Tommy - the screenplay

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gkmoberg1
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Tommy - the screenplay

Post by gkmoberg1 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 1:50 am

I'm taking an online class on how to write a screenplay. I've had in mind for some time ([1] & [2]) to write a screenplay, centering on Tommy - the lovable character from LTROI, not the character created by The Who :P .... When I found, by accident, this online course, I remembered my prior interest and so am diving in.

I'll paste here my progress as I go. The goal of the course is to create the concept for a television series, its definition, characters, the pilot episode and so on. The class does not get into writing epsides beyond the pilot episode, but I can always continue such here following your glowing reviews and critique. As with anything I do, your thoughts, flames, suggestions are very welcome. My intention is to create a fan-fiction that follows Tommy across the course of LTROI (the novel, since his role in the movie is somewhat reduced). My pitched television series is for one seaon, probably not that many eposides, where Tommy is introduced, the story unfolds, and Tommy winds his way through all the adventures JAL has Tommy experience. I'm not sure how well this will be received by my classmates but shall endevour nontheless.

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Re: Tommy - the screenplay

Post by gkmoberg1 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 2:11 am

Your series concept

Write up a paragraph or a few sentences to pitch your idea.
  • Series concept: Tommy, a high school teenager, finds his life unraveling. His father died several years ago from cancer; his mother is dating a policeman whom Tommy cannot stand; he feels he has no direction; and he is beginning to question his grip on his own sanity. He and his buddies hang out in their apartment building basement telling jokes, drinking and sometimes sniffing glue. Listless, bored and rebellious, and sometimes high, can he find his way? As the series progresses, Tommy starts to experience things which fall into the category of supernatural. Meanwhile the policeman that has come into his life is starting to make changes and paying increasing attention to Tommy and what he's up to.

    Pilot: Tommy is a high school student who lives with his mother. His father passed away several years ago from cancer. The two are still working through the emotional turmoil of this loss. Yet recently the mother has started to dating a new man. He is a policeman. In the pilot, Tommy struggles with both the loss of his father and the arrival of this new man in his life. As well, Tommy is a listless yet rebellious teenager. The pilot shows him and his buddies committing petty crimes (break-ins/robberies, vandalism). The boys have a hangout in the basement room of Tommy's apartment building. There, they drink, sniff glue and joke around.

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Re: Tommy - the screenplay

Post by gkmoberg1 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 2:14 am

I am worried that while I am excited to be building a screenplay around Tommy and that you understand where I am going, it's going to be a difficult 'sell' to my course classmates. Afterall, what is Tommy about? He is an aimless teenager. How am I doing to succeed at pitching a series that centers on a lost teenager who ends up fighting Håkan in the apartment building basement?

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Re: Tommy - the screenplay

Post by JToede » Mon Mar 21, 2016 2:24 am

It sounds interesting, new territory to explore, I enjoy when the stars align, the clouds part and a beam of creative inspiration hits.
I will refrain from posting a "Pinball Wizard" video here, even if it is hard not too.
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Re: Tommy - the screenplay

Post by gkmoberg1 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 2:31 am

I'm avoiding the name 'Tommy' in the online course for just the reason you imply!! (Tommy, can you see me? Can I help to cheer you? Oooh, Tommy. Tommy. Tommy. Tommy. ... ) I'll use the name Tommy here. But in the course material, I'll use the name Tomas.

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Re: Tommy - the screenplay

Post by gkmoberg1 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 2:43 am

Define the Characters
  • Tommy - protagonist. 16 yr old teenage boy. Leader of his set of friends.

    Yvonne - Tommy's mother. Dating Staffan.

    Staffan - officer of the Vällingby police deparment. Dating Yvonne.

    Lasse - 19 yr old teenage boy. One of Tommy's friends. Slight learning disabilities.[1] Tendency to be easily upset or frightened. Owns a white Saab-74 and has a driver's license.

    Robban - 16 yr old teenage boy. One of Tommy's friends.

    Oskar - 12 yr old boy. Lives in same apartment block as Tommy.
[1] The notion that Lasse has learning disabilities is from Tjippiflax. JAL says "something wrong with his head". Tjippi built this into Lasse having an auditory processing disorder. See the footnotes of chapter 2 of Gösta . I'm stealing that idea.

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Re: Tommy - the screenplay

Post by gkmoberg1 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 3:22 am

Create a logline

A single sentence to describe the entire series in a way that may refer to plot, character and situation that is laced with intrigue.
  • Tommy: The unraveling and macabre descent of a teenage life.
Not real keen on this yet going with it for now.

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Re: Tommy - the screenplay

Post by dongregg » Mon Mar 21, 2016 4:31 am

GK, when you mentioned screenplays sometime back, I Googled "how to" and considered trying to do a screenplay of "Set Me as a Seal." Since I wrote much of the story as though it were a stage play, I imagined it would be a similar process. How wrong I was. A stage play must get everything across with dialogue (plus gestures). A film has to let the visuals tell much of the story. It's like LTROI -- you can watch it without subtitles and with the sound off and still get it.

Plus it sounded like a lot of work! And I still have part 6 ahead of me. It also occurs to me that it would be really different to write a screenplay from a book. It sounds as though you are creating the screenplay directly from your imagination. I think that would be less work and more fun.
“For drama to deepen, we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”

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Re: Tommy - the screenplay

Post by gkmoberg1 » Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:08 am

I am struggling with how to create a story around Tommy that builds into something that stands on its own. As you work your way through the novel you'll find Tommy present occasionally throughout. But to center a story on this character, to build a fanfic around him but without breaking what he says and does in LTROI and without changing the events that happen in the novel, I'm not working with enough material to build a season's worth of episodes. I find I need to create more about him so as to even provide a pilot episode. Otherwise I end up using up too much of the book's material for Tommy before episode two. The course wants us to consider as season as being 10 to 12 television episodes or up to 36 webisodes.

And I will eventually have to struggle to figure out how the final scenes for Tommy (as per the novel) get put into my television series. [What follows is SPOILER material if you've not read the book!!] The "big ending" for Tommy, as from the novel, are the arrival of first Eli and then Håkan in the basement. Each of these are 'out of the blue' events; from Tommy's PoV there is nothing that triggers them There is no prior interaction between Tommy and either. In fact, we know there IS no prior interaction between either Tommy and Eli or Tommy and Håkan. So, it is going to be difficult to create a rising tension for the series' story arc. I can rely on the building tension between Staffan and Tommy, yay, and yes Staffan does come to Tommy's rescue at the very end. But I don't see how this effort is going to be something that could stand on its own; I don't see how to create it without also having to write 'and if you know LTROI, the following will make sense'. Ha. Fortunately for this online class, we only have to suggest the first season's direction and then provide the pilot as a screenplay. Thus this dilemma is something I don't have to figure out for now.

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Re: Tommy - the screenplay

Post by gkmoberg1 » Sun Mar 27, 2016 3:04 pm

Pitch your pilot episode in just a few sentences.
  • Sixteen year old Tommy, whose life is in turmoil, carouses with his friends at night, breaking into stores and experimenting with drugs. He and his mother (Yvonne) struggle with the aftermath of his father's (her husband's) death several years ago (cancer). But of late Yvonne has taken to dating a police detective (Staffan), whom Tommy both despises and finds a threat to both home and his renegade night-time adventures. Set in the suburbs of Stockholm Sweden, Tommy strives to both hold onto the past, carve his own independence, and now deal with the intrusion of the policeman.

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