Shadowrun Screenplay Project Options

[FanGirl]

True that, JM. Plus, you'd expect even the best teams to screw up every once in a while: no team is good enough to predict all possible outcomes and properly adjust for those possible outcomes.

[James McMurray]

EVen if it were possible, that team wouldn't belong in an SR movie. :)

[ChuckRozool]

I just thought up an awsome idea for an SR movie.
Are you ready for this?
Well... are ya?
Ok... here it goes...

Office Space 2060

Pretty sweet huh? Yeah?
I thought so too...

It would totally work, think about it.
In Office Space, Peter is sick of his job and pretty much were he is in life. So he goes thru work not caring and ends up getting promoted blah, blah, blah...

So here come the shadowrunny part, with the help of his friends they come up with a way to skim money from the company.

So what we do is this, have a small group of protagonist all are wage slaves for Big Corp corporation.
Jody an elf programmer who yearns for a less mundane life, he's "the brains"
Art an awakened human who thinks he has Jedi powers, hasn't quite figured out it's magic. (It's totally possible!)
Donny an introverted techy troll with a stuttering problem.

So you follow the same sorta premise Jody is tired of it all and convinces his friends to help him out. The thing is since this is Shadowrun when things go wrong, the movie takes a turn for the suspenseful. Now they're trying to just stay alive and make it to safety, where ever that would be. It would conclude with Jody getting what he wants, a less mundane life, as a shadowrunner. Heck if you decide to keep his friends alive through the thing they might even join him.

Well there ya go... Seriously though, give it real some thought. Don't just automatically shoot down the idea...

EDIT:

[James McMurray]

I'd pay -$5.00 to see that. ;)

[eralston]

I think the audience attraction busty boner-inducer proved wrong assumptions in both Ultraviolet and Aeon Flux (I will admit that neither Mila nor Charlize are terribly busty, but same idea).

There are no stereotypes for the majority of our audience. How many people in America have read the Secrets of Power Trilogy? I've played Shadowrun for 9 years and never touched an actual copy. Even straight up plagiarism from the book would appear like creativity to most and in this case its hardly a fraction of a synopsis.

And, as I implied in an earlier post, YOU are not making the movie, so you need to think far more universal than you are right now. Even I am not making the movie, WE are making the movie and even then not by consensus. All we can hope to do is exhaust ideas and split open concepts until we accumulate enough pieces to build with. What is original in Shadowrun, anyway? Riddle me that I'll make YOUR movie myself

I wouldn't mind diverging plotlines as long as they were highly dependent. So much time is spent in a fantasy/sci-fi type movie building the universe that multiple threads are not often used and I think for a good reason.

I can feel your proposal FG, but that's almost too generic. I'm also not on board with what makes him Heroic again? It smacks of a bit of whimsy on his (The Hero's) part to pursue vengeance instead of just getting the hell out. What offense would the corp make to change his loyalties, it would have to be more than a case of stockholm syndrome. It would have to be enough to risk. It would have to be something like a cranial bomb in his head (damn you M:I 3!!!), or killing his whole family or something equally huge to make him desperate enough to try taking the corp on.

CR, that's actually partially the premise to the movie adaptation of Johnny Mnemonic, only the band of employees were a bit more altruistic. Again, good idea for a Shadowrun short, but not blockbuster material.

Also, future posts of CR's type should try to land themselves in the pitch your snippet thread

[James McMurray]

A team sent to recapture the extractee has a bad time of it and is forced to fall back on their secondary onjective: eliminate the extractee.

[emo samurai]

"Almost too generic?" I'm proud of you.

But seriously; even if you discount the "Street Sam," "Decker," and "Mage" stereotypes, you'll still have "Quiet professional," "Cocky wisecracker," and "Arrogant Dickhead." Forget archetypes; I'm perfectly okay with standard character builds. I'm talking about personalities. You don't even have to watch mainstream heist movies to find them; you could just watch Armageddon or something.

Then again, we can't really talk at this stage, since most original characters would seem incredibly cliched without lines to represent them.

And simple moral outrage would be enough to make him quit. He could find that they're forcing bug spirits into dogs; this is canon, and it would be a great thing to use. He'll make a difference without saving the world by exposing Ares for doing that, and it'll be a great run idea. The crew will unload the paydata for a good amount of money, nothing will change. The mainstream audience, the protagonists, and the players who want the grit will all be happy.

[FanGirl]

[Shadow]

[emo samurai]

Why would we make this film just to sell it? We can't control how well it sells, be it a shitty action-fest like Ultraviolet or a great movie like Serenity. One of the few sci-fi movies in recent memory to sell well was Minority Report, and that was a great movie in pretty much every way without the dumbass buzzwords and cliches. These marketing "truths" don't really work. The only thing we can control is how good the thing we make is. I think we should drop the whole "marketing research says that if we have a skinny dude who makes jokes and wears glasses but is still cool we'll make a movie that'll sell to the 15-25 male demographic" because we don't know shit about that, and neither do half the people who pretend to for money, and the people who do know make "Monster-in-Law." If you made "Monster-in-Law 2060," I'm sure you'd shoot yourselves, and if you didn't, I'd do it for you, because you fucked up a great brand in the most visible, demoralizing way possible.

[Shadow]

There are universal truths about films. Here is one of them.

Hollywood truth #1
We are not making this movie.

WHAT? Then why write a screen play?

Because I love to write, and this is my chosen medium. If we write a SP and it is good, and WK decides to buy it, that’s it. It is out of our hands.

Hollywood truth #2
The writer has the least control over what happens to a screen play.

It's sad but it is true. You poor blood sweat and tears into a SP and the they buy it. They hire a big time director to shoot the film....

Hollywood Truth #3

The screen play as sold will have little resemblance to the film made.

The first thing any director does is bring in his own writer to re-write/polish the screen play. Maybe he likes it and doesn't do much, maybe he re-writes the whole thing.


I am not saying this to scare anyone or make it seem like an impossible task. But there are truths in this. Knowing that your main character has to be human is not marketing. It is knowing your audience. There are writing truths, especially when talking about films, and unless you have 20 mil in the bank to finance it, you have to follow them.

I could go on and on about this, but the simple fact of the matter it, there are rules to writing screen plays. And you CANNOT ignore them. If you do, you will not sell your screen play.

[eralston]

I'm not out to argue the point about monster-in-law 2060. All I'm going to say is that some movies are Citizen Kane and some movies are Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood. Everyone shoots for the former, but there is still someone who turned a dime making the latter, and you know what, even you emo are probably more gifted. Just imagine how much we could accomplish if we just worked together.

I remember just the other day I watched Spider-man 2 on DVD with the commentary on and they (Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, Avi Arad, and the realtively nameless co-producer) were talking about how many changes they made to each scene even after they had the official screenplay (which was about a million miles from what they described as the first ideas for the movie. Did you know black cat was going to be in it?). The theme of every DVd commentary I've ever heard is that directors are the most self-styled creative people in hollywood. Now, for writer-directors (such as Joss Whedon if you want to bring up Firefly), they get some well deserved credit, but others just have the syndrome of never leaving well enough alone.

Overall, I view this as an effort to make something indellibly Shadowrun despite "the system" and the best way to do it is to do as much routinzing to hollywood convention we can before it gets torn apart by any prospective buyers. I am also under the assumption that nothing groundbreaking will come from this and no matter what I will still go on with my life without an SR movie.

As far as what "expertise" I bring to this, hmmmm. Ever tried to explain Shadowrun to a room of forty people who would rather watch the real world: Las Vegas than a sci-fi/fantasy/noir cross-over? I have. Ever try to make a Shadowrun movie for consumption? I have. Now, the really important thing, more important than anything else, EVER START YOUR OWN THREAD TO TRY TO DO IT? I have. That's pretty much the most important distinction. Shadow and I tried first, so we get to reach for the stars, crash down to earth, or go down in flames.

If we're wrong there will be someone else a little while from now, when this thread has been buried by months of crap, that will try again.

[ChuckRozool]

Well, now that we've got that outta the way... heh. A friend and I are actually trying to come up with a story. We figure we'd try and film a series of shorts here in Austin.

The plan?

1. Come up with a story we can both agree on (my friend and I)
2. Find some decent locations to shoot (shouldn't be too hard in Austin)
3. Obtain some local acting talent, and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse!
4. Actually film the thing on the week ends (two cameras would be good...)
5. Edit and put it all together (note to self: buy a firewire card)
6. Upload to web and broadcast on cable access
7. Have something to show for the schooling I took.
8. And come to think of it, since I have this list here. A timeline would be good.

So anywho, I think it'd be nice to throw some ideas back and forth. So far we've come up with a simple data steal scenario, a detective story, a possible horror scenario, mainly involving ghouls and a more complex story involving bugs and some ancient artifact.

The last idea we were thinking of trying as a toon series, since it involves a bit of world travel. One problem with making it a toon is that it's a bit too much for just one man, namely me, to handle. For this project we'd need to find some more people to help get it off the ground. We were thinking at we'd need least two good illustrators, for character concepts and the like; one, possibly two, storyboard artists; and like, oh I don't know, five animators?(myself included) I guess a total of 5 artist would do, all of them filling the role of animators and two doubling as concept artist/illustrators and another two doubling as storyboard artists.

[Shadow]

I think that it is really creative. But for this thread we are going to focus on an attainable goal, writing a screen play.

So here is what we Need.

Characters

1 Lead Protagonist
1 Supporting (Possible Love Interest))
2-3 Sub-characters

1 Main Antagonist
3-5 Villains

A plot to run them through.

So far the best idea I have heard is that we have and extraction and a double cross. We need a good compelling story that is simple to describe.

[Shadow]

I really like the extraction angle, it gives us a lot of options. So the next question would be why are the runners extracting the scientist. Who is this scientist, what is she working on, and would she go willingly.

[WinterRat1]

A few quick things.

1. I think this is an absolutely fantastic idea, and no matter how it turns out, I'd love to watch the movie/see the screenplay.

2. Eralston - I think you working on the project is great. I loved your Shadowrun: One Night movie, and I'd love to see more of your work. Side note: The only negative for me was that I couldn't always hear the dialogue over the sound effects/music. On the other hand, it did create a very real feeling of being in combat where you can't exactly hear everything everyone else says. Heck, sometimes you can't even hear yourself think, let alone what others are saying. So if that's the effect you were going for, you did a great job of it. The combat scenes felt very chaotic and intense. Oh, and the music choices were great too.

3. Shadow - I know you and the kind of guy you are. I'm sure this will turn out to be an excellent product, since I can't see you spending your time on a subpar endeavor. Still eagerly waiting for you to rejoin us in LITS. :)

4. Is the point of this project to actually create the aforementioned movie for public consumption/submission, or simply to create a the movie for personal enjoyment? The reason I ask is I think several of the published adventures could easily fit into the 120 page limit that are short, easy to understand by the general populace, and yet engaging at the same time. Of course, plagarism would be an issue in that case, so that would be a no go. But if it's just for fun, it might not be breaking any laws.

5. Should production limitations be taken into consideration? For example, Eralston's movie was created using the Max Payne engine, which I am assuming had inherent limitations on what it could do. Is it necessary to take those limitations into consideration when tossing out ideas?

6. Is there a general time limit you are shooting for? I don't know how many minutes a 120 page screen play would translate into.

7. What degree of assistance/input (if any) are you looking for from the general populace/peanut gallery (i.e. everyone but Shadow and Eralston)? I freely admit I have no experience in film or production for general consumption, and my creative writing experience is mostly limited to role-playing, but I would enjoy helping in any way I can. On the other hand, I certainly don't want to cross lines and go where I'm not wanted/allowed, so would it be possible to clear up what you are and are not looking for from the populace at large?

[Shadow]

[eralston]

Thank you for your comments on my movie. I will admit that the sound design was a fairly big compromise of the medium and, while I liked some of it, will be tuned in future endeavors.

Indeed, our biggest concern is making a highly mainstream SR movie. It takes out part of the challenge for me if I weren't bending over backwards to make the final product. I've already made the scripts I want to make and will always make more, this is an exercise in constrained design.

Ok, let's hammer out this the EBC, what is pre-existing that we could pull on?

One thought would be we could center it narrowly pre-2060, make the employee a fuchi asset, get Renraku, Shiawese, and Novatech in a three way fight over them. We could make it 2063-2064 and have him know something about surfacing genetics stuff...we could do a lot. Overall, I just want more solid inspiration for presented conflict ideas. Let's focus on narrowing down our evil conspiracy if we have decided we need one.

[James McMurray]

Something inviolving Immortal Elves could be very cool. You could have Leonardo denounce "The DaVinci Code." ;)

[emo samurai]

DRAGONS! MOTHERFUCKING DRAGONS!!

Seriously; seeing a bigass thing toying with the main characters will be a huge kick.

[James McMurray]

You'd have to be very careful to avoid connatations with recent dragons in the real world movies like whatever movie that was where the guy jumped at the dragon with an ax. Positive connotations are ok though.

It could be hard to sell a dragon as a globetrekking, political, corporation owning threat. Standard hollywood says that dragons are villains that live in caves and get killed with swords.

[Shadow]

[Shadow]

There are two sore subjects in Shadowrun, IE's and Dragons. The former would be to complicated a concept to introduce in a fresh movie. The latter could work but it wold be as a very removed character, seen only for a second as a shadow. Or perhaps a voice on the com.

Maybe at the end of the script when all is said and done, a dragon is revealed as the master manipulator.

[James McMurray]

It only takes one explanatory scene and a couple of flashbacks to explain that magic isn't new, and that some creatures (elves and dragons) lived through the downtime, plotting and scheming the whole time.

[emo samurai]

Maybe have Lofwyr have a passing interest in the matter. Make it obvious that dragons exist in the world, perhaps using a broadcast from Masaru or Hestaby to show this fact. Then have a shot before the climactic fight scene with Lofwyr watching the runners on one of his 50 screens from the shadows.