As our group formed we decided to individually go and read the texts and decide on our favourites in terms of what we felt would be most feasible to adapt as well as the ones we thought were most interesting.
My Favourites
The Cop and the Anthem - I felt that the irony of this story with a character trying there absolute hardest to achieve something and as soon as they don't want it, getting it, would be very interesting to adapt into a modern story.
The Gift of Maggi - The key message of this story resonated with me especially considering the cost of living crisis and I wonder if we could turn the story into something with addresses such a relevant issue.
The Skylight Room - The themes of Hope and Obsession in this story greatly interest me and I feel the aspects of fate that link to the ending could be really powerful in a filmic form.
Synopsis Idea - The Cop and the Anthem
Jackie is an administrator stuck in a 9-5 office job and she is beginning to become exhausted with the repetitive nature of her job so she hatches a plan to try and get herself fired. She begins by writing an extremely rude email to her boss however her boss believes she wrote it as a joke and she is unable to convince him that she was being serious. She then steals a plant from a very obvious spot on the ground floor however the reception thank her as they were going to pay someone to remove it later that day. Finally she goes into the computer room and corrupts the system causing all of the computers to shut down. No one notices it was her and she returns to her desk unsure what more she can do. In this moment she sees a toy dog on her desk and remembers that this gift was given to her as a congratulations for getting the job helping her to realize why she likes it. Just as she decides she wants to stay the boss walks up to her and informs her that she is fired.
Our Decision
After our first two group meetings we decided that we wanted to adapt The Skylight Room for the following reasons:
Maria's Idea - When brainstorming for multiple of the O'henry stories we felt that Maria's idea was the strongest as the modern take using virtual reality interested all of us and we felt there was a strong connection between the original story and her idea.
Practicalities - Out of all of the ideas, we found that most aspects of the idea for this adaptation were things we could do on a low budget and on a small scale. For example the simple location choice of a café was something we knew was possible.
Writer preferences - We also wanted to make sure that Eve out of all of us was sure on the idea as we knew she would be the one adapting it. Eve felt that she understood this idea best and therefore the potential for her to write a great script was highest with this idea.
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