Slight format change with this one, because it's more of a trailer for the next one (#5) than a new one in itself, and I wanted to muck around with things a bit. So this should be more cinegraphic. Not nearly as funny, but that's for the real release (which should be a week or two). This is basically how I'd direct the trailer for the movie version of #5 (if John Woo wasn't available).

Tales of the Master #4.5:

Descent into Saffron Darkness.

[opens with shot of a crowded lecture theatre, with students absolutely everywhere, all looking towards the front of the room, where a lecturer (reasonably old) is droning on in a monotone]

Voiceover: The start of another boring year, and already I'm in another bloody lecture. I can deal with that though. I can also deal with all the law students (though this is harder). Unfortunately, things don't stop there. You see, I've got this pain in my stomach.

[shot close in one one particular student, who's slightly bent over, grimacing, and wincing occasionally.]

Voiceover: This isn't just a stomachache, however, and it's not going to go away. You see, there's a Zen Master inside me, and he wants to get out.

Master's voice: Come, Greg, let me out.

VO: No. Not anymore. Not this year. I've finished all that. I'm back at law.

Master: Oh come now. Look around you. Don't you feel the urge to lay about with the sledgehammer of enlightenment? To show these poor cretins what a conflict of ideas really is?

VO: No. Not even a little bit.

Master: Or are you really a law student?

VO: You take that back? Now.

Master: Or what law-boy? You can't do anything to me. I'm part of you. Remember the gym the other day? When you broke the punching bag again? Didn't it feel good?

VO: Um, yeah, but that was only because I hadn't hit anything in a week.

Master: Ah, but remember back a few years to when that luser came in, and you told her that you couldn't convert her text file because you were playing nethack? Then when she retyped all two thousand you deleted the file from the shared directory just as she was saving it? Converting all two thousand words into conjunctions of question marks? Remember that?

VO: Oh yeah.

Master: Don't you want to do it again?

VO: Yes! I mean no, I mean...

Master: Come child, we have work to do, enlightenment to bring. Look around you. Look at all these law students. These belly-crawling slime. They need you.

Voiceover [to audience]: I think about it, and the more I think about it, the more right it seems. So many law students, so few resources. This is a task that requires help. Philosophical help. I really don't have any option. Plus I'm sick of the pain. I let the Master out, and we go to work.

[Screen fades to black, then a saffron robe (empty) is imposed upon the blackness. Underneath is the title (in red) "Tales of the Master #5: In which the Master lays down the law". Excerpts follow, to the backing music of the first Piggy mix from NIN's FDTS#2.]

[First excerpt, during the slow intital opening of the song, is of The Master walking into a lecture theatre (half-full from the front) and sitting down (at the very back). Suddenly all these students rush in (half carrying laptops) jostling The Master, accidentally hitting him with elbows etc. Master has a strange half-smile.]

[Next cut (also during the slow part) is of signing up for tutorial groups. Master walks into empty room containing tute lists, reaches to pick one up, then a voice is heard, "Hey, the tute lists are out". Swarms of people rush in, pushing past The Master, and he is left watching a sea of individuals squabbling over the lists. They leave, and The Master discovers every tute is fully signed up, except for the ones that start before 8am.]

[Song switches to the fast, angry bit. Shot of The Master grabbing the laptop of the person next to him, and heaving it a particularly idiotic yuppie-wannabe in ther front row that has just asked the same question again. Owner of the laptop turns to The Master (looking outraged) and The Master picks up a disk (from the person on his other side), and jams it down the throat of this individual. There's a cry of "but I don't have backups" from the other side.]

[Various scenes of bloody carnage to law students, law lecturers and computing equipment follow, fast-cutting between them all. The Master is a whirling dervish of destruction.]

[Music suddenly ceases, there's a close up shot of The Master (with a robe now pretty-much red and brown), and he simply asks, "Do you know what the Buddha looks like?". Cut to black.]


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