User:Neoluku/sandbox

= Shadowed (TV Series Pitch) = This is a TV Series assignment for my DFK 774 class. Shadowed is set in modern day South Africa. It follows the adventures of a young black girl who is trying to find balance between the modern world and the religious lifestyle her father wants her to live by. Trouble starts when she finds herself stalked by a spirit she calls Shadowed, since it is always hidden by darkness. One day she finds that this spirit looks exactly like her, and little by little it reveals truths and secrets about her life and herself that make her question everything about the world she lives in.

Assignment Requirements
This assignment is due for the 22nd of April, 2016 and is for 50 marks. It is required to write a pilot episode and seven treatments of a one hour dramatic show. The genre and nature of this universe is up to me. This entire assignment is to be handed in in typed format.

The Pilot
The pilot episode script must be 45-52 pages long and counts for 70% of the entire assignment. It will be marked on its format, characterization, dialogue, the development of both story and character arcs, the ability to keep the momentum of plot lines going and the balance done between convention, formula and originality. In other words, am I able to write a story that follows standard procedures of a well-written story, but subverts certain methods to maintain elements of originality and uniqueness? Also, in terms of characterization, are the characters people one can relate to or view as interesting, or are they moving bodies with nothing much to offer the universe and the viewers?

The episode treatments
These count for 30% of the assignment and serve to show how the story and character arcs develop and continue. These arcs can also be resolved and thus make room for new ones to be introduced and developed. In terms of specific episode guidelines, the 4th episode usually has a big reveal or a cliffhanger at the end. Episodes 7 or 8 follow suit: a character or occurrence that brings about a huge shift in the show dynamic. These treatments give us an idea of where the plot lines go in terms of the story as a whole, and contain little to zero dialogue, the little dialogue being maybe a line or quote that you as the writer feel is crucial and can't be left out. These are handed in as a separate document from the pilot script and need only be a page long per episode.

Setting
Once independence was declared in 1994, South Africa - in order to rediscover their heritage and identity as a people - established their African religions and traditions as the predominant belief system in their country, not Christianity. The girl lives in modern times, and Christianity never became a prominent power in South Africa. Traditional beliefs and African religions are still practiced and not looked down upon, so for example certain locations such as the area around a certain tree are considered incredibly sacred and sometimes can only be visited by local sangomas of that culture.

The belief structures and traditions are divided by location: Kwazulu Natal and Gauteng is Zulu religion, NorthWest is Setswana Religion, Western and Eastern Cape is Xhosa religion, Limpopo, Free State and Lesotho is Sotho religion, Swaziland and Mpumalanga is still a monarch and is Swati Religion. The whole of Northern Cape is Afrikaans land. Please note that Lesotho and Swaziland are still independent countries within South Africa. The general alliances are between the three sotho tribes: Sesotho, SeSotho sa leboa, and Setswana, and the four Nguni languages: isiNdebele, isiZulu, isiXhosa and siSwati. However, due to a fight that occured during the days of King Shakazulu, the Zulus and Xhosas are great enemies, often the cause of civil unrest and tribal feuds erupting.

Within the girl's province (still to be decided) there is a university called PowerLife University. PowerLife University was established 20 years before under mysterious circumstances and is a girl’s only university. Ever year, the women who graduate participate in a ritual that is in fact step one of three steps to completing it. However, no girl has yet been able to complete the one. The ritual has never been heard of before, however its true function is said to just be a way to keep the women close to their traditional roots. The girl's aunt is its Headmistress and she is constantly trying to validate its necessity to the general population of her community as well as to its main funders, the men of the Town Council.

The Pilot
The girl is an A+ student and is in her final year of matric. She is popular, beloved by her community and highly considered to be accepted into the prestigious PowerLife University. Her father wants her to focus more on her cultural and spiritual needs rather than her academics, and is strict on the traditions and rituals of the family. However, because it is just the two of them they're extremely close, so he makes certain acceptations for her every now and then. Her aunt is more ambitious of her academics, and is excited to have her niece accepted into the institution. But she finds out that the girl can't get accepted into the university: she doesn’t know the language required for the ritual all graduating girls must go through.

The aunt panics: she believes that the girl is what they have all been looking for. She once had a supernatural occurrence and saw a baby girl with the mark of their family. She was told that this girl would save them all. The aunt approaches the girl and tries to persuade her to write the language down as "known" in her application form. The girl is hesitant and says she will think about it.The girl is then stalked by a figure who is constantly hidden by darkness. She is not frightened at first and thus names it Shadowed before seeing that it looks like her. She assumes it’s a spirit and tries to use her sangoma's advice to get rid of it but to no avail. The sangoma says that his bones tells him she is experiencing this because of a moral decision she is refusing to take, which makes the girl remember her aunt's preposition.

The aunt is called into a meeting with messengers from the men of the Town Council, and they tell her that the school cannot go on much longer, the men want results. She is able to bargain for another three more years, knowing that the girl will be graduating on the third. The girl notices that Shadowed is in chains that glow silver in the light and go stark white in the dark. They have a sign on them that the girl doesn’t recognize. Also, Shadowed never speaks. After Shadowed seemingly attacks the girl, she finally makes a decision and hands in the application form. On her way out she tells the aunt that she did not put the language down as "known". Hearing this, the aunt acts quickly and breaks into the office with the forms, adds the language to the girl's application and leaves without noticing a figure watching her in the shadows.

The next day, the aunt then tells the father of this dead language (the one the girl needs to know for the ritual) and suggests how good it would be for the girl to learn it, for the sake of her cultural roots. The father agrees to get the girl a tutor for the language. After a particular scary dream of Shadowed, the girl jerks awake to her father knocking on her bedroom door. She notices Shadowed standing in a corner, and resigns to the fact that it will never leave. When the father enters, he is holding an opened envelope and is happy to tell her she was accepted to the university. He also mentions that she will need to learn the dead language and that he will start looking for a tutor the next day. She tries to refuse but he asks her to do it for him and mentions how much this would mean to him and the legacy of their family. She accepts. As he is leaving, she catches sight of a silver key on his hip, and when he turns off the light, it goes white. Stark white.

Abduct
An Afrikaans girl from the Northern Cape is there as an exchange student at PowerLife University. She is reaching the end of her year there and is not looking forward to saying goodbye to her closest friend there: the girl. Out of rebellion, she leaves with three Xhosa boys from the neighbouring tribe to the sacred riverside of Inkanyamba, the rain god. This is looked down upon because the Zulus and Xhosas are not on friendly terms. Also, that specific riverside is only allowed to be visited by the head sangoma of the zulu tribes.

She is dared by the boys to go all the way to the actual river, and does so when a sudden thunderstorm hits them. As they run away one of the boys gets killed by lightning, and the girl disappears as she is surrounded by a gust of wind and rain. The two boys run back to their village, where they are punished and sent back to the Zulu community to warn them of the god's anger and the Afrikaans girl's disappearance. The girl this whole time has been looking for her father, who she later learns has left for work already. Her father works as an ambassador for the different communities and so travels for days at a time. When she learns of her friend's abduction by the rain god, she tries to ask Shadowed for help. Nothing comes of it.

The aunt is plagued by the sounds of a baby crying the whole day. The sangoma tells her it is just her neighbour, who's been pregnant and is near her date of delivery. However the aunt hears the crying in her dreams, in the fields as well as in her office. When she hears of the Afrikaans girl conundrum, she believes the Xhosas have kidnapped her, and so asks for a search party to be sent out for her. However, the town council votes for the head sangoma to be sent for and asked to perform a peace offering to the rain god and ask for the safe return of the Afrikaans girl. The aunt still believes the Xhosas are behind it, and so sends out a small band of mercenaries to go look around the Xhosa area for clues.

The head sangoma arrives and begins preparing for the ceremony. The girl is urged by her aunt to attend it, to hear how the dead language is pronounced and such. The aunt also mentions how much the girl looks like her mother, in order to persuade her more to leave and go to the ceremony. The aunt leaves with the community to the ceremony. The sangoma is surprised and comments how gracefully the aunt is taking her initial defeat at town council meeting. The aunt says that she did not come for them, avoiding to mention how she was trying to escape the baby cries that were still tormenting her. The ceremony begins at the river side with only the head sangoma entering the space. The community surrounds it, but Shadowed walks past towards the riverside. The girl doesn't follow until she finds herself being dragged with the spirit: she is chained to Shadowed with the same chains. She tries to resist but eventually falls onto the hallowed ground. Everyone sees the top of the head of an animal rise from the river. They scream and run, thinking it is Inkanyamba, only to see it is a crocodile. It's eyes are blood red.

The community returns to their homes ,with the head sangoma commenting to the men of the council that he has never seen such an omen before, and thus has no idea what it means. As for the girl, the rain god must have shown her favour, for she was not killed or abducted. Shadowed is seen smiling as she and the girl pass the group of men, and the camera notices the side of the girl's right arm glowing red. The aunt finally gives up and searches frantically for the source of the crying baby, but as she enters the house of the pregnant woman she sees that she is still pregnant and the crying baby is not there. The aunt then hears it is coming from the sangoma's house and enters to find him and the girl's father trying to calm down an albino baby.

Return
The mercenaries return to the aunt and tell her there was no sign of the Afrikaans girl, which worries the aunt as she knows the girl is expected to return home in the next two days. The mercenaries also mention how it was hard getting any information considering the latest rumour of the albino disappearances. The aunt asks them about this, and they reveal that even the Xhosas own sangomas were worried, as this time not even they knew what was happening to them. The aunt flashbacks to her discovery of the albino baby, and how she finds out that the father has been capturing albinos for the sangoma for years. He wanted to use the muti to try find the girl's mother.

As the aunt dismisses the mercenaries, she is confronted by the town council, who are eager to have the girl perform the ritual immediately due to the riverside occurrence. They say since she is still alive, the god must highly favour her and thus she is the perfect candidate. The aunt pleads with them to reconsider: the ritual is as well as the entire university is part of the council's plan to find the great super being that used to be a general occurrence amongst women long ago. These super beings occured the most in the aunt's family, as they were always born with twins every second generation, both girls ,and thus one was always supernaturally more powerful. It was always a woman to receive this power due to her link with the spiritual world through childbirth, thus her body was more capable of housing supernatural powers and gifts. They believed the line to have been corrupted, as twins had not been born into the aunt's family for nearly five generations. So they took to looking elsewhere for the being, who becomes the being through participating in a ritual that sees the girl being physically and mentally hurt in order to bring about the clarity of her spiritual eye.

The aunt is against this, having wanted the girl to enter the university only to gain more knowledge and not to actually go through with the ritual. The girl tries to get the key from the father's hip and succeeds. Unlocks Shadowed, who immediately disappears and a few hours later, a thunderstorm comes. The girl runs out to see Shadowed and the Afrikaans girl walking side by side. The Afrikaans girl says how she remembers nothing ,but is saddened by the fact that she lost her woolen bracelet her mother gave her. She tells the girl that she remembers seeing her there, but she knew it wasn't her. She looked exactly like you though, the Afrikaans girl says. Like your twin, almost. Just watching me.

The aunt still hears the cries of the baby, and returns to the sangoma's house to find it not there. She asks where is it, and the sangoma says he has killed it already. However, she hears it crying near the foot of his bed, and opens the chest to see it lying there. He finds this disturbing as the baby was asleep, not crying. The aunt picks up the baby, and the baby cries that are in her head immediately stop. She leaves his house amidst his refusals of her taking the baby.

The girl goes to the riverside, and after looking at Shadowed for assurance, thanks the rain god for safely returning the Afrikaans girl. The top of a head rises above the water, and after seeing two glowing red eyes, the girl smiles in acknowledgement. However, as she turns and leaves, two zebra ears prick up from the head.

Take the Child
The father is angered by the aunt taking the albino baby. He speaks with the town council and finds out they are not on good terms with her. He then starts a rumour that the aunt has been the one stealing the albinos from the Xhosa region. The sangoma tells the aunt this, worried that they will come for him too since he is the only one who would gain from such an act. The aunt says she knows what to do, and gives the albino baby to the Afrikaans girl, as a way to apologise for going to their sacred land in the first place. The aunt tells her never to return with it, and watches the Afrikaans girl leave in a cloud of dust with the baby.

The girl sees less and less of Shadowed, and she is also trying to find out if she really is a twin. If so, where was her sibling? The Afrikaans girl returns home with baby in tow. Her mother welcomes them both, initially thinking the baby was her daughter's. However the daughter explains what had happened. The mother asks for her woven bracelet and goes mad when the girl tells her she lost it. She is about to punish her when she sees a piece of thread tied around the wrist of the baby. She grabs it and goes into her room with it after she smiles long and hard at the baby.

The Xhosas send their ambassador to investigate the matter, and the father is angered when he finds out the aunt gave the baby away. However, a young member of town council suspects the duo of foul play, and has been building a case around the father and aunt since episode two. He is about to hit a breakthrough in the labino case and calls for a secret meeting with the Xhosa ambassador. Before he reaches him, however, the aunt reaches out to him from behind and touches his cheek, poisoning him with black magic. As he is dying, she says how she always knew the spiritual realm and all its powers were real, but that she never trusted their intentions, and never will. She is about to leave him to die when she stops, turns and with much effort walks back to him. As she drops to her knees a black arm is extending towards her from behind.

The aunt says, "He'd have been your age by now." The hand hesitates. The man lets out one last cough and dies. The hand continues to try touch the aunt but she senses a presence and turns around. the arm has disappeared. However, she hears a voice talking to her from the shadows. I tells her of things only the aunt would know. Cuts to the girl's house every now and then, where she puts on earphones after seeing Shadowed is not in her usual corner. The music drowns out all other audio. Camera pans out of girl's window to aunt's room where she is furiously washing her hand. Pans out to girls room through her keyhole to the lounge where father is working and a black arm is extending towards him from behind. pans out of window to sangoma's room where he looks anxious over the newspaper, we see the heading says Xhosa and Zulu truce has been shaken. Pans out of his window to father's lounge, where he is being dragged into the shadowed corner by the arm, pans to girl who hears something fall, she takes out her earphones and walks towards her door as camera pans out her window to the room of aunt.

The aunt says out loud that she has never worked with a spirit before. a pink feathered bird comes from behind her and says in the voice of the Afrikaans mother that she and her will make a very good team as the camera pans out and into the girls now empty room, through the keyhole to see her helping the father pick up his things. He dismisses her to bed, and goes about locking the doors, closing windows and switching off lights. As he enters his room, he switches off the light and turns as he closes the door, revealing two white glowing eyes (the arm that extended behind the aunt earlier on had two white glowing eyes in the shadows as well) before closing the door on the camera.