Here is a short screenplay titled "3am" that I wrote back in 2013. After trying to get it made into a film I shelved it and decided to move on to other things. So I figured, why not post it here and who knows? Maybe it'll get made someday. I've also included a preliminary sketch of a comics strip of the story, below the script.
It will be interesting to see how people respond to reading a screenplay in this form. I think as long as it's written visually, something like this can work.
Homage credit to Maxell Tapes.
INT. BEDROOM - EARLY MORNING
A bedside table lamp switches on, showing DWIGHT in his bed, hand outstretched to the lamp. He pulls himself up to a sitting position and slumps forward, staring at the floor. After a moment his eyes turn up to the door. He stares intensely at the door for several seconds, then rises to his feet and reaches for his night coat that is draped over a nearby chair.
In the bed next to where Dwight has been sleeping, MELANIE rises up from her pillow and watches her husband as he puts on his night coat. She pulls out a pair of earplugs.
Dwight leaves the bedroom. Melanie watches the door after him, then looks down at her own earplugs in her hands.
INT. LIVING ROOM - EARLY MORNING
Dwight’s slippered feet descend the stairs leading into the living room. He stops at the bottom of the stairs and peers into the shadows of the house.
Dwight walks over to a wall unit near the stairs. From a drawer he pulls out a conductor’s baton. He then steps further into the room, approaching the shadows.
Dwight takes in a deep breath and faces the room. His shoulders slump, and his eyes glimmer with the verge of tears.
Then he straightens up. He lifts the baton and taps it sharply, twice against an end table.
Dwight lifts his shoulders broadly, raises his arms and begins to conduct. His hands move in slow, sweeping gestures. The baton dances lightly in the darkness.
FADE IN:
From the shadows at the other end of the room a vibration begins to stir. The window curtains start to ripple slightly. The lamp on the end table has a shade that begins to sway back and forth, slowly.
Dwight continues to conduct. A gradual, spreading grimace twists across his features. His hands begin to move faster.
The vibrations increase. A tremor grows in the floorboards of the living room. Next to the window, a potted tree starts shedding leaves that dance as though on a breeze. Dwight’s eyes squeeze out tears that cast rippling tracks down his face. His hands are flying before him in a blur. The baton slices the air like a sword.
The curtains billow violently. The lamp shade twists. Leaves soar and spin in distorting patterns around the room.
On the wall behind Dwight there is a framed picture. It is a photograph of an orchestra. The glass shimmers and blinds the image, then settles, revealing the musicians smiling behind their instruments, with their conductor seated front and centre. Then another surge of sound shimmers the glass into obscurity again.
Dwight’s face is screwed up into a mask of pain, his eyes squeezed shut, his teeth biting his bottom lip hard enough to draw blood. He raises his hands stretched high to the ceiling, then abruptly drops his arms to his sides . All of the activity in the room freezes in midair around him.
Suddenly the picture on the wall falls off of it’s hook and crashes to the floor.
INT. BEDROOM - MORNING
Melanie awakens from a fitful sleep to find Dwight’s side of the bed empty. She sits up and hears a sound from the hall.
Resignedly, she rises from bed and puts on her own house coat.
INT. HALLWAY - MORNING
Melanie emerges from the bedroom into the hallway. The sound is coming from a room down the hall - Dwight’s den. Melanie casts a wary glance down the stairs, then turns and makes her way towards the den.
INT. DEN - MORNING
Melanie steps into the doorway and sees Dwight working at his table. She moves carefully into the room and puts a hand on his shoulder.
Dwight is re-framing the photograph that had fallen off the wall.
The old frame with it’s broken glass lies in a waste bin next to the table. On the table is a stack of unused frames, all the same size and features.
Dwight glances up as though noticing Melanie for the first time. He looks at her with a lost faraway expression.
Duncan looks down at the picture in his hands. The orchestra smiles up at him, including his own smiling face, in the centre of the group.
Melanie reaches down and gently takes the picture from Dwight’s hands.
Dwight looks back and forth from the picture to his wife, uncertain and close to panicking, but also very tired.
Melanie places the picture on the table and guides Dwight up from his chair. The couple walk towards the door.
As Melanie and Dwight move to the door they pass a second, smaller table.
Sitting on the centre of the table, exactly centred like a shrine, is a newspaper, turned and folded so that the headline is showing.
The headline reads:
LOCAL ORCHESTRA DIES IN PLANE CRASH
Beneath the headline is the same picture of the orchestra. Beneath this picture is a smaller picture, a blowup of Dwight’s smiling face from the first photo, and beneath this picture is the sub headline:
CONDUCTOR MISSED FLIGHT
Melanie guides Dwight through the door.
FADE TO BLACK.
Initially this was going to be a comic strip... There was a period where the above sketch was how I did all my writing - then I switched to a more formal screenplay format. You may notice that in the comic I was going to have the character sit in a chair, under the power of the ghost orchestra. This was changed because it would be less dramatic visually to the story, but also it would bear too much resemblance to the classic Maxell commercial that inspired part of this tale.
It's interesting how in an effort to set the work apart from it's derivative one can end up producing a better overall result.
So would you like to see a comic strip of this story, or a film? How about both?
