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DAUBER
SCRIPT BY IAIN (EMBRA) LOWSON
PAGE ONE
PANEL ONE
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY
STYLE), NIGHT
Wide, high shot, possibly bleeding over whole page. Their faces obscured by breathing gear, lit
only by muzzle flashes and explosive billows of flame, human soldiers are
battling through the wreckage of a city. Late 20th C architecture lies broken all around, ribs of
steel, concrete and brick sprawled open to the smoke obscured sky.
The enemy the soldiers are battling remain unseen. They are unimportant – only the fact of the
conflict matters. From this distance, no
individual characteristics can be made out on the soldiers. One group should clearly relate to Panel
Two’s grouping.
CAPTION DAUBER
words
by Embra
pictures
by ??
PANEL TWO
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY
STYLE), NIGHT
Closer in, we see Captain Morrison in the thick of
it. She is carrying a heavy rifle, but
is currently directing the action. Her
chest armour bears her name and unit designation (Omega-02). Painted on her helmet in strikingly simple
and exact script is the tag ‘Dauber’. The other soldier’s tags are very much more
scrawled, and not all have to be on their helmets by the way. Not all of this is going to go in this panel,
but this can carry over as background detail for later panels if required.
Around Cpt. Morrison, other soldiers are moving up – Sgt. Miller (Omega-04, tag ‘Bub’), Pvt. David (Omega-11, tag ‘Aqua’), Pvt. Grayson (Omega-33, tag ‘Cat’), and Pvt. Ellis (Omega-09, tag ‘Spider’). Pvt. McFarlane (Omega-46, tag ‘Spoon’) has just been blasted back by heavy gunfire - messy. Pvt. Ellis is firing a heavy rifle. Pvt. David is firing a rocket launcher. The important figures are Cpt. Morrison, Pvt. Ellis and, less so, Sgt. Miller. Focus on them.
McFARLANE >glak<
SFX (Ellis’ gun) GUDDAGUDDAGUDDAGUDDA
SFX (David’s rocket) FHUSSHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh!
PANEL THREE to PANEL FIVE
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), NIGHTCpt. Morrison has thrown her rifle to her shoulder and is firing a steady stream of automatic fire. These panels are effectively one image divided by the bright and deadly energy of the gunfire. Cpt. Morrison’s armour is thrown into high relief by the muzzle flashes.
SFX (Morrison’s gun) !GUDDAGUDDAGUDDAGUDDA!
PAGE TWO
PANEL ONE
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
Small panel. Cpt.
Morrison’s helmet and breathing gear are lying on the ground. While they are undamaged, the reader should
wonder for a second if Morrison has bought the farm.
PANEL TWO
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
Small panel. Someone
is reaching for the helmet, their reflection distorting in the visor.
PANEL THREE
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
Largest panel on page.
Pvt. Ellis holds the helmet. He’s looking about, frowning slightly. His own helmet is slung over the barrel of his rifle that is in turn
slung across his shoulder. He’s clearly
a young man, maybe eighteen but not by much.
In what may once have been a wide civic square, and
surrounding Pvt. Ellis, is the makeshift camp of the dozens of soldiers
we saw fighting in the previous page. The sun is on the verge of struggling free of the horizon. The pale glow, bleeding into a star-speckled
sky, is bathing everything in a cold, fresh light. Everything seems oddly diffused, almost
dreamlike after the harsh black and white and fire of the night battle.
There are some tracked transports that have re-supplied the
troops, and perhaps a mess tent or truck.
The surrounding buildings loom like the bars of a cage.
Near to Pvt. Ellis, the other members of his unit are
sitting, lying around, or standing about near to a small fire that is giving
out more smoke than heat and flame. Sgt.
Miller is closest, leaning back on a broken stump of wall, pointlessly
reading a battered book he’s picked out of the wreckage. The back cover and the last quarter of the
book are burnt and illegible.
ELLIS Where’s
the Captain?
PANEL FOUR
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWNSmall panel. Sgt. Miller hasn’t looked up. He jerks his thumb over his shoulder, indicating the ruins.
MILLER Dauber? Over there, doin’ what she does.
PANEL FIVE
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWNSmall panel. Pvt. Ellis looks back over his shoulder to where the ruins are.
ELLIS What’s
she doin’?
PANEL SIX
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
Small panel. Sgt.
Miller looks up, smirking.
MILLER Go
look. But take her a beer, huh. She always wants
a beer when she’s finished.
PAGE THREE
PANEL ONE to PANEL FOUR
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
This is to quickly show Pvt. Ellis walking through the ruins to where Cpt. Morrison is working.
The view is of a relatively empty area dominated by piles of
bricks and rubble. The broken silhouette
of a wall dominates the foreground, on the other side of which the unseen Cpt.
Morrison is working. The side of the
wall we can see is heavily shadowed for reasons that will become apparent. This is again a single image broken into
sections. Each of the four sections
shows Pvt. Ellis getting closer to the wall. He’s holding an unopened, non-descript can of
beer. Panel Four should show him a
little wide-eyed, looking at the wall.
SFX (PANEL ONE) …fsshhh…
SFX (PANEL TWO) …PSSHH…
SFX (PANEL FOUR) …fssshhss…
(Note:
Alternatively, if you’re comfortable showing the above in one panel, go
for it, so long as it is clear that it’s one person heading for the wall and no
more.)
PANEL FIVE
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWNPvt. Ellis is standing, gawping.
ELLIS …woah…
PANEL SIX
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
The view has pulled back, so we can now see Cpt. Morrison. A harshly beautiful woman, she is looking out
of the panel, working on the wall. Pvt.
Ellis can be seen over her shoulder, still gawping.
MORRISON I’m
not finished yet.
PANEL SEVEN
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
This is a side view, showing Pvt. Ellis, Cpt.
Morrison and the wall in profile.
The wall is freestanding, and strong enough to support the girders that
have fallen across it from another ruin.
Cpt. Morrison is using an airbrush, the hose of which
leads to a box on the ground by her feet that holds the paint. Though not necessarily seen, the airbrush box
has a screen on it that displays a colour palette. Using the connected stylus, the artist can
select the tone they want by tapping on the screen.
Cpt. Morrison’s rifle is lying against some handy
rubble, alongside a ration pack that has been opened but only picked at.
ELLIS …um…
so you do this everytime?
MORRISON When
we’re about to move on, yeah.
ELLIS That what I
think it is?
MORRISON Yup…
PAGE FOUR
PANEL ONEEXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
Finally, we see what Cpt. Morrison has been
doing. To all intents and purposes, she
seems to be standing in the gateway to another world. Framed by the broken wall and the
rubble-strewn ground, Cpt. Morrison has painted an oddly stylised scene
of a rural idyll – a beautiful, green river valley with fields, a country road,
a cluster of small houses, all that sort of stuff. A small figure of a man, holding the hand of
a small child, is waving from a corner in the road. The light feeding it is golden and warm. This is a painting by Constable, assuming
Constable was a graffiti artist.
Cpt. Morrison stands before her work. She is looking at it, wistfully. Her beauty is softer now.
MORRISON …home.
PAGE FIVE
PANEL ONE
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
Cpt. Morrison has stepped back to view her work. Pvt. Ellis can’t take his eyes off
it. The two of them seem to be standing
in the valley, their presence incongruous.
ELLIS Why’d
you do it?
MORRISON Keeps
me focused. Reminds me why I’m
here.
PANEL TWO
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
Pvt. Ellis hands Cpt. Morrison the beer, still
looking at the picture. They are
standing once again in the ruins. Cpt.
Morrison is back to ‘normal’, ready to face the grim realities of her life
as a soldier.
ELLIS It’s amazing.
MORRISON ‘S
alright. C’mon. Pick up that stuff, Private. I’m done here.
PANEL THREE
EXT: BATTLEFIELD, RUINED CITY (20TH CENTURY STYLE), DAWN
In a similar view to Panel’s One to Four on Page Three, we
see Cpt. Morrison and Pvt. Ellis walking back towards the camp,
with Pvt. Ellis carrying the airbrush and box. The shadows have changed now, and the
creeping light of dawn has revealed the irony of the soldier’s situation.
The back of the wall bearing Cpt. Morrison’s painting
is starting to be revealed. Partially
obscured by lingering shadows and the leaning girders, faded, chipped and
battered by time, another of Cpt. Morrison’s paintings bears silent
witness to the truth.
ELLIS Think
we’ll ever see it again? Home, I mean.
MORRISON Sure,
soldier. Sure we will.
ELLIS Yeah. Hey, Captain, would you paint somethin’ for me next time?
MORRISON Nope.
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