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Post day 9 Assignment Here
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<st1:city w:st=”on”><st1:place w:st=”on”>Tracy</st1:place></st1:city> LOST Big Picture Open Loops
What I learned doing this assignment is that this is a great tool I hadn’t really considered, but now I realize how well it gets thoughtfully woven into good shows. I’m glad I chose LOST to watch, as it’s full of all these cool tools. The challenge for me, though, is to pay attention to them as I get completely caught up in the show instead!
How did these big open loops play out in this episode and create the need to see future episodes?
The survivors split into two different groups — one a mile into the jungle in the cave with water and those staying on the beach — pregnant Claire gets captured between them when she ran away from Jack.
The moral compass of the group, Jack, in flashback turns in his father for killing a patient while drunk during an operation whom Jack couldn’t save; in the present, Jack refuses to give up looking for Claire and finds Charlie who was hung by the kidnappers and is able to save him.
Charlie from the start calls out the fact that the women overlook him and is determined to have a relationship with Claire — only to fail to protect her from being kidnapped. “They only wanted Claire.”
Locke, who believes in his superior tracking skills, also goes out after Claire with hubris. He ends up getting himself and Boone lost, only to discover a mysterious large metal plate in the jungle.
The antipathy between Sawyer and Sayid could have swung in Sawyer’s favor for retribution when Sayid is injured, but Sawyer has grown enough from his interactions with Kate to leave Sayid unharmed.
EL <st1:city w:st=”on”><st1:place w:st=”on”>PUEBLO</st1:place></st1:city> 5-8 Big Picture Open Loops
Will Joseph and Thomas be killed at some point by a citizen, soldier, or jealous Lucas, as other pirates were shot at different times — even when being taken back to the pirate ship. Is there a plot being formed against them?
Knowing how vengeful the ship captain Bouchard is in pursuing his men, will he venture inland to retrieve the pair in El Pueblo? Is anybody safe?
Will Antonia’s grandmother broker a match with a local man for Antonia or will she agree to a scheme to bring Joseph into their sphere? Would she really consider allowing Antonia to pair up with Joseph? Would the priests allow this? Would other families with eligible daughters allow this over them?
How do Joseph and Thomas respond to the new situation they are in as prisoners, not as the free men they had been on the ship as “somebodys.”
Will Joseph and Thomas plot an escape?
What about the soldiers menacing the women and girls? Since a woman’s sexuality must be guarded, how much risk is Antonia taking due to her infatuation with Joseph?
Can Lucas win back Antonia? Does he move on, finding a less desirable partner through dance? Will he inherit his uncle’s land and be set up as landowner, or always be a clerk or working man?
How does Father Perez reconcile himself to his exile until he can leave? How does he relate to the mission and the enslaved Indians under the Franciscans, the religious order he despises?
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What I learned from this assignment: I was impressed that the questions that affect the Big Picture Open Loops are so easily recognized in The 100 leading up to the season final episode.
Jack’s Big Picture Open Loops
ASSIGNMENT 1
In The 100, many of the questions that create big picture loops continue in Episode 10.
Regarding whether or not The 100 will survive on earth, new goals are presented when Raven has sex with grounder Lincoln and suggests there may be a way to peace. A meeting is set up on a bridge, but this goal is crushed when Jasper opens fire after seeing that the grounders have also brought back up forces.
On the Arc, regarding whether or not the population can get to earth, survive and repopulate, a new goal is established of taking a launch to earth with supplies for the 100. This goal is also crushed when Diana is revealed to be the leader of a mutiny who steals the launch, only to be destroyed when the parachutes don’t open and it crashes to earth, leaving the audience wondering if Abby was aboard and if the remaining people on the Arc can survive the power outage caused by the launch.
ASSIGNMENT 2
In my series CONCEIVED, the theme of nature versus nurture as the main component of personality is developed as four families are planned.
1. Victoria, the blue-blooded hedge fund manager, plans to combine her eggs with the seed of Sir George, another blue blood, to create a royal girl with the potential to marry into England’s royal family.
This Big Picture Goal is crushed when Kayla switches her eggs with Victoria’s.
2. Environmentalist lawyer Kayla, after switching her eggs with Victoria’s, plans to raise a son in the Everglades with Victoria as the biological mother and Miccosukee Indian Shaman Billy Osceola (her client) as the biological father (a modern-day Tarzan story).
This Big Picture Goal is threatened during the first season when Billy Osceola discovers the truth and realizes the biological mother is not Kayla, but Victoria. His daughter, Windy Moon, the surrogate, runs away to have the baby with the man she loves.
3. Professor Matthews, owner of the cryogenics lab which is funded by Victoria and used by her for storage of her eggs, intends to create a son with Victoria’s eggs and his seed, along with DNA from the 1500 year old skull of Bran The Blessed, a Celtic king.
This Big Picture Goal is crushed when Kayla switches the eggs so that the biological mother is her instead of Victoria and the resulting child is a girl instead of a boy. His daughter Bryony, the surrogate mother, runs away because Professor Matthews wants her to abort the girl and try again until they get a boy.
4. Santiago, the Argentinian polo champion who rides cloned polo ponies and is the captain of Victoria’s polo team, has a cloning lab in Buenos Aires where Sir George sends the eggs of Victoria to be matched with his seed. In addition to creating the embryo which is actually Kayla’s and Sir George’s child, (because of Kayla’s switch), he also uses what he thinks are Victoria’s eggs to create his own child with him as the father.
His plans change because he knows the Argentinian granddaughter of Adolf Hitler and he uses her DNA to sell embryos to Americans who want to raise children with Hitler’s DNA.
The first season ends with these four children born, and several years of intrigue can be established with Big Picture Loops that continue as the lives of the parents change when the truth of the children’s identities is revealed.
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R. Reid Jr Presents Non-Stop Intrigue Pilot: SIGMA 2619
What I learned from this assignment is it is never too late to shape and reform my TV Bible pitch documents.
Pull out your TV Pitch Bible. Read through it and highlight any paragraphs that need more interest or that you would like to be even more intriguing.
MAIN POINTS:
A paragraph from your summary, character descriptions, episodes, or seasons might include any of these:
Setup: Intrigue format, mystery, or character intrigue.
• A. An Alien named Bruce, who is a fish out of water is sent to retrieve some stolen TECH that alters minds in 60 days or people from HIS Home world will die.
• B. Thinking Bruce is just new to the States he gets advice by a neighborhood old man to enroll in a few college courses and learn more about customs and culture to help him adapt and climatize him to find THE TECH and who to trust so to adjust he enrolls in a local college to get the ‘lay of the land’.
• C. Bruce goes on unique transformational journey of becoming ‘human’ to hunt humans and not lose himself as he goes to find THE TECH.
D. We are drawn into an intriguing world that is fast-paced and ever-changing moment to moment world that keeps you guessing.
2. Tell us the World of this show.
Unique Sub-World: Bruce’s mission is to hunt a technology, called THE TECH, that is deemed too dangerous to be allowed to stay on Earth aka SIGMA 2619 while taking college classes and not trying to fall for a victim of THE TECH who is also a classmate.
Previously unexplored: the chase of THE TECH by a fish out of water who has memory loss and may not know which side is the right side to work with.
The unknown: who is to be trusted? From the agents to the Mysterious woman, everyone wants to find THE TECH or keep its’ secret hidden if you are not on the same team.
The unseen: Who is the Mystery woman who has been holding THE TECH.
Unheard of Dangers: If Bruce doesn’t work with the Agents and ever gets caught he may have to ask for help from the Mysterious woman who whispers to Bruce that they know each other.
Reason to explore it: When the Alien is put in a bind to trust the help from the Mystery woman. We can see if the Alien/Bruce can learn more about who he thinks is his enemy might turn into a useful ally.
HOW TO:
Step 1: Discover places that need intrigue. Bruce working with the Agents. How would that look as a team as he poses as an insurance agent who is after the same thing for the bank.
Step 2: Check the Setups and Payoffs. Bruce working with the Agents but under an alias but really trying to steal THE TECH himself.
Bruce might also be forced to work with the Mysterious woman if he gets in a jam with The Agents.
Going it alone he will be against 3 things: The Agents, The Mysterious Woman and his feelings for Snowy.Step 3: Brainstorm replacement lines. All done in the above and changes to the INTRIGUING CONCEPT & WORLD has been made.
STEP 3: BRAINSTORM REPLACEMENT LINES
For replacement lines, you have two instant possibilities.
1. Info from your BW Framework.
A. Character Intrigue
B. Empathy / Distress
C. Relationship Hooks
D. Mystery Bruce’s life from the Agents and the life of the Mysterious woman.
E. Layers. Bruce arrives> plugs into local culture in college> teams up with The Agents> hunts the Mysterious woman> has to wrestle feels he has for Earth woman.
F. Open Loops-Snowy turning him in/ not believing him/ teaming up with the Mysterious woman.2. The Intrigue formats
. The alien that lands on SIGMA 2619 /Earth is a fish out of water so he enrolls in classes at a college to know Earth more.
B. Strong statement; Get to Earth, find the TECH bring it back or your home world will suffer or be killed.
C. Question that points to hidden agendas. The very people who sent him might be the ones he shouldn’t be working for.
D. Bruce is worried/wondering that Character 2 is a victim of the TECH and Bruce wants to reverse the damage.
E. But maybe it is all wrong. And the Mysterious woman is an ally and they need to work together to save the Earth/Sigma 2619.
F. A Pattern that Leads to Future Consequences. Working with the Agents from SIGMA 2619/Earth means that he might have to reveal that he is not a human after-all but something more. Or Bruce will have to cover his tracks that much more.
G. If he does against the Mysterious woman and The Agents, that will mean more Intrigue for the story.
H. State the mystery: who is The Mysterious woman and what does she want?
I. Should Bruce work with The Agents, and one is willing to kill their partner it would mean Bruce partnered with a truly evil person, and make it even worse what he must do next.
J. Intense language. The Agent willing to kill anyone to get ahead or the Mystery Woman who may stop at anything to get keep THE TECH secret.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by r. reid jr.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by
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MODULE 2 LESSON 9
Jack Presents Non-Stop Intrigue
What I learned from this assignment is that it helps to read the improved sentences presented in the lesson to help me think of my own
PITCH BIBLE – CONCEIVED
CONCEIVED, a one-hour dramatic series.
CONCEPT: With gene editing and embryo enhancement, children are planned with surrogate mothers, but the eggs of the two donors are secretly switched, creating children whose parents don’t know who they really are.
WORLD: The story has an international feel, bringing the audience into the rarified air of England’s high, blue-blooded society via a hedge fund manager who manages some of the royal family’s wealth. Her portfolio includes investments in gene-editing cryogenics laboratories, one of which, in Buenos Aires, clones the polo ponies she rides on her championship team. In America, her lover is an environmental lawyer suing to save the Everglades from sugarcane pollution. These three worlds from different parts of the globe collide when the accounts of the hedge fund manager are hacked.
SHOW SUMMARY: This is the story of the unraveling of the lives of parents and their children who grow up not knowing who they really are. Two strong female leads of opposite pedigree meet and become lovers. KAYLA HITCH, late 20’s, is an environmental lawyer of mixed race who is all natural, very athletic, but not tech-savvy or good with money, as she loves to gamble. VICTORIA CROMWELL, 30’s, is very English, being of royal blood, and runs a hedge fund that includes some of the royal family’s wealth. She is extremely risk averse in her investments, but pilots her own Learjet around the world with her copilot, confidant and bodyguard CHARLES, 40’s, and plays high level polo on her own championship team. Kayla wants to halt the emergence of red tide on Florida’s beaches and save the Everglades while Victoria wants to halt the security breaches in her accounts and safely grow the fund she manages, not realizing Charles has sold her passwords to hackers who escalate their demands over the seasons from money to forcing Victoria to engage in very risky behavior, including lobbying for highly political and profitable management contracts for seaports and airports around the world, business that is against both U.S. and England’s national interests.
At the end of the pilot episode, the two women, each too busy with their lives to have children themselves, freeze their eggs so that they may have children in the future with surrogate mothers. Kayla, jealous and upset that she is disrespected by Victoria’s associates and parents, and wanting to prove that it is the environment a child grows up in, not their genes that determines personality, switches the frozen eggs, and at the end of the first season, children are born to parents who do not actually know who they really are.
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CHARACTERS
KAYLA
An environmentalist lawyer who lives on a beautiful, remote beach that is part of Vero Beach, Florida’s turtle preserve, Kayla Hitch is a tall, mixed-race, athletic, sexual being who loves to gamble, but is not well-travelled, not good with money, and has an emotional wound from growing up without her father, a wealthy, white NYC banker. Her mother, African American, was a great high school athlete who became pregnant with his child.
Kayla, fascinated by Victoria and her hundreds of years of family heritage, seduces her and enters a circle of high-society English who live in America. Rejected as inferior by Victoria’s blue-blooded associates and parents, Kayla switches her frozen eggs for Victoria’s as revenge and to prove her theory that nurture, not nature, is the determining factor of one’s personality. Later, she ironically is saddened that she can not be involved in the life of her own wonderful daughter who is raised in England as a suitable bride for royals.
VICTORIA
We are introduced to the short-in-size but tall-in-stature Victoria Cromwell as she pilots her Lear Jet into Vero Beach for a polo match in which she excels. She is a brilliant manager, but her brilliance is not matched with a personality of social skills. She has no time for incompetence or failure and has been paired by her parents with Sir George Townsend, who has the high-brow blood and background to produce children suitable to be brides or grooms to the royals. Normally composed, she later becomes unglued when she learns the child she loves is actually not hers biologically, while, at the same time, hacking blackmailers ramp up their demands for her to do their bidding against her interests.
When Victoria’s hedge fund is hacked, much of the money lost is from the royal account. In her quest to find and defeat the attackers, she uses her Argentinian polo captain Santiago Rodriguez, who clones polo ponies in his world-lass facility in Buenos Aires. He has been selling embryos and children with the DNA from Adolph Hitler’s granddaughter, Porshe, to white supremists in Florida. Victoria meets these people when she adds Americans farms with fresh water supply to her list of assets to be held in times of financial crisis. They, in turn, assist her with finding the hackers, who are Chinese associates of her bodyguard Charles.
SIR GEORGE TOWNSEND
Counsel for Adolpho Ramirez, the sugarcane king, who pollutes the Everglades with runoff from the fields, Sir George Townsend is a Miami lawyer who becomes the biological father of Victoria’s child who Kayla raises in the Everglades. Sir George is physically interested in Kayla and she is able to seduce him and obtain his seed for her deceitful purpose.
Unwittingly, Billy Osceola, the shaman of the tribe in the Everglades Kayla chooses to be the father of her child, gives his sperm to Kayla, thinking it will be used for the child he will father with Kayla, but Kayla switches his for Sir George’s and the plan is complete. Billy’s daughter with Kayla is raised in England and Billy raises Victoria’s and Sir George’s child in the Everglades.
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Jean Presents Non-Stop Intrigue
What I learned doing this assignment is that there is always room for improvement. I found several areas that were bland and was able to elevate them using this process.
2. Check the Setups/Payoffs and brainstorm possible replacement lines.
I had written several setups/payoff paragraphs but saw room for improvement. This is one example where I ended with an open loop.
However, there’s more to Sharra than meets the eye and her odd connection with the internal workings of the Vault proves it. Backed up by a team of seasoned agents, she forces the rogue agent back to the Vault to fight it out. She saves the agency and learns that the Vault is more than a machine. She’s finally found a place where she belongs. But behind the rogue agent is a puppet-master and he’s not finished with Sharra.
3. Rewrite any parts you feel could be improved.
I didn’t keep track of which parts I’d rewritten. The before and afters. Here are a few samples.
a. For Lazarus’ first character description paragraph, it was too wordy, so I picked out what were the most intriguing parts about him and his role in the show.
Lazarus Maitland
Methodical, ruthless, and powerful, Lazarus is the Vault Agency’s Head Director, a man carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Behind his sharp eyes is an old soul and there’s a reason for that. His origins: a British Earl from the 1700s. But he’s much older than that. He’s the longest living human in existence thanks to the agrylium metal infused into his brain.
b. My first two attempts at this sentence were clunky and didn’t deliver the setup/payoff. The sentence below is punchier and leaves lots of questions.
It should be someone with experience and expertise that gets picked for the job, but Lazarus’ recruitment of Sharra is predestined, and the note from his future self is the proof.
c. Episode 5 became a total rewrite. My first pass was just some thoughts of what I thought the episode could be about. But then I had a breakthrough and this is what I came up with. The show is about time travel and there are rules
Episode 5:
Sharra’s first solo mission to Middleton, PA 1954 hits close to home when she has to help her target through the death and funeral of her late husband. Sharra relives her own experience of losing her parents and It tears her heart. Sharra shifts a few days back to stop the car accident that kills the man but her attempt is futile. She tries again, going earlier and sabotaging his car, but he gets killed walking. She tries again, going back further, maneuvering the now newlyweds to buy a house in another town. Sharra shifts back to the Vault only to learn the man still dies on the same date, and she realizes she must complete the original mission as planned.
In each of those timelines, J.D. Dash is there, one step ahead of Sharra. He is the one in the other car who kills the husband. He is the one in the new town who tampers with the brakes of the husband’s car that gets him killed on the mountain road.
Dash infiltrates the funeral. Sharra knows because she hears his devious thoughts directed at her. Sharra links to Tanner, calling for backup, and then delivers the gift, a timepiece, to the widow with a speech not to give up, and goes upstairs to shift in private. But Dash, in a mask, pounces and strangles Sharra. Tanner saves Sharra but Dash shifts into time. It’s then that Tanner realizes Faolan isn’t the rogue agent.
4. Tell us what this has done for your TV Pitch Bible.
Every time I find a way to make a sentence, a paragraph, a section more intriguing, elevates the document as a whole. I will keep looking for ways to make more improvements.
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I learned to take another look at my main character.
LANE BAER, depressed and despondent as the bills pile up. Simultaneously he struggles to meet the publisher’s deadline breathing down his back for his second novel. He can’t seem to find his way into the book.
First piece of the puzzle: He interviews with Dr. Margaret Gilgood, headmistress of the Catherine Russell Brown Boarding School for Girls. She offers him a temporary job as the literature teacher until he proves himself. He gratefully accepts. Second piece of the puzzle: When senior student, Leylah Hafez, exotically beautiful and insanely attracted to Baer, is in his office, he discovers he can access the ideas he needs for the book. Can he avoid her seduction and write the book?
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Janeen Presents Non-Stop Intrigue
What I learned doing this assignment is that with some distance, it is easier to see what a producer will care about and what is unnecessary in each part of the Pitch Bible.
In this round of improvements, I
A. Reduced repetition between the various segments of the bible;
B. Eliminated as much explanatory material as possible;
C. Eliminated secondary stories where necessary;
D. Hinted at background info that I feel readers/users will need rather than providing it; and,
E. Wordsmithed a little — couldn’t help myself.
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What I learnt from this assignment is there are always areas to add intrigue and to try and look at my outline from a different point of view. While I know there is a lot of mystery and intrigue within the overall story, by looking at each paragraph and seeing where I can add it, has really helped me look at my story outlines from a different point of view. e.g. I have one outline that shows a character kissing another. it’s not interesting, there’s zero intrigue. let’s make the character disappear to take a secret phone call. the other one goes searching for him. now its more interesting. I have another scene with a director not liking an actress – now I want to rephrase this as a question – why does he not like, why does no one of the set like her? she’s done nothing wrong in her eyes.
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Tracy El Pueblo Assignment 9 Intrigue
I continue to work on this. A summary of the first season episodes went fine, but could still be tighter in a couple of spots. Season two is good. But season three-five, nothing much. I always thought of this as a limited series because the action is up front.
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