Genre: Horror / Dark Comedy / Film de Femme
Logline: When he asked her if she wanted to carpool, this isn’t exactly what she had in mind.
Another year, another 48 Hour Film Project here in Columbus, Ohio. I teamed up with Backward Slate Productions again to write, run sound, and volunteer my oldest child to be stuffed in the trunk of a car. Anything to get the shot, right?
This year’s elements were:
Character: Mr. or Mrs. Danoff, a substitute teacher
Prop: A deck of cards
Line of dialogue: “Do what you want to do.”
We drew Film de Femme as our genre, which the isn’t really a genre at all and was fabricated specifically to generate more strong female roles in the contest submissions. I personally think that strong female roles should be written when either the story merits such or a role, or when you have an actress capable of delivering a strong performance.
(For more on strong female roles as they pertain to BSP shorts, check out Dead Man’s Hand.)
The writing process for this short was… challenging. My mind wasn’t in the right place when we got our elements, and the story ideas I brought to the table were WAY off. Fortunately, two things happened to bring it all together.
Tiff said something to the effect of, “A Backward Slate Production needs to be funny, a little touching, and definitely inappropriate.”
Later on (about 4 hours into the writing process, to be precise), Max says, “I feel like we need to step back and come at this from an entirely different angle. What if Tiff starts out in an office.”
Fifteen minutes later, we had our script.
An hour later, Max was on his way to Kinko’s to print out copies for a very early call time.
And with time to spare, we turned in the finished short.
I absolutely LOVE this short. It’s funny, fast paced, and right in line with Tiff’s expectations: definitely inappropriate. Oh, and stuffing the kid in the trunk of a car? Hilarious!
Don’t take my word for it, though. Judge for yourself.
Download screenplay: Carpool
