Title
The Blur Between
Logline
Turning to lucid dreams to cope with her life and career falling short of her expectations by nightly fantasising about her ideal life, introspective plain-jane TV drama scriptwriter Erica encounters the charming and popular celebrity model-actor Xander at a casting audition for her upcoming script, who turns out to be a manipulative mentalist and power-hungry go-getter, exploiting his charisma and expertise in the ways of subtle hypnosis to achieve his desires. Under his influence and blackmail, will she pursue her inner desires in life instead of leaving them as mere fantasies?
Genre
Psychological Drama
Tone, Look and Style
Dark, cold, urban city-ish, monochrome, high contrast, serious, introspective, psychological, poetic, contemplative
Major Themes
Fantasies, reality, escapism, and the blur between
Silenced inner desires and ambivalence
Limitations of a practical reality
Pursuit of ideal life
Psychological manipulation, hypnosis and ethics
Social influence of the free will
Main Characters
Erica (26):
an introspective, kind and dreamy plain-jane TV drama scriptwriter who is often in her own world, addicted to the pleasures of lucid dreaming about her fantasies and desires as her mundane and struggling real life is not going the way she wants it to.
She is only an average worker who is not much special at work. She is very much seen as a replaceable person at what she does. Therefore she wants to be more significant – to be exact, an accomplished scriptwriter who wins awards and gets recognition from her peers.
As a person who is more introverted and quiet, she desires to be more socially lively, popular and influential with many more friends and a happening life as opposed to her mundane work-life routine.
She also secretly desires to have an intimate relationship with a boyfriend as she has not dated before, except for once: her ideal type, Shawn, another handsome actor whom she has had to opportunity to work with once, which was enough for her to be swept off her feet and ever since, she has been an infatuated fan of his.
In order to maintain lucidity of her dreams, she keeps a dream journal of her nightly escapades, most of which have to be kept secret from the world as she is embarrassed by some of her inner desires and is afraid of being laughed at. She believes in morals and does not like manipulation.
Xander (28):
a charismatic, handsome and influential celebrity model-actor who is quite successful at what he does, explaining his growing popularity with the media and masses. A cunning mentalist who is skilled in the area of psychology and subtle hypnosis, he is an expert at social interactions, giving him great influence over others whom he interact with.
He used to be a lucid dreamer and therefore knows what a lucid dream journal looks like. Discovering the the contents of Erica’s dream journal, he uses it to blackmail her into doing what he wants. Contrary to Erica who derives her pleasures from what he mockingly deems as a childish “dreamyland”, he believes in being true to one’s own inner desires and should take action and strive to shape reality to fit his desires, all real, physical and tangible instead of just being dreams. He does this even at the expense of exploiting and manipulating others without their knowledge of it. He has a power-hungry side which is impatient and easily frustrated from failures. Thus, he effectively hides these from others to maintain his image and influence as they are fundamental to his abilities as a mentalist and crucial to his pursuit of success.
Story Flow
Erica is in one of her lucid dreams, fantasising about an intimate moment with her ideal boyfriend. She wakes up and records her dreams in the journal before going to work.
At work, she is seen as just an average worker. But fortunately for her, her pitch has been chosen to be made into the next drama.
At the casting auditions for her script, she encounters Xander, who discovers the content of her dream journal. Xander is seen being influential and gaining the support of the other staff of the production. All of them approve of Xander taking up the lead role.
Unlike the rest though, Erica, having done the script so she can work with Shawn again, she is hesitant and does not want to cast Xander. But Xander has a week to change her mind before the cast is fixed. He uses his knowledge of her secret fantasies to blackmail her, revealing that he himself dabbles in the area of psychology as well.
5. TO BE CONTINUED
> Xander’s true motive, upon discovering she is into psychology too, is to gain her favour, influence and teach her how to hypnotise others and then hypnotise her to hypnotise others for him in his grand scheme.
