Inspiration and Screenplay Ideas

The machinima film “A Thin Line” did not really inspire me too much. To me it seemed like it was just the Little Brother story retold with slightly different events. To me it was somewhat boring and it did not interest me a whole lot. The film “Tilting Windmills” started off looking like I was going to like the idea and enjoy the screenplay. However, it quickly turned into just a summary of parts of the book. This film somewhat inspired me of exactly what I don’t want my screenplay to be, just a summary of the book. I really enjoyed the screenplay “The Great Escape.” It was a spinoff of Little Brother in which Masha and Zeb are both running from the DHS. They are being followed by an agent and they are trying to escape. This is more along the lines of what I want my film to be about. The film “Santa Clara Ablaze” was also appealing to me. Rather than just summarize parts of the book, it took an idea from the book and incorporated it into the screenplay. I thought it was a very successful type of screenplay and I enjoyed watching it. The machinima entitled “Justice” was very successful I thought. Just like the other films I liked, this film did not just summarize a portion of the book or anything like that. I took the character, Severe Haircut Lady, and looked at life from her point of view. The film explores Severe Haircut Lady, her life, and why she is the way she is. I thought the idea was very creative and the screenplay was quite successful and interesting. The machinima “SCU Chip Day” started out looking like it was going to be really interesting, but ended up disappointing me. However, I did enjoy the fact that it was branching out from Little Brother and creating a new story from it. I was disappointed by the fact that the movie was just cut short abruptly. This made me think that I should plan my screenplay to not be too action packed and rather make a solid screenplay that is just a little shorter. At first I thought that “ENG 138 Screenplay” was just going to summarize the book again. However, I was delightfully surprised at how the story spun off of a part of Little Brother and extended the story in a way.

From my descriptions of the machinima above it is probably evident that I do not want to make a screenplay about a summary of Little Brother. I want my screenplay to be a spinoff of a character or occurrence in the book, extending the story to some other place or occurrence. My first idea is to write a screenplay about how Marcus really was a terrorist the whole time, hired by Al Qaeda to disrupt America’s defenses on the home front, making it easier for terrorists to move about through the country. Another idea I have for a screenplay is to make a story about Ange and how she was actually a DHS agent, and she was just setting up Marcus the whole time. Either of these, I feel, would be fun to write and produce.