Movie script writing

TimPrice said:

What you folks are talking about is interesting. I started writing a story that I want to eventually turn into a movie. Its a VERY dark story about a guy that can't fit in socially. He's had a bad life and he is frustrated at every turn.
It is entitled: The Catacombist

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Hey, welcome to the thread.
So what's the idea of the movie?
Let me think about it.
So the guy lives in a small town, and he's a kind of an "not of this world" guy, a nomad, socially incapable. No one loves him. Except one girl that falls in love with the guy, and it somewhat changes his world for a little while, and he sees some light in this relationship. Meanwhile, the girl disappears and is believed to be dead. The guy falls into a deep depression. His life is filled with darkness again. By that time he works as a mailman and delivers mail in his small town.
So one day people don't get any mail. No one paid attention that the mail man is gone. People got worried and upset when there wasn't any mail on the second day as well. On the third day every family gets a letter with a short message: "In 6 days one of you will die".
And gosh, half of the people thought it was a sick prank and disregarded it, half of the people got scared. Nevertheless, the next day another mailman started delivering mail again. Town officials told people that the letters they got in the mail were just an evil joke and told them not to worry about it.
After 5 days people go to bed worried and many can't sleep.
And when the night was dark, every household heard a knock at their door.
All of a sudden everything became quiet.
The next morning every family had someone... not dead. Gone.
Of course there was an investigation, but no one could figure out anything and ran out of leads to find out about what happened.
So a few years came, long anough for people to forget the terror of that night. It was 6 years. So in 6 years people who were gone (obducted?) began coming back to their homes. Every single person who disappeared that night was back. But they didn't want to talk much about what happened... and it looked like a massive amnesia. And something else has changed in these people. They became colder, and their skin had a barely seen gray tint.
<<<I will skip some here>>>
Anyway, our second main character (a girl who was new in the town) started having strange night visions. And one night she was running away from someone, and got lost in a deep dark forest. There she found little black streams that ran through the forest and by following one of them she came to a lake. The lake was also black, like raw oil. And she was shocked by what she saw. She saw people walking in and out of the lake. They almost looked like real living people. Did she realize it was just a dream?.. She followed them. And walked into the lake. It was round and pretty small yet apparently was quite deep. She walked in and as she was walking in, she slipped and fell into it. Next thing she realizes is that she is near the bottom of the lake. And there, in a dim gray light, she sees a room with a table and a chair. And on the chair she sees a mailman. People walk in and out and take and deliver letters. The girl didn't dare to come closer and look at the mailman or the letters. She woke up suddenly, in sweat. She turned on bed light and wiped off sweat from her forehead. And oh no, it was black, like the water in the lake. She freaked out at first. She looked at her pillow and it had a black image of her face on it.
Well, after sunrise all that was black has disappeared. She was all clean again. But she was haunted by the images she saw. And who was that mailman? She had no idea.
<<<skipping some here>>>
gosh I really got to go to bed. sorry.

Post was deleted by me.

I don't have a specific approach to making stories. But here's my idea how to do it.
As I said, I want to create a story (drama + action) about a French pilot fighting for his life behind enemy lines in early 1940.
I see a story as a mix of the following:
1) people (characters + character development)
includes main character and villain (personal or impersonal)
2) context
3) events
4) drama (same as events, but specifically dramatic events)
5) time and location

Then all these 5 parts have ties (or chains) that connect them altogether into a story.

So when I am thinking about my story, I am thinking about:
1) people
main character is a French pilot
his friends and commanders
his woman (women)
people the main character meets along the way
villain: elements of nature, his "self" (his weakness), germans as a whole, certain german pilots and soldiers in particular.

2) context
general historic context:
France is in war with Germany (May 1940). Parts of France are evacuating. French airfoce is melting like a candle in a church. They don't have enough people and equipment to fight. And the big dilemma for French generals and politicians is either to keep fighting or to give up.
immediate context:
Our main character is based on a small airfield in the South France. His wing flies over enemy territory to take photographs of the german troops. They move from one airfield to another giving up territory to the enemy. One day the main character enters into a dogfight with enemy planes on the way to his base and is shot down, and lands behind enemy lines. His goal is to get back to the French territory.

3) events

4) drama (same as events, but specifically dramatic events)
There are two dramas in this story. The drama of a country that is being defeated and is struggling to find a purpose in this defeat. And the purpose of the defeat is future victory. The drama here is not just giving up land and lives. The drama here is people not understanding why. Not understanding the reason for this war that makes them leave their homes... their lives behind. The drama is the politicians and military generals being cought up in politics and strategy and not remembering about people behind it.
Second drama is the drama of one man who struggles for his life and dignity. I was thinking, it might be loosing a lot of what he had, including his health, his passion, his love (his woman), seeing terrors of war and maybe even his life.

5) time and location
France and Germany, May 1940. Parts of the action goes back into the early 30th to South America, where we see a struggle to survive of a friend of our main character, who was lost in Andes in Winter and survived 7 days there (tagline is that no animal went through what he went through)... because animals did not have a higher purpose, nothing more to fight for then just their existence.

Anyway, these are briefly the building blocks. I need to develop characters and events, including dramatic events. And these will become the building blocks of the story. Then I will shuffle them and put them together into a plot, which will be a skeleton for descriptions and dialogues. And then it will be laid out on a timeline, which can be used as a base for a script.

Or should I take another approach to the whole thing? Please comment something. How do people do this, usually?

The Ascetic Crusader said:

Hey Ringu ! How´s your story coming along ?

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Man, you know, I am so busy with all the other stuff that it's not coming along whatsoever.