1st Scene Script Ideas

Claire:

Riiiight. I've got it written down. If there's anything you're unhappy with, honestly just tell me and I'll rework it. Try reading it outloud to see how it sounds. I've used a lot of silence... It kinda needed to be there cause it's a one sided conversation, so the pauses need to be longish - long enough for the other person to have time to reply. He gets interrupted a lot - like, his lines are cut off. I don't know what you think of that, but I thought it represented the nature of those kind of people - like, they answer the phone and they're working to an agenda, they don't really care about you, so when he's talking they just kinda cut him off to say what they want to say. And it shows the power struggle too, like they have authority over him and he just has to kind of accept it. When he experiences his vocal tics I tried to make him just ignore them, like, not wanting to draw more attention to them, just carry on, behave normally. But obviously the other person acknowledges them, so he's forced to face it. I didn't want him to talk about his tourette's directly though - it's all hinted at rather than explicitly stated. I think it'd sound stupid if in the first scene he said "I have tourette's". Haha.

Here it is anyway.

Wanker:
Hello? Yes, this is - [beat] Oh, ok. [pause] Yes, hello. I applied for a job here and I haven't had a response yet so - [pause] Well, it's been about three weeks now and - [pause] And they did say they'd get back to me WANKER within fourteen days. [pause] Sorry? What, oh, that? I did on my form that I have - [pause] I'm sorry, I don't mean to DICKHEAD. [beat] No, of course not. Not you. It's just - [pause] Yes, I understand. Thank you for your time.

 

 

Me:

 

FANTASTIC! pretty much exactly what i was thinking :D so yeah, brilliant! wicked! awesome!! :P

right, the only things i want to change are that he's a bit rough and rugged, so instead of the polite ending on "yes i understand, thank you for your time." i'd wanna change it to something more abrupt like, "yeah ok. Nice one." then he pauses like 3 seconds, then throws the phone at the wall. Aswell just for personal choice keep both words wanker i think, not throughout the whole film, but just this scene.

SO, how would this sound.

Wanker:
Hello? Yeah, this is - [beat] Oh, ok. [pause] Yeah, hello. I applied for a job here and I haven't had a response yet so - [pause] Well, it's been about three weeks now and - [pause] And they did say they'd get back to me WANKER within fourteen days. [pause] Sorry? What, oh, that? I did say on my form that I have - [pause] I'm sorry, I don't mean to WANKER. [beat] No no. Not you. It's just - [pause] Yeah ok, nice one. [ends call and pauses] *then throws phone.

Just slight changes that makes his character a bit more kinda rough round the edges. He's angry at his tourettes so every time he gets put down, the more pissed off he becomes.

More Typographical Experiments

Vaughan Oliver

Where 'Fuck' derives from.

The earliest examples of the word otherwise are from Scottish, which suggests a Scandinavian origin, perhaps from a word akin to Norwegian dialectal fukka "copulate," or Swedish dialectal focka "copulate, strike, push," and fock "penis." Another theory traces it to M.E. fyke, fike "move restlessly, fidget," which also meant "dally, flirt," and probably is from a general North Sea Germanic word; cf. M.Du. fokken, Ger. ficken "fuck," earlier "make quick movements to and fro, flick," still earlier "itch, scratch;" the vulgar sense attested from 16c. This would parallel in sense the usual M.E. slang term for "have sexual intercourse," swive, from O.E. swifan "to move lightly over, sweep". But OED remarks these "cannot be shown to be related" to the English word. Chronology and phonology rule out Shipley's attempt to derive it from M.E. firk "to press hard, beat.

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?l=f&p=31

Currently Script Writing

Working with a friend on writing a script for the film. First few scenes are now thought of but not set in stone. Will hopefully be casting characters in the next few weeks to start filming.

Incredibly Moving Home Video

Aims

To create a film based around the difficulties with living with tourettes syndrome.

To create a typographical book based around tourettes syndome.

To create a set of posters to compliment both the film and the book.

Nick Van Bloss - 44 - Pianist / Author

I sat bare-chested in the plastic hospital chair and shook my head violently from side to side; my eyes rolled back hard in their sockets as I painfully jerked my head towards my right shoulder; a forceful nodding of my head accompanied some forearm flexing that made my lower arms rise a little; I yelped loudly several times, not in pain, but because my brain commanded me to do so, and a final flourish saw me punch myself viciously in the stomach. The doctor, a paediatric neurologist, looked at me with a suspicion verging on scorn, and I returned his look with a pleading one of my own: Please help me. Please just make it stop.

I was seven and my little world had turned upside down. The doctor prescribed Valium, and I trundled back home fingering the bottle of little white pills while praying they would hold the miracle cure.

It had all come on so suddenly. There was no obvious cause. I simply developed a head-shaking tic, one that, as the weeks progressed, greedily seemed to recruit other symptoms to join it on its course of taking over my life and turning me from a confident boy into a confused, gyrating, ticcing and verbalising freak.

My parents carted me from family doctor to hospital specialist in the hope of some enlightenment. It came in the form of a verdict that was to label me for 14 years: bad nerves - attention seeking. Of course! How silly of us all not to have realised that I was simply putting on an act and causing myself physical pain, embarrassment, exhaustion and alienation.

The luxury of being able to brand myself came when I was 21, on deciding, now as an adult, to start seeking some answers. It was not such a futile journey this time round, and I was led to a neurologist who stated that I was suffering from Gilles de la Tourette syndrome. I was ecstatic at first. I had a real condition. I was believed. But then, as I began to research the condition, my initial ecstasy evolved into anger.

Tourette's syndrome had been in the ambit of medical information since the late 19th century. The more I read, the more I realised that I had always displayed textbook symptoms. So why had every paediatric neurologist I had seen all those years ago failed to detect it? I've long given up waiting for the answer.

The trademark bodily tics range from simple flexing, grimacing or shaking movements, to more complex, often extremely painful contortions, repetitive touching of things or people, jumping, self-harming, and countless others. The vocal tics can range from small, meaningless but abrupt noises, to startling and often deafening variations on a yelping theme. Some Tourettists mimic sounds or words they hear, and some do that thing for which Tourette's has become so famous: they swear. But most Tourettists do not swear. Their main struggle is trying to tame the vocal and bodily tics.

There are no drugs specifically designed for Tourette's, but a number of medicines, potent neuroleptic antipsychotics, do seem to help eradicate some of the violent tics. Ironically, though, these drugs not only tend to almost erase the patient's personality, but can also have serious side-effects, leaving an irreversible tremor called Tardive Dyskinesia. The course of taking a medicine that might help my TS, but could afflict me with something equally disturbing, is not one on which I've ever been willing to embark.

Living with TS can certainly be a punishing ride. I tic approximately 38,000 times a day. Not a moment goes by when there is not some muscle in my body either delicately ticcing away, or, as is more common, going for it hammer and tongs. I vocally tic practically each time I exhale and, at certain points during the day, I'm compelled to let rip with various mega-loud yelps, which tend not only to startle me, but everyone in my vicinity. I ooh and I ahh, I spit and I smash my jaws together, I flex, shake, contort and nod, I blow comical raspberries, some small, some huge, and I touch things and people. I don't swear out loud, but sometimes I have a dreadfully abusive script going in my head. With some people, I salivate as I'm compelled to spit in their left eye, and I go through agony as I fight the urge. It's a constant battle, I'm given no time off.

I accept myself now. It took a long time to get here, and I had to overcome a lot of self-hate and confusion, but I made it. It wasn't always a pleasant journey though. I was bullied at school. I was spat at, beaten, mimicked and excluded. I then found love in the form of music - the piano - and I excelled. Finding solace in my music, I practised every moment I could, the beauty of the sounds acting as a panacea to the ugly ills I faced in the outside world. Going on to study at the Royal College of Music in London saw me develop the dream of being a concert pianist. While ticcing and gyrating, I won prizes.

Although I still feel trapped in a body over which I have no control, people who know me accept me as a ticcy being and even love me for it.

Nick Tatham - 23 - Singer / Song Writer

My most common symptoms are vocal tics and facial movements. I involuntarily say things like "yeah, yeah" but I don't swear. Most people are fine about it. Sometimes you get moody sods who tell you to stop it but the people I know are fine. Sometimes strangers do stare in the street but, at the end of the day, you get so used to it. Different people have different experiences.It's really their problem and not mine. There's so much to Tourette's - it's one big roller coaster ride. The Tourette's becomes a part of you. You have an amazing time and then you have downs. You are born with Tourette's but it doesn't show itself straight away. It's something that crept up by the time I was seven and at 11 I was in Great Ormond Street with it. I was badly bullied at school and when I was young. People imitated it and things like that. No-one likes to be bullied just because they've got something wrong with them. Tourette's is like someone wearing glasses, or having a hand a different size to another. People can single you out but that happens if you're slightly different. It's definitely ignorance. But you move on and it's an experience. I have written songs about Tourette's. The most recent song I've recorded started out being called Tourette Blues. It's now evolved into a song called Different.

Tourettes research

Trailer: Inside Tourette Syndrome (documentary) from leon on Vimeo.

CV Idea

PI // Darren Aronofsky

3 Min. Section of PI (1998) from Kristian Tumangan on Vimeo.

Fight Club Ikea Scene

Typographic Daredevil Comic

This piece of work is student work and to me is clever and absolutely gorgeous. The book is a representation of what the comicbook superhero daredevil may hear in a typographic form. Brilliant. To create this he use kaleidoscope mirrors and other forms of reflective material to produce the image which give them a raw and less clinical form, one that feels like you are in daredevils head, allowing the words to convey what he may be hearing around him at the time.