Shadowrun Screenplay Project Options

[eralston]

Ok, this is Shadow's project, but I'll get the ball rolling:

Can best could you describe Shadowrun in 120 pages, creating characters, events, and a way to string them all together in a Screenplay.

Under Shadow's watchful eye, I propose we, as a group of volunteer opinion-mongers, attempt to combine our best ideas into a cohesive story that could then become the definitive framework for a Shadowrun Movie.

Anyone interested, just post an idea here. Feel free to converse, but if you just thought "This isn't going to work", just scuttle off into the SR4 threads and don't bother posting.

UPDATE: Anyone who has an idea that is a good idea, but out of context, please post it to the "Pitch Your Snippet" thread

[SpasticTeapot]

First, I'd like to say that I like SR4. My players are all new to RPGs, and it's a great system if you can get over the crappy book layout. THBBT!
Secondly, an idea.

I've been thinking about how hard it is to write an info to shadowrun, and then I had an idea: Why not make the movie an introduction? Portray a young man who becomes a troll, and ends up in the Night of Rage, only to find out he's a wizard. Have his family become estranged, then dead (due to random gunshots aimed at him), and have is friends turn against him. He ends up in the sewers, and learns that his abilities are in demand.


So, here's a quickie storyboard overview.

1. Show main character playing in football game. ~16 year old male, physically fit, attracts girls. At end, gets phone number of cheerleader, manages to convince coach to make his teachers pass him one more time. Think standard nasty jock-type. Self-narrated.
Coach is small, fat, has bushy moustache.
Josh is blond, blue-eyed.
Cheerleader is preppy, makes oogly eyes at Josh.

2. Gets home at night, to find out that there's an odd plauge going around. This is 2012; this is reflected in eye-mounted computers, several roomba-like robots. Father blames it on "Sand-Niggers" or "Kikes", depending on what's more appropriate. (I'm a jew, and detest these terms, but we're trying to portray a creep here).

3. In this short sequence, he walks through the beginning of the day and collapses.
3.1Next morning, wakes up, finds his skin coarse, vision hazy.
Dismisses it as hangover.

3.2 Grabs stuff from kitchen, finds his shoes don't fit. Does'nt notice;
puts on large sandals and walks out door.

3.3: Walks down street, and collapses under traffic light. He lives in a
snazzy suburb, with white picket fences. He contrasts with dark
splotchy skin. Blacks out. Then, shot from side, zooms out to see
paramedics pulling up, blacks out.

4. Hospital
The main character (henceforth "Jeremy") wakes up to find out that he's in a huge ward, surrounded by people HAZMAT suits. This shot is from first-person. He's tied down, but only to keep him from convulsing, he has an IV in his arm. He then manages to undo the strap, and sees his arm.

Zooms out. He sees (along with audience) his reflection in the mirror, gasps. Camera now turns to bear on him. He's now four inches taller, and thin as a rail. He looks almost stretched out, and is barely able to move. (His muscles stayed the same size, but his bones grew.), and growing out of fresh punctures in his lower lip still covered with scaps, two small tusks. His skin is covered with splotchy gray bits. In the background, cheerleader is wheeled in, still appearing the same, but with outfit mussed up. character falls to sleep.


5. Home.
Character wakes up in his home. He puts on the pair of waders left next to his bed. His tusks are even bigger, and he's no longer scrawny.
He walks into kitchen. Finds out he's been in coma for three weeks. Talks to parents, who tell him how he must have done something wrong, his mother screams about "purity." They're angry, and confused; their son was more or less aryan, and now he's obviously sub-human. (Never mind his physical fitness.) Son gets angry, says @#$#$ you to parents, grabs bag and goes off to school despite doctor's order to stay home..

6. School.
Shot of him walking in, school already in session, but bell ringing. He's now wearing some previously baggy pants, and still no shirt.
Following shot through hallway. Students point, gasp, mumble. He hears it rumbling around his head, stomps off twoards door marked "gym".
Cut to shot of barbell moving up and down, end of barbell only thing in focus. Then, focus out, showing guy benching.
Cut to Jeremy, looking at weight rack. He's about to do a "clean and jerk". Puts 90 lbs. on bar, absentmindedly picks it up with one hand.
Room goes silent.
He puts it back down, adds another 90 lbs. Starts easily moving it up and down.
Shot of more weight being added 2x. Grand total of 540 lbs. He manages to get this massive amount of weight above his head, drops it. Dents floor.
He then walks out into the hall, and starts to cry. Coach follows, tells him it's okay; points out that he'd still do great at football, that he's the same person, just a little different on the outside.
Cuts to shot of PA speaker, beeps twice. Cuts out to shot of the coach and Jeremy. PA says "all genetically active students must go to point Q"

After this, they're herded on to busses.

So, whad'ya think? I was hoping to use this as something as a metaphor for racial bias; even though he's 7' tall and looks like an Uru-Kai reject, he's still the same person, and realizes he's a creep.
About the cheerleader? She turns into a TROLL. She realizes that A. her life is hollow, B. she's got more than looks, and C. anyone who respects her for who she is and won't push her around is a better boyfriend anyway. Ends up Jeremy's love interest.


Of course, this needs dialouge. Also, more content; I have to write out Night of Rage and such. Also, what happens after he flees into the underground? When does he find out he's a mage? (I'd presume a Shaman-what totem? Possibly Wolf.)
Also, I was thinking of making the cheerleader an Adept, as well. I think it might be interesting to have the cheerleader, an individual who gets her self-esteem from other's interest in her body, suddenly able to bench-press a Jeep.
Also, I was thinking about introducing a character in the beginning who used to be his friend. He's an Elf, and an early one; he's also a hacker, and flamboyantly gay to boot. He abandoned him when he came out of the closet, but now ends up having him save his life at some point in the movie.

[FanGirl]

I'm sorry, but it's just not canon.

Other than that, good concept.

[eralston]

I think it would be a great short film. It certainly reflects a sort of nice animatrix-style snippet of life in the future.

I think it's otherwise too involved and any attempts at progressing toward 2060 or past would be largely viewed as bad storytelling. I would also say that the awakening at large (magic + metahumans) is more important than just goblinization. Maybe if you could pin the opening flashback down to <5 minutes so no one gets "attached" to the location for the rest of the movie.

[Shadow]

It has some really great concepts in it, and I think it could definetley work (like my hollywood speek) with just a few changes. Unfortunatley, whatever you do the main character has to be human. Sure he can use magic, hang out with elves, orks, and trolls, but in the end the main characte has to be human.

Let me tell you why. The main character is the charactes whos eyes the story is told through. The Film going audience canot identify with a Troll. Wether they realize it or not there will be a disconnect and the story will fall on deaf ears.

It has a lot of potential though, any ideas for rewaorking it so that he's human?

[eralston]

Human lead character is a total necessity.

You could bifurcate the main character into two attractive young men who are best friends. When one turns ork, the other is forced to choose either the growing hatred around them or the years of fond memories with his friend. It could be this choice that leads them away from the world they knew and into the shadows. It still doesn't evade the previously mentioned time issue. Even if they gobolinize in 2021 (canon time) they would be too old by 2060 (or even 2070 if we were shooting for fourth ed) to make attractive heroes.

We could do an analogous background for a group of friends around bug city (2055), though they would probably be more torn apart by the bug spirits. If you wanted to go directly to the night of rage (2039), that offers a pretty good moment in time for setup given that also deals with the current state of governance, SINs, and creation of the underclass that exists today (namely probationary citizens).

I still contend that any opening flashbacks need to be rather short so I don't think we should let them get too involved.

[ChuckRozool]

[bustedkarma]

The Capt. Chaos Timeline post, IMO, is a terrific treatment for an SR Screenplay.
http://www.shadowrunrpg.com/resources/timeline.shtml

[Shadow]

[emo samurai]

Why does he have to be human? You seem to be too intent on making this movie mainstream-audience friendly. If anything, an orc character would be a great way to portray the alienation the runners face.

Also, we need some very exotic characters who push the boundaries of the universe; if we make things too mainstream, we'll just have the Matrix with elf ears and cyberware. There could be a quadriplegic decker, a street shaman who meditates in an alley, etc. The two good deckers in 2xs were weird, and they made effective characters. We have to make sure that the SR universe is genuinely exotic. Cyberpunk always has strange characters, and if everyone walks around with mirrorshades and trenchcoats, that wonder is gone.

I have a great idea for a scene. It starts with a puppy chewing a toy in an executive apartment. Everything seems normal for a few seconds, with a few executives behaving like everyday phony suits. They start getting down to the business of evil, and the puppy never leaves the screen. Then the runners burst in from the window, gun down their target, and leave, after they take the puppy. How does that sound?

I thought that the presence of the puppy would be a great contrast to the evil room conference and would be the perfect symbol of the disparity between the corps' shiny happy veneers and the evil that they do on a regular basis.

[James McMurray]

The more mainstream you make a movie the more you can expect it to earn. The more you expect it to earn the more you can put into it. I for one would prefer to see a movie with a human / troll pair of friends that had great special effects then a movie with just a troll and lousy ones.

[emo samurai]

What do you think of the puppy scene? And I still think having an orc protagonist would be a great idea; if that weren't viable, then comic book movies wouldn't exist.

[James McMurray]

Puppy: too, umm, puppyish? Ok, maybe that's the wrong word for it. Artsy?

Comic book movies exist because the comic books have a huge group of already existing fans to draw on. SR has fans, but nowhere near as many fans as Superman, or even The Punisher.

What comic book movie has an orc protagonist? Fantastic Four had Ben Grimm, but he was part of a team. The Hulk had The Hulk, but he was also human.

[eralston]

Emo, comic book movies, yeah. Even in that you can feel the gravitation away from the outrageous. Example: Hellboy. The "eyes" of the movie was human, despite it being about hellboy.

I think we should back up and establish a few things:

1) We want a successful movie (Who the hell doens't? A summer (action) blockbuster or winter (more fanciful) blockbuster. Anything less [Sci-Fi Scinema Saturday, yay :please: ] is just not setting out sights high enough)

2) To attain a successful movie we will make it mainstream (I know this might hurt, of anyone here it hurts me most, but little fan-flicks I can make in six months and some dedication. Blockbusters take a lot more)

3) We will present everything aspect of SR we can, but to attain goals 2 and 3 it must be grounded in movie convention and proven methods

4) We will not necessarily present your opinion of SR (whoever may be reading this). I certainly do not expect getting mine. Most important will be story, all other consideration specific to SR's averages or oddities (such as average metahuman percentages, average shadowrun duties, or whatever else) will be secondary.

5) We want something primarily representing the world as it is somewhere between 2060 and 2070 (I'm not saying we need SR4, but I think going any earlier than 2060 means we will be indulging something

6) The lens for the story must be highly relatable by average people [IE: The Human Argument, the one we've already dealt with] (A definite sub-rule to this would be recognizing that Elves make for better ready companions to main characters than trolls/orks, but that's not a strict rule)

I suggest anyone opposing these views start a new thread entitled "Alternate SR Screen Stuff" for accumulation of ideas around Shadowrun that are experimental and better left to fan films or future professional shorts. And ONLY DO THIS if you fully understand that we are fighting to win the majority so we can make professional grade high-concept ideas as you might present in that thread.

[emo samurai]

Maybe have a normal guy get caught up with a band of shadowrunners. Wait, they did that with the first trilogy of novels...

Dude, I know. Have the main dude be a normal wagemage. He'll start out the movie going through a normal-looking office with people in boring business attire, fluorescent lights, and cubicles. There will be inanities and boring, normal greetings exchanged. He'll put on a lab coat and enter a lab. Just when you expect him to pull out a test-tube or a microscope or interview a patient or something, he'll cast a freaky spell and do his thing, manipulating objects and having glowy eyes and stuff. That way, he'll be normal and yet extraordinary, and the film will be started with a great surprise. The first extroadinary thing in the movie will come from the most normal guy.

And the puppy doesn't have to be artsy; the irony will be obvious to anyone, and the audience will love it if the runners take it away.

[eralston]

An extraction run on some poor schmuck who needs the whole universe explained to them was my idea, emo. You're probably the only person here who would now that and you used the knowledge for evil. For shame :P

I like it. I worry that he will be a bit too extraordinary for a strong grounding, though I like being up front about magic. I suppose you should come up with the reason for him being there in the plot and I'll like it without reservation.

[Shadow]

Hey Emo, I love the puppy scene idea. People getting torn apart and exploded, guns firing everywhere, you don't see this of course you just see the puppy reacting to it. I think it's Beautiful.

It is a great idea for an opening scene and I will mark it. for sure. We still need at least 4 main characters, a story, a bad guy, and a ending.

I know allot o you think the main character can be something other than human. But please take our word for it that it can't. It really has to be human. There are a lot of things that make a screenplay attractive to a producer. Unfortunately "creativity" is somewhere near the bottom. At the top is "cost to produce". A Troll main character would most certainly have to be CGI and just would not be taken seriously. A orc would just be plain ugly. Audiences associate ugly characters with the bad guys.

Humans, Elves, and Dwarves. And I will NOT put a dwarf in the screen play if I think for one second he/she will be relegated to comic relief (ala Gimli) are what is left. Now I am not saying Orcs and Trolls wont be in it, but they will have to be relegated to secondary characters.

So think human male for lead, and female elf for supporting. I think the supporting character should be the magic user, not the lead, for reasons I stated before, the audience needs to relate to the main character.

[Shadow]

OK I just had a thought based on what has been posted.

Lead character is a human Sammy (minimal obvious cyber). He and his team (as yet to be determined) our hired to extract a Female Elf Scientist from evil corp A. Now as was said earlier, the girl being extracted would learn about the universe along with the audience. She also needs her puppy taken too, its part of the deal.


Now that is the first 9 minutes. We have a possible romance (lead and elf) and thats it. What we need is for there to be more of the story.

A lot of us have played SR so much that the standard storylines are cliche and old, but remember, to the audience it will all be new.

[emo samurai]

I would know that? How? I haven't really read your screen treatment all the way through...

And I like the idea of the puppy scene, but I don't think it should be the first scene. The scene doesn't work without the puppy being taken, and if the camera were on the puppy the whole time, there wouldn't be much of an introduction to the action. I think the taking of the puppy should be very offhand, a random gesture of humanity on the part of one of the more whimsical runners. And even if the camera did go to the action and the puppy were taken, the puppy being taken would be too confusing and unique a thing to really be a good introduction to the universe.

And the thing with him being extraordinary won't be an issue if he's a very normal character otherwise, wife, two kids, Ares car, etc. The combination of boring, normal personality with magic would help the audience feel as if they're one with the strangeness of this world while they're seeing it for the first time.

[eralston]

UPDATE: Anyone who has an idea that is a good idea, but out of context, please post it to the "Pitch Your Snippet" thread

Emo: I was kidding. I'm not surprised by your lack of dedication. You can't even turn on AIM despite being online right now, for shameful shame

I can agree with Puppy as humanitarian gesture, but only as long as it is distinct from the use of a puppy in Equilibrium.

So, why is she kidnapped? What could she know?

Thinking on important awakened-type events in SR, one does come to mind:

Halley's Comet

She could be associated with Orichalcum production, the comet itself, SURGE, or other. My only concern would be that it might be a bit specific for the first time audience, thoughts?

Alternatively, her magical ability could be incidental (and downright unexpected by the runners). It might make it all the more humanizing if she was wanted for some relationship with the enemy.

I think we should pin the central conflict before we start dwelling on puppies. We can make a string of cool scenes or we can make a good story. My universal thoughts on the subject of the necessities of an SR storyline (aside from the stuff covered in the other thread on the subject):

1) It needs to be fairly small scale (we're not out to save the world, we're out to get paid and give some payback, blah, blah)
2) It needs to involve high risk on the part of the characters, risks higher than not getting paid for something (the relationship thing helps)

One example could be that the Elven Mage is the sister of some pair of brothers caught in some middle-level corp fight. One brother hires the runners to fight against the other, the sister gets involved. Perhaps there could be some revelation about her being their sister. One possibility would be the runners siding with the sister over the other two or somethign like that. Family feuding is used fairly often in SR

[emo samurai]

I don't know if a "we're just out to get paid" mentality would really work in a mainstream film...

[FanGirl]

I like the wage-mage idea. I think it would be best, however, if he were a young guy who recently got out of college and is now working his way up from the bottom of the corporate ladder. He'll still be someone that the audience can identify with, but he won't have so much of the strong social ties to the law-abiding world that a "family man" would have. This will make it that much easier for him to sever his ties and immerse himself in the shadows.

I figure that the film should start by introducing a "typical" runner team, who is introduced in the film's opening sequence ("the puppy scene"). The team will be an assortment of three to five stereotypical film characters, led by a busty and sardonic Lara Croft type who'll make all the fanboys drool. In the next scene, we are introduced to our wage-mage, who is working in the R&D department of the same corporation as the slaughtered execs. He's mildy concerned when he hears the news of the carnage, but he's too confident that "that sort of thing" will never happen to him to feel any real fear.

We'll then spend a little while switching back and forth between these two plotlines: as Our Hero gets assigned to a Top-Secret-Project in the corp, the runners are hired to extract the leader of the Top-Secret-Project. The plotlines soon intersect when the runners go to the Top-Secret-Facility where the Top-Secret-Project is being worked on and, thanks to faulty intelligence, manage to extract Our Hero instead of his superior.

The runners determine that it would be too dangerous for them to let Our Hero go free, so they decide take him to their hideout and keep him there until they can figure out what to do with him. Our Hero soon bonds with his captors, of course, and ends up joining the team. As the film progesses, the runners slowly realize that they're caught up in some kind of evil Byzantine conspiracy in which they play a small yet integral part. They start investigating in this conspiracy, which leads to escalating Action and Conflict and possibly even the death of some expendable runner(s). In the end, Our Hero figures out the conspiracy, saves the world, wins the heart of the Lara Croft type, and rides off into the sunset with his surviving team members.

[emo samurai]

I will NOT work on a movie where the main characters are boring stereotypes. Yes, the characters of Firefly had some archetypes, like the "brutish mercenary," the "ice-cold amazon," and "earnest normal dude," but they have to be unique in some way.

And the "part of a fragged-up run that went wrong" thing has already been done in the "Secrets of Power" trilogy. Those books made me so super-pissed that I kicked my dog in the nuts so hard he exploded puppy-guts.

How about: he tries to help people on the way home from work and gets caught in some bad underworld shit. I don't know what else to do.

[FanGirl]

1. I agree with your sentiment on creating original characters, but you've only got so much time in a movie to introduce your characters before the audience starts to fidget. This is especially true for a plot-driven story--and this film will need a plot-driven story, if its creators want to tap into the action-movie fanbase. It's sad, but you have to give up a little chunk of your soul if you want to make something that most people will enjoy; that often means making your supporting characters (and possibly even your lead characters to a certain extent) into round pegs, so they can fit into those round holes that make up the plot.

2. Yes, the "run gone wrong" thing has indeed been done, but most movie-goers wouldn't know that, now would they? ;)

3. Your idea sounds fine, although I must admit I'm biased in favor of my setup. :D

[James McMurray]

emo: stereotypes sell. It's how you make them subtly different that matters.

Secrets of Power wasn't that bad, and it had a lot of the standard SR stuff in it. Run gone bad is 1,000 times more mainstream SR then helping omsone on the way home.