the first draft of the script i’ve been working on for almost a year is now finished!
for any professional enquiries please contact the movie producer (and initiator of the project :), john richardson, on [email protected].
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Synopsis
This is the story of MARTIN, a disturbed and withdrawn thirteen-year-old boy, who in the midst of a severely malfunctioning environment is coming to use his prodigious skills at Nanotechnology to spread mayhem and disaster around him. As his increasingly destructive inventions grow in scale and power, government ploys of even vaster significance spring up almost simultaneously, putting his childish ventures in catastrophe into the broader context of anyway looming global deterioration of values and meaning. A world of lies and deceit falls entirely apart as the detrimental danger of Nanotechnology displays its true face to everyone.
Played out as a morally unbiased mixture between dark comedy and classical disaster movie we witness each character’s tragic trajectories towards failure. We’re being gripped by the increased urgency to bring to a halt complete world destruction – when in a surprising twist NANOBOY suddenly enlightens in a beatific paraphrase of Buddhahood. His final, most devilish concoct of a Nanovirus, meant to be rendering everyone into an identical copy of himself, turns out to be the literal and metaphorical ‘seed of salvation’. NANOBOY’s suffering and ultimately innocent journeying of Truth enables Mankind to be truly set free and ascend.
reinhard schleining
london, june 2009 – january 2010
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following are the beginning of the script until the end of the opening credits. enjoy!
1 EXT. WOODLANDS ON A HILL – NIGHT / FULL MOON
MARTIN, a cute but withdrawn boy – NANOBOY – sits crouched at a damp tree trunk in the woods, shivering from cold and fear. The MOON is full and tinting the SCENE in a SILVERY LIGHT.
A horde of WOLVES surrounds MARTIN, growling and howling. ONE of them approaches him fiercely, snout snapping, saliva dripping.
MARTIN tightly embraces his legs and bends his head down on his knees as the WOLF closes in on him with grinding, bared teeth.
CUT TO:
2 INT. NANOBOY’S ROOM – NIGHT
MARTIN wakes up from a nightmare, bathed in sweat. His hair is a mess and he is shaking uncontrollably.
His room is a stereotypical cliché of any nerd’s surroundings. Collectibles and merchandise are scattered everywhere.
MARTIN is still shivering as he almost sleepwalks towards his Pokemoney-branded laptop. He opens the lid.
With the ease of an accomplished pianist NANOBOY concocts something on an application. We cannot quite follow what kind of programme he uses but we see three-dimensional objects reminiscent of Origamis. He spins them about and alters them, while a window to the right of the screen keeps updating a picture, too quick for us to make out what it shows.
As soon as he finishes the screen renders the final image: it is a WOLF, not unlike those we saw in the dream earlier.
MARTIN presses the ‘print’ button.
2A INT. A4 SHEET OF FURMULAS – CLOSE UP
A page of indiscernible formulas is spewn out into a print tray.
2 (CONT’D) INT. MARTIN’S ROOM – NIGHT
MARTIN closes the laptop and goes back to sleep. He is visibly relieved of a great burden.
CUT TO:
3 INT. NANOBOY’S SCHOOL – CLASSROOM – DAY
We are in a class of about 15 – 20 people. MARTIN, the NANOBOY, sits amongst them, withdrawn in his own world and not paying attention to what their teacher, MS FABIAN, rattles on about.
Some of the PUPILS listen, others fool around cunningly.
MS FABIAN
… so when Napoleon took his army on Russian soil, he didn’t really know what he was doing. He just followed a call, an inner voice telling him “conquer”. And do you know what happened? Jason? Any ideas? What about you, Alice? No? Martin, have you been listening? Any ideas what happened to Napoleon in Russia?
MARTIN hardly shows any reaction when MS FABIAN calls him up. As to the question he has no any idea and in actuality could not care less. He just stares at her, vainly, with a hint of the detest he feels towards his teacher.
MS FABIAN
Don’t just stare at me. Would you mind sharing some of your insights with the class?
LAUGHTER ripples through the class about the idea that their strange, withdrawn colleague had any capacity for insight.
MARTIN’s expression does not change though. He is not at all intimidated by the obvious attempt of his teacher to push some of his buttons.
MS FABIAN
No? Very well, then? Anyone else?
A GIRL further back raises her hand.
MS FABIAN
Yes, Ellie?
ELLIE
They got defeated by nature …
MS FABIAN
Yes! Thanks, Ellie, that is a very good answer. “They got defeated by nature.” That would seem to apply also for our colleague here …
… aiming at MARTIN.
Again the class bursts out in LAUGHTER. They obviously scapegoat MARTIN for their own creeping insecurities. But again, NANOBOY, at least outwardly, remains his calm, unmoved by the ritual pecking.
When MARTIN’s eye catches ELLIE, the girl who just gave the right answer, he sees that she has also joined the collective ridicule. Only then does he flinch and we get to understand that he obviously likes the girl.
CUT TO:
4 EXT. FRONT GARDEN OF NANOBOY’S HOME – DAY
MARTIN arrives at his home from school. There is POLICE and AMBULANCE at his next door neighbour. Lots of PEOPLE gather around, flustered, gesticulating. SOMEONE in uniform lies on the grass, bleeding.
MARTIN walks past without acknowledging any of this – as if he knows all of it anyway. He enters the front door of his parent’s house.
The CAMERA continues to capture footage of the SCENE in a hand-held, multi-angled style. We dive through WITNESSES reporting to note-taking POLICE OFFICERS.
We can hear traces of what they say:
WITNESS 1 (male)
… there was a growl … bitten … the postman …
WITNESS 2 (female)
… such a nice dog … always stroked it …
WITNESS 3 (male)
… blood everywhere … still can’t believe it …
WITNESS 4 (female)
… never be the same … something changed forever …
A jigsaw puzzle of SHOTS paints a shaky pastiche of the SCENE:
MOUTHS gaping open, eager to see more …
RESCUE TEAMS trying to squeeze through with their stretchers …
PEOPLE shouting at each other, panicky gesticulating …
CLOSE UP of a POSTMAN lying on the grass, bleeding heavily …
SIGNAL LIGHTS of police and ambulance …
NANOBOY’s NEIGHBOUR crying on her doorstep and her HUSBAND consoling her with his arm wrapped around her …
Several CU’s of PEOPLE staring both at the scene and into introspective infinity, like news footage from a major collective catastrophe …
The RESCUE TEAM picking up the presumably dead POSTMAN, shoving the stretcher through the crowds back to the van …
… until we finally dive through a series of legs in a LOW CAMERA ANGLE to reach the dead neighbour’s DOG in a CLOSE UP. It has been transformed into one of the WOLVES from NANOBOY’s dream. Its fangs are dripping with bubbly saliva while its head bleeds from several gunshots into the vibrant green of a freshly-mown suburban front-yard.
CUT TO:
OPENING TITLES COMPOSED ON:
5 INT. NANOBOY’S HOME – LIVING ROOM – DAY
MARTIN has crashed on the couch watching daytime television. He nibbles on some crisps and a peanut butter sandwich with dried tomatoes. Every now and again he sips from a can of fizzy energy drink branded ‘Guaragantuan’.
During the TITLES we get to see what he is watching:
It is a PROGRAMME featuring mud-wrestling AMPUTEES. There are several SHOTS of them as they grapple and slide off each other.
They are INTER-CUT with the show’s host KEVIN, a somewhat tacky, jeans-clad nice-guy who explains with subtle tongue-in-cheek humour who is doing what to whom. Who is leading and who is about to lose.
6 INT. WRESTLING COMPETITION ON TV – DAY
The TV programme is CUT TO judges holding up numbers. The judges represent a variety of the populace – from serious guys in suits to teenage cheerleaders to Kurdish kebab shop owners to black female religious fanatics to Chinese Mafia.
CUT TO a prettyish woman, although perhaps not the brightest, sitting in a Disneyesque, pseudo-gothic golden throne near the wrestlers. The throne is covered with a plethora of company logos. She is identified via subcaptions as ‘Miss Nebraska’ and a date with her is the main trophy for the winner of the game.
CUT TO applauding STUDIO AUDIENCE. Like the jury the audience is made up of people from a huge variety of angles – even intellectuals, seen to be watching the event with a mixture of awe and reverence.
Every now and again: CUT TO SCENE 5 – NANOBOY eating and drinking but not necessarily following what is happening on the screen.
CUT TO the show host KEVIN again, excitedly announcing the winner of a round, before we see more SHOTS of the mud fight.
CLOSE UPS of JURY, AUDIENCE, FIGHTERS, TROPHY – as well as every so often SHOTS of a fizzy ENERGY DRINK, the same one MARTIN is drinking.
As soon as the TITLES are finished, the PHONE in the living room starts to ring.
….