4ColorHeroes:Nightjar Original Script

ALAN MOORE
NIGHTJAR EPISODE ONE

Right…maybe this first page could be laid out something along the lines suggested in the sketch to the right. Two tiers of three frames each with all the frames the same size, then a narrow strip along the bottom with frame seven quite small and frame eight being the title logo. If you’ve got a better idea then please don’t feel intimidated by all this junk…just go ahead and do what you like.

1.
First of the six flash-back frames that form the opening sequence. I’m still quite fond of the idea of maybe using some different medium for these first few panels to give them a different look. If you’re doing the rest of the strip using a half-tone maybe you could do these frames in pencil? Just a thought…This first frame shows a view of an overgrown and untended terraced garden, looking towards the peeling back door which is opening towards us showing a rectangle of darkness within. Someone unseen is opening the door from inside…we can see his fingers clasped round the edge of it. The garden is deathly still, maybe just a couple of insects droning somewhere. There’s junk everywhere…bricks, pram wheels, tin bath, plant pots…I want to give the impression of a frozen instant, like something out of an old photograph album. As an almost subliminal detail there is a small bird swooping low over the garden, it’s shadow falling neatly beneath it. We have caught it at one split instant of it’s flight. It’ll be gone by next frame.

BOX: IT WAS A STICKY AUGUST AFTERNOON IN 1964 WHEN DEMDYKE STAGGERED OUT, OUT THROUGH THE BACK DOOR, OUT INTO THE SILENT, SWELTERING GARDEN…

(UNDER)BOX: FAT AND OLD WHEN HE DIED, HE HAD NO JOB. BUT DEMDYKE WAS THE EMPEROR OF ALL THE BIRDS.

2.
Same shot. Harold Demdyke is staggering out into the garden, collapsing in horrifying pain, eyes rolling, spittle flecking his lips. He looks like everybody’s dad after Sunday dinner…white shirt, denim trousers and braces, sleeves rolled up, fat, florid, fiftyish. The bird is gone.

BOX: IT WAS A DIRTY DEATH, STUMBING AND FALLING AMIDST THE YELLOW GRASS AND RUSTED PRAM WHEELS, EYES ROLLING, WHITE FOAM FLECKED ON BLACKENING LIPS.

(UNDER) BOX: IT WAS A SUNDAY. “SEMPRINI SERENADE” WAS ON THE RADIO. THE EMPEROR OF ALL THE BIRDS WAS CRAWILING OUT INTO THE WEEDS TO DIE.

3.
Still hanging onto the same shot and angle…Harold Demdyke is now sprawled full length in the f/g. He is convulsing horribly, sweat standing out on his brow and cheeks. I want to really get a lot of sordid, painful pathos out of this… a fat old man dying in a scruffy garden on a Sunday afternoon. From the b/g running out through the open back door comes the ten-year old Mirrigan Demdyke, dressed however a ten-year old schoolgirl dress on a Sunday in 1964… skirt, cardigan, ankle socks? Something like that. She looks very scared.

BOX: NOW DEMDYKE HAD A DAUGHTER, MIRRIGAN. SHE WAS A BIRD, TOO. SHE WAS A NIGHTJAR.

(UNDER) BOX: MIRRIGAN DEMDYKE WAS JUST TEN WHEN HER FATHER WAS MURDERED BY SORCERORS.

4.
Change angle and shot for second tier of frames. We’re looking at a side-on shot of the prone Harold Demdyke, Mirrigan kneeling the other side of him clutching his hand. He is trembling violently, eyes glazed and bulging. From the look on Mirrigan’s face she is obviously being torn up inside. Her father is dying in terrible pain and there’s nothing she can do to help him. She isn’t crying.

BOX: SHE KNELT ON THE PARCHED, CRACKED MUD AND HELD HIS HAND. HE TRIED TO SPEAK, BUT HIS MOUTH WAS FULL OF DRY BLACK FEATHERS.

(UNDER) BOX: HE COULD SEE THAT HER LIPS WERE MOVING, BUT HE COULD NOT HEAR HER VOICE. HIS EARS WERE FILLED WITH THE BEATING OF TERRIBLE WINGS...

5.
Close in on Harold Demdyke so that all we can see is one hand coming from the bottom of the frame. It is clutching suddenly, tightly, and violently on Mirrigan’s smaller ones which are holding it. Apart from that hand, the frame is taken up with the kneeling Mirrigan, eyes wide in sudden numb shock as a sudden explosion of blood and tissue erupts from her father's chest, which is mercifully off pic.

BOX: ...AND THEN HIS HEART EXPLODED.

6.
Close in still further so that we have a very tight close up of Mirrigan’s dazed, horror-stricken face, blood-covered and dripping, eyes staring down at the carnage which we cannot see.

BOX: SHE DIDN’T CRY. SHE TOOK HER GRIEF TO A COLD AND SILENT PLACE WITHIN HER WHERE SHE KEPT IT AND POLISHED IT LIKE A BLACK AND SECRET TREASURE.

(UNDER) BOX: SHE WAS HER FATHER'S DAUGHTER.

7.
Small frame. Sudden cut to nearly twenty years later. What we have is basically a tight close up of Mirrigan Demdyke, now in her late twenties, as she sits behind the wheel of her car (I'll leave the model up to you). We are looking at her through the rain-splattered windshield, maybe one wiper blade coming into the pic. I’d be nice if we could keep the angle and posture as close as possible to that in frame six to try and get a visual continuity that bridges the sudden twenty year jump.

BOX: NEARLY TWENTY YEARS LATER, SHE STILL IS...

8.
Title frame. The way I see this is as follows... We have the word NIGHTJAR designed so that it's letters are highly stylized and run together, forming almost a regular and elongated rectangle. Making up, in fact, the entire panel border, with holes in the panel where the 'G' an the ‘R' and so on are. Right, so that's the shape of the panel…the word "NIGHTJAR"... the actual picture shows an exterior shot of Mirrigan's car driving through the countryside. The beams of it's headlamps are picking out a sign which bears the word 'SABDEN’. If this is tricky and complicated, or if you genuinely haven't the faintest fucking idea what I'm talking about then please do it how you like.

TITLE: NIGHTJAR.

9.
Okay, I figure we're at the top of the second page now. I had a layout idea for this page too, but, as before, if you don't rate it then ignore it. I figured we could lay the page out into six horizontal bands of equal depth with the band at the bottom of the page being split vertically in two. This will give the page the look of an I-Ching Hexagram and will sort of subliminally tie in with the shot of Mirrigan's granny playing with her yarrow stalks. I know the wide shallow frame-shape is restrictive but I think if we play around with the angels within the frame we’ll get an interesting page with a nice feel of mounting tension emphasized by the rigid panel layout. Right, this first frame has maybe the front wheels of Mirrigan’s Car quite large in the f/g to the left. Mirrigan has walked a few steps away from the car and is standing staring up at the old cottage. There are no lights on within.

BOX: IT IS LATE, AND THE TINY VILLAGE OF SABDEN CROUCHES IN THE DARKNESS ON THE SLOPES OF PENDLE HILL.

(UNDER) BOX: BREATH FOGGING IN THE NOVEMBER AIR SHE LOOKS UP AT THE DUST-BLIND WINDOWS IN THEIR SPLIT AND PEELING FRAMES...

10.
Shot from inside the darkened passageway of the cottage. The front door is open and we can see Mirrigan, a shadowy figure peering hesitantly in.

BOX: …GRANDMA'S HOUSE.

MIR: HELLO?

11.
Mirrigan has now ventured deeper within the darkened house. Maybe we have a tight facial close-up in this frame showing her expression. She looks puzzled and faintly worried. She’s wondering what's happened to her grandmother.

MIR: ANYBODY HOME?

(SMALL) MIR: GRAN?

12.
We are looking from one end of a table. Granma is seated at the other end, looking like a tiny wizened mummy. There are candles arranged around the table which are magically springing to life, igniting without the touch of a taper. The whole scene has a weird and candlelit glow as a result. Mirrigan need not be seen as we are seeing things more or less from her point of view.

F.X: VWHUT!

F.X: VWHUT!

13.
Long shot of the room showing Granny seated and Mirrigan standing, the tiny room with all of it's quaint supernatural detail lit by the candlelight. In front of her on the table Granny has some yarrow stalks (Or maybe Chinese coins which are round with a square hole in the centre) which she has been throwing, presumably in the dark, for an I-Ching reading. Her expression is impassive. Mirrigan’s is slightly reprimanding but nonetheless faintly amused.

MIR: HELLO GRAN.

MIR: STILL NOT LOST THE THEATRICAL TOUCH, I SEE.

14.
This is the first of the two smaller frames on the bottom tier. It just shows an ordinary simple middle-distance shot of the old lady sitting at the table with her coins or yarrow stalks. Her eyes are invisible within the shadows of their sockets.

GRAN: SAY AS YE LIKE, LASS. I’LL NOT BE MYTHERED. THE LIGHTS ARE FOR THY BENEFIT...

15.
Tight close-up of granny. We can now see her eyes. The lids are stitched together with tiny strands of catgut. She is impossibly old.

GRAN: ...NOT MINE.

16.
Okay, this is page three. You'll be relieved to know that I haven't the faintest idea what layout would be best for this bit. Maybe it'd be nice to have the camera sort of circling round the tiny room like a bird, focusing upon the two women, but bringing lots of interesting shapes and sorcerous bric-a-brac into the picture in the f/g. In this first frame Mirrigan looks wryly piqued at her grandmother’s cantankerousness. Grandmother looks totally unconcerned. We can also see a minor detail that I should have mentioned earlier… before granny, on the table, is a tiny agate statuette of a nightjar. I believe they're quite small birds so maybe it could be life-size, without a base or pedestal. It still needn't be terribly conspicuous, just so long as it’s there.

MIR: HMMM.

MIR: GRAN, WHY DID YOU CALL ME HERE TONIGHT?

17.
Main emphasis upon the motionless figure of Mirrigan's grandmother as she calmly tells Mirrigan that she is shortly to die. Maybe one of the minor details in the room could provide some sort of symbolic counterpoint to this revelation.

GRAN: BECAUSE I'VE SEEN THE WHITE CROW, MIRRIGAN. BECAUSE TONIGHT I SHALL BE JOURNEYING TO THE DUSK LATITUDES AND I'LL NOT BE COMING BACK.

GRAN: I’M GOING TO DIE, JUST AS YOUR FATHER DIED THESE EIGHTEEN YEARS SINCE. AND THERE ARE MATTERS TO BE CONCLUDED AND LEGACIES TO BE SETTLED.

18.
Close up of the agate nightjar, maybe one of grandmothers liver-spotted bird-like hands resting lightly upon it.

GRAN: THERE IS THE NIGHTJAR IN AGATE...

19.
Maybe Mirrigan is now holding the tiny stone bird, looking down at it in puzzlement and wonder.

GRAN: IT WAS YOUR FATHER'S WISH THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE IT, ONCE YOU WERE OF AN AGE. ONLY TREAT IT WITH CAUTION. SOMETIMES IT SINGS...

GRAN: THAT IS ALL. I HAD ONLY TO PASS ON THE STONE BIRD...

20.
Sudden dramatic emphasis on grandmother. Maybe a tight close-up.

GRAN: ...AND TO TELL YOU WHO IT IS THAT YOU MUST KILL.