Tuesday, June 3, 2008

A Secured Story

Okay guys. Here's the deal - I've updated my story. I didn't go back to square one, so please don't have a heart attack, but I did go back a little bit and get rid of the root of all my freaking problems - The Bartender/Burlesque Dancer.

She is toast. She was bringing down the story and I wasn't going to have that, so I killed her off.

Here's how the story goes now (this is going to be horribly written. Please bear with me.)-

It starts off with the entire train sequence, only the damsel dies once again and the villain rides off happily. Then it cuts to the cowboy drinking his sorrows away at the saloon. Back to the train, lightning and zombies. At the saloon, the cowboy has passed out. The zombified damsel enters, bites a dude, and then lunges toward the cowboy. He fires off some shots and misses every time, she closes in, he closes his eyes and fires off one more shot. The zombie falls to the ground and the cowboy looks down at her. He gets really happy, looks out at the rest of the town, and decides he can save it.

Then we get into some gags where the cowboy acts like a spaz. He shoots down the home of a family he's trying to save, jumps over a horse instead of on top of it, and ends up kicking some burlesque dancers into a crowd of zombies while trying to save them. In the end, he is cornered against a storefront and shoots at the hoard of zombies that approaches. He runs out of ammo, notices a flaming plank next to him, and picks it up. The cowboy starts swinging and ends up kicking a lot of butt with that stick, but he also ends up lighting various parts of the town on fire. By the time he notices, the town is in flames. The flames reach the ammunition store and it explodes, killing everyone.

The credits would roll over scenes of a zombie town, like I originally planned.

So I know that sounds like I added a whole lot of new stuff, but I actually haven't. Everything is the same except for the way the damsel dies, and the final two scenes of the film. The biggest change is that now I don't have to cut between two characters, and I don't have an extra character bringing the film down with all of her baggage. What a plus!

Now the plan is to make an entire page of zombie designs, storyboard out my new sequences, and start some animation. This summer is going to rule.

4 comments:

Victor said...

Get those designs down, boy. I want to make some background-shufflers.

Sheila said...

Carder-

I think this could work. I don't understand why the last bullet would kill the damsel zombie. Aren't zombies impervious to bullets? Perhaps he could reach for something- a drink? Or something else- and throw it at her at the last minute? It might make more senses.

I'm not sure you need the montage of him fighting and messing up- but you could keep it in for now. It would be a good place to cut if you run out of time.

The flaming plank is hilarious.

I think you need to make a new animatic and post it before you move on. It will help you work out any potential narrative issues.

Good luck!

Sheila said...

Hi again Carder-

According to my husband (the zombie expert) in order to kill a zombie you need to decapitate them or hit/shoot them in the head. So I guess if your protagonist's last bullet hit the zombie woman in the head your idea would work.

Victor said...

One must remove the head or destroy the brain, of course.