From Script to Screens: Initial Ideas

The 3 words:

Character: Pirate

Location: Garden

Prop: Sink Plunger

The two following ideas are the first ones that came to my mind but even though they look more developed, I don't really wish to pursue in that specific direction. However I think it's a good thing to get them out of the way as soon as possible. :)

(Excuse the clumsy writing)

- A child is playing on her own in a backyard, dressed as a pirate with items found around the house (strainer, paper hat, boat origamis, duvets, brooms, sink plunger, etc). Her mother can be seen running a bath upstairs while humming a sad melody. Suddenly the singing is interrupted by a cry and the child drops her toys in shock. Cut to a pirate grabbing her sword and climbing a stairway towards the bridge of a ship. She bursts the door open only to see a giant squid ferociously attacking a mermaid, throwing her in and out of the water and against the wooden masts. The pirate tries to help the latter and engages in a combat with the kraken, aiming for its tentacles. After a turbulent fight and chase, the furious squid eventually grabs hold of its opponent and tighten its grip around her. Cut to the child’s fingers gradually losing their tension as a final shot reveals a scene of domestic violence. A horrified father (the kraken) realises what he’s done, contemplating the small, lifeless body in his hand whilst the mother is seen sobbing on the floor, next to an overflowing bathtub. In a nutshell, a metaphor for a child’s perspective on domestic violence and a merging of reality and imagination. 

- Time-lapse of a patch of grass with a pond as it gets sold to a couple, renovated and turned into a garden, populated with stone gnomes, filled with life, flowers, running children and dancing guests and then progressively returning to a state of neglect over the years. 

One autumn morning, a stooped old woman is seen walking across the yard, a photograph in her hands as she contemplates the weathered gnomes, poorly repaired with random items. She goes sit down on the edge of the pond, whose sole inhabitant is a pirate garden gnome holding a sink plunger amongst the water lilies. The old woman studies the photograph once again, takes off a ring and holds it up in the pale sunlight. The ring inadvertently slips into the water of the pond and the woman’s face seems to become even more melancholic. Distraught by her sorrowful expression, the pirate gnome attempts to break his stone pedestal with the sink plunger whilst she’s not looking and dives to the bottom of the pond. Although the waters are eerily dark, he witnesses the ring getting swallowed by a fish. The gnome manages to get the ring back by sticking his plunger on the fish’s mouth but as soon the jewel touches his fingers, a curious underwater tremor sends him away to the edge of the pond. It takes a few moments for him to find the ring again but when he victoriously swims back to the surface, it is only to see the woman too had jumped into the water, perhaps to get her ring back, perhaps for another reason…

- A bored pirate, nostalgic of the mainland, steals various objects around the ship they’re serving on to recreate an eclectic and original garden in the lookout point at the top of the mast. Their ultimate goal is to get the captain’s sink plunger, which upside down resembles an exotic flower, despite not carrying the same sort of smell…  

- On a pile of trash in a public garden, a one-legged, homeless person imagines himself as a pirate on a tropical island to forget the particularly cold winter night. In his fantasies, he gets rid of his crutches when he finds a perfect wooden leg and lives all sorts of adventures under a burning sun. But the sirens’ call of his dreams slowly dissolve into actual siren sounds as the audience sees him getting carried away in an ambulance, freezing cold and a sink plunger stuck to his knee.

- A bunch of pirates are organising a garden party on the bridge of their ship when a rival vessel interrupts their festivities by opening fire. In their panic, the pirates attempt to seal the holes caused by cannonballs with anything they can find lying around them. As they run out of items, their only hope to block the last hole is a sink plunger but a seagull flies away with it before the pirates can even make a move. A last shot reveals the latters pursuing their party, shipwreck-victim-style on the surface of the ocean.  

- A pirate, nostalgic of the sea, sticks a sink plunger to their ear in an attempt to hear the sound of the waves permanently. 

- A Thumbelina version of piracy set in a garden
- Underwater garden  

- A sink plunger used to prevent the water of the oceans from getting drained  

- I was thinking about using the word ‘garden’ as in ‘secret garden’ (in the sense of jardin secret) but according to my internet searches I believe it isn’t an expression used in English?
- A toilet cabin in a garden that would act as a portal and spit out supernatural beings at night (in this case maybe a zombie/devil-like pirate) who need to be pushed back with a plunger.

More to come hopefully...