Lonely Island - Location - P. A. Nolte

1/ Dagdiesel.  A small, modern boat is tied to the remnants of the dock.

Verna (Cap): How far out are we?

2/ From what’s left of the rafters, we see three figures enter, light pouring around them into the musty darkness.  Verna, the director, Maurice, the location scout, and Homer, a photographer.  There are plenty of birds, and even though we don’t see anything, a definite presence of something else.  Verna and Maurice are simply admiring the scenery, Homer is snapping picture after picture.

Maurice: About a mile off the coast.

Homer: What’s the name of it again?  Dagdiesel?  What does that mean?

3/ Maurice shrugs.

Maurice: Dunno.  There’s not much info on it.  Conflicting half-truths at best.

Maurice: Should work for the big finale, though.  Nobody’ll mind if we blow a few holes in the wall.

4/ Homer has lowered his camera for the first time, reacting poorly to the thick layer of droppings he’s just stepped in.

Homer: Gotta sweep up after the birds.

5/ Verna puts her hands on her hips.  Content.  The others are equally at ease.  From the same rafter-perched view as before, the birds have scattered.  There is now an inhuman hand, attached to an inhuman shadow, watching the trio.  They don’t notice.

Verna: It’s perfect.

LONELY ISLAND -- GONE FISHING -- DAVID PRESS

PAGE ONE.

1.1 Wide shot: a small motor boat flies from off-panel towards the reference photo to this week’s prompt. We can see the abandoned factory in all its glory and it looks amazing. There are THREE tiny figures in the fishing motor boat.

CAP:                                       My father told me to not approach Dagdiezel. But do you know any 13 year-old whom will not investigate abandoned structures?

CAP:                                       Of course not.

1.2 Half shot of the kids entering the giant abandoned first floor. This is sort of what I’m seeing in my mind’s eye, from Charles Soule’s twitter feed: https://twitter.com/CharlesSoule/status/754769184341581824

CAP:                                       Some say it was abandoned World War 2 base.

CAP:                                       Others say it was for secret munitions during Cold War.

CAP:                                       Mostly—

1.3 Cut to: The three boys CASTING lines off the edge of a GAPING hole in the side of the building. Nothing but cloudless blue sky and ocean in front of them. Same size shot as the previous panel.

CAP [cont’d]:                         It has grand fishing.

1.4 Similar to the previous but this time pull way back and take up the rest of the page where we can see one of the boys PULLING UP a huge SWORD FISH. The fish has rows of stripes that disappear in the blue sky casting it half-invisible.

CAP:                                       The invisible scales are great for reproduction and skipping university courses.

--END--

Lonely Island - An Ominous Endeavor - Perry Kent

Panel 1

External, night, sea. A small leisure boat heaves in the large white-capped waves of the sea. The dark gray clouds roll overhead. The boat is battling its way through a storm.

1. SFX (waves): CRASSSSHHH!

Panel 2

NEIL shouts across the small cabin of the boat as he clings to the cabin railings for his life. The boat heaves around him. NEIL is drenched from head to toe.

2. NEIL: WE GOTTA GO!

3. NEIL: WE'RE GONNA DIE OUT HERE!

Panel 3

SEAN grips the wheel with a mad desperation as he glares intensely out of the window and shouts back his reply. He is also soaked.

4. SEAN: I THINK I SEE SOMETHING!

5. SEAN: I'M GOING FOR IT!

Panel 4

The little boat boat rocks sideways against a large wave as it makes its way to a distant structure. The structure is an ominous concrete platform with concrete buildings. At the corners of each building is a bright light, highlighting it's presence.

6. SEAN (from the boat): IT'S OUR BEST SHOT!

Panel 5

A bolt of lighting backlights the silhouette of the concrete structure, giving it a horrible and ominous appearance. The sea continues to churn around the small boat.

7. SFX (lightning): KAAATTTTSSHHHH!

- END -

Lonely Island – The Island of Schrodinger – MK Stangeland, Jr.

(5 Panels)

Panel 1: A sailing vessel of a science fantasy nature, with a post-apocalyptic design aesthetic – the PHANTOM ADMIRAL. It’s passing through what appears to be an invisible wall of some kind as it sails through a foggy mist, the only indication of the ‘wall’ is a ripple effect in the air around it.

SFX: (Trails off as it goes on) whhmn whhmn whhmn whhmn whhmn whhmn whhmn whhmn…

Panel 2: The bow of the PHANTOM ADMIRAL. The fog around the ship has mostly vanished. There stands CAPTAIN VERNE, a post-apocalyptic-style pirate or mercenary captain of the dashing sort. Next to him is HAWKENS.

HAWKENS: Where are we?

CAPTAIN VERNE: Exactly.

Panel 3: HAWKENS looks to CAPTAIN VERNE, very confused. VERNE has a stupid, mile-long grin on his face, like he’s trolling, even if he’s not.

HAWKENS: What?

CAPTAIN VERNE: heh heh

Panel 4: Panel switches to look out on the water from behind VERNE and HAWKENS. VERNE holds his arm out to indicate to a lone island, one that closely resembles the island from the LONELY ISLAND photo.

CAPTAIN VERNE (1): Welcome to our not-so-humble home.

CAPTAIN VERNE (2): Which, as far as anyone is concerned, doesn’t actually exist.

HAWKENS (1): That supposed to include you?

CAPTAIN VERNE (3): Heh.

CAPTAIN VERNE (4): Yep!

HAWKENS (2): How does that even…

Panel 5: View of the island as the PHANTOM ADMIRAL pulls up alongside it next to the side with the elevated tower.

CAPTAIN VERNE (1): Don’t think about it too hard, kid.

CAPTAIN VERNE (2): The only thing you’ll accomplish is hurting yourself.

(END PAGE)

Lonely Island - All Work - Grant McLaughlin

1 - Interior shot of a factory assembly line, with men and women in matching drab uniforms posted all along it.  Maybe have one figure's uniform be slightly different to help them stand out - maybe a bandanna to keep her hair up.  This is Rosie, our protagonist.  It's not clear what is passing on the conveyor belts, but it looks to be small and metallic.

CAPTION (ROSIE): I've never liked working in a factory.

2 - Close on Rosie.  She is tired and sweaty from exertion.  From this distance, it's clear that the belts are conveying bullets.

CAPTION (ROSIE): The days are long.

3 - Rosie has scooped out some bullets and is loading them into a magazine by hand.  Those nearby are doing the same.

CAPTION (ROSIE): The work is mindnumbing.

4 - Focus on a window in the factory wall.  Below in the foreground, Rosie has paused in her loading to look towards the window.

CAPTION (ROSIE): But there was one thing that always helped me get through it all.

5 - Our last panel is pretty much a dead ringer for this week's photo, except the building is still in active, non-degraded condition.  The important thing is to emphasize its isolation among the waves.

CAPTION (ROSIE): You got to go home at the end of the day.

Why Lonely Island?

No, no, I'm not referring to Akiva Schaffer, Andy Samberg, and Jorma Taccone's comedy trio (although their music and bits are well worth doing so if you're unfamiliar with the group).  What I'm wanting to draw your attention to this week is the picture you see below:

You can find this image on most any "abandoned places" list you'll come across on the internet, but if you start doing any amount of digging, its actual provenance is murky at best.  Variously listed as a "Soviet naval testing station", "Eighth factory shop", "marine weaponry test facility", "Dagdizel", and "Dagdiesel", it does not lend itself to easy discovery.  If you google those latter two terms, most of the hits are for a defunct soccer team or a Russian engineering firm.

Trying to dig deeper into its backstory, the island facility seems to have been built in the Caspian Sea near Makhachkala, a Russian city I'd never heard of that apparently has a population of over fine hundred thousand souls.  It might have gone up during the Second World War.  Or it might have been built later than that.  Either way, it hasn't been used much of late and its web presence is frustrating, to say the least.  Its latitude and longitude are apparently known, although Google Maps, nefariously terrible at water, does not help you actually see it.

The above mystery was a nice bonus when it came to digging into the picture's origins, but the image itself is what really grabs me.  This is a building erected on water.  As far as it appears, there was not any actual land for it to be built upon.  Huge amounts of effort must have gone into the endeavour, and yet, for whatever reason, it was ultimately decided that abandoning the facility was the only acceptable course of action, leaving all that hard work to rot.

Maybe your interpretation is different than my own.  Maybe its mysterious origin is what speaks to you.  Either way, I want to see what this inspires in you, because it's inspired quite a lot in me.