IFALES / Run Run Radio / 1

IFALES Post apocalyptic satirical survival perception parable.

LOGLINE:

Morality is a luxury when pestilence leaves pockets of survivors devolving into instinctual animals living as both predator and prey, though for one starving runner the radio always plays, forming her perception of the ravaged reality around her and the blissful sounds emanating from where the civilized reside.

PITCH PARAGRAPH:

Gathering around the last bastion of civilization like savages around a fire, are the unwashed masses massacring each other to make it to the next moment. Where the inner song of radio waves fill the runner Vermel’s head every second, analogous of her conscious mind. The outer song is the sensory world, the beating of her breast, her breath breathing in incessant peril, and she herself persists somewhere between.

IFALES – Three act, followed strictly or loosely, allowing for linear, semi-serial; and or nonlinear nature style satirical survival parable of perception v. reality, pondering if the collapse of civilization lead to humanity back in the food chain, though were they are now predator and prey.

*Satirical, neoliberal capitalism effect on individual and 3rd world, as a survival parable following a runner through a post-apocalyptic dystopia surrounding a walled-off terraforming outpost standing as the last bastion of a fading media saturated civilization.

*Prime factors – radio stations, hyperbolized media mixing with the runner’s thoughts form ‘inner song’ and incessant war and tactile world of the ambient as ‘outer song’ and she as the ‘needle’ of the record. The runner is watched as the animal of a nature program surviving in the ‘wild’. All the while wishing to go over the wall to see where all the beautiful songs, game shows and broadcasts come from.

*Expand ‘universe’ by making one-off runs of the main character running, hiding and surviving as though a cheetah on the killing fields fleeing the raids, military sweeps, and incessant war always around her. Last as long until completing three acts or as a permanent nonlinear series.

*Bread and Circus satire in that what’s played on the radio and media is an exaggerated reality, so what she hears, and she alone among those outside the wall, every waking second are hyper-real utopic sensationalizations that form her perception of the reality over the wall. Existing as a paradise in her mind contradicting literally incessant war, famine, cannibalism, and capture by the ‘civilized’. Underfoot are rubble, corpses, and shells of all sorts of ammunition, but no food.

*‘Price’ of civilization, cost of civility. In that a faction or territory captures people of another territory to both eat and sell to those over the wall, who use them as fuel and slave labor, which allows small stability for the second faction in which a semblance of culture flourishes.

1. Vermilion section – hunted, the most desolate desperate killing fields.

2. Mint green section – semi-civilized rudimentary farming, or people and horrid crops, and semi-stable organized hierarchy.

3.Mea section – originally a military / terraforming outpost that became a city. The ‘oasis’ like ‘emerald city’ to the runner. Imperial corporation commercial center never seen or known but for their wall on horizon and radio shows.

*Source of conflict – parable setting constant need to run, hide, survive against any and all other people in a cannibalistic, warzone where humans are both predator and prey, juxtaposed with the hyperbolic way radio shows and tv depict reality which are always playing in the protagonist’s ear.

*Visual tonalism, bleak post-nuclear climate post last world war attempted terraformed world, Eastern Europe, Stalingrad.

ABOUT CONTEXTUALIZATION The inner and outer song meeting through Vermel, who is the needle of the record player and so playing the song that is human life. To be seen as a seemingly nonlinear nature program following the runner as they run, hide, and survive through their days as in the food chain.

Mode - is proximity, to other people or danger. Patrol - of MEA or hunters. Perception - instincts, consciousness, and surroundings. Progress – through the area, region, radio stations, and runs. Nature pace – paced at times like a nature show. Rush run – space, the zone/adrenaline. Meet – other peoples, circumstances.

Interact with the setting and all that is not protagonist as part of the parable of human as part of food chain.

Inner song - is radio and thoughts though only radio is ever heard, rarely does she ever speak.

Outer song - is the tactile and the ambient world, danger in the bushes, cannibals, constant hunting of each other and warfare where there is no food but ammunition is under every step taken.

Needle of the record – is Vermel as the subject of story, and where inner and outer songs meet. The record meeting the needle plays the song of her life, as a means of depicting human experience as individual in circumstance that makes the song of existing.

Human relation to being a rubble running rabbit wishing to be over the wall to a place she romanticizes as though it were the emerald city of ‘wiz of oz’ of her dreams making caused by the incessant radio playing in her ear.

Audience engagement: Empathic with runner Vermel as the human experience analog of being back in the food chain, a conscious being in the unknown wild, with the viewer wanting her to survive and eventually reach over the wall to the bliss she believes is there. For them to also see if she lives, escapes to find happiness and safety, with the suspense of a nature show, but of humans, and human nature.

While also satirical in that the radio and broadcasts are hyperbolic as TV is to reality, while many starve and die.

Factors of each run, always with an intrinsic humanistic relatable element of seeing a human back in the food chain. *Mechanics of perceptual parable, where is viewed as nature, but the protagonist is humanized.

0. Inner Static, Outer static – consciousness, ambient. 1. Meet, context – other people as food chain animals. 2. Run, Hide, Survive – her each episode, radio shows, mood.

3. Interact with – ambient, and circumstance. 4. On radio – radio shows, music, juxtaposition. 5. Path – throughout the plains, as predator and prey. 6. Nature, watering hole – finding places to stay and survive.

EXAMPLES OF TACTILE CONSTANTS, OF THE OUTER SONG The sound and rumbling of incoming warplanes, she runs over dusk rooftops. Down into rubble and over a street or two. Up again and into a building. Artillery ebbing and falling. Streets are flooding with soldiers fighting, as aspects of nature greater than herself. Gunship chain gun rips through the building and artillery bursts behind and before her She falls two floors straight down as bombs land from on high Running still through broken basement walls until turning and exiting the building, running through battle thrown by running soldier who is killed. She crawls around a corner, plays dead, then stands and runs with huffing breaths. Two block carpet bombed beside and behind her. She runs, hears the footsteps and jumps into rubble a bit higher than their heads, lays perfectly still as enemy troops on the other side of the wall, and the warplanes and helicopters overhead. Hover for a few second. Two of the soldiers fire through the wall, another spikes a grenade right over her, she jumps and shoots one in the face after a second and runs, or waits on the ledge with episode ending.

CONCEPT: Suspense of constant need to survive accentuated by the blending and juxtaposing of the conscious and subconscious mind, and body, thought and action, using the metaphor of radio, and atmosphere, or inner and outer static, song.

Surviving on the orange lands, the deadlands, is Vermel, a messenger who has run very well, nimble of foot as she races and rushes over rubble and steep walls as easily as mercury would. She has a rage for the rush of running, of breathing and being in a mental zone, the runner’s zone similar to her mother when flying like a jet fighter pilot. Following Vermel in a third person and first person p.o.v. through suspenseful action born from her dire circumstance and will to survive as long as possible. There is a plot and progression, but the majority is the suspense of run, hide, survive, juxtaposed ‘inner static’ meeting the ‘outer static’ with vermel as the ‘needle’ which gives ‘sound’ to her story, her life.

Inner song = radio and Vermel’s own thoughts. conscious, subconscious, the mind. Also propaganda of all media in forming the public consciousness, suiting and serving powers and self-perpetuating the culture it is born from.

Vermel was given the radio by her mother, that he’s had since birth is symbiotic of her existence, of her reality, as she has a constant influx of information, of hyper-real media personae, be they entertainment or sincere, they are all artificially presented to entertain. In the same way a newscaster emphasizes this or omits that by which emotion they present the information with. All factors into the radio incessantly playing through her head. This along with her own thoughts is ‘inner song’ with her being the silent interpretation, the instinctively acting Vermel, who doesn’t speak until very late in the story arc.

Outer song = atmosphere of war, the tactile world. Body, world, five senses. The world is destroyed by famine created by pollution and climate change, apathy of man. The nuclear fallout of war, greed and wrath of man, and the terraforming, the arrogance of man. These factors of environment of constant warfare and separation of peoples as capitalism run amok creating and sustaining third worlds and becoming corporatism.

Needle (of record player) = She is the needle in a sense, where the inner song, of radio and her thought being the song, and the outer song, of the atmosphere of war and her running through it are the record, as her body what joins them both. And through the viewer watching her is akin the listener of the song of her story. She exists in the orange quarter of the landscape to the far south-west, existing as a messenger toward the inside, and by eating the newly arriving at the verges of the city. The sounds of the chance circumstance of this existence around her, the whole ambiance and atmosphere, the struggle to survive the hunger to eat, everything tangible touchable physically real are the ‘outer static;’ including her breathe and heartbeat which can be used as the metaphor joining the inner and outer within her as she runs.

She is silent, in that she is usually as quiet as possible in her movements and never has anyone to speak to, though kills others as to not be killed. A practically feral A loner with no alignment but to survive another day. She is a messenger a runner among runners of the orange section, sometimes dealing with the hunters but very rare. She does not speak for most if not all of the story. She may think with a narrated voice, but other than that, nothing, she is to live with and juxtaposed with the radio, and the world around her, rarely showing emotional reaction. This is for character and for viewer to project both their own feelings onto Vermel, creating a sort of inflicted relatability, (with hand to mouth scene early) while also seeming cold, stoic, seemingly invulnerable behind her black glasses similar to those of an outrun character as she keeps surviving. The radio, music and shows are to be seen as Vermel’s hyperbolized stream of consciousness.

WORLD, SETTING There are two main sections, the walled, or living city, and everything else is the deadlands, or the dead. All who live in the dead expanse no matter how alive they are, are ‘dead’. This is due to two major incidents of the recent past as prime factors:

THE FIRST FACTOR: alternate planet climate change as the biosphere of the planet was growing more turbulent and violent, with increasing natural disasters, earthquakes, twisters, tsunamis, greatly accelerating the loss of livestock, food crops and wild life. The drying of jungles and flooding of deserts with pestilent waters.

THE SECOND FACTOR: is a result of the food crop shortage, leading to a world war with the strongest remaining nations seeking to control what pockets of crops and resources are left. This war becomes a worldwide thermonuclear war and sunless nuclear winter devastating the already erratic climate. Leaving violent, often catastrophic bouts of worsening weather mixing with fallout rendering most of the world to forms of ash. Nuclear, chemical, or sands of brittle bones remaining after the flesh is stripped by the stronger, or smarter.

These two general groups, and more subsets among the dead, as the living remain constant and hermetically sealed.

THE MEA – the only ‘living’ comes to represent a sort of emerald city, a fairytale or mythical enchanted place, to Vermel who is enchanted by the radio always in her ear. This is further strengthened by also being the opposite projection of daily survival danger, adrenaline, fear, and paranoia she is perpetually living in as part of the food chain. Believing the verbose exaggerated culture of all media she hears nearly every second of her life, coming to form her view of reality in stark contrast to that of her own. Hearing them laugh, selling products in

their commercials, or telling of the building of a church or hospital, cured children and school days, traffic emergencies, all happening in her ear as she runs an hides, starved while scrounging to survive the scourge of life she was born into

All who inhabit the MEA outpost city structure as remnants of a science outpost from one of the last known nations to exist. A completely commercially indoctrinated society that is never actually seen but for the radio and media forming the inner static of Vermel’s radio. The MEA is located at the north-west of the greater land, sitting with its back to the large river, and a wall on the southern, a granite short mountain at its west.

THE DEADLANDS - any land outside the MEA outpost city structure but there are two major subsets among the dead lands defined by area of birth with the different of a foot meaning being bounty or hunter.

THE LIGHT GREEN: Also born of rubble and chaos, The light green section represent sponsored puppet governments that sell out their resources and thereby their people for power and profit which allows a modicum of stability. Though here the people are the resource, and also to be honest in context if these people did not capture and sell the other people it would also be them who are hunted. This also to establish the price of a society, the price of peace of mind, or a peaceful place to sit in the context of an eat or be eaten existence. What is it that separates us from animals or merely instinctual beings. Is morality a luxury of those with full stomachs? Hunters sponsored by ‘the MEA’ are lands under the light green banner, mostly of the north-east. These lands operate under a semi-stable infrastructure built entirely on hunting the bounty of lives of the orange banner lands, those who live only in rabbit holes and under rubble. Their existence is a moral one for those who are puppet governments for more powerful entities, be it ideological or physical. In this case a seemingly omniscient society that needs the labor and bodies of their fellow man for a seemingly perpetual war.

The semi-stable infrastructure is allowed by their turning on other people and hunting them, selling them to the MEA and so are allowed to sustain themselves, pass tradition down and learn to form a feeble culture and peace for some of its people. Their existence is to be a moral question, what is the price of a society? of morality? Of civility? As the people of the orange section are always hunted and hunting to eat, usually with little time for reflection living like animals.

This is north-east, and just beneath the south-east of the MEA outpost. This meeting is where the prison camps are. The area has significantly more building intact, though still ravaged by war they have some recently dug roadways, tent villages and houses at best resembling the slums of the early 1900’s. They have elderly people and some shops, the little bit of society they are allowed.

ORANGE QUARTER: The orange section is wastelands of rubble and ruins with some structured partially standing, in all resembling a bombed out Dresden or Stalingrad though with no societal structure and are killing fields of starvation, decimations and are hunted and slaughtered by each other for survival and food, the green sector to eat and give over to the Mea, and slaughtered by the Mea to suppress and dominate the region.

The bounty, or the hunted hunters, where starvation is the norm and there are fields and fields open expanses resembling a bombed out Stalingrad or firebombed Dresden. There are tunnels, these are rabbit holes. There are pantries at the bottom of some, the most communal places here. Aside from them it is survival of the fittest, with a single slip up usually meaning death. There are bullets, and weapons everywhere. Troops could sweep through any minute or second, strafing helicopters every day spraying and spraying, jets always at war with one another overhead, the same every day for decades. Roving packs of hunters who seek to capture and sell those who live through all that. This is the desolate land with no water to drink, or time to think, only to react and live