My synopsis

[yldii]

Floating On Sycamores

Synopsis:

An eleven year old girl makes a wish when she blows into a dandelion.
Her wish, to become a famous actress is granted. Upon her fathers death she returns from Hollywood to her small home town in Kansas and to the sycamore grove where she made her wish.

It is there that she is met by a mysterious man who tell her that if her wish had not been granted her father would still be alive. She insist that she made her way to the top on own and not becouse of a wish. She then realized that she told no one about her wish, yet he knew what she had wished for.

Expressing her surprise that a dandelion could grant a wish, she learns from the man that the dandelion only carried the wish to the treetops and that it was the sycamore tree that granted it.

Given back the life that would have been hers before the wish, she sees the lives that she touched and learned how fame and fortune never came with the happiness she now found in every aspect of life. But this was only a look int a life she never lived and she would have to go back to the way it was.

Feeling that she would not be able to go on that way she
she returns to the grove and finds the mysterious man waiting for her he tells her that there is no other way and she has to go back.

She decides she will live her life to the fullest and give up her wealth if need be try to touch as many lives as she could. Her plan of selflessness swayed the mysterious man decision and she awakens back in the life she loves. The life without the wish.

Returning to the grove one last time, she asked the man who he is and how he knows all of these things. That is when she learns that the man she had been talking to all this time was not a man at all, but the spirit of the sycamore tree.

[yldii]

Hello? Is this thing on?

[Kastman]

Hey i read it, and it's a little weird (i think in a good way)...

but what you posted really doesn't sound like it has enough in it to filla feature length script.

If it had say more characters, and you had other things happening behind the sycamore business then it might, but you need a lot more to fill 100 pages or however long it may be.

I don't get the spirit of the sycamore thing either, but i'm not the sharpest knife in the drawer so that may explain it.

[yldii]

Kastman: Thanks for the input.

There is a lot to it that I didn't put in.

The ppl she effects by not haveing her wish granted:

Her father.
If she never went to Hollywood she would have saved a condemed playhouse and opened an acting scool for kids.
But instead it was torn down and replaced by a bank. In that bank her father was shot to death by a robber.

Her brother.
She encoraged him to stay involved with football leading to sucsess in the NFL.

Her love.
The Hollywood side a lonly one with a leeling that something was missing. But in the other side of life She was married to Billy Watson, her life long crush.

There are more. You see we are dealing with two plains of realaity going in two different directions.

[Kastman]

But how would you show this in a script...


would it be like the scrooge, going around and seeing what they would have been like?

And how is there any conflict, if being here and reading into this stuff, scripts SHOULD have conflict. In this it just seems as though there is no real obstacle fr her to overcome other than making the decision to help people, and while thats good and all, it doesn't seem like anything that interesting would happen.

[yldii]

She is 34 when she is put into that other life.
The memories of that life come little by little in her dreams.

As for conflict, it is a story of self discovery. not wanting to accecpt the new life that she knows deep inside that she prefers because it dosn't come with all the bells and whistles of a life of stardom.

After realizing that she loves this new life she has to give it up and return to the way it was.

[Ronaldinho]

Originally posted by yldii
Hello? Is this thing on?

Patience.

I honestly think it's probably too saccharin to work. There's an obvious "It's A Wonderful Life" paralel, but I'm not sure how that movie would play, today, as a contemporary piece rather than as the nostalgia piece it is today.

A few other problems:

First, nothing is at stake. All the important choices in the film were made in the past.

Second, it's sort of an obvious choice well before you get there. If you want to offer someone a choice, "Go back and change your life," youhave to make it a hard choice. But you don't make it a hard choice. You make it a very obvious one.

Take another look at "IAWL"-- note how much of the film is dedicated to showing you WHY George Bailey is given this opportunity to see how life could have been. He's earned it, and we know exactly why. In this film, she seems to have earned it because she's the lead character in a movie, no more.

[Beeblebrox]

Originally posted by yldii
There is a lot to it that I didn't put in.

The ppl she effects by not haveing her wish granted:

Her father.
If she never went to Hollywood she would have saved a condemed playhouse and opened an acting scool for kids.
But instead it was torn down and replaced by a bank. In that bank her father was shot to death by a robber.

Her brother.
She encoraged him to stay involved with football leading to sucsess in the NFL.

Her love.
The Hollywood side a lonly one with a leeling that something was missing. But in the other side of life She was married to Billy Watson, her life long crush.

There are more. You see we are dealing with two plains of realaity going in two different directions. [/B]

This goes for anyone posting a short treatment or synposis.

It would help when evaluating these if we have ALL the information we need. Don't leave out important story points. You synopsis should be identical in beats with your script. Only skip over large chunks of story if you do so in your actual screenplay.

I understand the temptation to be cagey and not wanting to give too much away, but we're not an audience at this point. We don't want teasers. We want to know what your story is about.

[Beeblebrox]

Originally posted by Ronaldinho
I honestly think it's probably too saccharin to work. There's an obvious "It's A Wonderful Life" paralel, but I'm not sure how that movie would play, today, as a contemporary piece rather than as the nostalgia piece it is today.

I agree with your other points, but I do think this could work if done properly. The Family Man had the same IAWL elements and I thought that movie turned out pretty well.

[TheDeadWalk]

I wasn't thinking of this so much as IAWL, as much as a "happier" "family friendly" version of "The Monkey's Paw".

With the spirit of the sycamore tree taking a role, will it have Native American/Mother Nature references throughout the film?

[yldii]

dead walk:
I hadn't thought about the native american thing but I did consider Mother Nature and decided not to go that way.

I just may consider an indian pesona for the tree spirit. could add depth to the character.