Throwback (Institutionalized)

Joseph · Posted: Thu Aug 02, 2012 3:47 am Post subject:

Okay, so here it is: the Basic Idea.

Two thousand years after the Earth is struck by a giant comet, a faction of an international fleet of human survivors awakens from stasis to find the rest of the fleet missing. After setting out in search of the fleet they encounter a tribe of warriors that attack and capture them. With their lives endangered, the crew befriends a defiant matriarch warrior who helps them to escape, only to then realize that their captors are descendants of the missing fleet.

Joseph · Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 1:39 am Post subject:

So, I'm guessing by the lack of response to my last post, my basic idea is basically crap. Is there no point me going on with it? Can I have a list of what elements you'd remove or change? I'm kind of stuck as to what to do. I'm thinking that the black vet syndrome doesn't just affect my protagonist, but also the plot. What am I doing wrong?

Hollywood crAZRick · Snarky Cat Joined: 28 Mar 2008 Posts: 1645

too much backstory, not enough compelling story to play with

the story is what happens when they return to Earth and find the primatives who turn out to be the missing fleet... everything before that you can cut

you won't

but you could

write on!
Cool

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Joseph · Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 7:22 am Post subject:

I'm having a screenplay crisis! I'm not ruling out anything right now. Even the story with the primitive has a lot of back story. Now I'm thinking there's a story with the primitives and there's a story with the fleet.

I'm going to see how they work alone (with their back story) and together (minus the back story).

The feedback I've received has upset the screenplay's equilibrium. As hard as it is for me to deal with, I can't just ignore it.

I will let you know of any further progress.

Thanks very much for your help
Joseph

RobbRoss · Siberian Tiger Joined: 04 Jan 2012 Posts: 334

You're too tangled in the story at this point. It's a common issue so step away from it for a few months. Work on something different and then re-approach this idea with a fresh perspective.

You need to answer- Why am I writing this? What is the kernel of this idea that makes me want to spend my time and energy on growing it? What was the original spark of the idea? What part of this idea is different than previous movies? Don't answer here, this is your private work.

If you're still stuck, write a bunch of loglines focusing on different parts of your idea. It's you asking yourself, What if this? and What if that? One with the primitives, one without, one with this kind of protagonist, etc. This is your own exercise, not that you should post all the logs here.

Re-read the logline section of the first book and complete its exercises. Did you do this when it was first suggested early in the week? Now you should re-read all the books. The exercises are important as just reading is not enough. You sound committed so accept that this kind of work is part of the process.

Also read screenplays, some from produced movies and some specs.

Follow the steps of Logline->BS2->Board->Script. If I hear again that you're jumping ahead, if you're not helping yourself, then I won't bother helping again.

Good luck.

Hollywood crAZRick · Snarky Cat Joined: 28 Mar 2008 Posts: 1645

Inistitutionalized stories are some of the most difficult to write because they are most difficult to plot, since there are seemingly so many more compelling aspects to deal with than a 'regular' DWAP-- Dude, Problem, life or death complication

Institutionalized stories involve the few vs the many, a loner vs a group but you have to have enough dynmaics between all members of the group to keep the group fresh and more than one-dimensional, so you have to devote time in the story to fleshing out your fleeters and your primatives befrore the fleeters, as well as you hero shippers and your lone heroine anthropologist... lots to juggle, so it seems appropriate that it would take lots of balls to get it done right, right??

start with the simplest form of the logline:

A determined but disoriented astro-anthropologist's conflicting mission: defy her crew or eradicate hostile primative remnants of post-apocalyptic Earth. 18 words

if that sets the story up, then start beating it out...

using your model of the basic story...

Joseph · Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 6:25 pm Post subject:

Robb, thanks for your help on this. I’ll certainly consider everything you’ve said. You sound to me like you’re the boss. I feel like a pupil having been reproved.

I’ve been thinking about what’s been discussed and today decided to split the story just to see what I had and how they might work alone. I created a logline for each.

A defiant matriarch warrior struggles to protect the local tribeswomen from their marauding men-folk and sadistic chieftain - her mate.

In a post-apocalyptic Earth, a determined anthropologist and her crew go in search of a missing fleet on a mission to save humanity from extinction.

It’s interesting seeing the story like this: split and yet so much clearer than how I was seeing it before. I can see what you mean by Black Vet. There are clearly two A stories going on in my screenplay. I’m not going to pretend to be surprised by that. I was determined to flesh out the major characters and give them their own story. But what’s happened is that I’ve created a split personality fighting to control the mind, in this case my screenplay. I am surprised, however, to discover that what I thought was the B story (the defiant matriarch) is more complete from the logline than the A story (the search for the fleet), which is missing an antagonist. But then the sadistic chieftain is the antagonist.

This, of course, has caused me to wonder whether I am concentrating on the right story, and if I am, whether I do have the right protagonist, despite my conviction before. Looking at these two loglines, there is much more happening with the defiant matriarch warrior. She is clearly more involved in her story than the determined anthropologist is in hers. There is no conflict in the anthropologist logline. In the screenplay there is no conflict for the crew until they encounter the tribe of warriors in Break into Two. Act One is mainly setup and the sub-plot (memory loss), which offers the only conflict. The matriarch, on the other hand, experiences conflict immediately in her story without a sub-plot to provide the action.

Of the two, I would choose to stick with the matriarch logline. But if I am to continue with the story with both loglines blended together, it would have to look something like this, I think:

A determined anthropologist fights to stay alive in a post-apocalyptic Earth when her crew is captured by primitive descendants of their missing fleet.

And for it to work I would probably have to remove not just the memory loss sub-plot but also the conflicting parallel A story that involves the matriarch.

I’ll go away and think about it for a while, or step away, as you suggest, and not think about it.

CrazyRick, right!! It would take a lot of balls. But I would want to flesh them out. One dimensional characters in a film is one of my pet hates. The male characters in my story, particularly the fleeters, are one dimensional, and I need to look at that more closely. Ripley said it right in Aliens: “I feel like kind of a fifth wheel around here. Is there anything I can do?” They’re not really doing much at all.

quade · Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 7:11 pm Post subject:

Bryan Reeves · Posted: Fri Aug 03, 2012 9:36 pm Post subject:

Joseph · Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2012 6:01 am Post subject:

Quade

I'm glad someone has acknowledged the theme issue I was beginning to have. I was really beginning to think that the theme of a story is not important at all. No one here has said that, but since starting this thread everything for me has been thrown up in the air, including the theme, which had really got my knickers in a twist.

I agree with your comments completely.

When I genuinely started thinking about changing the face of my story due to the feedback I was getting, removing elements that I considered to be integral to the plot, I realized the theme was being affected. At first I thought "OK, I'll just have to think of a different theme", but then it hit me. I suddenly realized why I had chosen that particular theme: "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" or, as I am also wording it: "People have a duty to others as well as to themselves". I had chosen it because of an underlying theme that is essentially my life's theme, but a very common theme among people and in films: Identity. And when I realized that, I knew I couldn't just cast it aside. It was the one most single important element of my screenplay. It was what was driving the protagonist forward: the need to be who she is, an individual and not part of a collective, despite the fact that the lesson she needs to learn is that who she is as an individual should not be exclusive of others. But as Robb has pointed out, I have become so entangled in the story that I almost forgot why am I writing this?

I thought the plot I had was the best way of bringing it across, but now I'm not so sure. I need to "prune it", maybe "mutilate it", "reduce it to skeletal strength", "wipe out whole pages without even shedding a tear", and hopefully "get a masochistic pleasure out of it". - my mate Henry Miller, not me.

I'd like to think that I can salvage the protagonist through all of this. But she may not now be the best character to convey the theme. None of the crew are. So I'm looking at telling the story from the POV of the matriarch instead, who is better placed to contend with the ideas of individual and collective identity. Unless I reverse the theme and make the protagonist struggle for her individuality and independence, which can work too, but that is so pro our times, and won't challenge ideas.

Joseph · Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2012 1:01 am Post subject:

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