcast, we have to consider horror that is relevant to this day in age and is also believable. While we've come a long way since 1938 (I doubt that creatures from outerspace would be within our real of believing now), there are some events that still strike terror in the hearts and minds of the masses.

What seems to be relevant in terms of mass hysteria and horror is the horror that hits close to home: Natural disasters, terrorism, xenophobia, and illness. With the panic and distress following the spread of Avian influenza and SARS in 2002, it’s clear that the horror of the spread of disease is quick to terrify the masses.

I propose that, to create a pure horror radio broadcast that could convince and terrify the world at large, we should adapt Max Brooks' World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War into a series of faux eyewitness reports of a mysterious “illness” ravaging the impoverished nations of the underdeveloped world. The believability factor would come with not only the eyewitness perspective, but also America’s predisposed xenophobic nature (particularly in the feared Communist China) toward third world underdeveloped countries.

The first “report” would begin with Brooks’ first “eyewitness report”: Dr. Kwang Jing-shu.


The following is from Max Brook’s World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (New York: Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., 2006), 4 – 10.


A sample of the broadcast:



Reports continue coming in describing the unidentified illness.Our first latest report comes from Dr. Kwang Jing-shu of the Chongqing province of China.

(Dr. Kwang Jin-shu begins to speak in Mandarin. An English translator is heard over his voice)

The first outbreak I saw was in a remote village that officially had no name. It was known by its villagers as “New Dachang.”

The villagers were keeping their sick in their communal meeting hall. There were seven of them, all on cots, all barely conscious. I asked the villagers who had been taking care of these people. They said no one, it wasn’t “safe.” I noticed that the door had been locked from the outside. The villagers were clearly terrified. They cringed and whispered; some kept their distance and prayed.

I knelt to examining the first patient. She was running a high fever, forty degrees centigrade, and she was shivering violently. Barely coherent, she whimpered slightly when I tried to move her limbs. There was a wound in her right forearm, a bite mark. As I examined it more closely, I realized that it wasn’t from an animal. The bite radius and teeth marks had to have come from a small, or possibly young, human being.

I examined the six other patients. All showed similar symptoms, all had similar wounds on various parts of their bodies. I asked one man, the most lucid of the group, who or what had inflicted these injuries. He told me it had happened when they had tried to subdue “him.”

I found “Patient Zero” behind the locked door of an abandoned house across town. He was twelve years old. His wrists and feet were bound with plastic packing twine. Although he’d rubbed off the skin around his bounds, there was no blood. There was no blood on his other wounds, not on the gouges on his legs or arms, or from the large dry gap where his right big toe had been. He was writhing like an animal; a gag muffled his growls.

The boy’s skin was cold and gray as the cement on which he lay. I could find neither his heartbeat nor his pulse. His eyes were wild, wide, and sunken back in their sockets. They remained locked on me like a predatory beast. Throughout the examination he was inexplicably hostile.

His movements were so violent I had to call for two of the largest villagers to help me hold him down. Initially they wouldn’t budge, cowering in the doorway like baby rabbits. I explained that there was no risk of infection if they used gloves and masks. When they shook their heads, I made it an order, even though I had no lawful authority to do so.

The two men knelt beside me. One held the boy’s feet while the other grasped his hands. I tried to take a blood sample and instead extracted only brown, viscous matter. As I was withdrawing the needle, the boy began another bout of violent struggling.

The man holding the boy’s arms decided it might be safer if he braced them against the floor with his knees. But the boy jerked again and I heard his left arm snap. Jagged ends of both radius and ulna bones stabbed through his gray flesh. Although the boy didn’t cry out, didn’t even seem to notice, it was enough for both assistance to leap back and run from the room.

I instinctively retreated. The boy began to twist in my direction, his arm ripped completely free. Flesh and muscle tore from one another until there was nothing except the stump. His now free right arm, still tied to the severed left hand, dragged his body across the floor.

I hurried outside, locking the door behind me. I began to hear banging on the door, the boy’s fist pounding weakly against the thin wood. It was all I could do not to jump at the sound. I prayed they would not notice the color draining from my face. I shouted, as much from fear as frustration, that I had to know what happened to this child.

The boy’s mother came forward. She admitted that it had happened when the boy and his father were “moon fishing,” a term that describes diving for treasure among the sunken ruins of the Three Gorges Reservoir. The boy came up crying with a bite mark on his foot. He didn’t know what had happened, the water had been too dark and muddy. His father was never seen again.

[neverending]

I think your choice of material is good. Zombie lore is very popular. Your excerpt is too talky though. That may seem a strange comment to make about a radio broadcast- but if you listen to War of the Worlds, there are no long passages of description like this. It is presented in the form of live news coverage of events as they happen- short bursts of description with sound effects, mixed with interviews of on the scene participants.

This effect could be carried out with your script. It could be presented in the form of an on the scene audio diary. For instance- when he's examining tthe boy, he calls out to the villagers and orders them to help him. We hear them protest, and we hear the Dr. persuade them. Then he describes what he sees, in its gruesome detail, as the boy's arm comes off... He doesn't tell us there was banging on the door- we hear it, as we hear the boy's calls....

Good marks for subject matter. Low marks for execution. You've done much better.

[ChronoGrl]

Originally Posted by neverending

This effect could be carried out with your script. It could be presented in the form of an on the scene audio diary. For instance- when he's examining tthe boy, he calls out to the villagers and orders them to help him. We hear them protest, and we hear the Dr. persuade them. Then he describes what he sees, in its gruesome detail, as the boy's arm comes off... He doesn't tell us there was banging on the door- we hear it, as we hear the boy's calls....

Good marks for subject matter. Low marks for execution. You've done much better.

Agreed on the execution. I've been feeling like death for about two weeks now (I'm blaming it on the change in meds; that way it means that it'll END soon) and I'm having a HELL of a time functioning. I was going to pass on this challenge but didn't want to be eliminated for giving up on something that will (hopefully) pass soon.

In terms of the "You've done much better" remark, you sound like my parents, teachers, and professors. :rolleyes:

Grading should be blind. That way I don't have to compete with high expectations. :p

[The Flayed One]

A Shot In the Dark


Plot synopsis:


A man, visibly upset and obviously drunk, sets in a bar talking to a stranger. He is Billy Claiborne, ex-cowboy.


Quote “I was there that day. The day they shot up the cowboys and started the movement what ran us out of town. History will remember us as villains; it ain't so. We was a hard working bunch. Some of us was brothers, but we was kin, all of us. Sure, we did some damned right unlawful things. Weren't nothin' no one else wasn't doin if they were needing to survive. But the folk, they were generally happy. Ain't nothing was wrong with this town of Tombstone, until those bastard Earp brothers came down on us and brought the devil with them.”


The story is told through the eyes of Bill Claiborne, recounting the events of the Earps rise to power and they're attempt to put the town under their thumb to increase their market share on gambling. They always had their ace in the hole, the devil himself, Doc Holliday.


Quote: “They called him educated; schooled in language and a gentleman. We called it the devil's tongue. He spoke his language through a cleft lip and walked on cleft feet. And any man what seen him gamble should've known without doubt that was the devil's luck. Any man who feared god, that is.”


The town, a little lawless but generally happy, resists the Earps constraints on them, especially not being able to carry their weapons. Billy goes on to recount many violent pistol whippings and arrests to anyone who disobeyed their weapons orders.


The cowboys try to fight back, but you can't win when someone has the very devil on their side. The events finally lead up to the infamous gunfight, which although took about thirty seconds “seemed like an eternity.”


Billy, as one of the two men who ran, feels guilty. The shots loom large, as while most of the Earp clan get injured, Docs eyes glow as the darkness whips around him and he fires shots into the cowboys.


Quote: “They say although he was shot, the bullet hit his holster. I'll tell you this, there was no holster. It was as though he pulled his guns from the air itself, and the bullet strayed from him as though it feared to touch him. Had the others not held him back, he would have killed the whole town. You could see it in those eyes.”


Billy, now almost in tears and lamenting about how he ran while the others faced down evil, looks into the strangers dark face.


“I can't live with what I've done and what I've seen. I can't run. I've come back here to Tombstone to make my peace with my maker. Lord knows that evil will find me. I only hope when it does, and I look into those horrible eyes one last time, I'll be able to forgive myself like him up above is supposed to.”


Billy then stands up and walks towards the door.


“Do what you will, stranger. I knew you'd come, sooner or later. Outside, you and I will come to terms. I will turn and look hell into it's eyes one last time and fire into its depths. If I see the ghost of my brothers, then I'll ask them to forgive me for being such a coward. I'm a coward who's asked to be called Billy the Kid, but I don't deserve his good name. I'm a coward like the one what killed him.”


Billy turns to look the stranger in the eyes, and we see the glow. The screen goes black as a single shot rings out.


Screenplay
Kathryn Bigelow


Main Cast:
Billy Claiborne - Brenden Sexton III

Wyatt Earp - Liam Neeson

Doc Holliday - Robert Carlyle

Stranger - Michael Madsen

[neverending]

Very atmospheric, Flayed! A completely different take from Bwind, yet an equally original storyline. I like it. You do know the title's been used already, right?