Progress, Character, and Story

I have met with several friends and writers going over the story of The Collector's Gift in the past week.  I am working on sharpening the plot points, the characters physical and emotional journeys and overall story focus. I am working on the action driving the characters and story forward in a fun way that gives a sense of the overall world and where they fit into it.

These are a few pages from some notes on development of the girl. The old man is close to being done, as far as modeling, I will update where he is at soon. The Girl will fallow soon with more progress.

The Story

Logline:

In a time of hardship, a man travels the world to collect and preserve all of the elements from the periodic table. When a young girl stumbles upon them left behind in a trunk, she discovers a new world forming inside.

Synopsis:

            The Collector’s Gift is about two characters that together, with the elements of the periodic table, form a new world. The story takes place in a city that is in economic and environmental decline. A young girl alone in the world is seen on the dangerous empty streets. As the night falls, she enters a boarded up storefront. Frightened, she makes her way up to the roof of the building where she finds an old abandoned house. Once inside the girl discovers a trunk filled with little jars, each holding one element from the periodic table.  She explores the trunk and the room, full of maps, charts, and scientific instruments, piecing together the origins of each element and imagining the man who brought all the elements together to preserve. As she falls asleep, safe from the streets, she, the collector and the trunk float through the stars together in her dreams.  The crumbling house shakes her awake and in her dream the elements all smash together.  When the dust settles she opens the trunk to find a new world forming within.

The Collector's Gift

 “The Collector’s Gift” will be my Thesis film to be completed in the coming year. I have applied for a grant called the Sloan Grant. It involves bringing the sciences into the arts in a fun way they are involved all over the country academically and professionally in many forms such as theater and film. After hearing a spot on the NPR show Radio lab I had an Idea that I wanted to explore for my thesis as well as felt would be great for the Sloan. It was a story about a collector who gathers all of the elements from the periodic table into a trunk and after reading this quote I found a story I wanted to tell and felt it worked perfectly for the grant.

“The periodic table is, finally, an anthropological marvel, a human artifact that

reflects all the wonderful and artful and ugly aspects of human beings and

how we interact with the physical world- the history of our species

written in a compact and elegant script.”

                                                      -Sam Kean-     

I have not yet heard back if I have received the grant so I have continued forward in development.