[Shannon Amborn]

Agree

[Shannon Amborn]

Shannon’s MONSTER in PRESERVED

I learned to layer in so much more nuance than I would have without this class and these prompts!

FEAR-PROVOKING APPEARANCE

Victoria’s (7-year-old child, homage to Victor Frankenstein) frozen decapitated head goes through the careful reanimation process, and then is attached to a recent 10-year-old client’s body by the team of cryogenics doctors and scientists. Will she emerge alive? Will she be the Victoria her mother remembers?

She springs to life with supernatural strength and heightened senses, but no vision – her eyes are black pits. She is blind and a confused child, lashing out with double-jointed contorted limbs, scratching at the voids where her eyes should be, and wreaking havoc in the OR before her mother sings her favorite lullaby and soothes her. She speaks for the first time, “Mama, I can’t see you.”

But she can feel her mother’s fear and repulsion…

MYSTERY

Because we see her reanimated, we’ll see her initially before she disappears into the lab and starts terrorizing the cryonics team.

TERROR

She remembers with detail in flashes of flashbacks the process in which she was frozen and preserved. She preys upon the cryonics team, killing them one by one using the cryonics lab tools that were used on her:

· she gouges eyes in her first fit of rage

· drains blood and replaces with cryoprotectant solution on live victim

· decapitates a live victim for neuro storage (head) in the cephalopod

· she freezes a live victim with liquid nitrogen

· more ?

The team is trapped in the cryogenics lab (CONTAINED) when it goes into lockdown.

Later, final survivor/s are trapped in the storage room where the 200 “patients” are stored in “Bigfoot” dewars.

Maybe she forces an eye transplant done by a staff member on fear of death?

Maybe she reanimates other “patients?”

Maybe she reanimates a new “mother” after killing her biological mother in a fit of rage?

RULES

Victoria died as a child, so never had fully developed frontal lobe development. As love is withdrawn and replaced with repulsion and fear, she experiences at first extreme sadness which evolves into rage, like a child throwing a tantrum. She is irrational and operates with supernatural strength and senses on a purely emotional basis.

MYTHOLOGY

She escapes the cryogenics compound after trying to “save” the other stored bodies (possibly reanimating more than one ?) and letting them loose into the world…

[Shannon Amborn]

PRESERVED is the story of a mother so blinded by grief that she uses her life savings to cryogenically preserve her terminally ill daughter (CONCEPT). But fifty years later, when the technology exists to “bring her back,” the scientific experiment goes awry in this modern-day Frankenstein tale where science and morality meet (MONSTER: the reincarnated “creation”).

As a technophile fascinated with the science behind cryogenics, gene editing, and CRISPR – as well as a lover of classic literature – I intend to grapple with the ethics specifically surrounding the technology of cryogenics, asking the same age-old question as Mary Shelley: just because we can do something, should we? Additionally, it will question the essence of what constitutes an individual; from where are our perceptions of self derived or contained? In the brain, the body, the mind and/or the soul?

As a single mom with an only child (a daughter), I also wanted to explore the extremes of maternal instincts and attachment (FEAR OF LOSS/DEATH), and play with a female “Frankenstein” and her “creation,” in this case a grieving mother who collaborates with a group of ambitious, eager scientists (GROUP WHO GETS TERRORIZED).

[Shannon Amborn]

I, Shannon Amborn, agree to the terms of this release form.

As a member of this group, I agree to the following:

1. That I will keep the processes, strategies, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class confidential, and that I will NOT share any of this program either privately, with a group, posting online, writing articles, through video or computer programming, or in any other way that would make those processes, teleconferences, communications, lessons, and models of the class available to anyone who is not a member of this class.

2. That each writer’s work here is copyrighted and that writer is the sole owner of that work. That includes this program which is copyrighted by Hal Croasmun. I acknowledge that submission of an idea to this group constitutes a claim of and the recognition of ownership of that idea.

I will keep the other writer’s ideas and writing confidential and will not share this information with anyone without the express written permission of the writer/owner. I will not market or even discuss this information with anyone outside this group.

3. I also understand that many stories and ideas are similar and/or have common themes and from time to time, two or more people can independently and simultaneously generate the same concept or movie idea.

4. If I have an idea that is the same as or very similar to another group member’s idea, I’ll immediately contact Hal and present proof that I had this idea prior to the beginning of the class. If Hal deems them to be the same idea or close enough to cause harm to either party, he’ll request both parties to present another concept for the class.

5. If you don’t present proof to Hal that you have the same idea as another person, you agree that all ideas presented to this group are the sole ownership of the person who presented them and you will not write or market another group member’s ideas.

6. Finally, I agree not to bring suit against anyone in this group for any reason, unless they use a substantial portion of my copyrighted work in a manner that is public and/or that prevents me from marketing my script by shopping it to production companies, agents, managers, actors, networks, studios or any other entertainment industry organizations or people.

This completes the Group Release Form for the class.

[Shannon Amborn]

Hi all – I’m a bit late to the group as well!

Shannon Amborn here, and this is my sixth script. I started out writing bigger budget (and hard-to-sell) thrillers and period dramas, tried my hand at a half-hour single cam, and then decided to try a contained, elevated horror. My screenwriting coach says I need to eventually pick a lane, but I’m still experimenting with my voice!

I started my career working in new media development for Aaron Spelling and Michael Crichton, but always wanted to be on the production side instead of corporate. I started writing scripts after a pandemic-related layoff, and I haven’t looked back!