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SH - Chapter 3: First script
🕑 Added 2025-09-01 16:15:02 +0000 UTCAfter finishing cleaning the apartment, Henry sat down at a desk with a computer. Luckily, he had Owen’s memories, so he remembered the password.
'Why is this computer so slow?' Henry thought impatiently.
After a few minutes, it finally booted up, and he saw the desktop full of folders and programs. Why was Owen so messy with literally everything?
“Is this what I think it is…?” Henry thought when he noticed a folder with several Xs in its name.
When he opened it, it was exactly what he thought. The worst part was that the bastard Owen hadn’t even bothered to hide it. Luckily, they were legal videos.
He had to do a deep cleanup of the computer to get it to work faster. After that, he opened a text program. to begin writing his first script.
He stared at the blank page for several minutes, not thinking about the script itself, but about the name he would use from now on.
Would the script be written by Owen Ashford or Henry Harrison?
“Changing my identity will be too difficult, and I’ll only be able to change my name… The best option will be to call myself Owen from now on,” he thought, frowning slightly. It was the fastest and most efficient choice.
After ten minutes, he finally wrote the first words:
Script by Owen Ashford
'It has to be something simple, something that can be made with a $20,000 budget…' Owen thought, quickly discarding a huge number of great films that required more effects, more actors, and above all, much more money.
If he sold his car, he’d get around $30,000 to $35,000. If he used $20,000 for the budget, the rest could support him for the next few months while he focused on this project.
Horror and thriller films fit perfectly with what he needed: stories that could be produced with limited resources yet still become massive hits.
The most important thing now was to find a project that would give him a large amount of money, enough to stabilize his finances so he wouldn’t need to take a job that drained more than eight hours a day.
He recalled The Blair Witch Project (1999), one of the most famous low-budget horror films. That movie had been made with only $60,000 and grossed almost $250 million worldwide.
However, he ruled it out for several reasons. First, the budget was three times what he had. Second, and most importantly, he hadn’t seen all of the sequels, so the franchise did exist here. There was no script to write.
Blair Witch 2 had been an utter disaster. Henry had fallen asleep halfway through and never bothered to finish it. Any movie that put him to sleep was a bad one. The reviews for it had been overwhelmingly negative.
Then he remembered The Gallows (2015). The film tells the story of a group of students at a theater school who decide to pay tribute to the protagonist of a play who had tragically died in an accident twenty years earlier.
The film cost about $100,000 and grossed $43 million worldwide. Cheap compared to Hollywood standards, but still far beyond his budget.
With those options discarded, Owen kept thinking.
Then it struck him: Paranormal Activity (2007). A movie that had left such a good impression on him. It had been filmed with just $15,000 and grossed more than $193 million worldwide!
A smile spread across Owen’s face, he had found the first movie he would create himself, and he would star in it as well.
The budget was acceptable, even lower than what he had originally planned to use. Although, since the film was from 2007, inflation might make it a little more expensive now.
Owen typed the title: "Paranormal Activity." Then he began writing what he remembered from the synopsis:
[The story focuses on a young couple, Katie and Micah, who are tormented by a paranormal entity in their own home. The couple decides to install a camera in their bedroom to capture what’s happening and the strange and terrifying experiences intensify]
Owen looked at what he had written and nodded, it was a good first synopsis. Then he continued with the plot summary:
[In September 2006, the young couple Katie Featherston and Micah Sloat recently move into a new home in San Diego. Katie claims that an “evil presence” has periodically haunted her since childhood and believes it is still following her. Each night, Micah sets up a video camera on a tripod in their bedroom to record any activity that occurs while they sleep.]
'Whoa… I even remember their last names and the exact month they moved,' Owen thought, a little surprised at how precise the information he was writing down was. It was even a shock to him that he remembered the protagonists had moved to San Diego and could recall their surnames.
Then he glanced at the male protagonist’s name: Micah. What kind of name is that?
Without a second thought, he deleted Micah and replaced it with: Drake. The first name that popped into his head, and in his opinion, much better than Micah.
He then began writing the actual script. In his life as Henry, he had read a large number of scripts, so he had an idea of how a screenplay was structured.
As he recalled, the first scene showed Micah (now Drake) filming the house with his new, expensive camera.
[SCENE 1
INT. LIVING ROOM
We find ourselves in a living room. Drake is filming directly at the television, which is turned on. He then briefly shows the rest of the house before walking to a mirror, where we see him for the first time holding the camera. The camera he’s carrying appears more professional and heavier than a typical home-use camcorder.]
Owen continued writing without stopping for a second. Drake filmed a bit more of the house until he finally heard the sound of a car, prompting him to step outside, where his girlfriend Katie arrived in a white car.
Owen remembered that the first time Drake filmed outside, a title appeared on-screen that read:
San Diego, CA
September 18th, 2006
After that, the dialogues between Drake and Katie followed, talking about the camera, exchanges with little importance. The strange part was that Owen remembered those dialogues perfectly.
Owen froze as he realized he was recalling the movie’s dialogue with precision.
“This… is weird,” Owen murmured. Paranormal Activity was a movie he had only watched maybe three times at most, and years ago. It was impossible for him to remember everything: the dialogue, the expressions, the characters’ reactions. Yet it was all there, as if the movie were being projected in his mind.
With this strange sensation, Owen closed his eyes and began recalling the film from beginning to end. Within ten minutes, he opened his eyes with an expression of both confusion and ecstasy.
He remembered the movie perfectly! Every line, every image! This would make the job so much easier. He didn’t know why he suddenly had such a flawless eidetic memory when it came to this film.
Quickly, he tried recalling another movie, and the same thing happened. He could remember it from start to finish with impeccable precision: dialogue, images, everything.
Perhaps it was because, in that black void where he had spent an indeterminate amount of time, he had relived his life countless times? Maybe he had rewatched all the films he had seen dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of times?
He didn’t know, but he didn’t care much to figure out the origin of this ability. What mattered was that he planned to take full advantage of it.
'Who would have thought dying would bring so many benefits?' Owen thought with a strange expression on his face.
Without dwelling any further on this bizarre ability, he continued his task of writing the script for Paranormal Activity.
A week passed.
During that week, besides eating and sleeping, Owen dedicated himself to two main goals: writing the script and selling the car.
His car sold extremely fast. Before that, he gave it a good wash to make it presentable. He managed to sell it in just one week, since a former high school classmate was interested.
It was nice having friends, or ex-classmates, with money. Even if the money came from their parents, it didn’t matter. He quickly pocketed $32,000.
In addition to that, Owen had about $5,500 in his bank account, giving him a total of $37,500. If he used $20,000 on the film, he would have around $17,500 left to live on.
His current apartment was in West Hollywood, an expensive area, but Owen didn’t plan to stay there. Once the lease ran out (in about 11 days), he planned to move somewhere more affordable but still close to central Hollywood.
He was considering moving to Silver Lake or East Hollywood, areas where rent could be about a thousand dollars cheaper than where he was now.
Living in one of those two places, he could spend around $3.000 per month. That meant he could live for almost six months without needing to work a full-time job.
That would give him the chance to dedicate himself completely to the production of Paranormal Activity, which according to his calculations could take roughly three months, from pre-production to distribution.
Besides selling the car, he also managed to finish the script. He even reviewed it and polished certain details. The script was 81 pages long in total.
Even though he had the movie imprinted in his memory, it wasn’t as easy as it had first seemed. The difficulty lay in transferring all those details into proper screenplay format.
Although he had read many scripts as an actor, that didn’t make him a screenwriter. It wasn’t simple for him to write down camera movements, character emotions, and visual details within the context of a technical script.
He had to think carefully about how to structure the scenes and which visual details to include so a director could understand his intentions. He even had to watch a few YouTube courses and buy a book that explained the basics of screenwriting: What is a scene? What is a sequence? and so on.
'Script done, on to the second step,' Owen thought, looking at the Paranormal Activity manuscript in his hands.
