CSE 459 Story Track Assignment 2a

Group 1 – Andrew Y, Ryan I, Byron J, Matt D

List of Story Changes • We changed the setting to a smoking room at a mansion, where they can be smoking cigars and knocking back cognac. Justification: Putting the old men in a retirement makes them seem powerless and has connotations of senility and feebleness, which do not make much sense if they are supposed to be heads of state metaphorically. • We did not have the difference in their personalities be the source of the conflict, rather their similarities. We envisioned that they would be boasting to each other of their material possessions and when it came to show their trophy girlfriends, they both show a picture of the same woman, which initiates the conflict. Justification: The differing personalities were an ad hoc solution to creating a conflict with the game of solitaire and need not be replicated here. • We envisioned the introduction of the cards thusly: Either one of the old men or a butler goes to the wall and passes over various dueling instruments such as swords, guns, net and trident, and selects a silver attaché case. Bringing it to the table and unlocking it, it is revealed that instead of some elaborate weapon system, it is two decks of cards. Justification: Having the old men start by playing a card game and then transition into playing another card game weakens the significance of War. Furthermore, we wanted to emphasize the absurdity of using cards to resolve a conflict and thus the absurdity of engaging in war in the real world. • Instead of having the cards destroyed in a convoluted matter, we specifically have each player destroy the loser’s cards when an exchange has been won to piss off the opponent. Destruction starts out relatively tame such as tearing or scissors, but escalates into blowtorches and physically ingesting the cards. Justification: This solves the problem of how do we escalate the game of War into violence because it will just start that way and the only escalation will be the methods of destruction. This also sidesteps the game mechanic of taking the other player’s cards because this is a sort of “take no prisoners” type of war. • Remove this: “…but have no idea how or why these awful things are happening to them.” Justification: In the metaphor the cards are soldiers so it makes no sense that they wouldn’t understand how or why they are dying. • New ending: After engaging in this mutual card destruction for a while the old men play their last card, which will decide the match. However, the cards turn out to be a match, which would call for a war, but no more cards remain. The game ends in a stalemate and the last two cards are swept off the table. The old men have not resolved their conflict and so stomp out of the room. Zoom in on the destroyed cards on the ground and then fade to a real battlefield or a graveyard lined with crosses. Justification: The whole end interaction between the old men in the current story is cheesy and unrealistic. More importantly, it makes no sense metaphorically. To emphasize the pointlessness of war, the initial conflict is not resolved. Also, we felt the need to drive home the metaphor, lest it be lost on some people. Questions 1. The source of conflict in our revised version is the similarity of their personality, namely that they both are bombastic, materialistic, chauvinistic, snobby elitists. It is their vanity that brings them into conflict. We visualize the two men as being contrasting in appearance more than personality, such as short and fat versus tall and skinny. 2. We don’t think this would support this story because correlating the cards with their masters weakens the sympathy we are supposed to have for them. The two card decks can be differentiated very simply by the color of their back designs. 3. For the record, we feel having two guys playing Solitaire next to each other doesn’t logically progress into War. However, in the spirit of the question… Perhaps the two old men are playing Solitaire in such a way that they are taking up more and more table space until there is a conflict over the scarce remaining space. In another instance we can have one old man point out that the other is playing wrong and try to correct him, which results in a conflict. 4. For our hopeful ending, we could have them resolve their differences and instead of using the card decks to fight each other, they use them to build a giant card house together. For the eternal war ending, we show the next day when one of the old men arrives. As it happens, he is wearing the same suit as the other guy, which again starts a war. 5. One option is to start in the card world and have them engaged in warfare without any real reason, but then at some point we pull out and show that it is just these two old men engaged in a game of War. Another option is to have the cards be sentient and cognizant of the old men, in which case they could obey commands issued by the old men.

Group 2 Scott Wade, Cale Schupman, Patrick Williams, Justin Pai, Robert Forsberg

Once upon a time there were two old shopkeepers. One was a French man, that was very protective of the cleanliness of his perfume shop, while the other was a stout German sausage shop owner. They didn’t like each other. And every day they fought over where they were going to put their sandwich board advertisement. Until one day when they’re fighting, one man breaks the other’s sign accidently. And because of this, the man prompts the other to challenge the other to a game of war. They move to a neutral Swiss (naturally) café across the street, where they begin playing war. And because of this they start playing, where crazy card stuff happens that only they can see. The Swiss waiter glances over periodically, and the men acting quite manic with the cards. Until finally one man’s tank rolls into the square threatening to destroy the other man’s store. He admits defeat. (fade to black) As a new day begins, they begin fighting over their signs again, and in the background the waiter places a deck of cards on the table and walks back into the café. 1. The German is jolly. The Frenchman is very stern. The characteristics are important because it provides the expectation of conflict. The actually conflicting characteristics are not so important. 2. The cards will not be representative of their owners. They will all be militaristic. 3. Two card games are too much for the viewer to deal with when the significance of solitaire is loaded and unnecessary. Why use solitaire when it doesn’t help us tell our story. 4. They decide not to play the next game, after looking at the pile of corpses from the last game. Or alternatively, the losing shop owner picks the same fight with his other neighbor. 5. They have existed the entire time, waiting in the Swiss café to settle disputes. Or alternatively, sometime after the war starts and the men begin to use their imagination.

Group 3 Jordan Hill, Lauren Quist, Derek Shiu, Dan Ciurczak, Amber Manuguid

Question One: Old man 1 a) chill, laid back b) wants a fun game, team player, happy Old man 2 a) anxious, uppity, b) super serious, ready to snap, serial killer, unstable Question Two: You could express their relationship as a reflection of the old men’s personalities. The cards start off sarcastically and as the game progresses they will get more and more aggressive along with the old men. Question Three: Initially one old man is playing solitaire and the other is watching from the table behind him. He gets up after noticing some moves the man playing solitaire failed to notice, and starts back-seat solitairing the guy. This angers the old man playing, and after some bickering they declare war on each other. Question Four: Alt 1: They realize the damage they’ve done and try and tape up the cards. Alt2: They have a never ending war game until both of them die of massive heart attacks. Question Five: It should start when they start playing war. If we start with war and ignore solitaire all together, the CARD WORLD – as it were – wouldn’t appear until the battle escalated and the old men got really cheesed with one another. If it starts with solitaire however the cards should just get into the card world anytime we’re playing war – since that’s the metaphor. The world is just symbolic – it isn’t actually happening and is just there to help show the parallel between this and an actual war – which is why the old men never see it. Another option is for them to start with solitare and then like one card will lean forward so its kind of a hint they will come alive, but once war comes up they all come alive and they’re all rock’n and a-rollin’

group 4 Eric Jason amir Sharon Andrew G

1. expanded person 1 personality: hand sanitizer, general ocd traits like orderness and cleanliness. expanded person 2 personality: slob, eats with hands mismatched clothing, crocked collor (Not poor) 2. decks shouldn't have personalities, but maybe the card colors should have same color as old man shirt 3. There should be no cultural difference in the cards but the card's back should represent the old man's shirt. 4. HOPEFUL: servant changes instead of old man, cleans up the mess tapes some cards together. and intervenes in the war Other: At the end the servant cleans up and another two old men and throws away 5. cards only respond when played in war. or cards in solitaire and we see how they interact before War. note: cards like action figures There are two old men who are in an upper class (club, restaurant or mansion community). One is a obsessive compulsive, the other is slobbish person. These two are sitting across from each other but at different tables. Each is playing solitaire but minding there own business. until the slob gets his crumbs on the ocd guys table, who them flicks them way, but some accidentally hit the slob guy. and because of this, the slob becomes angry and sends his cards to the border. From there it becomes an all out WAR!!! Cards are crumbled bend lit on fire and flung thrown he area(NO origami things like airplanes, tanks, transformers.) finally there are no more cards left and the old men are forced to look at each other. They are exhausted and disheveled and exhilarated. They laugh so hard they cry and laugh there way out of the room. servant/waiter stays behind and cleans up. Either ending Things we changed 'one of the cards triggers an event' - this goes against everything in the armature. old mans war fought by cards gap between tables- the tables should be touching and attached to each other. The border should be where the tables connect. and the war should be fought across the border. neither of the old men move. The cards don't impersonate their 'general' - we thought that the cards have their own personality but show ownership to the general. the old men shouldn't be 'amazed' at the damage - the old men show no emotions to the cards, but the the servant/waiter should.