Day: July 31, 2014

Screenplay for short film. No dialogue, just images and music.

JODY is male, late 20s,  reasonably good-looking. He walks down an urban sidewalk.
A series of cuts establishes that he is observing his surroundings as he walks.
He looks at architectural details, birds, clouds in the sky. Close-ups show a twinkle of appreciation in his eye -- that he is enjoying the walk and what he sees.
He passes ordinary people on the sidewalk, all of different ages. They are either standing or moving, but all are looking down, engrossed in smartphones. Soon it becomes clear that not a single person is like JODY, that is, just a person walking along, looking at nothing in particular.
About the sixth person JODY passes suddenly looks up, and does a quick once-over of JODY. He ends the brief examination by looking at JODY's hands, which are swinging and not holding a phone.
JODY passes several more people, all looking down at phones, standing at random intervals along the sidewalk -- cars are passing back and forth on the street, it is a normal day in the city -- and the same inspection occurs. This is beginning to seem ominous. The fourth person he passes, a young woman, ends her perusal of him by returning to her phone keypad, where she is seen urgently typing as he passes.
The next man JODY passes looks up from his phone as if expecting to see JODY, and immediately begins typing. Closeups of JODY's face show bemusement, scorn, then worry.
Halfway down the block, JODY sees a group of four "yuppies" standing together, all looking at phones but also talking to each other. As he approaches, they disperse into a line that will block his passage on the sidewalk. Their body postures are menacing.
The four start moving towards him in tight formation, hate in their eyes, and...
END