We have our elements, time to beat it out.
Matt I have made many short films together over the years going back to high school, so he is by far my choice to go down the rabbit hole of what a story can be. The outline of this project began bearing fruit immediately give we already had solid jumping off points. Usually our dialogue in pre pre production goes like this:
Taylem : Hey Matt! I have an idea for short!
Matt: Let me guess, I am a zombie.
Taylem: Yeah! But this time even better than last time. I learned a new way to do your make up that will add another hour before we can shoot and involves gluing paper towels to your face.
Matt: Do I have to carry a heavy chain around this time?
With the elements provided by the contributors of the first Super Fantastic Mad Lib Film Club, we knew we’d be working with zombie puppets this time. Criminal and dramatic zombie puppets… yes. I like where this is going!
Matt the muse kept us on task and away from my comfort zone of the undead by planting the seed that would grow into a epic short film idea:
“What if one of the puppets smoked a cigarette and when he exhaled it came out of the puppets mouth?”
Genius!
So now we know there has to be an interrogation scene where this gag is played out. What gets us in the room? How can we add to the reveal? Maybe our main character is trying to solve a murder and when the smoke comes out of the puppeteer’s mouth he knows black magic is at play. Maybe he knows this because he has practiced this dark art too, but gave it up after it backfired.
Excellent.
We have the frame work and we have conflict.
Now we also have to get this across in a short film. Preferably under ten minutes. Keeping out project around ten minutes should arguably keep us from going to far off the rails with a big idea… but here we are, trying to create a world where puppets and puppeteers fuse their souls to accomplish true ventriloquism… and a also a murder.
I love it.
Matt and I laughed, cracked open another beer and then sat in silence. I was letting the magnitude of excitement for this problem to sink in. Could we do it? absolutely. How? No idea. And I was on the edge of my seat spinning my wheels.
Matt used this time to try to beat another level on block breaker.
During the lull and refraction period of a lighting strike I googled ‘ready made puppets’ and smiled. There as the top hit was a very affordable and well built puppet. In bold letters read “Tommy.” I hear you universe, you mysterious minx. If I did not hear you right, I also appreciated the slap to the face that comes next.
“I googled ready made puppets and we knew we were on the right path… The top hit is named Tommy.”
At this point we know our main character, a detective, has practiced black magic to fuse with his puppet, surrounding a part of his soul for the glory of being a police puppeteer, with all the fame and glory that goes with it. This must go terribly of course, leaving our hero in a pit of despair. Then his call to action: A phone rings and he gets put on a case of an attempted murder of the one who took up his mantle. Somewhere in the interrogation room we get the gag that sets the final act in motion… but how does it end?
And holy shit! What about our elements? Peter Wiener, easy. Name a character. Line of dialogue, “Really? Really that’s all you’ve got?” is easy enough. Enter the captain unhappy with the main characters progress. What about our prop, the left shoe?
Matt and I recall My Left Foot which as film buffs have never seen, and The Usual Suspects that features a tilt shot in its climax of the antagonist reveal of Verbal Kent being Keiser Soze all along.
How great would it be if we could pull that off with a puppet getting disconnected from his soul bond?
The imagery that gets called to mind of a marionette-like dance of a puppet playing out against a sunset was too silly to pass up.
So we have our beats! We know where our main character starts. We know the conflict that forces him to change, and we know how it ends. Time to write it all down and put some pen on paper.
We finished our evening now buzzed and high on a great idea with watching some puppet films for inspiration. The universe shouts this time: KEVIN SPACEY STARRED IN A SHORT FILM ABOUT A VENTRILIQUIST!
In the next post I will share how I took this far out idea with a huge world to build and began to shape it into something that can be put into script format. In the mean time enjoy Kaiser Soze himself act his ass off in The Ventriliquist:
And afterwards, I posted the pages I wrote after Matt went to bed outlining our beat it out brain storm session. Please read and enjoy.
-Taylem
The Beat Sheets:
Continue our story here:
