In this blog, I review my personal explorations and define the lines of division between each. I define each type, explore what makes them different and why I have chosen to separate them, as well as list some ideas from my past in each and look at why they fit into the camps that they do.
I have written a couple of blogs now which have started to probe into the kind of personal explorations I want to be making throughout the year, and luckily the two that I have chosen to develop are both on different ends of the personal influence spectrum. I have found that all the ideas I have can be camped into three different conceptual foundations:
First-Hand
The first (Klosterplatz 5, https://badbootjebotoxbopresentsbsa3yall.blogspot.com/2020/02/research-iii-chapter-i-part-iii-short.html) is a story that I have worked on because of a request from someone else, I molded it to their personality and life experiences. I am calling this a Second-Hand exploration: seeing how personal injections into a story develop when it isn't based on my own first-hand experience.
Definition of the First-Hand exploration,
(for a class presentation or equivalent):
Something that comes directly from the writer and their own experiences, the basis and concept is rooted in a situation or feeling that the creator personally experienced. The very lifeblood of the story is based on first-hand life experience and everything that sprouts from that, any direction the story takes, are intrinsically connected to the writer and their life.
Some other ideas that I have had related to First-Hand exploration are:
I will do this as a secondary First-Hand Exploration.
Second-Hand
The second (Long Distance
Horror, https://badbootjebotoxbopresentsbsa3yall.blogspot.com/2020/02/research-iii-chapter-i-part-iv-long.html) is a First-Hand exploration, something which I am basing off my own personal experience, basing the concept and logline to what I have discovered in my own life.
Definition of Second-Hand exploration,
(for a class presentation or equivalent):
Something that originates in a second party's head and is brought to the writer to develop, a project that requires the writer to influence the work with someone else's personal experiences. With writers for hire, this is often the case, as they are responsible for helping bring the director's vision onto the page.
Some other ideas that I have had related to Second-Hand exploration are:
Dillon Kirton asked me to prepare an outline and possible treatment for a story that he had made a beat sheet for, I took it and changed some things, especially bringing his personal inflections back a bit and making them more metaphorical for the characters.
This is an interesting one, I might do a secondary exploration on this as well, I thought it was interesting how much first-hand content he put into the story and the ways in which I changed those a bit.
Conceptual
The third exploration is not one that I have written about yet, but I want it to be purely conceptual - a story based on a pure concept, without any personal investment in the foundation (or logline). Then through development see if the themes and ideas I infuse it with are somehow related to my own life.
Definition of Conceptual exploration,
(for a class presentation or equivalent):
Something that originates from an objective or analytical place, an idea that seems ripe with story potential but is not related in any way to the creatives involved, or it is derived from external influences such as the media. It is a concept that has no personal bearing on the writer, something that they can stand back from and view in a purely objective light. What is interesting about it to me is what happens when you give it to a writer and how much of themselves they actually put into it.
Speaking of: I have a new idea for possible exploration, give one concept to three different writers and see what each of them make of it, and whether or not those changes are based on their own lives.
Some other ideas that I have had related to conceptual exploration are:
This is a great example of a pure concept being saved through personal experience.
This idea was the product of me and Kiarne working together to come up with a good short for the Tall Shorts last year, again wasn't immediately sure if this should be camped in Conceptual or Second-Hand, but the idea was never related to either of our lives and was created purely for the use of a funny and entertaining short - essentially just a comedy skit.
Again I did a quick script for this but we never did a second draft or got around to filming it, we ended up doing an improv thing in the elevator instead and its a scary thought to return to this cause we found it's really annoying to film in one of those things:
I have written a couple of blogs now which have started to probe into the kind of personal explorations I want to be making throughout the year, and luckily the two that I have chosen to develop are both on different ends of the personal influence spectrum. I have found that all the ideas I have can be camped into three different conceptual foundations:
First-Hand
The first (Klosterplatz 5, https://badbootjebotoxbopresentsbsa3yall.blogspot.com/2020/02/research-iii-chapter-i-part-iii-short.html) is a story that I have worked on because of a request from someone else, I molded it to their personality and life experiences. I am calling this a Second-Hand exploration: seeing how personal injections into a story develop when it isn't based on my own first-hand experience.
Definition of the First-Hand exploration,
(for a class presentation or equivalent):
Something that comes directly from the writer and their own experiences, the basis and concept is rooted in a situation or feeling that the creator personally experienced. The very lifeblood of the story is based on first-hand life experience and everything that sprouts from that, any direction the story takes, are intrinsically connected to the writer and their life.
Some other ideas that I have had related to First-Hand exploration are:
The Devil's Hole
A journalist desperate for a story looks into the case of a man who claims to have been raped by a Sasquatch in the native bush named “The Devil's Hole”.
This is an interesting example because of how different the two versions of the story I've had are.
The basis for this concept is purely just the title "The Devil's Hole", which is near the bush where we filmed Matthew Wilmshursts' Goddamn Bush People last year. It was a bit of a meme on set and I thought it would be interesting to see what can be done with a funny title like that for a film.
I developed it once into something veryu first-hand and personal, a found footage movie where the protagonists were filmmakers, trying to break into the industry. The central relationship was a friendship and the themes were about finding a family and trying to find fulfillment through industry success,
I changed it because the movie felt too personal, we should never make a film about student filmmakers, so I overhauled it completely, taking inspiration instead from Wallace and Gromit and some online media. The logline as it stands now is the night to the day it used to be, the entire story is focused differently and works to first and foremost tell and interesting mystery (the main character is now a journalist and The Devil's Hole is a small part of a larger plot).
I like both versions, but think that the latter - the more conceptual and less personal - is a much more effective story for mass audiences.
I think this is an interesting study to show how distancing yourself from a project and using a metaphor rather than showing things as they literally were is a more effective form of storytelling.
I will do this as a secondary First-Hand Exploration.
Work-Place Mystery
A high school student starts his first job at a fast-food establishment and is coerced by local law enforcement to help them identify which of the employees had recently stolen a large sum of money.
I was working at KFC at the start of 2019 and found myself negatively influenced by the type of gossiping and talking behind the backs of other co-workers that seemed to permeate the work environment, from this I came up with this idea - the intention being to satirize and observe this side of human nature by placing an emphasis on the protagonist finding a specific truth.
These Damned Descendents
A father and provider of wife and two teenagers loses his job when the firm gets impeached for fraud, he gets stuck at home where he realises that his family has significantly changed in the time that he’s been preoccupied with work. He becomes convinced that the ghost stories his children used to tell when they were younger are much 9more than just childish fiction, believing the house to, in fact, be haunted.
The movie is about a man's mid-life crisis after choosing family over his artistic endeavors and how that literally manifests as a demon that haunts him, his family and ultimately tears the household apart. I felt it was a good allegory for a mid-life crisis, but also spawned from the fear that I always had if I didn't pursue my filmmaking aspirations.
It's one of my most personal stories because I think it accurately captures a big idea that has perpetuated it over my life, so much so that it determined the course of my career.
Let's Split Up
A couple hitchhiking through Southland get trapped in a crazed religious town and have to learn that they survive better independently rather than together.
This came about during a time in my life where I felt like my Girlfriend and I were too different and had different ambitions for out lives, I thought it would be better to split apart and created this story as a response to that. It's a horror movie that gives a new meaning to the age-old horror trope of "let's split up".
The second (Long Distance
Horror, https://badbootjebotoxbopresentsbsa3yall.blogspot.com/2020/02/research-iii-chapter-i-part-iv-long.html) is a First-Hand exploration, something which I am basing off my own personal experience, basing the concept and logline to what I have discovered in my own life.
Definition of Second-Hand exploration,
(for a class presentation or equivalent):
Something that originates in a second party's head and is brought to the writer to develop, a project that requires the writer to influence the work with someone else's personal experiences. With writers for hire, this is often the case, as they are responsible for helping bring the director's vision onto the page.
Some other ideas that I have had related to Second-Hand exploration are:
Dillon's Babadissio
An incel goes looking for love in the mythical Tall Girl Forest, but instead finds himself.This is an interesting one, I might do a secondary exploration on this as well, I thought it was interesting how much first-hand content he put into the story and the ways in which I changed those a bit.
Buried Around Back
A short film where a drug dealer finds his lab raided and learns that his partner-in-crime is buried somewhere in the backyard, the air in his coffin quickly running out.
Another short film I prepped for Marcella last year when she was working at an equipment house, I wanted to make something that was easy to film and contained, while also adhering to the location and casting limitations that she had. I tried to incorporate some of her personal taste - specifically Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels by Guy Ritchie, which is one of her favourite movies.
I don't think it has a lot of her personality in it, rather I was aiming to make it a story that might appeal to her taste. I never ended up finishing it, like everything on this list, but I think it still has potential as a short story.
The best things about it are its' set-up (they can't call cops because of their occupation, which also gives reason as to why they were hit in the first place) and its race against time urgency. I think the ending never seemed too compelling to me, and the dialogue required a lot of work.
Conceptual
The third exploration is not one that I have written about yet, but I want it to be purely conceptual - a story based on a pure concept, without any personal investment in the foundation (or logline). Then through development see if the themes and ideas I infuse it with are somehow related to my own life.
Definition of Conceptual exploration,
(for a class presentation or equivalent):
Something that originates from an objective or analytical place, an idea that seems ripe with story potential but is not related in any way to the creatives involved, or it is derived from external influences such as the media. It is a concept that has no personal bearing on the writer, something that they can stand back from and view in a purely objective light. What is interesting about it to me is what happens when you give it to a writer and how much of themselves they actually put into it.
Speaking of: I have a new idea for possible exploration, give one concept to three different writers and see what each of them make of it, and whether or not those changes are based on their own lives.
Some other ideas that I have had related to conceptual exploration are:
First Diemester
A heist movie but instead of stealing something the main characters try and induce a miscarriage.
This film started from a very quick and funny though, pretty much just the logline, there wasn't any development to come up with the costume, it was quick and simple. The challenge came when having to develop it, I struggled with tone especially.
Only recently did I return to it and found a way to maintain the original story while infusing it with more recent feelings I had about relationships, and especially the relationships I observed in my own and those of other couples around me. This cleared things up and I will do a blog on this one soon, developing it further as my third exploration.
This is a great example of a pure concept being saved through personal experience.
_Jump Scare
An evil entity haunts a man with a poor heart, trying to scare him to death.
This is an idea I had in 2018 and had developed fully in my head, it was an interesting concept but I think the story is hard to return to and finish because it never had much of a personal touch to it. I can't remember why I thought it was so good, the ones that got some personal injection are easier to recall and easier to pick up again. I based it very much on the works of Yorgos Lanthimos and the film was supposed to be a challenge to horror convention.
Objectively it still seems like a really good idea, turning the tropes of the genre on its head and presenting the titular Jump Scare in a different light, never cheap and always relying on a Hitchcockian sense of suspense, but the passion for the project isn't there anymore.
It's an interesting study though because of how strongly I felt about the project and how much it changed every time I went back to it because of how my life had changed.
I intend to study the development of this project for my research as I think it shows how one idea can be interpreted in different ways depending on what point you are in your life when writing it.
I Saw Hell
A selfish lawyer suffers a drug overdose, dying for three minutes, he is haunted by the demon that follows him out of hell as he is forced to turn his life around after seeing his eventual fate.
This was a purely conceptual idea, being brought on by things I had seen as a kind of people "dying and going to hell" whilst being inspired by the story structure and character development in the work of Vince Gilligan. I wanted to capture the excitement I felt watching things like Breaking Bad or Good Time (and now El Camino) where it felt like the story had the infinite potential to go anywhere, emulating the way we feel in real-life situations. The story took inspiration from other stories as well, like Death Note (which I actually have yet to watch) and Castaway on the Moon.
I think there is a lot of my own person infused in the story, it was during a time where I was struggling with my own mortality and recovering from what seemed like a loss of faith. But I intend to make a more analytical study of this.
Accursed Things
Four ambitious teenage boys with a wish to escape their small New Zealand community find a collection of supernatural objects in a Cabin in the Woods and sell them for a profit, taking responsibility they have to battle the evil supernatural forces that they have released upon the innocent town.
I worked on this for a very long time, the idea coming to me in 2018, I developed it quite deeply and had a whole pilot ready for treatment. Unfortunately, I decided to change my 204 ideas a couple of times, the story is still there and I still think it's good, but I'll return to it another time.
The story started as an interesting concept as I saw potential in the idea of a collector of haunted objects or some kind of museum and what could be done with that, combine that with a bit of Stephen King and Stranger Things and this popped out.
Developing it is where I saw a lot more personal elements being injected into the story - the main characters' ambition and desires were based on some of my own, especially some that I had towards the end of high school, and the mentor character was based on a book about money that I read back then. A lot of the themes are ones that I had directly experienced in my own life, ones that stuck with me, and the character interactions were based very much on student relations that I had seen through my years at school.
LEGS
A short film murder mystery told completely from the waist down about the unimportant of skin colour, sex or social status to justice.
For which I prepped a script for the Tall Shorts Film Competition, which never saw further development or adaptation into film:
INT
>
BASEMENT
Black and white footage:
the Shadows of someone's legs play along a wall next to the stairs.
A woman's legs, wearing sneakers: They walk down the stairs.
A champagne glass shatters in fantastic fashion on the concrete floor.
Dolly right from her quivering legs to reveal:
A dead body!
INT
>
HALLWAY
(O.S) She screams.
Her legs are running along the corridor.
The title appears:
OF SOUND MIND AND SOLE
It cuts abruptly as the film tears.
Replaced with a
colour image of:
LEGS
INT
>
COMMON ROOM
A door opens revealing three more sets of legs. They all wear sneakers.
WOMAN
Mr. Schumacker is dead!
A foot wearing a dress shoe enters the frame.
INSPECTOR
(to others)
No one enters or leaves, this a lockdown.
(to woman)
Show me.
INT
>
BASEMENT
The four sets of legs stand uniform down the stairs, the inspector bends down and looks at the body.
INSPECTOR
No accident, this man was stomped to death.
WIFE BEATER (O.S)
It was probably the tramp! She's been after his fortune for years!
INT
>
COMMON ROOM
WOMAN
I would never...I loved him
SKIN HEAD
You know what they say about who smelt it...
INSPECTOR
I suspect not gentleman, her shoe size is far too small. The shoe size of the murderer was 11.
The Inspector has measuring tape out.
INSPECTOR
Your size gentlemen?
WIFE BEATER
11.
SKIN HEAD
11.
OLD MAN
11.
INSPECTOR
Shoes against the wall, no one leaves.
The shoes are lined up against the wall.
SKIN HEAD
This is nonsense, we all know who did it.
WIFE BEATER
Oh, do we?
OLD MAN
Your infamy precedes you.
WIFE BEATER
Excuse me we don't even know who you are fugly, you certainly have a face deformed enough for a killer.
The inspector measures the first set of shoes.
SKIN HEAD
And you've the look of a wife-beater, too bad the poor woman couldn't see it before you beat her half to death.
WIFE BEATER
Watch your step, you're on thin ice baldie-
A swastika is visible through the Skin-Head's holey sock.
OLD MAN
I would not speak so quickly for an ex-convict.
SKIN HEAD
Hold your tongue scarface.
WIFE BEATER
Low life takes revenge on the rich, sounds plausible to me.
INSPECTOR
Alas, he did not re-offend, the shoe's pattern doesn't match the marks on the body.
SKIN HEAD
(scoffs)
Come on we all know who it was, look at him trying to pin it on everyone else.
INSPECTOR
Settle lads, he's up next.
The inspector picks up the next pair.
SKIN HEAD
He couldn't help it, it's in his nature.
WIFE BEATER
Okay, that's it, I've had it.
The wife-beater takes off his gloves, revealing black hands.
His fist clenches. He moves lightning fast.
The Skin-Head reaches for a gun in his back pocket.
BANG!
The Wife-Beater falls to the ground.
The woman screams.
Smoke rises.
INSPECTOR
(raising shoes)
...it wasn't him either.
The Skin-Head falls to his knees.
The last pair of shoes sit untouched.
INSPECTOR
You do keep a very clean pair of shoes for a farmer...
Water drips from them onto the polished wood.
FADE OUT:
THE END
Would like to give this story another shot, limited me with pages because of the competitions' restrictions, but remember thinking it would be better if it could be slightly longer.
Smart Car Horror
A smart car goes rogue and attempts to rid the world of cars and their owners who are a hazard to the environment (kinda like Duel)
This is also one that I almost considered putting under second-hand because it is based on an off-hand comment that my dad made when we drove down from Palmerston North to Invercargill; during the first-semester break last year, wherein he said someone should make a smart-car horror movie. I thought it was a silly idea and because of this decided I should develop it and see what one could do with it.
One thing I have a lot, especially when it comes to conceptual ideas, is the belief that any idea can be made good if developed and told in the right way, this was one of them. It's a terribly campy idea, but fun and if told right and infused with good characters and themes I think it actually has a lot of potential.
Werewolf Story
On her first hunt with her father a middle schooler shoots a wolf and when they track it down they find the body of a man instead of the canine she thought she shot, they hide the body and while her father tries to cover up the manslaughter she investigates the murder - sure that she saw a wolf.
This came about purely from me toying with how to make a werewolf story interesting again, its a genre that has very few good films but always seems very interesting. The story potential is high, but if I were to make one I needed a concept that was more instantly captivating than just the basic werewolf story. Eventually, I came up with this idea, which I think provides much more interesting character conflicts and human drama without resorting to the usual werewolf tropes. A werewolf story told from a different perspective. It was also heavily influenced by The Clovehitch Killer upon further development.
Cursed Rom-Com
A man is cursed to die on the happiest day of his life and spends his remaining days ensuring that he doesn't live through a happy day, things are turned upside down when he meets a girl with a terminal illness.
This is an idea that I came up with in first year for my genre project, but I never developed it very far - ended up going in circles with the structure as I had conceived it as a feature and had to break it down into a short - there are many versions of it in my head, but I want to return to it because I think I have developed enough as a writer to be able to see it through now.
Buried Around Back
A short film where a drug dealer finds his lab raided and learns that his partner-in-crime is buried somewhere in the backyard, the air in his coffin quickly running out.
Hell-evator
A man enters the elevator to the afterlife and starts worrying when it keeps going down as worse and worse people get on and off.
Again I did a quick script for this but we never did a second draft or got around to filming it, we ended up doing an improv thing in the elevator instead and its a scary thought to return to this cause we found it's really annoying to film in one of those things:
INT. LOUNGE
A man steps up to an elevator and presses the button.
He holds a ticket in his hand, he frowns at this.
The doors open and a bellboy looks him up and down.
MAN
They said this is the elevator to the after life?
BELLBOY
Sure thing...ticket?
He hands the bellboy his ticket, the bellboy looks it up and down and shakes his head.
BELLBOY
Goin' down...
The BellBoy presses a button, the elevator moves down.
The man looks worried.
The elevator stops.
The doors open and another man steps in.
He hands the bell boy a ticket and stands next to the man.
MAN 2
What are you in for?
MAN
(swallows)
I don't quite know.
MAN 2
I drove over my neighbours cat.
MAN
Well you shouldn't go to hell for that, was it an accident?
The elevator stops and the second man gives him a look.
He steps out. The sound of screeching cats can be heard.
Two other guys enter.
Tickets.
Button.
The three men stand next to each other.
MAN 3
(shrugs)
...robbed a salvation army. It's not technically stealing though is it?
BELLBOY
Sorry emergency stop.
A saint gets on.
A white ticket.
SAINT
(smiling)
Hi.
The elevator goes up.
MAN 3
(surprised)
What did you do?
SAINT
I ran a salvation army, I didn't survive very long after I was robbed though haha
The third man swallows and chuckles awkwardly.
The doors open, white light streams in and both men look annoyed as the Saint gets off:
SAINT
Well you guys have a safe trip.
The doors close, when they open its only the first man left.
IIt's completely black outside.
MAN
Are you sure this is me, I don't think I was worse than that lot.
The Bellboy just shrugs.
He enters the black void warily, another man steps in.
MAN 4
Sheesh, what'd he do to deserve that.
BELLBOY
(matter-of-factly)
Pineapple on pizza man...
The doors close.
END
The Trial
A man wakes up with a detective in his room, interrogating him a bout his relationship with his neighbour (the perspective of the victim of an experimental type of subconscious interrogation after being accused of rape).
This one was interesting because it started as a fan-fiction of sorts for Orson Welles' The Trial (based on the book by Franz Kafka) - a movie that I watched and started hoping the story would go a direction it never did. I transformed it on my own and made it into a sci-fi story that looks at obsession and the legal/moral grey of accusing someone of rape.
I also found later that this was a response of sorts to the situation I was going through in my own life, the character and his actions mirrored some of my own at that stage in my life - a time during which I had a crush on my girlfriend but who was with someone else at the time and rejected my approaches. It was written in the wake of this rejection when I was dealing with the struggle of destroying the crush I had to get over her and not push further to try and get her to end her current relationship at the time.
Dark Fairy Tale
A puppeteer trades a young boy to the fairies in the park in return for one of his wooden dolls to become alive.
I had been researching fairy tales or something at the time (specifically looking at Guillermo Del Toro and Jan Švankmajer's dark fairy tales), I think it was related to screen arts and especially the group project, which at the start had some elements of classical allegory in it when Matthew Wilmshurst was still the head writer. It changed completely, but I started thinking about what I would have possibly suggested for a group project where animation had to play a major part - this short story is what I came up with. I think there was also some inspiration taken from musicals, although at the moment I can't for the life of me remember what exactly that was.
A lot of my more conceptual ideas are a hodgepodge of different influences, all coming together somehow to give me an idea that I, at the time, usually think is really cool.
Lizard People
A Robin Hood-type thief springs a heist on a wealthy household, only to realize the inhabitants are far from human.
This story was actually based on another story that I came up with before (for a feature) and I tried to find a way to tell something similar, with the same emotional resonance, but on a much smaller scale.
The movie is very much a conceptual piece, even the character arc and motivations are pretty far removed from my own life, but I found that there were inflections of my own life experiences and thoughts on the actions and dialogue of the characters. The scene with Queen playing on the TV being a major one lifted not necessarily from a scene from my life, but definitely a thought.
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