monkeyfish
Posts: 1234
Joined: 18/9/2006
From: Under the sea
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Snooze is actually the first time since I started entering the script contest that I went back to an old idea rather than taking inspiration completely from the challenge itself, this was probably as I had to quickly rush a script in the end to make the deadline. My original idea revolved instead around the laundry room (Room I) and how it could be a place for some disparate characters in a large apartment block to associate together. It was going to be four women from different apartments and it would cut between the laundry room to their own rooms and tell their little stories of what caused their dirty laundry. It was a bit too difficult to figure out in 10 pages so I abandoned it and went back to this idea I had had a while back and never got around to writing (Snooze).
The original concept for Snooze was much more simple than some of my previous scripts. It just grew out of one of those typical "what would you do if you could travel through time?" questions. I said, being someone who's never the best at getting up in the morning, that what I'd really like was an extra hour in bed. The image that I had in my head that I really liked was that of getting into bed beside myself and sleeping side by side with another me, it was just a weird looking thought. Thinking it over, this just sounded like a short film, I've seen a few that operate like this, taking a classic fantastic, epic theme like time travel and applying it in a very low key domestic setting, something I thought was kind of fun.
On abandoning my original contest idea, the idea of Snooze came back to me when thinking of stories that revolved entirely around domestic spaces. I knew that this was something that I could write quickly, something that could tell the whole of my simple concept and story very satisfactorily within 10 pages (something my over ambitious scripts have struggled with in the past).
I kind of already knew the way that the story would be structured. It just had to be a single character piece, where the audience would just watch a man going through his morning routine and then getting into the time machine at the end and sleeping through the sounds of the other him going through that same routine. So, essentially the rooms, the spaces in which the script takes place needed to tell the story as there was never going to be much dialogue. I had to, therefore, pick rooms that fitted the concept and the character.
The idea with the character would be that someone who has a time machine but only uses it to get an extra hour of sleep is probably doing so out of a desire not to do anything to create any time travel paradoxes (by just having the other him sleeping through the time when there are two of him), probably someone careful and obviously very private, keeping his secrets to himself. He obviously had to live alone and slightly lonely (the idea of tucking himself into bed, making himself breakfast, leaving himself a little note, treating himself almost like a lover or partner was supposed to sort of emphasise that his existence was a lonely one) to make this work. The idea was that he had to have a set routine to always follow to make things work and the morning we are watching is just the same as every other one (the time machine has liberated him into having an extra hour but has resulted in a life of endless routine).
I chose rooms that reflected this idea of routine and order. Someone who wants to have everything just so and also has an extra hour in the day to clean and tidy, would live in a very neat home but one rather lacking in personality, I dwelt on the cleanliness and lack of personal touches to kind of bring home both the benefits and the loneliness of this guy's weird existence. So, I went with the rooms where things looked expensive and polished but a little soulless. Wgamador criticised the script for the detail of the descriptions of the rooms when we had the pictures to look at, but I wanted the script to stand on its own, to operate without the pictures. Besides, if you look at Room K, say, your reading of it may be different from mine. I felt that I was actually quite succinct in giving a description of the room and conveyed what it said about its occupant - "An anonymous modern apartment. Everything is nicely but sparsely furnished, a double bed and a TV being the main objects. No bookshelves, no paintings on the wall. One side of the room is taken up by a series of windows. The curtain is drawn back to reveal an equally anonymous cityscape against the dark blue backdrop of dawn. The opposite wall is filled with a series of cupboards and wardrobes." That's one short paragraph revealing a lot of what I want people to think about my character and his lifestyle. I haven't gone overboard with any florid description, I kept it simple, short statements to reflect the neat, unfurnished environment.
Then it was just a case of filling in the scenes with the character's routine. I had two thoughts with this. One was simply that of thinking (as I normally just roll out of bed and hurry into work as quick as possible), what would you do with an hour of preparation before work? The other was the consideration that for the script to work, it needed a lot of sound references. In order for the second part, where the other version of the character is in bed, to function properly, he needed to hear what part of the routine the original him was on. That's why I had things like singing in the shower (and I put in that particular choice of song as a Back To The Future reference to give some clue of the time travel theme, the reporter on the TV also quotes from the radio in Groundhog Day; I had wanted to have every line of dialogue, given there was so little, be a quote from a time travel film, but I didn't have time to figure it out) and the cartoon on TV, as well as sizzling bacon, which would also be something the sleeping him could smell, which I liked (that image of never seeing each other but being aware through other senses).
The character in the photo looked like he was doing push-ups, so I thought a morning work-out routine would be a good example of something people would do if only they had that bit more time. The scruffiness of the guy in the photo also gave me the idea of transforming himself, shaving, sorting out his hair, into someone as neat and tidy as his house, therefore giving the later him a different appearance (something that's always useful in a time travel story to distinguish between two versions of the same person).
So, that was my thinking really this month. I was also kind of inspired by the simplicity of a time travel film like Timecrimes, that showed that a neatly structured plot can work far better than some epic Terminator style paradoxes. Because I kept it simple, this is actually probably the script that I'm most pleased with how it turned out of any I have written in this contest.
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What became of the Empire Script Challenge?
Bring it back, I say!
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RE: The Empire Script Challenge: Month 19 - 
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