So You Think You Can Write

This was written for my Film Lit class as we listened to the song "Three Little Birds" by Bob Marley. Listen to the song as you read this. It makes it a hundred times better.

SONG: Three Little Birds
LOCATION: Cold, damp basement, gray cement walls, bright fluorescent lights, no windows, cement staircase. Backstreets of Philly, Pennsylvania.
CHARACTERS: A middle aged man, dark short hair, thick black rimmed glasses, 6’ 3”, stalky, bright white smile, hungry sparkling eyes. He has a “crazy” insane presence, but a strange attractiveness to him.
ACTION AND CONFLICT: Camera, at eye level, travels down a backstreet of Philadelphia at sunset and at a moderate pace, then turns right and approaches a white door with a chain lock. Camera goes through the door and slowly down a cement stairway into a room with high key lighting. The walls, floor, and ceiling are all cement and there are bright fluorescent lights hanging from the ceiling, no windows. Camera approaches the back of a man in a lab coat working at a steal table, still at eye level, and drops down lower as it draws around him, revealing a young woman lying on the table covered in a white sheet, mid-twenties, red hair, pale skin and dead. A black dashed line crosses her forehead. More dashed lines are drawn down her nose, under her eyes, and across her cheeks. The camera flashes to the man’s face, middle aged, dark hair, thick black rimmed glasses, a bright smiles, and hungry eyes. He turns to a side table and the camera draws back to show the man and the array of scalpels and scissors arranged on the table. The man pulls on a pair of latex gloves and delicately picks up a small, jagged scalpel, but sets it back down and replaces it with a thin, straight knife which he slowly draws to the dashed line on the woman’s forehead, drawing a small stream of blood. The camera flashes back to the man’s face as he smiles. The screen goes black.