Lesson 1: Creating Your Action Concept

[leland teschler]

Lee’s Action conventions

What I learned doing this assignment is that brainstorming after the initial idea may be the most important part of the creation process.

Highly skilled hero: Undercover cop who
gets a cover job at as a dishwasher/janitor to gather evidence of
terrorist taking place at a restaurant.

Demand for action: Thugs and thieves
also frequent the restaurant, and the hero must deal with them in a
way that doesn’t compromise his mission, hurt the store owners who he
has come to like, or reveal his true occupation.

Mission: Gather evidence of gang
activity taking place at the restaurant and make arrests.

Antagonist: Terrorists, thieves, thugs,
street hoods.

Escalating action: Robbery and mugging
attempts turn into fights that must take place without attracting a
lot of attention or revealing the hero’s true nature. Climaxing in a
showdown with heavily armed terrorists.

High concept: An undercover cop must
take down dangerous terrorists while keeping his fellow workers safe.

[Robert Smith]

ROBERT SMITH SU ACTION LESSON 1 4424

WHAT I LEARNED TODAY:

The important key to creativity – Put aside your ‘Internal Editor’ as a principal key to creativity. Likewise I learned the importance of brainstorming at the risk of bad ideas before coming across a good one.

1. Brainstorm your concept and Action Conventions.

(The project I’m thinking of is current crime thriller I am working on turned into Action.

GENRE: Gangster Fantasy.

TITLE: A Golem in Gangland.

The movie is based on actual persons and events but fictionalized.

2. FILL IN THE BLANKS ACTION CONVENTIONS.

HERO: (MAX LEVITSKY) A rabbi’s son who turns gangster in Murder Incorporated and gunner-runner to the Haganah in Palestine where he learns Israeli martial arts (Krav-Maga) and is gifted by a mystical rabbi with two items which could both turn dangerous to Mas, namely, a Golem to be his personal servant and protector of the Jewish community from American Nazis and (2) the text of the ancient “Pulsa di-Nura” or “Lashes of Flame.” death-curse.

ANTAGONIST: ABE “KID TWIST” RELES, the ruthless contract killer of Murder Incorporated, second in command to Boss Louis “Lepke” Buchalter who orders Reles to kill Max and kidnap the Golem and steal the death-curse in order to expand the criminal empire of the New York Syndicate for which Murder,Inc is the stable of contract killers.

DEMAND FOR ACTION: The Jewish mobsters, led by MEYER LANSKY recruit Lepke, Reles, Max and the Golem to violently disrupt an American Nazi Party rally in New York City, which they accomplish when the Golem attacks Nazis with brute force and Max disables them through his Israeli martial arts. However, a car chase through New York streets ensues as Reles tries to kill Max and capture the Golem, instead the Golem smashes Reles’s car but he escapes with the intention to try again and kill Max and take the Golem. Reles is under pressure from Lepke to kill Max and take the Golem while Max must kill Reles before Reles kills him and captures the Golem. the Golem who finally kills Reles after Max recites the death-curse against him. Max endangerment becomes evident after the Golem derails a subway train while returning from killing Reles by hurling him from his police-guarded hotel room on the eve of Reles’ court testimony against Lepke. .

MISSION: To stop the Nazis from harming the Jewish community and then to Reles’s mission to kill Max and capture the Golem.

ESCALATING ACTION: Reles continues his attempts to kill Max in a luncheonette shooting and attempting to shoot Max and capture the Golem from his warehouse lair, both of which fail. Police vow to capture and convict Reles but Reles vows to kill police detective Murtagh and Assistant D. A. Jack Sapterstein – totally against mob rules – so Luciano and Lansky resolve to preemptively whack Reles who then surrenders to police and rats on his former bosses. In police custody, the Golem kills Reles. Historically, Reles’s death is unsolved in NYPD records.