Hi Emma - wow, this got dark! Last time I checked-in, it was all sweetness and light pretty much, and now we've got a murdering clown!
I think you're onto something with the final image of victims with their faces painted as clowns - feels nicely creepy, though I'm less convinced you need all that back-story and Vegas-specificity in the mix. For me, it's an issue of where you want our sympathies to lie - with the bullied potwash boy, or his victims? At the moment, I don't feel much sympathy for any of them. I wonder if it could all go much simpler: so...
Your character is a hapless potwash boy, who is clumsy, with big feet; he is bullied by the big bald pastry chef, who refers to the potwash boy as 'the clown', because he's always dropping stuff, falling over etc. One day the pastry chef plays a cruel joke on the potwash boy - something awful, don't know what... but it's enough to ensure that the clown takes his grisly revenge... To me, it needs to be simpler, otherwise everyone's motivations are harder to convey quickly. This almost feels like the origin story of a psychopath? I can't help thinking that the last shot might be 'the clown' giggling to himself, so we know we're now in the company of a full-blown nut-job; I'm wondering too if the 'practical joke' the chef(s) play on the clown might leave him actually looking like a clown - rather like the joker in Batman?
I'd suggest you can set things up much more immediately; potwash boy nicknamed clown by cruel colleagues (get rid of back-story of actually wanting to be a clown), bullying gets out of hand, 'The Clown' takes his revenge... Also, if you make the chef the clown's opposite - so dainty, with a piping bag and pasty brush, elegant, tidy, neat - all the things the potwash boy isn't - (you make him camp, and haughty and arrogant), you'll explain the differences between the visually very quickly - it also means that when the potwash boy uses the pastry brush in his revenge, that will be nicely satisfying.
Anyway - yes - my instincts are to go smaller, quicker and meaner...
OGR 22/01/2015
ReplyDeleteHi Emma - wow, this got dark! Last time I checked-in, it was all sweetness and light pretty much, and now we've got a murdering clown!
I think you're onto something with the final image of victims with their faces painted as clowns - feels nicely creepy, though I'm less convinced you need all that back-story and Vegas-specificity in the mix. For me, it's an issue of where you want our sympathies to lie - with the bullied potwash boy, or his victims? At the moment, I don't feel much sympathy for any of them. I wonder if it could all go much simpler: so...
Your character is a hapless potwash boy, who is clumsy, with big feet; he is bullied by the big bald pastry chef, who refers to the potwash boy as 'the clown', because he's always dropping stuff, falling over etc. One day the pastry chef plays a cruel joke on the potwash boy - something awful, don't know what... but it's enough to ensure that the clown takes his grisly revenge... To me, it needs to be simpler, otherwise everyone's motivations are harder to convey quickly. This almost feels like the origin story of a psychopath? I can't help thinking that the last shot might be 'the clown' giggling to himself, so we know we're now in the company of a full-blown nut-job; I'm wondering too if the 'practical joke' the chef(s) play on the clown might leave him actually looking like a clown - rather like the joker in Batman?
I'd suggest you can set things up much more immediately; potwash boy nicknamed clown by cruel colleagues (get rid of back-story of actually wanting to be a clown), bullying gets out of hand, 'The Clown' takes his revenge... Also, if you make the chef the clown's opposite - so dainty, with a piping bag and pasty brush, elegant, tidy, neat - all the things the potwash boy isn't - (you make him camp, and haughty and arrogant), you'll explain the differences between the visually very quickly - it also means that when the potwash boy uses the pastry brush in his revenge, that will be nicely satisfying.
Anyway - yes - my instincts are to go smaller, quicker and meaner...