Puzzle-making practice: Making Movies

[heltenjon]

Puzzle-making contest – making movies.

Sorry, everyone. I forgot completely that I was supposed to come up with a new topic here, but later good than, no, that's not right. (I actually typed that. Will let it stand just for the heck of it.)

New topic! You are a movie director.
You have: Fairly standard set of movie technical equipment, cameras, microphones, artificial lighting etc. Let's work from the premise that you have what you need in this area.

Three possible locations: A western saloon, a small ferry and someone's living room.

Five actors:
 

• Laura (50+) is a diva that not quite has accepted that she may not be the star anymore.
• Gregory (40s) is a typical type-cast guy who is often getting roles as a henchman, bodyguard, the tough sergeant. However, he's got a wish to evoke feelings in people, and would most of all have liked to be able to sing.
• Hannah (20s, but can look older or younger) wants all her movies to break taboos or in some other way get her the attention she needs to become a rising star.
• Paul  (20s, but can look older or younger) is the epitome of political correctness and wants all food to be organic, no animals to be harmed, and the movie to be wholesome and family friendly.
• Grumpy the wonder dog (Ageless) wants dog biscuits.

You need to shoot a scene that meets the following criteria:
   

• All actors need to be satisfied. This equals 3 out of five on a satisfaction scale. (They all need to score 3 or higher. Feel free to include how their score goes up and down with every decision taken.)
• The scene needs to have high emotional content.
• You need to include products from your sponsors in the scene, including Farsley's Very Good Coffee, Tents R Us, Guns & Buns & Puns (& Sons), Karate Sam's Breakable Furniture (no guarantees!) and the board game A Woman's Touch.
• To satisfy your producer, there needs to be a development in either the inter-personal relationships or personal growth for the main characters.
• There must be a twist or a cliffhanger.

The Rules!

Participants respond to the set-up by writing entries that must do the following:
1. Use at least 3 of the provided elements (inventory, NPCs, a piece of the room like a cabinet or faucet etc.)
2. Give a step-by-step walkthrough of your puzzle solution.
3. Don't add new elements. For example, if the room is a forest, breaking a thin branch off a tree makes sense unless the host said the trees were huge and tall. But adding a hollowed-out stump with a bear sleeping in it is too specific. Assume all important elements have been mentioned by the host.
4. Keep any dialog elements summarized rather than typing out the whole conversation (for example, "threaten the mailman", "ask the child for advice", and so on, instead of giving every spoken line).

Each contest runs for two weeks to allow for a good number of entries, and then it switches to voting for one week. The participant whose solution gets the most votes gets to come up with the next scenario! (Please also provide a link to these rules).

Voters use the criteria of:
a) how logical the puzzle seems
b) how creative or unexpected (but still sensible) is the use of elements
c) how satisfying is the solution (Is it too simple? Way too complicated? Or just right?)

Note: These are the standard rules, and this month's contest deviates slightly.

[Creamy]

Interesting change of formula. To comply with the rules, the only way I can think of is to shoot a FMV/visual novel, like Wales Interactive does.

[heltenjon]

Interesting change of formula. To comply with the rules, the only way I can think of is to shoot a FMV/visual novel, like Wales Interactive does.

I guess I'm going into territory covered by the writing contest or MAGS here. I hope it doesn't scare away the contestants.

[heltenjon]

Is anyone working on something, or planning to participate? 

[Creamy]

I may not have a scenario yet, but I have a cast:

[Creamy]

Here you go:

Spoiler

Return of the Obra Dinn II - A musical FMV game

In this episode, you assume the role of a historian.
Your museum wants you to track the origin an antique pocket watch (the one from Obra Dinn).
Your predecessor has mysteriously disappeared in the midst of his research.
He left behind a big chest full of memorabilia that will help you on your quest.

Like in Obra Dinn, the pocket watch allows you to see fragments of the past: the moments where people died.
Unlike Obra Dinn, there's no 3D involved.
The game is played in first person perspective . Panoramic photographs of the living room will pass for the coffee room of the museum. You'll get to watch musical clips performed by the cast.
Each clip is triggered by an object in the chest. The clips are unlocked one by one. The players must connect an element from the clip they've just watched with the next object.
Hopefully, Sam Barlow will allow us to use the system he created for  his game "Immortality" where you can pause a video, click on an element of the still shot and memorize it for future use.

The first usable item in the chest is a copy of a will in which Paul's character bequeathes the fob watch to the museum (he wasn't wearing it when he died).
Use the watch on the will and you're taken to the first musical number:

"Help! I can't swiBLBLRG!"
In this short clip, you get to see Paul's character accidentally falling from the ferry and singing for help. A very old man (Gregory, disguised) grabs a buoy on the deck and throws it to Paul but it goes off target with the wind and Paul can't reach it. The granddaddy then tries to push Grumpy to the cold water to rescue him. But the dog resists. Paul drowns.

On Paul's wrist, you could see a "Quat'zarts" tattoo.
Thus you're able to trace the next item in the chest: a brochure for the School of Fine Arts in Paris (with the same logo). Using the watch on it takes you to the next clip:

"Don't dissect her just yet"
Set in the saloon, transformed into a classroom.
It takes us back to the strange days where medical students and art students shared anatomy lessons together.
Hannah (in heavy make-up) plays a nude 'dead' woman laying on a table, with strategically placed bottles and towels to preserve her intimacy (that is, if you didn't disable the "family-friendly" filter in the options).
Paul's character (made up to look younger) launches into a resounding plea, because he thinks he saw her twitch. The anatomy teacher - played by an old-looking Laura - calls him over-sensitive. Operatic verbal jousting ensues. Laura doesn't yield and concludes the argument by planting a scalpel in Hannah's heart. Paul leaves the class infuriated. In the corridor, he notices the vest of the teacher with the dangling chain and steals the watch.

The next item to recognize is the colorful African scarf tucked in Laura's vest.
Finding the same scarf in the chest is our ticket to the next number:

"Ain't no cure for that"
A bunch of tents pitched on the nearest beach will do as a makeshift African dispensary.
Laura's a younger doctor. She works in a humanitarian mission.
Gregory plays an old bedridden officer. He holds the pocket watch in his hands.
She lists in rhymes all the supplies they have with the diseases they cure (some of which are very whimsical).
At the end of each stanza, he laments that there's no cure for love sickness.
He eventually expires. She removes the watch from his hands before he is taken away.

There's nothing to research in this clip. You've got to take a small blade and loosen the back cover of the pocket watch. You find an old black and white photograph of Hannah inside, which takes you to the last clip.

"Break you in two (woo woo woo)" followed by "She got moxie".
In a busy saloon, Gregory - now a juvenile soldier - has just won a game of poker with the fob watch as a prize. However the bad loser (played by a disguised Paul) picks up a fight. Blows rain down to the beat of a Zimmer-esque score (Quick Time Events in rythm!) and Gregory emerges victorious. Definitely vindictive, the antagonist reaches for his gun but is beaten to the draw by one of the dancers played by Hannah. He collapses amid broken furniture. Unfazed by it all, Greg and Hannah sympathize over a coffee.

This flashback of burgeoning romance is interrupted by a knock on the door of the museum.
You walk past your colleagues playing a board game during their pause and open the door.
The episode shamelessly ends on a cry of surprise from our protagonist at the sight of our injured predecessor (time for a cameo by the director, since this game will probably never be continued).

[close]

Hopefully, it meets all the requirements.
I couldn't find a way to cram them all in a single scene.

[heltenjon]

@Creamy - I'm impressed. As long as the dog got his biscuits after his scene, I think you have it all. Good work!

Anyone else out there planning something?