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.