10 Minute Short
Pitch for ‘Out of Sight’
Oscar, a thirteen-year-old boy neglected and ignored by his alcoholic, grieving mother, goes from zero to hero by waking up with the power of invisibility. Empowered, Oscar embarks on a spree of lawlessness and revenge. Suddenly his mother and his bullies must take notice of him.
Extract
INT. LIVING ROOM – NIGHT
OSCAR straightens up the living room, removing wine glasses and emptying an overflowing ashtray. As she sleeps, he removes a lit cigarette from his Mum’s hand, stubbing it out. He then carefully returns some of his father’s records to the shelf, studying the album covers for Fleetwood Mac, Led Zeppelin and Queen. He looks in the mirror and breathes to create steam. He draws a smiling face in the moisture, wipes it away, and is left looking at his tired reflection.
OSCAR
Loser.
He turns away, tripping over a box on the floor. It has ‘Terry’ written on it.
OSCAR
Dad.
He drags the box over to the sofa and pulls off the tape apprehensively. Inside are hundreds of photos of him, his mum, and his dad. He pulls them out, laughing at the good ones, then crying at the feeling of loss. He digs deeper and finds a Walkman. Confused by the old technology, eventually, he finds a tape Inside labelled, ‘For Oscar’. He finally figures out how to use it, and the song ‘Invisible Man’ by Queen plays. Unknown to him, he slowly fades and disappears. The song ends Oscar reappears, then goes upstairs to bed, taking the Walkman and a photo of him and his dad.
INT. OSCAR’S ROOM – LATER
Oscar is in bed. He looks at a photo of his dad, then looks up at the poster of Superman covering up the peeling paint on his wall.
OSCAR
Night.
CUT TO:
INT. MORNING – OSCAR’S ROOM
A Star Wars themed alarm painfully rings, then is picked up and thrown. From OSCAR’S P.O.V through groggy eyes, the Superman poster comes into focus, then the Walkman. Oscar clumsily puts on the headphones and listens to ‘Invisible Man’ again.
He grins from ear to ear. As soon as the song starts, he fades, and the bed has the outline of a body, but we can’t see Oscar.
OSCAR
Let’s do this, nearly the weekend.
Miraculously the duvet flies off the bed, and the bedroom door opens.
OSCAR’S P.O.V as he travels down the corridor and into the cluttered, slightly mouldy bathroom. ‘Invisible Man’ is the backing track to his morning routine.
INT. CONTINUOUS – BATHROOM
A toothbrush hovers like magic from the pot on the sink, and the toothpaste joins it. Suddenly they freeze.
OSCAR
No way!
The reflection of the toothbrush and toothpaste hover in mid-air.
OSCAR
Oh my god… (screams and then laughs in delight) Yes! But how?
The toothbrush and toothpaste clatter into the sink. He draws the same smiling face on the bathroom mirror, but there is no reflection when he wipes it away. The song ends, and he slowly reappears. He quickly rewinds the tape and presses play. As he does, he gradually disappears.
OSCAR
The song! The tape! Winning!
Contact me for the full script
In development
Feature film
Pitch
‘The Selkie’ is a horror film set on the Irish coast. A small fishing community will feel the wrath of the girl they shunned. Gerda was presumed to be lost to the sea until she returns, transformed, horrifying and deadly.
Extract
EXT. SEA – MOMENTS LATER
A commercial fishing boat enters the cove and cuts its engine. Three fishermen joke and laugh as they tip the bloody remains of fish heads and guts into the sea. Blood snakes and seeps into the water.
CUT TO:
EXT. BEACH – CONTINUOUS
Blood trickles out of the corner of the siren’s mouth; it’s black as tar. A young man faces her, Connor, his dazed expression shifting to pure fear. The siren touches the blood on her grey lips; as she looks at her skeletal finger, she disappears into a cascade of water. The bodies around the beach fire start choking, drowning onshore, water gushing out of their eyes and mouths.
CUT TO:
EXT. SEA – CONTINUOUS
On the boat, a fisherman in yellow boots takes a fish out of a bucket. It starts to drown in the air, flipping and flapping on the bloodied boards.
CUT TO:
EXT. BEACH – CONTINUOUS
A punk flips and flops on the sand, clutching his throat. Connor stands surrounded by his choking friends writhing in an offbeat dance of death. He runs to where he left his girlfriend under a blanket. Her eyes are wide as she stops breathing, water runs out of her mouth, and her pupils dilate.
CUT TO:
EXT. SEA – CONTINUOUS
The fisherman grabs the fish from the bloodied boards and smashes his head on the side of the boat.
CUT TO:
EXT. BEACH – CONTINUOUS
The bodies all stop moving, mouths open, water trickling out of blue lips, under black eyes onto the grit and grain of the sand.
An extract of The Selkie produced by the Drama Centre
Contact me for the full script
Pitch for a Comedy Web Series
Banned Transmission
Ground control is calling Major Yvonne, an Astronaut lost in space, sending regular video diary messages out to the cosmos hoping that her salvation will come one day. She reminisces about her past and analyses her present situation; she tries not to imagine her future. Yvonne’s chances of having a family are slipping away; at over 40 years old, she will be barren if ground control doesn’t find her soon, and she desperately wants kids. Perhaps another life form will offer itself as a suitable spouse.
Yvonne is the Bridget Jones of space, tending to the robots, holograms and artificially intelligent assistants of the Titanic Torpedo, which is, off course, without a crew. How the crew disappeared and left Yvonne flying solo will be revealed as she loses her cool.
Suffering from amnesia, Yvonne wakes up thinking she is ten years younger, which is devastating. She is desperate to know long she has been in space but has yet to find out, as many of the ship’s instruments are faulty or unreliable. A robot keeps calling her captain, which is very disturbing as the last thing she remembers she was the ship’s doctor.
To keep herself from going insane, Yvonne decides to broadcast an online coaching podcast for ‘how to survive alone in space.’ She will cover entertainment, beauty, cooking space style, keeping bone density, staying sane alone in a vast cosmos and asking soul-searching questions, including; are artificial intelligence assistants your friends? Can robots reproduce?