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"Let me write you a film"

Hi, I'm Alistair Gray. You may remember from such staff topics as 'Stop bugging me,' and 'I'll look into it.' This is a serious topic, not really work related, this is me writing from home - hey, it doesn't happen very often, so savour every moment. You may or may not know, but my capacity here at Special Reserve is writer, I do the news, the e-mails and some of the reviews. But what I really want, is to write a film/book. And this is where you help me.

I need an idea. I'm a perfectly competent writer, I know all about structure, balancing, character development and all that jazz, but I just need a spark, something to set me writing. I need an idea, a good idea that I can base a film around. God knows I have enough spare time (I'm here aren't I?) and I'm really into the idea of writing some serious stuff, rather than news about a game with monkeys in it. Seeing as the standard of writing in these forums is through the roof, I was wondering if any of you fine people have some ideas you'd like to share for such a project - just ideas, premises, floaty notions - anything at all to get me started, because once I'm off, it'll be done within a week. I'm looking at people like Grix, Meka, Mr. Happy and Goaty, and the others who write such fine stories day in, day out right here on these very forums. You can help me fulfill my potential.

If you have any ideas you'd like to share, or just anything you feel could help me, please e-mail me at [email protected] and let me know, because I'm eager to get started quickly. I'm not looking for anything too heavy, but I don't want to write a comedy either, because... well, basically I don't think I'm funny.

Please, with your help, you can put a smile on the News Monkey's face and fill his spare time with things other than eating. Any thoughts at all, let them flow and I'll thank you profusely in the credits when I'm rich and famous. Cheers.

Ali

I have an idea of a film/game called 'Death Row'. Yes, it's as unoriginal as a distended piece of sputum, but what do you lot care? With names like Deathmatch, I'm a shoe-in ;D

It involves a massive high-security prison, with lazer beams, sentry guns, the works. I should put SR members in it! Excellent...

I like that a lot, Mr Happy. I do like that a lot.

I love the "second time round" stuff... The first story I wrote on here you had to read twice to understand fully. It was a bit simple, but fun to write, all the same. :0) Rip off of two films, pretty obvious which one of them is, considering the title is "Seven", but hey. :0)

I had this idea of one character that you see every now and again... has no part in the story at all, just walks past the camera, or see him in shops, and then at the very end he plays an important role. Can't really work it out that well though, just a starting thought, and pretty simular to yours.

I've been planning an Unreal Tournament rip off called Deathmatch (also a rip off of another film's title) where it's the future, and online gaming is played via a rip off of the Matrix (which ripped it from other films), where you're plugged into the computer. In the games you have special powers (ripping off the Matrix) Basically from there it's a rip off of the Running Man, where this hero guy tries to escape it because he's sick of the killing... or something. Anyway, there's lots of rip offs from the Matrix and John Woo films, with slow motion fight scenes and bullet time

Yep, won't get me sued at all

Snuggly I have an idea for a film noir that could rock, possibly, but it might sound odd without a story and characters to wrap around it. Anyhow it goes something like this...

You know how most film noirs are fairly conventional and you see the central detective trailing the bad guy etc.. that's the starting point. A film noir. It's become increasingly fashionable to have this three overlapping stories thing as well thanks to Quentin Tarantino. Well that plays a part too, but not obviously. Finally one of the most genius moments in film is when halfway through Psycho the central character is killed and if you don't know that it's about to happen it's a revelation.

So what I thought was that you could start your film noir with a guy who is being followed, but not only does he not know it, neither does the audience. However, you make it obvious enough that he is being followed that if anyone watches the film for a second time, a second story emerges. For instance in Chinatown Jack Nicholson leaves a fob watch underneath the wheel of the car of the guy he's tracking to find out what time he leaves. It'd be quite cool for the central character in this film to get into his car and reverse off and then hear a crunch and get out to discover the watch under his car. Little clues that don't become obvious until the guy who is following him knocks him off and you realise that he was being followed, and when you watch the film again you see his pursuer in shops just before him, hanging out in the background, things like that. When the first guy is killed, his killer would become the central character and solve whatever clandestine mystery was at the heart of the film.

I've only thought about this a little, and what I need to do is come up with a plot to fit around the idea. I'd want it so that there was a continuous case/mystery just that another character takes over halfway through, and equally I'd want that character to somehow play a pivotal role in the scenes before he kills the central character but so no-one would realise it until they saw him kill the central character.

If I ever manage to break into directing that would be my gold-ticket first film, something nice and different. It may seem odd but I'll probably sit down and flesh it out after my exams and then it will work.

I shall think about this.

Don't ask me to beat 40's gangster monkeys, especially if you can get Clint and Groucho voices.

Just let one of them be like Roger Moore, and pull all the lady monkeys, and stuff.

Well you've got that bit with the couple moving into a new house, I had an idea, well, less than an idea, just a title really, for a story about a bigamist, called 'The Lives and Wives of Hector J Allcock'.

But 40's crime monkeys are great.

I'm not gonna touch this one..

My girlfriend's asleep under the sleeping bag you used at the weekend. You better have left it 'pure'!

Some of those stories were comedy gold, consarn it. Especially the one about the Tetris creator being buried in a l-Shaped Coffin in a cubic grave.

Digifelch.





HAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHA







Oh yeah, it was my idea.