THIS SHOWREEL OF COMPLETED 30 MINUTE PROGRAMME AVAILABLE FOR TV SALE
MODERN MYTHS
Fact or Fiction?
The idea behind the series is to use modern myths that work visually as a
Ripley's Tales meets the X Files. A myth or urban legend seemingly has a
basis in truth....it supposedly happened to a friend of a friend of a
friend . These are stories that circle the globe they are like whispers
around the room . They spring from places such as scary web sites, or
true tabloid tales and x-treme rumors.
STYLISATION:
Each story segment is filmed with the highest possible production values,
turning each story into a mini movie. Each 30 minute programme will
feature approximately 4 completely different stories.
BIOGRAPHY:
The producer is BILL RUDGARD who is the pioneer of European "Reality TV' He has produced & directed over 20 hours of programming for the series Police Stop!
& the Really Caught in the Act . He has also the recently completed the
editing on 3rd & 4th Annual American Robot Wars filmed in San Francisco.
Bill has worked for 20 years in production on feature films such as Chariots of
Fire, Flash Gordon and Superman as well as numerous music videos and concerts for bands like The Clash and Paul Mccartney.
contact: info@cctvarchive.com
The executive producer is GARY PINI [Sm:)e Communications, New York.] -
website: www.smilecomm.com
The 3 different segments for the showreel were directed by IAN SINGLETON
who ran the Oxford University Film Society and has just finished his own
pilot for a feature film called" Happy Hour".
contact: www.iansingleton.demon.co.uk
Lighting Cameraman : Clive Gil - website
PRESENTATION:
The showreel is presented and voiced by a an actor playing a TV news
journalist, who has been given the job of finding where a particular story
comes from, for instance The Kidney Story. In his travels he gets told
many other myths and he delves into the background of each story. He
investigates where the story originated from, how the story has mutated
over time and what links the story has with traditional folk stories .
The actor/journalist interviews on camera the following myth experts;
INTERVIEWEES: Johnathon Meades + Phil Healy & Rick Granvill
ACTORS: JOURNALIST : Alan Westaway EDITOR : Erik Collinson
THE MODERN MYTHS SHOWREEL
THE HAIRY HANDED HITCHHIKER
It's early evening and a lady [in her thirties] walks to her car across a
near deserted dimly lit multi-story car park....near her car she finds an
old lady with a shopping bag in her hand seemingly in distress...it turns
out she's lost her purse and doesn't know how she is going to get home and
is asking motorists if they are going her way.... the driver consents
[abit reluctantly] and lets the old lady into the car....
As they drive along the driver gets increasingly nervous about her
passenger as she see's her in flashes of light from passing cars and
notices how she jumps when a police car passes them with it's lights and
sirens going....she's very quiet ..with a strange voice....and strange
mannerisms...she seems preoccupied with the contents of her shopping
bag.....suddenly the driver has to brake hard and the old lady puts her
hand up on the dash to protect herself ....the driver can't help but
notice the back of her hand is hairy.....
The driver pulls into a fuel station and asks the old lady if she wouldn't
mind quickly checking the passenger side rear tyre as it's sounding abit
odd and might be going flat...the old lady with some reluctance awkwardly
climbs out of the car and is looking at the tyre when the driver screeches
off leaving the old lady looking back in shock..she has a last glimpse of
her silouetted by the garage shop window..she seems taller and bigger
like she's lost her hunched back....
The driver gets home..she's a bundle of nerves....she lights a cig before
getting out of the car....she notices the bag and reaches down for it and
looks in....she pulls out a wicked looking hatchet which gleams evilly in
the light.
ARTISTES: Gary Fairhally / Juliet Howland
"JACKPOT"
Jackpot combines two urban myth stories passed down by word of mouth . The
first is of a practical joker who videotapes the national lottery and then
buys a ticket with that weeks numbers. The next weekend he plays the tape
to some friends and asks them to check his numbers! they are fooled into
thinking he's won the lottery ....story two is of two couples in a
restaurant... the wife has stolen a look at her husbands lottery ticket.
They tip the waitress to come over and tell them the husband's numbers
which she does but the husband doesn't react at all. After making a phone
call he sits down and suddenly puts his car and house keys on the table
and tells his wife that he has been having an affafir with her sister for
three years ..he walks off never to be seen again.
Artistes: John Peters / Gregor Singleton / Julia Haythorn / Stephanie
Pack
THE KIDNEY STORY
A male [Steve] in his mid 30's is sitting at the bar of his hotel, he's
the sort of person who would not stand out in a crowd, he is on his own
and feeling lonely. He is in town for a convention and doesn't know
anyone. A very attractive girl enters the bar, she looks around as if
looking for someone ...she decides to sit at the bar and chooses a stool
one away from Steve . He catches her eye as she sits down, she orders
herself a drink...she seems shy....he catches her eye again and he plucks
up courage to talk to her .. he moves into the bar seat next to
hers...they get drunk together and have a great time experimenting with
cocktails...one thing leads to another and she agrees to come back to his
room....
......in his hotel room she raids the mini bar, but while he goes to the
toilet she pours a liquid into his drink....they drink more ...she then
begins to undress him ...Steve suddenly starts to feel whoozy... he
struggles to get up but she pushes him down onto the bed and he passes
out.
The camera pans across the empty bed which is littered with bandages and
the debris of surgery and the sheet is blood stained..the camera tracks
across the room to the bathroom where we discover Steve lying in the bath
covered in melting ice.. he is slowly waking up....he's freezing cold and
he feels like death....his eyes slowly focus on a sign written with
lipstick on the mirror " don't move ...call an ambulance...we have taken
one of your kidneys " he looks down and notices he has a surgical bandage
wrapped around his stomach ...end on close up of his face as a tear comes
to his eye...
Artistes: Sara Stockbridge / Nathan Osgood
SHOWREEL OF COMPLETED 30 MINUTE PROGRAMME AVAILABLE FOR TV SALE
MODERN MYTHS : OTHER STORIES CONSIDERED FOR SERIES
THE DOBERMAN STORY
A woman returns home from work one day to find her doberman dog lying on
the kitchen floor gasping for breath and in convulsions. She somehow
manages to get the dog into her car and rushes it down to the vet who does
an emergency tracheotomy which clears the dogs throat . The vet decides to
keep the dog in overnight to keep an eye on it. The woman goes home but
as she walks into the house the phone is going.. it's the vet who tells
her to call the police and get out out of the house as he'd found 2
fingers stuck in the dog throat. The police arrive and search the house.
They follow a trail of blood to a cupboard in the bedroom where they find
a youth hiding.... with two fingers missing on his hand.
THE LICKED HAND
The parents of a young girl had to go out one evening and couldn't find a
baby sitter, but the girl said she'd be OK with the family dog to protect
her. She went to bed after making sure all the doors and windows were
locked. She woke in the night to some noise and called out to her dog who
normally slept on the floor by her bed. She felt the dog lick her hand and
she was comforted and went back to sleep. In the morning she woke up and
found the dog was dead in the bathroom with it's throat cut ... she
screamed and screamed until her parents came rushing in. They then found
a note by the bed which said "Humans can lick, too, you know"
FOOTBALL IS FOR THE BIRDS
There's a story about an MIT student who spent an entire summer going to
the Harvard football field every day wearing a black and white striped
shirt, walking up and down the field for ten or fifteen minutes throwing
birdseed all over the field, blowing a whistle and then walking off the
field. At the end of the summer, it came time for the first Harvard home
football team, the referee walked onto the field and blew the whistle, and
the game had to be delayed for a half hour to wait for the birds to get
off of the field. The guy wrote his thesis and graduated.
THE BODY AND THE FOREST FIRE
Firefighters in California were baffled to find a corpse dressed in a
wetsuit, flippers and face-mask in an area of scorched earth after a
forest fire. Even more confusingly, a post mortem revealed that the man
died from massive internal injuries rather than burns. It turned out he
had been swimming in an area of ocean from where the fire authorities
dredged water to dump on the blaze. The man was caught in one of the huge
buckets carried by helicopter from the sea to forest and was then dropped
to the ground.. from 300 ft.
LOST GRANDMA
A family take a vacation in Mexico with the kids and grandmother. They are
over 2 days drive inside Mexico when the grandmother suddenly dies. The
family are not very well off and decide that they will drive back home
with grandma on the roof, so she can be buried next to her husband. They
buy a roll of carpet and hide grandma in it, tie it onto the roof and set
off home. Unfortuneatly when they stop for a meal someone steals the
carpet with the grandma! And they never see her again.
HIGH BALL
A young man in New York has a date with a woman he has recently met at a
party; she lives in a plush high rise apartment forty or so floors above
the street. He arrives a bit early, and she is not quite ready to go; so
while he is waiting for her to come out of the bedroom, he begins to toss
a ball for her friendly dog which is frolicking around. Each toss of the
ball goes a little further, and each time the dog dashes after it and
retrieves it for another toss. Then unintentionally, the young man gives
the ball an extra hard toss, and it bounces out of the open window to the
street below. The dog leaps right out after it.
THE STOLEN SPECIMEN
A patient has been asked to save her urine for 24 hours and bring it into
the doctors office for examination. The largest container available for
the specimen is an empty whisky bottle. The patient accumulates the
specimen in the bottle and sets out for the doctors office. The bottle is
put in a brown paper bag and placed on the back seat of the car. On the
way to the office, the patient makes a stop at a store, and upon returning
finds the full whiskey bottle stolen.
NERVOUS GIRL
A young girl from the country is visiting New York for the first time and
is going to see her aunt who lives high up in a sky scraper apartment
block. The girl is very nervous about being on her own in the city and is
relieved when she gets into the lift which will take her up to her aunt.
But just as the doors close a tall and imposing man with dark glasses and
long hair and with a huge dog on a lead gets into the lift. The girl
makes herself invisible in the corner and looks at the floor. After what
seems like an age a booming voice goes "Sit" and the girl immeadiately
sinks to the floor , much to the embarrassment of the guy who was talking
to his dog!
THE HOOK
Once there was a young couple and they were dating and they had parked in
a lonely spot in the woods. They were making out when on the radio came a
news flash telling listeners to watch out for an escaped psychiatric
patient who was very dangerous, but he could be easily recognized because
he had a hook hand. So they sit there as it gets dark and the winds
blowing in the trees and the girls getting really scared because they
aren't very far from the mental institution the murderer has escaped from.
She persuades her boyfriend to take her home which he's not to keen to
do, but she insists. So he starts the car quickly and screechs off. Back
at her place he gets out first and walks around the car to let her out and
is shocked to see a hook hand hanging on the door handle!.
DISASTER WEEKEND
A bachelor is invited to a grand country house weekend by a business
contact to make up numbers. He is given a huge room with a four poster
bed and fabulous tapestries on the walls. Because he's nervous he
overdoes it on the drink at dinner and wakes up in the night dying for the
toilet which is miles away at the end of the corridor. He fumbles around
for the light switch and while doing so he knocks over something with
liquid in it, which gets all over his hands. He thinks it's some water. He
fumbles along the wall and finds the light switch and finds to his horror
that the liquid was ink and he's left hand prints all over the priceless
tapestries.
He panics, packs his bags and leaves.
A week later he plucks up courage and calls the Lord and Lady and fixs a
meeting so he can explain what happened. He arrives at the house and is
ushered into a huge living room by the butler. He sits down in an armchair
by the fire and breaks the neck of her Ladyships poodle sleeping in the
chair. He runs for it again!!
THIS SHOWREEL OF COMPLETED 30 MINUTE PROGRAMME AVAILABLE FOR TV SALE
