Something always bothered me about super hero movies and stories… What exactly happens to all the homes and business the “heroes” destroy in an effort to “save the day?” Usually quite a lot, especially if you’re a director like Christopher Nolan or Michael Bay. So it occurred to me that the stories of the cleanup and restoration of the hero damage would actually make better stories than some of the actual films. This is where the idea for “Epic Claim” first came about.
In general though I thought it would be fun to take something as mundane as a call to the insurance company and give it a supernatural twist (as most of my films/stories have). The trick was to make everything seem fairly common, but through the right music and dialogue hint at something a little more extraordinary.
So, when it came to the narrative I thought it would be fun if the character was the one telling the story. Starting with an opening scene showing clearly a man of business sets up the idea of who the character is, which is then expanded upon in the second scene. Then as most irate customers are, the tone of the conversation escalates. When it came to the script however, I didn’t write out every single nuance to the story though. I left myself with more of an outline of the events and gave myself room to improvise and let my acted anger seem more natural. However I was left with a slight problem…how do you end such a short concept story like this. What’s the twist? Having a sudden spark of inspiration I thought about a larger universe of heroes that could exist in this fictional world. Around the halfway point in the film my character talks about “not keeping up with heroes,” as if there is more than one in the world. This gave me a way to uniquely guide the tale to show that what appeared to be a normal person, was just another hero in disguise.
Unlike many of my projects though, I couldn’t quite piece together a solid title for the project. This is where I asked my brother’s girlfriend at the time (now sister-in-law) to help me with this strange word and theme association. Taking her suggestion of “Epic Claim,” I knew I had the perfect title to describe exactly what the concept of the project was about. An insurance claim of epic proportions.
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