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screenplay subplot ideas
May. 21st, 2007 11:47 pminvasion of the bottle snatchers.
I dunno if this comes up outside the bluest parts of The Bluest State. Do the rest of you have a recycling subculture? No, I don't mean how MITers managed to trashpick a car, or other amazing feats of dumpster diving. But that old guy, not a day under 150, or a pound over 100, riding a bike that is balancing 8 giant garbage bags worth of recycling. If you see him when you're parked at a light, you hand him the empties in your car.
Unless the guys upstairs are saving the house recycling for their ancient, grizzled scavenger of preference. Until they get sick of how he doesn't take all the deposit items, and shakes the limes out of the dead Corona Soldiers, leaving them all over the driveway, rather than aiming for the bin a few feet to the right.
Or how when Harvard square changed their bins to be trashpicking resistant, and all us activitists found ways to squeeze deposit-recyclables into the still accessible bin framework until someone developed a minibin attachment where you could leave recyclables for folks who would actually collect the deposit.
Maybe there's a documentary in there.
The printer tray conflict.
Maybe I don't watch enough of The Office (I tried tuning in mid-season or something, it didn't take), and, Office Space didn't get sufficiently specific (or was made too early), but, I'd like to see an ongoing subplot about the printer tray problem. Some brainiac doesn't get the hang of the printer trays, or that there are three (3) that can hold about 35 reams of 8.5 x 11, and one (1) tray that can hold *maybe* a package of 11 x 17, and so, when the 11 x 17 runs out, they replace it with 8.5 x 11, or the ever dreaded 8.5 x 14 (which can fit into one of the other trays). You know who you f#$king are!
If I were to correctly log my hours on various design jobs, I think it's about 1-2 hours a day of trying to figure out some new software stunt, 5 minutes of actual edits or design, 1 hour of proofreading, and 6 hours of wondering Why the #$@! hasn't my job printed yet? AAAAAAAARGH!
Or, folks who know just enough about the print server to push themselves to the top of the printer queue don't realize they're stopping your job to do so. I'm a Mac User. Hell, I didn't even know about Minesweeper until the first gig where I had to spend some quality time with the PC print server, literally guarding my spot in line. (I got really, really good.)
I envision someone first setting up a series of mirrors, in hopes of catching the culprit in the act of befouling the paper trays. Since they're already so tuned in to the sound of every error on the printer, despite being around the corner from it. Then upgrading to a hidden camera, and slogging through too much footage before they realize that won't work, to finally bribing coworkers to help them set up webcams and scripts that activate the webcams every time a paper tray is opened, or someone clicks their job ahead on the queue. Maybe cause a police siren sound to go off.
Sure, it'd end up being a VP, or someone just high level enough that you can't do much about it. But it might make for a good subplot.
Then again, I think that decent samples of office machinery noises could make for a great dance mix, aka The Printer Jam.
(But I suppose if I were so right, I'd be getting paid for this kind of brainstorming.)
I dunno if this comes up outside the bluest parts of The Bluest State. Do the rest of you have a recycling subculture? No, I don't mean how MITers managed to trashpick a car, or other amazing feats of dumpster diving. But that old guy, not a day under 150, or a pound over 100, riding a bike that is balancing 8 giant garbage bags worth of recycling. If you see him when you're parked at a light, you hand him the empties in your car.
Unless the guys upstairs are saving the house recycling for their ancient, grizzled scavenger of preference. Until they get sick of how he doesn't take all the deposit items, and shakes the limes out of the dead Corona Soldiers, leaving them all over the driveway, rather than aiming for the bin a few feet to the right.
Or how when Harvard square changed their bins to be trashpicking resistant, and all us activitists found ways to squeeze deposit-recyclables into the still accessible bin framework until someone developed a minibin attachment where you could leave recyclables for folks who would actually collect the deposit.
Maybe there's a documentary in there.
The printer tray conflict.
Maybe I don't watch enough of The Office (I tried tuning in mid-season or something, it didn't take), and, Office Space didn't get sufficiently specific (or was made too early), but, I'd like to see an ongoing subplot about the printer tray problem. Some brainiac doesn't get the hang of the printer trays, or that there are three (3) that can hold about 35 reams of 8.5 x 11, and one (1) tray that can hold *maybe* a package of 11 x 17, and so, when the 11 x 17 runs out, they replace it with 8.5 x 11, or the ever dreaded 8.5 x 14 (which can fit into one of the other trays). You know who you f#$king are!
If I were to correctly log my hours on various design jobs, I think it's about 1-2 hours a day of trying to figure out some new software stunt, 5 minutes of actual edits or design, 1 hour of proofreading, and 6 hours of wondering Why the #$@! hasn't my job printed yet? AAAAAAAARGH!
Or, folks who know just enough about the print server to push themselves to the top of the printer queue don't realize they're stopping your job to do so. I'm a Mac User. Hell, I didn't even know about Minesweeper until the first gig where I had to spend some quality time with the PC print server, literally guarding my spot in line. (I got really, really good.)
I envision someone first setting up a series of mirrors, in hopes of catching the culprit in the act of befouling the paper trays. Since they're already so tuned in to the sound of every error on the printer, despite being around the corner from it. Then upgrading to a hidden camera, and slogging through too much footage before they realize that won't work, to finally bribing coworkers to help them set up webcams and scripts that activate the webcams every time a paper tray is opened, or someone clicks their job ahead on the queue. Maybe cause a police siren sound to go off.
Sure, it'd end up being a VP, or someone just high level enough that you can't do much about it. But it might make for a good subplot.
Then again, I think that decent samples of office machinery noises could make for a great dance mix, aka The Printer Jam.
(But I suppose if I were so right, I'd be getting paid for this kind of brainstorming.)
