All right, I'm gathering your acting crew is mostly young white men (about 5 or six on rotation), so i'll need to develop that story. I'm also guessing the location needs to be local which looks like the mid-east Americas for me.
I've noticed a willingness to do comedy, but I'd like to take a sharp turn away from that to present a new challenge to the actors.
I'm starting right this moment on developing an idea that should be about 15-20 min of footage if you condense it.
For some reason I'm getting that song "
Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" by caged elephant to set the scene based on these factors, my own music wouldn't work much for this type of thing. I'm thinking some scenery similar to Rob Zombie's house of a 1000 corpses or Texas chain saw massacre, mind you not the horror theme, just the old world setting of buildings with the overgrown front yards that house some old junker and the house has boards on the door, busted out windows and some old clotheslines hanging out back, old rusted burn barrels, preferred overcast sky shooting conditions, that sort of thing. Although you're not filming in Louisiana, kentucky, etc. (as far as I know) if should feel like it to a certain extent. Thematically think this shouldn't be horror but should be cold, dark grit.
The first thing that pops up here is that two of the guys are bringing one of the other guys to this remote location to make him dig his own grave and execute him, only it's not clear why. They appear rather nonchalant while the third guy is scared for his life.
They have some whiskey and it gets dark while the prisoner digs the grave and they have some flashbacks that explain the story of how they got there. The story itself is heinous and screwed up on every level as well as being a total clusterf*** something similar to the feel of the end of the movie "Snatch" only more dark and less comedy. I'd even like to use the freeze frame on the face and zoom in effect with the character name underneath them in comic letters for the main characters (since you said you can add in effects, see snatch for this technique).
The pieces of the story (this lets us a use a few other locations, like a seedy bar, and some other cliche archetypes for this kind of story) are interrupted by the various emotions of man to be executed as he goes through the stages of accepting his own death.
backstory element ideas:
-At some point I want someone in a tub with their kidney removed, weakly but calmly making a call from a cell phone to 911.
-I also like the idea of a corrupt cajun accented preacher (should be old man) that is a total sleaze and scum that gets away with it.
-dumb bimbos at a strip club that scam the characters and leave them naked and tied up in a hotel with no money, completely outsmarting them.
that's the base pitch.
I'm not certain about the end because I have to tell the story first, but the first idea that pops in my head is that the man attacks his executions, there is brutal blood and someone dies, but I want their to be some poetic irony to this, which will really depend on the story. Someone walks away, business as usual, with the moon in the background, hit credits.
That's my first thoughts, and I'm sure with the writers here we can take that and turn it into something awesome provided your crew likes the pitch.
If you want a different idea we can try something else but that was my first thoughts.
Also, if you want another project, not writing-centric, I have tons of music, any of which could use a video with heavy effects, but that's more editing and less acting.