Four Page Treatment: Crestfall

FOUR-PAGE TREATMENT: Crestfall
Written by: Timothy C.W. Runge
LOGLINE: Crestfall is a superheroine trying to uncover the conspiracy behind her origins.

GENRE: This is a superhero comic book


1. FOUR MAIN PLOT POINTS:
BEGINNING: Jessica Crest is a soldier in the Middle East, when she and her platoon investigate a roadside IED with a strange canister attached to it, there’s a fatal explosion and her entire platoon is wiped out. Jessica survives.
PLOT POINT I: Jessica awakens in a hospital to find she has wings and super powers, she’s recruited into a government training facility.
PLOT POINT II: Jessica (Crestfall) is beaten by a brute and dragged to the villain.
ENDING: Crestfall leaves a defeated Quitlove in the streets outside the police station and returns to her nightly vigil a top the roofs of Neon City.

2. DRAMATIC RECREATION – ACT I – SEQUENCE I:

It’s raining tonight in Neon City. Crestfall stands atop one of it’s many towering skyscrapers. The blue and purple neon tubing going down the side of the building cast an eerie glow on her. She has blood red angelic-like wings jutting from her back. She knees forward on a gargoyle perched on the ceiling and spreads her wings in the rainy night sky.
She pauses for a moment, listening. She launches herself in the air.
It’s quiet tonight in Neon City. Crestfall glides in between buildings, soaking in the night. The girl’s scream startles Crestfall at first. She hovers for a minute regaining her composure.
In an alley, a girl is surrounded by a group of thugs. It’s dark in the alley and only the flickering neon lights keep things illuminated. It’s a creepy look, flashing between yellow and green in a sporadic fashion. The thugs close in on her.
Crestfall drops in behind the thugs and proceeds to beat them up. She makes quick work of them and escorts the girl to cleanly lit streets. Crestfall flies back up to the rooftops. She contemplates her origins…

3. NARRATIVE SYNOPSIS – ACT I:

For the rest of act 1 we enter a flashback to a few years ago. Jessica Crest is in the Army in and EOD (explosive ordinance disposal) unit. We’re introduced to her unit and we understand that her job is to uncover and defuse IEDs (improvised explosive devices).
We see her team go through a practice run and diffuse a practice bomb.
They go out on a call to diffuse an odd IED found by an infantry patrol. Crest’s team gets out there and goes through their motions. This IED is different, there’s a green canister attached with an odd symbol half rubbed out. There’s a purple substance inside the canister. One of her team members remarks on how they’ve never seen anything like it before.
The explosion is bigger than anyone could have anticipated. Her entire team is engulfed in flames. Crest is drenched in the purple goo before the fireball hits her. She wakes up in a hospital a few weeks later.





4. DRAMATIC RECREATION – PLOT POINT I:

Crestfall wakes up startled. Her vision is blurry and she’s unaware of where she is. She suppresses her panic and surveys her surroundings. She’s sitting on a hospital bed. She’s attached to some monitoring devices. She’s alone in the room.
She lurches forward and screams in pain. Her back has two lumps that are sticking out between her shoulder blades.
Two fully formed red wings just from her back, fully extended. She screams in agony. Two nurses run into the room and hold her down. A third nurse jumps on the phone. Crest throws the two nurses off of her with ease. One of the nurses flies back into a wall, smacking his head and falling unconscious. The other two nurses run out of the room. Crest removes the nodes from her body and stand in the room. Her wings settling down as she regains her composure.
A man in a suit enters the room. He tells her that he can help her. He works with a facility that specializes in people with unique abilities. She takes his card.


5. LIST OF FOUR OBSTACLES – ACT II:

My second act is broken into two parts. The first part is Crestfall in The Facility, training. The second part is her breaking out of the facility and becoming a crime fighter in Neon City.
Her goal starts out as learning her new powers, then it becomes escaping The Facility, and at the end of the second act, her goal is to find the man responsible, Alexander Quitlove

1. Her obstacle at the beginning of act II is to overcome her own doubts about her abilities and the survivor’s guilt she feels.
2. After her training is underway she starts to notice a symbol posted everywhere, it matches the symbol on the canister that exploded. She discovers that the people training her are the people responsible for her condition.
3. After she escapes, she goes back to her hometown of Neon City, cleaning up the streets and questioning the seedy underbelly about details on the symbol and who might be behind it.
4. By the end of the act, she’s ready to face her foe but he’s more than ready for her.

6. NARRATIVE SYNOPSIS – ACT II:

Crest is taken to a secret facility. She’s given the codename: Crestfall and a special jumpsuit that accommodates for her wings. She learns through a series of tests how to control her wings for both flight and combat. She also finds she has enhanced strength, sight, and hearing. She starts to notice a symbol everywhere that she can’t quite recognize and the name of a company “Sinecorp”. She realizes this is the same symbol on the canister that held the purple goo. She overhears one of the doctors talking and comes to the realization that her “accident” was more on purpose.
She escapes from The Facility and heads back to her hometown of Neon City. This is also corporate headquarters for Sinecorp. She realizes that she won’t be able to make an appointment or go through traditional channels to get the information she needs. She starts to fight gang members and petty crooks and interrogates them for information on organized crime in the city. She’s not surprised to learn that all roads lead to Sinecorp CEO Alexander Quitlove.
She can only ask questions for so long before he realizes someone’s looking for him. Quitlove doesn’t like to be hunted, he prefers to hunt. He sends out The Brute, a hulking beast that has no conscious. He just destroys things.
The Brute shows up and fights with Crestfall. He makes short work of her. He beats her to near death and drags her to Quitlove’s office.

7. DRAMATIC RECREATION - PLOT POINT II:

A woman screams and Crestfall responds. She flies into the alley and sees a giant of a man towering over a woman. She punches him, injuring her fist. The giant man turns around, the woman runs off.
The giant man only says “Brute. Hurt.”
He swings his arm and knocks Crestfall through the side of a building. She flies out, head butting him. She falls to the ground. He is unfazed. He swipes at her again, and she flies through another wall. She gets up again, this time more slowly. He lumbers towards her. She holds her ground. He pulls his arm back to swing again and she lunges forward, her wings jut forward hitting him in the neck. He stumbles backwards and she jumps in the air, her foot outstretched to kick him. He grabs her leg and spins her around. He smashes her head into a pole. She goes limp, unconscious. He swings her around like a rag doll.
He stops, holding her leg while making sure she doesn’t respond. He walks down the street dragging her bloody, broken body behind him.
Satisfied with himself he says “Brute. Hurt.”

8. NARRATIVE SYNOPSIS – ACT III:

Crestfall, beaten and broken by Brute is dragged to Quitlove’s office and tied to a chair. Her wings shackled. She groggily comes to in a fancy office. Sitting across from her is the man who gave her his card when she awoke in the hospital. He identifies himself as Alexander Quitlove and tells Crestfall that he’s had his eye on her since she was very young. He goes on to explain that her parents were scientists for his company many years ago and that through an experiment unknown to them, their DNA had been altered. Crestfall was set up from birth to be his champion, she was only missing one more thing, the purple goo that was in the explosive. He facilitated Crestfalls transformation.
She thanks him because now she didn’t have to torture him for the information, she also didn’t have to break in and try to find his office. She breaks her binds and flexes her wings, shattering the shackles that held her down. She punches Quitlove in the face and he goes down.
Brute bursts through the wall. This time, Crestfall doesn’t hold back. She punches him a few times, he’s dazed and bleeding. He thrashes around furiously. She pokes his eyes with her wings and picks up Quitlove. She runs out of the office with him over her shoulders. Brute barrels into the hallway thrashing everything in sight. Crestfall stands in front of a scenic window and waits for Brute to come charging at her. She jumps out of the way and he runs through the window. He plummets to the ground from the top floor of one of Neon City’s highest skyscrapers.
She jumps out of the window with Quitlove and drops him off outside the police station. He’s screaming and yelling that he’ll admit everything. She drops him on the street. Two uniformed police officers come out side. Crestfall is nowhere to be found.

9. DRAMATIC RECREATION – ENDING SCENE:

It’s a clear night in Neon City. Crestfall stands on top of her favorite gargoyle in the city. Observing. She feels relieved for the first time in a while. Her friends’ deaths are avenged. Her mystery solved. All she has to do now is clean up the streets. She won’t let anyone sully her city again.
A man screams in the night. Crestfall smiles and leaps into the air.