Flip The Premise: A Screenwriter's Game

I was browsing YouTube as I do every day and I came across a video from over a year ago uploaded by uptomyknees. If you know that username, it is probably familiar to you because it is the channel name (and Twitter handle) for screenwriter Max Landis. The title of the video was "Flip The Premise". As a screenwriter, I instantly knew this would be an interesting video. What I found was a video explaining a game that Max had played for years. I decided to try it and it's now my favorite game. For screenwriters (or just creators in general), it's a useful tool to help with writer's block, pitching skills, and story development skills. How you play is rather simple, until you get into the game and start exploring the different ideas you have immediately started generating. The "instructions" are as such, you pick a movie (or TV show if it has a cinematic-y premise) and make the good guys the bad guys (and vice versa). You arrange the plot to revolve around making the new good guys good and to coincide with your new character stances. I decided to publish my example. You can try and guess what it is if you like or you can just sit back and enjoy.

Ever since he was a young boy, Thaddeus Bradley has loved magic. In his teenage years, he decided he wanted to become a magician and became an apprentice to a world class magician named Lionel Shrike. Lionel taught Bradley all about a mysterious organization for magician's called "The Eye," with whom Shrike was obsessed with. Shrike teaches Thaddeus everything he knows while still upping the spectacle of his tricks with Thaddeus's help in generating ideas. Eventually his acts empress The Eye and Lionel is accepted in, leaving Thaddeus behind and taking the credit for Thaddeus's work. Betrayed, Thaddeus soon realizes he was played and that this whole industry is corrupted by The Eye. Thaddeus, a moral person, soon discovers the Eye is in control of everything magic and are on the verge of world domination, achieving this by using magicians to distract the world and to commit various crimes to help them rise to power including bank robberies, fraud, and even assignations. Thaddeus begs Lionel to help him, but Shrike is too blind to the corruption. Thaddeus realizes the only way to beat the Eye is to expose their agents. He begins exposing magicians as fakes, leading to their ejection from the Eye and their disappearance. Thaddeus eventually exposes Shrike as a fraud. Lionel, in his attempts to remain within the Eye, creates a new spellbinding trick to show his relevance to the network. However, The Eye have seen his exposition already and kill him by tampering with his act, causing Shrike to drown. Thaddeus is crushed. He continues exposing the Eye by his usual methods in a blind revenge act. Eventually, The Eye gets annoyed with him and they send their newest recruits, the Four Horsemen. They are different then the rest of the magicians that Thaddeus Bradley has dealt with in the past. They are blatantly committing crimes (acts for the Eye) and getting away with it, even with thousands of witnesses. These guys are smart and have a plan. Thaddeus finds himself paired with the FBI and works with special agent Dylan Rhodes to catch them. Thaddeus plans to expose their tricks and get them kicked out of the Eye, but finds that apparently one of them as died in a police chase. (Later this is revealed to be another trick to help execute the "Third Act" of their plan.) Thaddeus helps the FBI to a point, until the FBI believe that the 3 living horsemen escaped. Thaddeus believes they just disappeared and avoided the Eye's wrath for their failings. As he remote starts his car, it explodes with all money that was stolen falling out, with the FBI rolling up to arrest him. Thaddeus is terrified as he has done nothing wrong but help to catch the criminals. He even hypothesized that there was a fifth horsemen helping them. That's when he realizes that they believe him to be the helper. He proves his innocence to Rhodes...only find out that Rhodes was the traitor and had framed Bradley. Dylan Rhodes was the son of Lionel Shrike and believed it to be Thaddeus's fault that his dad died. Rhodes had been raised by the Eye and was now it's new evil leader. Bradley has been silenced by the Eye and the Four Horsemen... or has he? ~ Koho Productions, YouTube.

In case you were wondering what movie premise I just flipped, that was my flipped premise for Now You See Me, a magician heist film written by Ed Solomon and directed by Louie Leterrier released by Lionsgate studios in 2013 (starring Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, & Morgan Freeman, who played Thaddeus Bradley in the film.)

I love the idea of Flip the Premise as it's actually a really fun game and it helps generate a world of ideas for creators. I hope you find this game to be fun and useful to you. If you are interested in watching the video, here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4yRZ1zVsS0k

#Game #Screenwriter #Advice #Fun #WriterHelp