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Day 16 Assignments
Reply to post your assignment.
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5 Replies
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Laura Woodworth’s Outline –
I’ve been using the class teachings to elevate an action thriller script that I had previously worked through the Thriller class. So, instead of an action outline, I’ve been working directly over with my script, so unfortunately, I’ll need to bow out of this exercise.
-Laura
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Sunil Pappu’s Outline Version 1
Title: Russian Sniper
Logline: A female CIA sleeper agent escapes the Russian prison and is hunted down by the KGB and soviet military as she is activated for a solo mission to stop KGB Commander Mikhail, her former instructor, from secretly launching a tactical nuclear warhead to win the war on Ukraine.
Action Outline:
1. Opening:
Svetlana is in a prison fight club against a huge opponent who is clearly a favourite. Israeli fighter who supports her warns her not to do it. She is the underdog, but she beats her opponent using Krav Maga’s moves. It’s a fight to the death by any means necessary. She grudgingly earns respect from her fellow inmates, but the Israeli fighter reminds her of her training to correct a few mistakes she made today. Now she has made a few more enemies and revealed herself to be a trained fighter.
Meanwhile, at Langley, CIA has credible sources to take them from DEFCON 3 to DEFCON 2. CIA Director has only one final option, and he authorises a clandestine mission he hopes can lower the threat level.
2. Inciting Incident:
Back in the prison, the guards who bet against her are not very happy with her and chain her up to be interrogated. She escapes her restraints using her wit and cleverly tricks them. They are left chained up instead as she slips out before the CCTV camera captures her face.
KGB surveillance agent alerts Commander Mikhail of a possible facial recognition match to a defected dead agent.
Commander recognises his former student, but his dilemma is whether to go after her as a defector from the KGB and clear his name or stick to his secret mission from the Kremlin.
He puts up an open contract with the prison guards to get the inmates to take her out and bring him proof of death for a million rubles.
Mikhail assembles his team for his secret mission that even the generals are not privy to – to secretly launch a nuclear warhead from a clandestine missile silo.
3. Act 1 Turning Point:
The fight club inmate takes the hit contract put out by the KGB Commander for Svetlana to get even with her for his humiliating defeat. He tries to abuse her but is brutally killed instead.
This triggers her wound from childhood. (in flashes across the remaining ACTS)
She recalls how her father is killed in a Sarov nuclear accident, and she is forced to abandon her plans to go to school. Instead, the KGB recruits her into the Red Sparrow program for teen girls. KGB commander Mikhail is her instructor then, who takes fancy to her and rapes her repeatedly after their martial arts lessons.
She chooses to endure it if it keeps him off from her best friend. But now, having lost her best friend and lover in the last mission and ending up in a Russian prison, she finally is getting a chance to avenge her death.
She is activated by the CIA for a mission she thought would never be sanctioned until now. The Israeli fighter gives her a postcard that has just arrived and asks her: “Time to go?” The postcard is an image of her in KGB training which is code for activation.
Her mission is to stop the KGB commander. But she doesn’t know that his mission is to launch a nuclear weapon that could kill many innocent lives in Ukraine and start a nuclear war with US and NATO.
She escapes from the Russian prison as inmates chase her to win the open contract on her, and prison guards try to stop her. She uses her wit and marksmanship to put into action a plan she worked out many years ago to escape and has been waiting for a green light.
She puts her carefully thought-out plan into action. She gets to a vantage point with a sniper rifle and takes out all the guards. She flips the postcard and examines it under a flame to read coordinates in magic ink and enters them into the computer at the guard station to see the target location of a missile silo and memorizes it. She saves the Israeli fighter and traps the prison inmates in the fight arena and escapes off into the woods.
4. ACT 2: Action-Reaction
Mikhail orders the military canine unit and sends his agents on skis with automatic weapons… who are killed by her bare hands.
The KGB Commander orders more agents and sends assassins into the forest to take her down.
She is chased by assassins on motorbikes airdropped into the forest. … she uses her sniper rifle on the move, quickly moving from one vantage point to the next using the natural terrain… takes out the chopper that blows up and comes down crashing.
Barely escaping the blades, she picks up one of the satellite phones from the dead assassins to threaten Mikhail in Russian that she’s coming for him to teach him a lesson this time. He warns her that she’s a dead woman if she comes after him.
She gets knocked out by a KGB agent, but she gets some help to neutralise him.
She falls through the cracks into the icy lake but is rescued by the ex-military sniper Igor and his rescue dog.
5. Mid-Point:
Svetlana would have drowned in the icy lake if Igor hadn’t shot the assassin and rescued her. Igor is an ex-military sniper who disobeyed his orders to hide out in the forest than fight an unjust war. He doesn’t trust her yet and needs to know who she really is and why she is being hunted down by KGB. Now he is at risk of being exposed. Will he help Svetlana or not?
Svetlana wakes up in bed chained. She becomes alert and looks around and sees no one. She unlocks her cuffs and looks for something to defend herself. Igor is out to get wood to light a fire, and they face off each other first with sniper rounds and eventually in hand-to-hand combat. It’s choreographed to pit them both as equal and is a good matchup. Their meet-cute is a sniper face-off!
Igor reveals that he’s against the war on Ukraine and was ready to end his life as he will be hunted down and hanged once he’s found out. Svetlana seeks his help to take down her nemesis and reveals she has a personal agenda. Igor agrees to help her stop Mikhail, who stands for the rogue regime taking innocent lives on and off the battlefield in this unjust war.
KGB commander knows she has been activated to stop him and wants her dead.
Svetlana gets on a UHF radio to send a distress signal with coordinates she memorised and activates a GPS tracker that is picked up by a CIA post to authenticate and identify her location.
5. Act 3 (rethink everything):
Svetlana and Igor are dropped off by her Mossad friend Yosef on the remote island that hosts an abandoned missile silo.
The military and KGB fortify the missile silo to make it impossible to enter without being detected while they scour the forest.
Mikhail reaches the missile silo and sets up snipers to keep a lookout for Svetlana and take anybody that moves within a mile…
Svetlana anticipates their positions and, with the help of her partner Igor, takes out the first sniper. She uses his position to neutralize the others.
Svetlana takes out the power to the missile silo by making an impossible sniper shot.
She enters the missile silo to stop the launch and shuts off power to the building. She has her sniper scope, and she sets up C4 bombs on the lower deck to ambush the mission platform.
7. Crisis/Dilemma:
One of the snipers goes after Igor and captures him.
She is forced to surrender when her partner Igor is taken hostage and beaten up, and the rescue dog is shot dead by Mikhail in the woods.
8. Act 3 Turning Point:
She is restrained and tortured like a defector to reveal her CIA secrets, and the missile launch is initiated.
Mikhail enters the target coordinates for the tactical nuclear missile launch and initiates the sequence.
9. Climax:
Svetlana breaks out of her restraints, using her escapism skills to kill the agents guarding her.
She takes on the Commander in an ultimate hand-to-hand combat and beats him.
But he manages to escape in a helicopter as bombs go off inside the missile silo, collapsing the structure, but the missile is launched.
Svetlana uses her sniper skills to make an impossible shot at the nuclear missile that is already mid-air through the launch sequence, using an anti-ballistic system to destroy it.
The blast wave takes out the Helicopter carrying Mikhail and his team and blows up in flames.
10. Resolution:
She rushes to save her partner Igor in the woods, whose barely alive.
The other missile launch sites have all been deactivated as well, and Russia is sanctioned heavily by NATO.
Even China condemns its actions of starting a nuclear war and signs onto the UN Treaty for the Prohibition of nuclear weapons.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Sunil Pappu.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by
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Nick’s Outline Version
Title: Spooky Holler Massacray
Logline: Captured and tortured by murdering skinheads on a camping trip to Georgia, a disabled war vet with PTSD escapes and must try to save his friends, but he has one big problem: The skinheads smashed his prosthetic legs.
Action Outline: I did not do an outline for this course, but instead took action scenes from a script I created previously and really beefed them up. So, instead of an outline, I will post the intro to my screenplay, which I greatly improved from a third of a page to two pages. If anybody did the same and wants to exchange scenes, I’m up for it. An, outline doesn’t get to the emotional impact of a detailed scene, I think, which is what this course is about.
OPENING SCENE:
OVER BLACK
THE SOUNDS OF BATTLE–EXPLOSIONS, RATTLING GUNFIRE, PINGING METAL. Sounds of DEBRIS CRASHING DOWN. The WHIRRING SCREAM of a wounded helicopter going down.
PILOT’S VOICE (O.S.)
May Day…May Day. Can’t pull up. Coordinates…
The SOUND OF A VIOLENT THUMPING CRASH and SCREECHING METAL. Then quiet.
An infant’s WAIL breaks the brief silence.
FADE IN:
EXT. DESERTED AFGHAN TOWN STREET – DAY
Our eyes are suddenly opened to the aftermath of what our ears just heard: Shattered brick piles, twisted metal, burning vehicles, and bloody, dead civilian and Taliban bodies litter the street.
U.S. Army Medic Sergeant JUAN DIAZ (30s) dashes low towards us with his medic pack across bare no-man’s land as bullets ZING around him, then weaves and dodges his way through the protective piles of wreckage on the street.
He runs up to the smoking helicopter in the f.g. and dives next to it as bullets THUD against the copter. He’s breathing fast and is scared shitless. Sweat rains from his hot face.
He crawls over to the cockpit. It’s obvious the helicopter pilot hanging from his seatbelt is dead. He checks for a pulse anyway.
His attention now turns to a baby SCREAMING nearby, unseen.
BULLETS ZIPPING around him, he dashes over to a tipped truck, gets behind it. He sidles along the undercarriage, peeks around to SEE a dead WOMAN in a black burka crumpled in the middle of the dirt street.
An INFANT covered in blood WAILS forlornly beside her.
Juan ducks his head back in, his eyes darting back and forth wondering what to do. He edges a look at the baby again and ducks back in. He closes his eyes and mumbles something to himself, makes the Sign of the Cross, and pulls out his .45.
He dashes into the street. GUNFIRE! Bullets SPLASHING the dirt around him. He grabs up the child and runs back firing his .45 aimlessly around him–BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM! BLAM!–and dives behind the tipped truck.
He quickly checks the baby over.
JUAN
You’re okay, baby. I’m going to get you outta here. Just hang on tight.
He hugs the CRYING infant firmly in one arm as he prepares to make a mad dash for safety.
TALIBAN WARRIOR #1 skips over the truck and dives at Juan with knife in hand. Juan SEES his shadow and ducks as the Taliban flies over him and hits the ground rolling. He jumps and charges at Juan.
BLAM! He flips over from a sniper bullet to the head.
TALIBAN #2 charges at him. Juan round kicks him in the jaw with his foot, drives his pistol into his groin and fires.
Juan turns as Taliban #3 charges at him with a knife. Juan squeezes the trigger. Nothing. Out of bullets. Juan drops low, still holding the child firmly in one arm, and sweeps his leg into the side of the Taliban’s knee.
The Taliban goes down SCREAMING. Juan finishes him off with a round kick to the head.
Juan takes off on a dead run, zig-zagging his way around debris under GUNFIRE.
On the top of a building, Taliban #4 takes aim at Juan as he runs below him.
CLOSE ON TALIBAN #4 as a hole suddenly appears in his head. He topples over and crashes in front of Juan.
Juan stops and looks off across the broad empty street. An AMERICAN SNIPER gestures to him to run towards him.
Juan stares across an open, unprotected fifty yards towards the sniper and safety as the sniper BLASTS AWAY, providing cover. Juan takes off, both arms around the baby, bullets ZINGING all around him.
TSINK! A bullet blows the helmet off his head. THUK! Another hits his medic pack.
CLOSE ON the GLINT OF A BURIED IED land mine —
— SLO-MO as Juan’s foot steps on it —
CLICK!
KABOOM! DUST, FIRE, BLOOD fill the screen. Then BLACKNESS.
SUPER: “Ten Months Later”
EXT. MIAMI AIRPORT – DAY
A jet airliner lands.
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I have been behind on my assignments, but the good news is I have been thinking and thinking about things. I finally had some great breakthroughs and I working things out. hope to talk some of you all soon
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I’m using the tools and processes learned during this course to try and fix some of the plot and character weaknesses and elevate the writing of a script I’ve already written.
A WIP I’ll try and post something more substantial this week. In the meantime this is what I have.
Title: Step Out Of The Shadows
Logline: An elite CIA sniper races against time to stop another pandemic.
• Opening 1 to 4 pages: Rachel Gilroy, elite CIA sniper, is ambushed by Chinese snipers during an intelligence meeting with the CIA’s Russian Informant, Serge Ivanov.
• Inciting Incident 10 to 15 pages: Serge Ivanov is left for dead by his boss Natalia Volkova, but before he dies he tells Rachel she must protect a Dr. Steel.
• First Turning Point at end of Act 1 – when she’s chastised for shooting at her father when he turned up at her meeting with Ivanov, her boss, CIA Director Susan Green, also tells her that her father is being investigated for treason. Green wants her to put personal grievances with her father aside and find out why he was at the meeting.
• Mid-Point: A Mark Taylor steals a deadly virus from a local laboratory.
• Second Turning Point at end of Act 2 –– Rachel is now dying having been infected with the virus and has only 1 hour to live.
• Crisis: Rachel has to decide whether to risk Dr. Steel’s life to take out Mark and regain control of the helicopter. Mark throws Rachel from the helicopter.
• Climax: Rachel swims to the yacht in search of her parents and the antivirals that will save her life.
• Resolution: Rachel saves her parents lives, takes out Nick, and finally gets an answer to why her father disrupted her meeting.
• But there’s a twist…
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