You had a character called Pikey as well - how strange!

Joking aside, my initial thought does not involve buying a phone, but another 'top secret' way, like he finds it! Or she of course.

No time unfortunately to devote to this.

However, further to what Allfy said: (jeepers, that sounded formal i.e. the 'under the table stuff' - if you look at Ebay, people are often selling phones given as gifts/'pre-loved as new' etc. Or, you could buy one retail that someone returned to 'easy to return' shops, and not know it's been used until you happened upon something when you start using it... or someone desperately wants it back & they're on your tail!!

Or it could be packaged up perfectly, & then retailer tries to pass it off as new, then there's pre-testing of phones before they're even up for sale i.e. some internal conspiracy where someone was meant to get a particular phone and dumped it.

I'm sure if you let your imagination go, there's a lot of stuff 'purchase' could mean. I'm not up for the duration of this challenge, but I think Phil did very nicely with this rather broad theme.  Just a few thoughts. Be interesting to see what you guys come up with.

Don't let the phone bog you down - it's your inciting incident but from there you can take it wherever you want.

My initial thought was of some kind of time hole a la http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodnight_Sweetheart_%28TV_series%29 which would give you plenty of mystery and ability to weave in a story like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_%28film%29 nothing wrong with adapting existing films!

Lots of potential here for the SSers to develop something both commercially appealing and creatively interesting.

I'm out (waaaaaaaay too much to do right now) - but I did want to weigh in and say I like the concept in general.  There's plenty of freedom to choose one's genre:

It could be action (someone gets a spy's phone)
Rom-com (there's a contact on the phone that they fall in love with)
Business -thrller (there are corporation secrets on the phone that someone wants back)
Horror (it's a serial killer's phone, and there's evidence on it that the killer wants to erase...)

Etc, etc.  Just throwing ideas out there. Anyone wants these, feel free of course!  And it's the sort of high concept thing that Hollywood likes, so that makes any good scripts potentially sellable...

Course, if suddenly an idea catches on fire for me, I'll think about it. But unless that happens, I'll just look forward to seeing what comes out of this.

Quoted from alffy The 'purchasing' part has me worried too.  I thought it would be easy to work out how someone ended up with another persons phone but having to buy someone's phone?  I can only picture a dodgy pub and a Pikey selling it under the table lol.  I can't see how a phone is made for someone else, aren't all phones the same?

You can be a little flexible in acquiring the phone.  But it shouldn't be a case of finding it on a table in the food court.  There could've been a mix-up at the phone store or something.

And phones can be upgraded with more memory and better batteries and stuff.  Why not run with it?

Quoted from crookedowl Wow, I'm psyched. A 7WC AND a (sort-of) OWC. I will say, I'm not loving the premise (yet), but hey, I'll take what I can get. Let's do this!

Keep in mind that no theme/genre will appeal to everyone.  But what if a director asked you to write (and you were to get paid and get credit for it and have access to a craft service table), would you be able to do it?


Phil

I really like the premise - plenty of possibilities and possible genres that it could be adapted to. I haven't written anything new so far this year, but this has my creative juices flowing and I'll tentatively throw my hat in the ring in the hope I can get something finished within the 7 weeks!

I'm way out for this.

But for the record, I was really looking forward to an OWC, as I think many members were.

This heme has been done to death in amateur scripts and bad movies.  It does not appeal to me in any way, but that of course is simply my opinion.

Best of luck to the 3 or 4 who take this challenge on.  The rest of us and vast majority of us will just have to wait for a good old fashioned OWC.

I'll leave this thread alone now.

Firstly, well done Phil for the very entertaining announcement of this ?WC – especially enjoyed the Rick Astley link and how you tempted me with the whole “don’t click here” approach.

Unfortunately, I’m going to have to bail out on this one but I do wish all that take part good luck with it.

It’s quite open and should lead to some interesting features.

In the last 10 page challenge, Don decided that if someone wanted to do  a short, up to 10 pages, on the same theme they could. Out of that came Kevin's decent short,  of Mice and Monsters, if i remember correctly.

It's not my challenge but I don't see why someone couldn't do this - there are no winners! ,or is that losers, whatever.

As the first ten pages are possibly the most important in a script, I think this is a worthy challenge, even if I decide not to take this further.

I have an idea...

Actually, Don asked for a 7WC.  I just came up with the genre and theme.


Phil

Gosh...I'm teetering...busy as a bee...but like a moth to flame...I'm drawn to assignment type writing. Ugh...decisions.

Intriguing hook with your choice or premises, Phil.
But my current workload forces me to pull back from this.
I thought I could scrape together something for an OWC, but...

The lure of submitting to the Sunny in Philly producers is way too strong for me.
Gotta go after that white elephant.
Writing about that jolly bunch of deluded sociopaths? Oh, I'm in!

Thanks for running the event for the site, Phil.
I'll try to carve out some time to read the first ten of each player.
Hey, it's work related! I can justify it.
Already scooped up one OWC short to develop into a feature.

Have fun folks!

Regards,
E.D.

I'm confused. Is it a 1 week challenge to write the first 10 pages or a 7WC to write a feature? According to Don it's a 1+6WC...

Quoted from Grandma Bear I'm confused. Is it a 1 week challenge to write the first 10 pages or a 7WC to write a feature? According to Don it's a 1+6WC...

I thought it was the hybrid/simple addition option too.
So, I figured there'd likely be a bunch of "first tens".
But perhaps not all those gel, so there could be less completed features.

E.D.

Quoted from Reef Dreamer As the first ten pages are possibly the most important in a script, I think this is a worthy challenge, even if I decide not to take this further.

I agree, Bill. They’re very important and this could be in fact a worthy challenge even if you didn’t take it any further.

But Phil also said in the announcement:

Quoted from dogglebe Don't submit the first ten if you can't commit to the whole challenge.

A lot of us I’m sure are already working on features so the normal OWC is a nice break. I certainly can’t commit to a 7WC – too much on at the moment.