Level 1 Video Script

Overview

In the dead of winter in the early 1900s, a lone hunter ventures deep into a snow-covered forest in search of game. He spots a young boar foraging beneath the trees and quietly takes aim. Just as he pulls the trigger, the mother boar bursts from the brush behind him, startling him and sending the shot astray. The young boar escapes with its mother as the gunshot echoes through the woods. Left alone, the hunter rises and looks toward the sky, where a flock of startled birds scatters above the trees. Rifle lowered at his side, he watches in silence as the forest slowly becomes still again.

Script (The Hunter)

EXT. WINTER WOODS MORNING — c. 1905
A hard winter morning.
Bare trees stand black against a colorless sky. Snow lies deep between their trunks.
A pair of worn LEATHER BOOTS presses through the crusted snow.
A HUNTER, 40s, moves carefully through the woods.
Heavy wool coat. Leather gloves. A canvas game bag across his back.
In his hands, a wooden-stock rifle.
His breath clouds before his face.
He stops.
Something rustles beneath a low fir.
A YOUNG BOAR roots through the snow, pushing aside dead leaves with its snout.
The Hunter crouches.
He rests the rifle against his shoulder.
The young boar fills the sight.
It digs.
Stops.
Listens.
The Hunter slowly exhales.
His finger settles on the trigger.
Behind him—
CRACK.
A branch breaks.
The Hunter turns.
A SOW charges from the brush.
He flinches.
BANG.
The shot goes wide.
The young boar bolts.
The sow disappears after it through the trees.
Silence.
A clump of snow drops from a branch.
Then—
WINGS.
Birds burst from the treetops.
The Hunter rises slowly.
His rifle hangs loosely at his side.
He looks up.
The birds circle against the pale winter sky.
For a moment, he simply watches.
His breath drifts upward.
The birds disappear beyond the trees.
The woods are still again.
CUT TO BLACK.

Synopsis

Mr. B. Foley is a senior sound designer who has spent years creating sounds for films and animation. Experienced and efficient, he has become so familiar with his work that he rarely stops to question what things actually sound like. While on vacation, Foley receives an emergency call from his studio: a short film has been left completely silent, and with no other sound designers available, he has to finish it before the deadline. Away from his studio and sound library, Foley only has a portable recorder, a simple editor, and whatever he can find around him. As Foley travels through campgrounds, hotel rooms, villages, coastlines, and eventually a snowstorm, he begins recording ordinary objects and experimenting with unexpected ways of turning them into sounds for the film. What starts as an inconvenient work assignment gradually becomes a journey of rediscovery. He begins paying attention to sounds he would normally overlook—the texture of fabric, the rhythm of footsteps, distant voices, waves, wind, and even silence. By the time the film is finished, Foley has rediscovered the curiosity that first made him love sound design. His journey leaves him with a simple realization: the world sounds different when you actually listen to it.

Story Arc

Professional → deprived of his tools → forced to improvise → discovers possibilities → loses certainty → learns to listen → becomes curious again.

• Ordinary World: Mr. B. Foley is an experienced senior sound designer. He’s good at his job, but years of professional work have made sound design routine and technical. He’s on vacation partly because he wants to get away from work.
• Call: His manager contacts him with an emergency. A silent film needs sound immediately, and Foley is the only person available.
• Refusal: He doesn’t want to work during vacation—and more practically, he doesn’t have his studio, props, sound library, or normal equipment.
• Crossing the Threshold: He reluctantly tries using whatever he can find around him. He discovers that an ordinary object can convincingly become something completely different when paired with an image.
• Trials / Discovery: As he travels, each environment forces him further away from his familiar professional methods. He experiments with objects, people, spaces, ambience, rhythm, silence, and increasingly abstract sounds.
• Crisis: Eventually he encounters something he cannot solve through technical knowledge alone. There is no “correct sound” to find. His normal instinct—to search for the right answer—fails.
• Transformation: Instead of asking “What sound am I supposed to use?”, he begins asking “What does this sound like to me?” He listens first, interprets second, and creates third.
• Return: Foley completes the film. The emergency is over, and he can finally return to his vacation—but now he voluntarily keeps recording sounds. He has returned to the ordinary world with a changed relationship to his craft.

Core Of Story

The world sounds different when you actually listen to it.

Character Arc

Foley begins as an experienced sound designer who is confident in what he knows, but his experience has also made his process habitual. Forced outside his normal workflow, he gradually becomes more playful, observant, and curious. By the end, he hasn’t learned how to be a sound designer—he has rediscovered why he became one in the first place.

Level Structure

• Level I Camping Ground: tutorial level; learn the controls and tools (basic sound recording and editing rules, basic sound design concepts)
• Level II Hotel Room: timbre (different sounds create different textures that can be applied to different visual textures)
• Level III Village Plaza: dubbing? Human-related sounds? ex fabric, breathing, heartbeat?
• Level IV By The Sea: rhythm and harmony? Soundscapes?
• Level V Snow Storm: sound upload