Rules of the world
How the living objects of The Mission behave, and how the book is filmed. Rules marked text come from the manuscript (click ¶ to read the lines); rules marked decided are the art director's decisions; rules marked proposed are proposals waiting for a decision.
The law of the stationery (text)
- Every object needs a job. A jobless object is thrown away: "Jobless things go in The Trash Can!" The binderclips call it "the LAW of the stationary".¶ 2
- The Trash Can and The Shredder are the gods and monsters of the office world; the clips fear both.¶ 3
- Never talk to humans. "We are strictly NOT ALLOWED to talk with humans. They can't know we are alive."¶ 1
- Freeze when a human comes. When someone shouts the warning, every object drops where it stands and its human features disappear: "Nobody moved, their human features vaporized."¶ 2
- Features vanish when a human handles them. When Grecs grabs the clips, their "eyes, legs, arms, and hair vanished".¶ 1
- Many objects are alive, not only clips: the Roomba, the lamp Bulb, the staple remover Remover, the laptop Ed, the push-pins and labels on the crime board, a pencil, sticky notes, a mug.¶ 2
- The box. The clips spent over twenty years in a soggy cardboard box, "dark and stuffy".¶ 2
- Scale. The clips are tiny: a nine-inch gap between a shelf and the crime board "was a lot for tiny binderclips".¶ 1
- Things from nowhere. Clips produce objects from pockets they do not have (Quinn's books, her toy phone).¶ 1
How a living binderclip looks (decided)
- A real black binder clip coming alive; true clip anatomy; the face drawn inside the see-through handle loop; nothing ever drawn on the black body; hair as a hairpiece on top of the loop; artistic ink-and-pencil line; long legs with knees; a light outline on every black part. See Character sheets.
- Living objects (Bulb, Ed, Remover, the Roomba, the pins): the real object, photographed, with a doodled face.
How the freeze looks (proposed)
- Alive: drawn face, hair, arms and legs, as on the character sheets.
- Frozen (a human is near or touches them): the drawing is gone; only the real clip remains, lying or standing exactly where the clip stopped, often in a funny pose for its body. The comedy is the gap between the last drawn pose and the plain object.
- In between (the moment of freezing): the drawn lines fade or snap away, a single frame in animation, a motion line in comics.
How the clips are filmed (proposed)
- Clip scenes: a macro lens at the clips' eye level, very shallow depth of field, the human world huge and soft behind them.
- Human scenes: a normal lens at human eye level; clips are small details in the frame.
- Mixed scenes: foreground clips in sharp macro focus, the human softer behind (as on the Bored cover).
- Inside a pocket: "white cloth, patches of sewed in soft black felt", "just slightly translucent": blurry shapes and light through fabric.¶ 1
Light and look by place (proposed, from the text)
| Place | Light in the text | Proposal |
|---|---|---|
| Police station | "fluorescent lighting and tiled floor" | cool fluorescent office light; warm desk-lamp pools at night¶ 1 |
| Riverside | streetlamps with a "sterile, white light", on in daylight | flat, too-clean daylight; slightly cold, uncanny¶ 1 |
| The casino | "yellowish fluorescent lights", "a pool of yellow light on the green felt" | hot yellow-green, smoky, low ceiling¶ 2 |
| The mansion stairs | "velvet-thick shadows" | dark, dusty, a single shaft of light through stained glass¶ 1 |
| The city, autumn | "chilly autumn air", pumpkins "in the middle of November" | late-autumn New England: bare trees, wet streets, grey skies¶ 2 |
| Iraq, 2004 | rain, "a rare occurrence durin' an Iraqi summer" | a different film stock: warmer, grainier, desert dust, then night chaos¶ 1 |
The book in three times (proposed)
- Present day, Saturday to Monday: the main story.
- Memories and dreams (the kidnapping, the foster home): desaturated, softer, a slightly different lens, so they never look like the present.
- 2004–2005 (Connor's View): its own grain and colour, like footage from another film.