Screenwriting 2010

Intro:

The popcorn is purchased. The lights go dark. The curtain opens. It’s time for Action! Adventure! Romance! Horror! But long before you are screaming from your seat someplace somewhere there is a director screaming: Lights! Camera! Action! A call to action for literally hundreds of talented individuals, Actors, camera men, costume designers, set designers, craftsmen, âÂ?¦. And long before that, in a sanctum somewhere in the dens of quietude there is someone quite like yourself. Someone who has a story to tell. Someone who has a yarn to spin, a vision to vista. Talented. Creative. Intuitive. Someone who spent long hours and sleepless nights hammering a new journey into the human experience. An expose’ written to be transformed into visual images, creating a new world or a new way of seeing the old oneâÂ?¦ Yes, yours is the pen that will launch a thousand mindsâÂ?¦

Accepting the 78th Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for CRASH, Bertolt Brecht said that “Art is not a mirror to hold up to society, but a hammer in which to shape it. …”

Storytelling is the basic of human art form. The technology of the art will change� But, storytelling� the technology of the heart will never change�

So you want to write movies.

Screenwriting 2010 is designed to help you write, produce and film your first motion picture before graduating from high school by helping you assimilate the mind of, not only the movie Writer, but the Cinematographer, the Composer, the Director, the Actor and the Agent.

Screenwriting 2010 will familiarize you with the writer’s Palette where with 46 Lines per Page in 13pt. Courier you will sculpt 120 Minutes, 7,200 Seconds, 120 PagesâÂ?¦ 5,520 Lines total, 1,380 Straight cuts, 920 1-Action line cuts, 613 1-Dialogue line cuts, 613 1-Dialogue line cuts with parentheticals or 460 2-Dialogue line cuts, 460 2 Dialogue line cuts with parentheticals at the blazing clip of 60 Seconds per page (Average) into the foundation, the skeleton, for an audio-visual masterpiece, (or at least the very best expose of the story you wish to tell within the parameters and restrictions of the modern film industry.) And the paradigm ‘parameters and restrictions of the modern film industry’ is a concept that is absolutely essential to grasp.

You will learn the fundamental terminologies of screenwriting and film, such as: Cuts, and where and when, (and as important, where not and when not), to use them.

Screenwriting 2010 will introduce you to my personal innovation: the ’24 Elements’ of a screenplay (@ 15 Scenes/15 Minutes per element.) The ’24 Elements’, a recipe and not a blueprint, are by no means exhaustive, but if implemented and craftily devised, the ’24 Elements’ will give your play life, direction and a polish that will have even the most jaded Hollywood professionals giving you a second look. And anyone who has worked in, or even researched, the movie industry will tell youâÂ?¦ you need every edge you can muster. Starting early is good. Connections are the best. Starting early and establishing good connections by demonstrating unmistakable talent is Elysium.

As a test I have written these three screenplays using the Screenwriting 2010 method and have devised a list of Literary Agents that I am going to forward materials to in the hope of landing a contract and actually see a work progress to the production phase. The results will be posted on this site. (Or just maybe you’ll be able to cast your vote at your local picture show.)

They are:

(1) THE KOVYCH VORTEX PART 1: LOG LINE & 1 PAGE SYNOPSIS

TITLE: The Kovych Vortex Part 1: The 3rd Eye of Love
AUTHOR: Illian Morrison
FORM/PAGES: Script/120
DRAFT/DATE: 1st/October 30, 2005
BUDGET: Med-High
AUDIENCE: Young Adult-Adult
GENRE: Drama/Intrigue
TYPE: Fiction
MODE: Contemporary Realism
TONE: Hard-edged Suspense
PERSPECTIVE: Narration. *(First Person POV/Flashbacks)
PREMISE: Paranormal abilities are passed down through Gregori Rasputin and affect world history.
SETTING: 21st century world affairs.
CIRCA: 2012 C.E.
PRIMARY PLACE: Los Angeles. Washington,D.C. *(International)
PRIMARY MYTHOS: Democracy versus tyranny.
PRIMARY ATMOSPHERE: Family tranquility. International tension.
PRIMARY IMPENDING CHANGE(s): Lives, international relations spin out of control.

LOG LINE:
Severe personal trauma transforms, Rasputin descendant, California debutante Love Alison, into a high-priced call-girl in Washington, D.C. who, with the aide of her Black father, must now overcome amnesia and tap into a mysterious psychic ability in time to help an elite anti-terrorism unit prevent the nuclear obliteration of Washington, D.C. and the death of her child.

1 PAGE SYNOPSIS:
The story builds into a furious struggle for love and survival.

On a cold Russian night, a desperate mother sells her crippled, frightened little son to, KARASKANOV, a mysterious old man on his deathbed. The old man then touches the boy in a way that sets off a series of events that forever changes his life and influences the fate of the world.

The story leaps fifty years into the future, to Beverly Hills, California where ED, a high-tech millionaire, rigs his wife’s car to go over a cliff because she’s getting close to finding out he’s selling missile plans to a foreign government. They will pass the plans on to another. These will use the plans to equip a nuclear drone, a Trojan ship and hand them over to a terrorist mastermind.

Her mother in a coma, ED, having been seething with passion for his beautiful step-daughter, callously rapes LOVE, our heroine. Further, furious after learning of her bi-racial heritage, BRET, LOVE’s boyfriend takes a payoff to drug her and allow a vengeful mobster, KOSINOV, to also rape LOVE on their prom night in retribution for the death of his own daughter during an abortion after being impregnated by Love’s father, ALEX. Upon returning home, LOVE has to kill ED to fight off yet another rape attempt, but by now she is so traumatized she aimlessly flees on a cross-country sojourn. Years later LOVE is found an amnesiac, high-priced call girl 3,000 miles away in the nations capital just hours before a nuclear device is set to level the city.
An aged URI, murderous agents hot on his trail, has now fled to America because via the ‘third eye’ he has seen the Russian president’s involvement with the terrorists’ nuclear plot. Through a shear act of God URI passes the ‘third eye’ on to LOVE during a tryst and dies. Fearing URI has passed information on to her through physical contact, Russian agents are now dispatched to find LOVE and eliminate her.

After five desperate years, LOVE’s real father, ALEX, finally finds her in Washington, D.C. on the eve of the nuclear conflagration. NASSASSIN, the terrorist leader has also landed in Washington. He wants to die in his nuclear holocaust and join his wife and daughter killed in an American air raid. If the plot is not uncovered in time, Love, her baby, ALEX and millions of Americans will all die. More, with America’s government and capitol vaporized, it would also mean the end of America, the collapse of NATO and the end of the free world. In spite of BRET’s treachery as a double-agent, the ‘third eye’ enables Love to help an elite anti-terrorism force, S.T.A.R., finally find and eliminate the bomb, but at horrendous cost.

In the end, Love and her family are reunited. But it is revealed, ironically, that LOVE, her mother LENA, her paramour URI, the old man KARASKANOV, and her rapist KOSINOV are all blood descendants of Rasputin, Russia’s infamous philandering ‘Mad Monk’. Her father, ALEX, is also the descendant of an ancient African dynasty whose progenitor, SHASAHNASSA THE GREAT, was also fabled to possess paranormal abilities.

Love’s young son, (the baby), is actually narrating the story of his young life to the audience.

Enough background and tangential material to easily expand into a novel or mini-series.

(2) KATRINA LANDERS: LOG LINE & 1 PAGE SYNOPSIS

TITLE: Katrina Landers
AUTHOR: Illian Spearson Jr.
FORM/PAGES: Script/120
DRAFT/DATE: 1st/February 28, 2006
BUDGET: Low-Med
AUDIENCE: Young Adult-Adult
GENRE: Drama
TYPE: Fiction
MODE: Contemporary Realism
TONE: Emotional Tension
PERSPECTIVE: First Person POV
PREMISE: Confusion surrounding the suspected rape and murder of a young Black girl during Hurricane Katrina awakens dormant racial tensions in a southern town.
SETTING: Contemporary America.
CIRCA: Summer, 2005 C.E.
PRIMARY PLACE: Mobile (Dauphin Island), Alabama.
PRIMARY MYTHOS: Freedom and equality.
PRIMARY ATMOSPHERE: Numbing reality of hurricane devastation.
PRIMARY IMPENDING CHANGE(s): Exploding emotions.

LOGLINE:
While working to rebuild his life, an injured and angst-filled college athlete ends up on trial for the murder of a young Black girl setting off a racial uproar in the wake of the 2005 Katrina disaster. The killer is� what really happened to her days before the night of their romantic encounter on a secluded Alabama beach.

1 PAGE SYNOPSIS:
BENJAMIN MONTLIMAR. His father is a distinguished Alabama attorney. His brother a U. S. Senator. Rather than continue on in med school, Benjamin embarked on a renegade athletic career hoping to become a professional tennis player only to suffer a heartbreaking and career-ending injury after coming within two points of achieving greatness by winning the U.S.,Tennis, Open.

Now back in his sleepy hometown of Mobile, Alabama, Ben is floundering in school, and in life, while he works nights in a popular Gulf Coast night spot where he and a few friends have created quite a sideline industry for themselves as southern-fried gigolos and Ben dreams of carving out a new career in the hallowed halls of his true love, music. Then the whole world is turned upside down. Hurricane Katrina makes landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on the morning of August 29, 2005.

Amidst the uproar and the turmoils of tens of thousands of devastated lives, Ben takes a late night stroll on the moonless beach before an arranged midnight rendezvous where he happens into an alluring and distressed storm victim, lost and separated from her family.

Ben’s encounter with the mysterious female soon leads his well-meaning attempts to help backfiring into a rape/murder investigation. Racial emotions explode in the Mobile community as national coverage highlighting the disparity of the plight of Blacks during the Katrina debacle spills over into the emotionally charged investigation. KATRINA LANDERS, the missing girl, is Black. Ben Montlimar, her accused assailant, is white.

Repercussions reverberate all the way to the nation’s capitol, and Ben’s brother, U.S. SENATOR DAVID MONTLIMAR, resigns his senatorial post to head his prodigal brother’s legal team. As aggressive detectives and a determined prosecuting attorney zero in for the kill, it appears that, even absent a body, it will take a miracle for the innocent Ben to escape prison, or worse.

And just when all seems lost� a miracle happens. A miracle happens involving a person� and involving a way� just as shocking as the truth of what really happened to Katrina Landers.

(3) GAME BOY: LOG LINE & 1 PAGE SYNOPSIS

TITLE: Game Boy
AUTHOR: Illian Morrison
FORM/PAGES: Script/120
DRAFT/DATE: 1st/May 31, 2006
BUDGET: Med-High
AUDIENCE: Family
GENRE: Action/Adventure
TYPE: Fiction
MODE: Special Effects
TONE: Physical
PERSPECTIVE: First Person POV
PREMISE: A talented teen-ager heads off an inter-planetary war.
SETTING: Urban.
CIRCA: 23rd Century.
PRIMARY PLACE: The primary moon of the fictional planet Tiaris.
PRIMARY MYTHOS: Philosophical/Democracy.
PRIMARY ATMOSPHERE: Teen-aged angst. Galactic peace.
PRIMARY IMPENDING CHANGE(s): Coming of age. Inter-planetary war.

LOGLINE:
Contrary to the university aspirations of his academician mother and military commander father, Max Daystar wants to win a video-game contest and a trip to his home-world before he embarks on a career as a professional airboarder� Instead he spends his summer vacation in a death match versus an evil Artificial Intelligence and fighting to head off an interstellar war all the while being hunted down by his own planetary police force.

1 PAGE SYNOPSIS:
Our view zooms past Tiaris Prime and zooms in on Tiaris 2, (Lunaris), where descending to ground level we see MAX DAYSTAR as he wisks his airboard through city traffic making his way to the mammoth Lunaris Central City Game Arcade.

Max and his friend’s are gearing up for a big video-game competition in the hope of winning a trip to the finals on Tiaris Prime. In the process Max and the Game Boys are recruited as game testers by the contest sponsor ARGON REDDIN, CEO of Omni-Tron, a multi-trillion dollar computer game company that Reddin has swindled from its founder, super-scientist NEBULAN OMNI.

Under the ruse of testing video games, Max and other kids are tricked by the sinister Reddin, into using their quick reflexes and gaming skills to assassinate galactic leaders with remote controlled killer androids, Assassitrons, so Omni-Tron can profiteer from an inter-stellar war. Worse, Reddin hedges his control over his puppeteers by kidnapping their families. Max uncovers the plot, but knows he must free his kidnapped loved ones before he can reveal Reddin’s treachery.

Max finally realizes the true meaning the words of his Grandfather, Tiaris’ spiritual icon ARISTOTLE DAYSTAR, that “True Truth, True Freedom and True Love are worth fighting and dying forâÂ?¦”

Courageously, Max stows-away aboard a spaceship to Tiaris Prime and faces down rock-wolves and sand-vultures in the Tiaris desert in order to reach the enemy stronghold to save his true love and save his world. Unfortunately, Max manages to get captured by the villain in the process. With the aid of friends Max escapes and frees ALPHA OMNI and her father. Max finally wins the love of Alpha from Argon’s son, defeats Argon’s maniacal super computer, OTM9, and the evil plan.

But, Max still has work to do. By reprogramming a small army of Assasitrons and marshalling the help of all the airboarders in the planetary capitol, Tiartica, Max is able to make his way through the Tiaris Security Services trying to arrest him and burst in on the President, expose the plot and prevent the war.

Our story triumphantly ends with Max and Alpha’s proud parents watching on as they are awarded airboarding medals in the Inter Planetary Olympics and then airboard off into the future.

Wish me luck!