Script To Screen - Story Ideas

I have been going over the words that I have been given for my animation trying to think about how I can put them all together. I have been taking on broad the ideas that I've been given to me by my creative partners and it has helped with trying to work out why the Light House Keeper would be at the cemetery but the food blender is still giving me problems.

Overall, I've only been able to think up one story that makes use of all three elements in some way but I feel that there could still be some changes made if this is the only thing that I can come up with.

Story Idea

Light house keeper goes about his day watching the sea at night checking for ships and making sure that they see the light, until his wife nags at him to fix the blender. This goes on day after day with the wife nagging at him at different points about it. Until one day he goes in to the cemetery to see a particular grave stone that is tucked away at the back, it turns out to be his wife's grave and shows that she had died sometime ago (more than a year ago). The Light house keeper cleans up the grave and just as he's leaving he tells his wife that he'll fix the blender tomorrow.

A brainwave that I did have was the reason why the Light house would be connected to the cemetery - It's a graveyard for those lost at sea, a bit like a memorial. However, if this idea is used then I would have to think up a reason why the wife would be in a cemetery for those lost at sea unless she did die at sea (boating accident maybe?)

Any ideas you might have that could help me are welcomed.

Comments

  1. tutorphil11:32 pm, January 18, 2017

    I think you're onto something here, Rhia - I felt a little squizz of 'story-ness' as I read your idea. The only point I'd make is the lighthouse isn't actually doing anything proactively in your story here - he could, after all be doing any kind of job. I don't know about you, but when I think about lighthouse keepers, I think of the loneliness of the job - sitting up there, all by yourself, day after day, but with all that responsibility...

    Maybe this character of yours becomes a lighthouse keeper because of the death of someone he loves - maybe the story starts in the graveyard, when we learn that someone important has died, and then they kind of exile themselves to this solitary job, their heart is broken and they've shut themselves away from the world. In this way, you set up an obstacle, because it's sort of 'character versus self' - the lighthouse = grief. You might also set it up so the guy in the lighthouse keeper was unable to save his love so has exiled himself, but also committed his life to saving others (the ships) - you know, it's like he's still trying to save his wife...

    Now, this pesky food blender... so maybe this is a love-story really - a story about how a new person slowly brings the other person 'back to life' (or rather down from the top of the lighthouse). I'm just throwing this out there, but maybe the lighthouse keeper subsists on tins of terrible soup; we know this because, at the bottom of the lighthouse, there are all these empty tins... meanwhile, in a fisherman's cottage at the bottom of the lighthouse, a woman (or a man - this could be a thoroughly modern love story after all!) moves in - she/he notices this guy, tries to bond, but he resists (because he's shut out the world etc); but she's a wonderful cook; she makes wonderful soup; she has a lovely kitchen and veg patch and she puts all these wonderful things in her blender and makes him soup - which he ignores... anyway, somehow (just busking here) - there's a terrible storm and the fisherman's cottage is struck by lightening - the food blender (which is plugged in) explodes catches fire... the woman is trapped, but she is saved - yes, by the lighthouse keeper...

    There is something in your idea, about grief, about simple domesticity and 'nurture' as expressed by the food blender, and about the lighthouse keeper being a widower that is making 'story sparks' - I think you're telling a story about a character learning to love again after a terrible heartache, about a character who needs to 'save someone' in order to forgive himself... and seriously, there's something about soup that is healing in terms of giving it to someone who is suffering, as in...

    https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01FRGNXHI/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

    Suddenly, that pesky food blender isn't looking so out of place after all! :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Michaela Cernejova12:55 pm, January 21, 2017

    His wife could die because of using the blender during a horrible storm.

    Maybe thunderbolt hit the lightinghouse and his wife fell out of the window into the sea? This could explain why is she in the cementary for those lost at sea.

    ReplyDelete

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