Docudrama - The Batavia

Good day to you,

I finally have a negative antigen test so I will be back to work sometime this week. I still have to take a PCR test tomorrow. So after that comes back negative, I'll be back to work in a day job I have no interest in. I've been applying to a few creative vacancies, hoping to hear something back. I'll just to keep trying.

As for #55Genres. I am onto genre 22 - a docudrama.

I have until the 16th January to complete a short docudrama. I think I am going to settle on the brilliantly exciting and terrifying story of the Batavia mutiny. It is a story set in 17th century. Starts in the Netherlands and ends up off the west coast of Australia. There is a mutiny, a shipwreck, a massacre and a little bit of an all out war. It's a crazy story I still do not believe how it hasn't been shown on film yet.

Here is a Wikipedia article on in it. Batavia Ship

The Batavia replica was constructed between 1985 and 1995 at the Bataviawerf (Batavia shipyard) in Lelystad, The Netherlands. Image: Malis via Wiki Commons

So I am going to probably scale it down to as low a budget as possible. Maybe write just a tiny fraction of the story. You know, this story actually got me my first placement in any writing contest ever. I entered The 2020 ScreenCraft True Story & Public Domain Competition with a quick Word document retelling the story and it got to the Quarter Finals. Yay me. I figure if I actually put a lot of effort into it maybe I could actually write a screenplay for it.

It's a bit daunting though to be honest. I have thought about asking a writer for help but then I'm sure they have their own stories they want to write. There is also a part of me that thinks "stick to stupid comedies where you won't embarrass yourself quite as much". That's not a worry though. Most writers have some form of self-doubt and I'm comfortable with it. I still end up writing so it's nothing to take too serious.

So for the short, I mentioned how the story deals with a mutiny on board a 17th century ship, a shipwreck, a massacre and battle. All of this sounds very expensive so I am going to have to find a small piece within the story to dramatize. There are some moments that stand out.

1. Commander and senior merchant Francisco Pelsaert publicly admonishing the ship's skipper Ariaen Jacobsz after he became drunk and insulted Pelsaert in front of other merchants. This seems to have been the final straw for Jacobsz who received help from Jeronimus Cornelisz in organizing the mutiny.

This might be a little easier to film. One setting - a bar. Some actors for the roles. A lot of talking. Maybe not enough action? It seems like it's ending will be a lot of foreboding though and not a real end to the short itself.

2. Once Cornelisz had taken over command of the survivors he set about massacring them. First to establish control and cull the number of survivors to make their food supplies last as long as possible. Eventually the massacres occurred for sport as Cornelisz (most definitely a psychopath) and his supporters enjoyed it. They had moved some survivors to another small island which was very small, very barren. Mostly a piece of flat land not much bigger than a football field. His twisted supporters hunted down some survivors on this football field island in the dead of night.

This might be more action packed. It's scary as the twisted supporters have the only weapons and the survivors really are defenseless where nowhere to hide. But there isn't much story going on except a chase. It's pretty dark and I don't know if there is anything else to it.

3. SPOILER ALERT:

After Cornelisz and his supporters are apprehended, they receive a trial and are executed. Two are abandoned on mainland Australia, never to be heard of again. These two were the first Europeans to have permanently lived on the Australian continent. Others were tortured and executed by hanging, while several others were flogged, keelhauled or dropped from the yardarm on the later voyage back home.

As for Cornelisz, he was hanged after his hands were chopped off, supposedly by a hammer and chisel.

For some reason that image of an executioner putting a rusty chisel over someone's wrist is spine shivering, right? If it's up to me I'm not filming the actual chop of the hands. But seeing the chisel hover over a wrist is enough to leave an uneasy feeling in my stomach.

Which is great! No? It's memorable? (I promise I'm mostly all sunshine and rainbows!)

So could I do an execution scene? Maybe just that part? And have a character or two sort of relay information about what he just did to deserve this horrifying death?

I don't know if I could knit all three scenarios together into one series of events? Again, I want to keep in mind a budget for any future filmmaker. Next Sunday I hopefully will have a good idea written down.

Then I move onto Teen Drama!

Thanks for reading

Kevin Kevin