PANORAMA:
horses for courses
by .M.
v5 2001/01/23
© thequality.com 2001
1 EXT. WOODS - MORNING 1
FADE IN:
We are moving through the woods. We hear birds
tweetering, pan pipes, and other ambient noises. Leaves
fall past our view. Young beautiful wood sprites,
fairyish females, float past and into a clearing.
An alarm clock goes off. Almost immediately it is
silenced with a smash. Someone yawns expansively then we
hear him wake up mumbling. The sprites giggle.
We move backwards, our view of the woods warps, we are
moving through a porthole and...
MATCH CUT TO:
2 INT. MAIN OFFICE - MORNING 2
we are looking at the woods through a round picture frame
hanging on a bleak office wall. The painting is the only
coloured object in the room.
MAIN TITLES
The background drone of voices grows louder. A lot of
people work obviously here.
CU. PAINTING
We hear running and huffing and puffing. PAN, the cloven-
hooved goatee’d god of the woods, pokes the top of his
horned head up inside the painting.
Pan sees a large desolutely grey open plan office, filled
with desks, a few cubicles, and identi-kit workers in
suits.
Pan ducks down disappearing into the painting.
After a beat, the office door is flung open to reveal
Pan, now decked out in an bowler hat, an umbrella and
briefcase in hand, and a cheeky grin.
Pan surveys the office.
BOSS
(VO)
Your job, sir, is to inspire these
people.
Two identically dressed office workers, HARRY and LARRY,
slouch past, heads down.
BOSS (cont’d)
(VO)
They lack something.
Pan tips his hat to the workers.
BOSS (cont’d)
(VO)
I want to see personality...
animation.
Pan sets aside his briefcase and rubs his hands with
anticipation.
We see BARRY shuffling along the aisle towards Pan.
Pan grins to us and leaps into action, blocking Barry’s
way.
BARRY
(without eye contact)
Pardon me. Sorry.
Barry walks into Pan, rebounds, and continues walking
towards Pan as if on automatic pilot. As Barry rebounds
off him again, Pan begins dancing like Fred Astaire.
BARRY
(CONT’D)
Sorry. Pardon me.
Pan blocks and bumps Barry, strutting his stuff around
Barry with obvious enjoyment.
ECU. BARRY’S BLEARY EYES
Words are being typed across his eyeballs.
Pan stops dancing and looks up expectantly. Barry passes
him, still oblivious to his presence.
Pan frowns.
Pan reaches over Barry, grabs his head and neatly spins
him around 180 degrees, like Fred Astaire twirling Ginger
Rodgers.
Barry continues walking in the direction he is pointed
back past Pan. Still no reaction.
BARRY
Pardon me. Sorry.
Pan shrugs his shoulders good naturedly. He flings his
umbrella away.
It lands on the hat stand.
CUT TO:
3 INT. CUBICLE A - DAY 3
SALLY, a panic-stricken worker, is hyperventilating at
her desk. Her desktop phone and mobile are ringing
simulataneously. Her computer monitor is flashing between
scrolling spreadsheets and the Windows blue screen of
death.
ECU. SALLY’S BLEARY EYES
Spreadsheets scroll across her eyeballs.
SALLY’S PERSPECTIVE
Pan is juggling spheres, cubes and pyramids covered in
spreadsheet numbers staring deep into Sally’s eyes.
The phone noise fades to techno.
Pan stops juggling. The objects hang in mid-air. He
reaches up, adjusts the orientation of a pyramid, the
objects fall, he resumes juggling.
Sally stares at Pan for a beat. She swivels around in her
chair to face her desk. Her phones resume ringing with a
loud clatter.
Pan shrugs his shoulders and adjusts his hat. He’s no
quitter.
CUT TO:
4 INT. CORRIDOR - DAY 4
LARRY walks past a gigantic display of sumptous banquest
food. Pan stands behind it with outstretched arms and
chef’s cap. Larry stops at the Yoke machine next to the
display.
Pan grins at Larry expectantly.
Larry gazes blankly at the food.
ECU. LARRY’S BLEARY EYES
Larry’s perspective shows calorie charts and graphs
labeling the banquest food. He bangs on the Yoke machine.
Pan’s smile drops away as a can is dispensed with a
thunk.
CUT TO:
5 INT. MAIN OFFICE - AFTERNOON 5
Pan stands between rows of desks looking very glum. The
office noise is more intense.
ECU. PAN’S BLEARY EYES
Pan’s eyes reflect the stock ticker on the wall.
The ticker blends into...
MATCH CUT TO:
6 INSERT. BOW AND ARROW 6
Stock prices and scrolling hexidecimal characters form a
gleaming arrow being slowly drawn back.
The bow string is released.
CUT TO:
7 EXT. WOODS - AFTERNOON 7
A sprite is felled by the arrow. She cries out in pain.
CUT TO:
8 INT. MAIN OFFICE - DAY 8
ECU. PAN’S BLEARY EYES
The sprite is reflected in his eyes. She turns grey.
Pan snaps out of his day-dream. He rips his hat off
angrily.
Barry is sitting nearby staring blankly at a monitor.
Pan’s eyes narrow menacingly. He flings his bowler hat
across the office like a frisbee.
CUT TO:
9 INT. CUBICLE B - DAY 9
The bowler hat lands on Larry’s head.
CUT TO:
10 INT. MAIN OFFICE - DAY 10
Pan snatches his briefcase and surveys the office.
ECU. The briefcase opens revealing Pan’s pan pipes.
Pan plays a sequence of notes like a touch tone phone.
After a moment, the sound of a modem connecting.
Pan nods with satisfaction.
With the modem connection ‘noise’, Pan begins to expand,
a computer screen growing from his belly.
CUT TO:
11 INT. CUBICLE B - DAY 11
Larry looks up from his desk and furrows his brow. The
office hubub has been replaced with the noises from the
woods.
PAN
(OS)
Come on. Don’t be shy. It’s all tax
deductable.
Larry stands up and cocks his head, listening intently.
CUT TO:
12 INSERT. PAN SCREEN 12
Our view is divided in half into two frames. The top
frame is a void containing Pan’s disembodied head. The
bottom frame is filled by the multi-coloured head of a
cameleon staring out at us.
PAN
(to viewer)
There’s more than one way to
do it. There’s more than one way to
play. Do your worst. Make your best.
The cameleon flicks out its tongue at us. It goes splash
against our view.
PAN (CONT’D)
(VO)
Find your voice. Have your say.
CUT TO:
13 INT. MAIN OFFICE - AFTERNOON 13
All the workers are crowded around Pan, once vaguely
humanoid, now a walking talking web browser. The frames
we saw are onscreen.
CU. PAN (THE REAL ONE)
Pan grins devilishly, as his onscreen avatar does all the
talking.
PAN
(VO)
Step right up, everybody. You haven’t
seen this before.
Sally is standing directly in front of Pan, pressing his
belly as a touch-screen.
PAN (cont’d)
(VO)
But be quick. This free line lasts
just a few seconds more.
CU. PAN SCREEN
Several pairs of hands jab frantically at the screen.
CUT TO:
14 INSERT. PAN SCREEN 14
CU. TOP FRAME
Sally’s disembodied head pops up to join Pan.
CUT TO:
15 INT. MAIN OFFICE - AFTERNOON 15
CU. PAN
Pan grins mischieviously, towering over the crowd. Pan,
and his stomach screen contraption, tips over,
simulateously sucking in all the workers.
FADE TO:
16 INT. MAIN OFFICE - TWILIGHT 16
We pan across the deserted office.
BOSS
(VO)
Simons? Whitfield?
CUT TO:
17 INT. PAN BROWSER 17
In the top frame, the workers, fronted by Harry, Sally,
and Larry, peer downwards at the woods in the lower
frame. Sprites chase each other through the trees. The
workers are entranced.
IF USER_DID_SOMETHING=1 GOTO 18 ELSE GOTO 19
CUT TO:
18 EXT. WOODS - TWILIGHT 18
We move through the trees. Pan’s umbrella and bowler hat
hang from a branch.
In the clearing, Pan plays his pipes while the sprites
circle around him.
A round picture frame is hanging from a nearby tree but
facing away from the clearing. Inside we see the animated
faces of the office workers pressed up against the glass,
looking out expectantly.
FADE TO BLACK.
THE END
19 EXT. WOODS - TWILIGHT 19
The office layout has been re-created amongst the trees.
The stock ticker hangs from a branch. The birds tweeter
merrily.
Harry, Larry, and Barry sit smiling contently at their
desks, eyes still glued to the monitors.
A round picture frame is hanging from a nearby tree.
Inside, Pan watches, shaking his head.
He bangs on the inside of the picture frame glass. The
picture falls from the tree.
THE END