Erstwhile Lives
A colourblind painter, a medium from 1930, and the desert oasis that binds their families.
Read the full pilot (PDF, 44 pages) ↗︎Logline
A magical desert oasis gifts a family with supernatural powers that later turn into a curse extending into generations.
An original series I created and wrote: a 44-page pilot, a series premise and a pilot synopsis.
The story
Basil is a successful, independent painter in his mid-twenties who lives in Nubara, a desert oasis that looks like something out of a fantastical tale. He paints portraits he believes come from his imagination: faces that hijack his mind while he sips tea in the garden or walks with friends. They are, in fact, the faces of people long dead who once lived nearby. Basil sees spirits, but only in his mind.
He is colourblind. He sees only orange and green, and everything else is grey, so his portraits are surreal and two-toned. Then, sitting under the fig tree in his garden, he sees a girl in colours he has never perceived: blues, purples and reds.
That night she appears in a dream, strikes a single note on his piano, and vanishes from the canvas he painted of her. Basil follows her out into the night, falls, and wakes as a ghost in 1930, tied by an invisible cord to the girl, Sarah, a medium who carries messages between the living and the dead. She has learned to travel forward as a spirit and trap a soul from the future to bring back with her. That is exactly what she has done to Basil.
Characters
- 2021
Basil
A colourblind painter who sees the dead. Edgy, anxious, gifted, and about to learn where his gift comes from.
- 1930
Sarah
A medium who speaks with spirits and has found a way to reach the future. She appears to Basil in colours he can't see.
- Place
Nubara
The desert oasis itself: fig trees, dust storms, and a secret about the family that lives there.
Colour as the story
The whole series is built on what Basil can and can’t see. His world is graded to his eyes: two tones, orange and green, with everything else falling to grey. The spirit world breaks the rule. Whenever Sarah or the past reaches him, blue, purple and red bleed into the frame, colours the audience has been starved of as long as he has.
Drag across the frame below to see Nubara through Basil’s eyes. (Built from my own photography.)
Tone
The series sits between metaphysical adventure and family saga. It takes its dream logic and simple, sunlit aesthetics from Federico Fellini and the great Italian filmmakers, its play with time from Christopher Nolan, and an ambition borrowed from Sergio Leone: compose the score early and shoot to it.
Read the cold open
The first pages of the pilot, exactly as written.
FADE IN:
DREAM SEQUENCE:
INT. ART STUDIO - DAY
The scene opens in a gloomy GREEN AND ORANGE color filter, conveying how the dreamer sees the world. The dream world is skewed with unnatural shadows moving about freely.
EXTREME CLOSE-UP of different people's mouths laughing silently. Intercut with a CLOSE-UP on a MAN in his mid-20s, laughing with tears streaming down his cheeks. His expression shifts to crying with every cut.
A hand holding a big brush slathers thick paint onto the man's face.
The camera CUTS TO REVEAL that the painter and the crying man are identical, creating a surreal mirror image.
The painter is roughly covering the face with different expressions of joy; broad, unnatural grins, wide bright eyes, etc. The painting continues, intercut by:
INT. CHILD'S ROOM - DAY
A YOUNG CHILD laughing and painting a tree with small orange fruits on a wall with his bare hands. An OLD MAN with eyes flushed white, sits behind him on an armchair, laughing eerily. With each cut, their faces and hands get splattered with paint.
EXT. FOREST - DAY
Suddenly, the child and the old man are in a forest, but in their exact positions from before.
Around them, lengthening shadows like curtains are creeping from every side. The boy notices them and jumps on the old man's lap. The man, still laughing, flips backwards in his chair like a lifeless doll, yet his laughter continues. The boy peeks from behind the chair, crying in terror.
As the shadows engulf them, the boy and the man begin to melt into a puddle. A faint light flickers within the depths of the puddle like a cry for help.
The CAMERA slowly closes in on the puddle, then-
ABRUPT CUT TO:
INT. BEDROOM - NIGHT
A young man wakes up in a fright. The room is too dark to establish his face.
He sits up straight, takes a water bottle from the nightstand and drinks.
He leaves the bed, walks towards a sliding door and opens it.
It leads him to his ART STUDIO; a spacious room lined with tables against the walls and a couple of easels. Opposite the sliding door is a wall-to-wall window overlooking a small garden with a big tree.
The man stands in front of six squared canvases of portraits painted in green and orange.
A faint light in the corner of the room casts on his face; he's the painter from the dream; middle 20s, long hair, and edgy facial features.
He's still for a minute, then drinks more water, and heads toward the bedroom.
CUT TO: