screenplay challenges : from life and books to treatments and graphic novels
MOVIE SCRIPT BASED ON “BAUDOLINO” BY UMBERTO ECO Writen by Vlad Vasilescu (Treatment format: “Year 1191. Baudolino Pilgrimage to the Universal Religion Realm”) EXT. TERDONA FOREST - NIGHT SUPER: "MARCH 1155, TERDONA FOREST" The rain just stopped. Drops drip from leaves, mist rises from the ground. The moon rays project the tree trunks' shadows on Read More ...
Screenplay by Vlad Vasilescu Based on Umberto Eco’s novel “The Island of the Day Before”. EXT. PARIS - CARDINAL MAZARIN'S PALACE - DAY SUPER: "Paris, 1650" Sunny day. Small boats on the Seine River. On the shore's ramparts, Cardinal Mazarin's palace with a large courtyard between the palace's wings and a water fountain in the Read More ...
SYNOPSIS In 2067 the world is in turmoil. People fight for rights, countries for resources. A free-spirited CIA agent learns the secret of ending the turmoil but gets under he spell of an omen. While pursuing a prioress's charms, he hopes to clear the omen. STORY About to be rejuvenated from 70 to 30, Auntie Read More ...
THE FAITH OF WEI SHENG Adaptation from Ryunosuke Akutagawa by Vlad Vasilescu CREDITS MUSIC: "Faith" soundtrack theme. INTRODUCTION A Manga cover page, blue color with silver Buddhist border motifs, "The Faith of Wei Sheng" title and "Ryunosuke Akutagawa" author. The cover page opens to reveal the accordion binding style and the first two folding pages. Read More ...
Mulaget and Nukilar Use Mother Nature (Check the challenges of writing this movie script) Synopsis. There are crooks, crooked minds, and evil people behaving like viruses, spreading and feeding on a tolerant society-the juicy host. The association of such people fuels a virulence that could damage society on a large scale. And while such viruses evolve Read More ...
In the book, the description of the fight between the Huns and the defenders of Pndapetzim is fun. However, there isn’t much description of the landscape and where the fight happens. In the movie, the Huns are Magogs and the defenders are the “creatures” led by the pilgrims. To describe the fight and its timing, Read More …
Baudolino keeps going to the lake, waiting for Hypatia; but she doesn’t come. His worries are growing on whether Hypatia participates in the honey celebrations with the fecundators or not. Returning to the city in one evening, he sees candle lights and hears voices through the open door of a hut. Inside, Kyot feeds mushrooms Read More …
Umberto Eco writes on 29 pages, most of them discussions about religion and philosophy, the love story of Baudolino and Hypatia. She is the disciple of Hypatia of Alexandria, historically known as a “martyr for philosophy”. The fictional Hypatia believes that God needs a “redemption”. Actually, she says that it’s on us to accept that Read More …
Towards the end of Umberto Eco’s book Baudolino, the Huns attack the border of Prester John’s Kingdom. History sources locate the Huns in Central Asia; thus, the Kingdom must have been South of it, probably Ethiopia. One Wikipedia source describes the Huns as having “sort of a shapeless lump, not a head, with pin-holes rather Read More …
The first part of the book, until Frederick drowns, has roots in historical reality. The second part though is populated with mythic places and creatures. In my movie, I had divided this second part into two: a “real” pilgrim through places of religious and philosophical thought, rendered with “real” characters, and the arrival at the Read More …
The pilgrims come out of the thick fog climbing a narrow trail on the hillside of the valley. The Tibet mountain peaks bordering the valley and those they left behind are covered by snow. The cold weather left behind, the pilgrims stop to warm-up their faces in the setting sun and rejoice the sight of Read More …
It takes Saladin nine years to conquer Aleppo after surviving an assassination plot. Thus, in 1183 he controls the valleys of Egypt, Tigris and Euphrates and is about 600 miles from Jerusalem. The Templar Reynald angers him by attempting to destroy a Muslim shrine in Egypt and sacking a caravan that, legend say, included Saladin’s Read More …
The crusade starts in May 1189 with the Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Frederick Barbarossa, marching his army on land. Baudolino and the pilgrims sail on a trading ship towards Constantinople to safeguard Frederick’s safe passage through Armenia; they have to change clothing though to blend in with the flashy Armenians, Greeks traders or Read More …
Jumping ahead to the third part of the trilogy… Recently I’ve read Yuval Harari’s “Sapiens, A Brief History of Humankind” and watched Reza Aslan’s “The Scientology Reformation”. The happy coincidence gave me more material for who the Pyramid Head Chief will be in 2065. Nowadays, the Pyramid Head is a bloodthirsty comics character. Did the Read More …
After completing the sequences of the pilgrims’ route through religious and philosophical experiences, I had to return to their starting point in the script: the beginning of the Third Crusade to freed Jerusalem from Saladin. Following the Diet in Mainz, Frederick Barbarossa takes the land and the England’s and France’s kings the maritime routes towards Read More …