Story Treatment

Here's the treatment I pitched at todays meeting:

“Always Greener”

A half-awake turtle smacks his lips in thirst as he reclines under a worn, propped up umbrella next to a desert highway. The sound of water filling a bucket wakes him from his slumber and directs his attention across the road to a lonely gas station. Along the side of the station he spies a worker turning off a spigot and walking away to the back of the building, leaving a gleaming, beautiful puddle of water.

The turtle rises to his feet with determination, closes the umbrella, and sheaths it into his shell like sword. He looks both ways with a worried expression, then widens his stance, looks ahead, narrows his eyes...and then drops to all fours and moves forward at an excruciatingly slow pace.

Within seconds his is swiped by a speeding car and spins in place like a top, finally coming to rest and popping head and limbs out of his shell. More cars pass, ricocheting him around like a hockey puck until a semi launches him into the air. Sensing no more impacts the turtle pops his smiling head out only to find that his falling from a great height and frantically unsheathes and opens the umbrella just in time.

He lands on the station side of the highway to his relief and scampers over to the puddle, which he reaches just as it dries to nothing. He licks the faucet, then the ground and looks up, spies his umbrella by the side of the road and heads toward it. He reaches the road, stands to reach for his umbrella, but it disappears in a flash on the grille of a passing truck.

The turtle begins to weep in desperation but it begins to rain, and he then laughs and dances with mouth open to the air.

Fade back up and the turtle is standing by the side of the road, sad and in the rain with a cardboard sign reading "DRYNESS".

This is, by no means, finished or complete in the slightest. As you create boards of your own story points (while maintaining character and motivation), try to put your own spin...or just board it out exactly as written here. Either way, everyone's visual take will be different and provide us with invaluable fodder.