ZOOMERS
Idea for a TV series
in development
objective
ZOOMERS has several plots, the central of which concerns an investigation into a (probable) murder: “Who killed Cammie O’Reilly?” And why? The prime suspects are 7 of her closest Facebook and Instagram ‘friends’- her fellow ‘Zoomers’.
On a thematic level, ZOOMERS is an investigation into how a group of 18 – 30 year old men and women (Generation Z) deals with, responds to, a worldwide pandemic that has radically transformed their lives; forced them outside of their comfort zones, into an unknown and scary future.
TEAM
A team of talented screenwriters is required to create this series. Ideally, most will be young enough to know and understand the world of Generation Z such that the series is credible to its primary target audience. Older screenwriters will benefit from the input of younger ones. Young audiences must be able to relate; to be able to say: “Yes, this is our world. These are the issues in our lives that concern us. These are the things we talk about, and this is the langue we use to communicate with each other.”
The same applies for a production team. It needs to be made up, primarily, of young people who understand new digital technologies in a way that ageing Baby Boomers such as myself do not; who understand the audio-visual language that young audiences are familiar with and expect.
It may be (I would not be surprised) if talented young video editors, with so many ‘windows’ to work with, unconstrained by liner story-telling, can add a dimension to ZOOMERS that would not occur to me and others of my generation.
Whilst the use of music has only been hinted at in the early drafts of two episodes written so far, I would like to see music, the combination of music and images, play a significant role in the series. There are already many wonderful examples of this happening online, in these the early days of pandemic, with music and dance collaboration on Zoom. ZOOMERS could provide wonderful opportunities for online musical collaborations organised by Gabriel.
I believe there would be great value in having video editors and musicians involved in the script development process.
STORY
Cammie, 19 years old, has an idea for a Reality TV show, to be broadcast on her online channel: “Zoomers TV”.
She needs to find just the right combination of Gen Z women and men to ‘star’ in it, without their realizing that they have been carefully selected as participants. Why? Are Cammie’s motives noble? Or is her agenda driven by self-interest?
The ‘cast’ of Zoomers that Cammie assembles come from diverse ethnic, cultural, gender and socio-economic backgrounds. (We meet some of them in Eps# 1 & # 2) They have all been forced into isolation by a pandemic that Cammie refers to as ‘the thing’; their government enforced ‘social distancing’ leaving them with no choice but to conduct their social (and sexual) lives online. Zoom is their preferred form of online communication.
As far as its eight initial 7 new members are concerned, the Zoomers is a self-selecting online club, in which new members must be voted in by a majority of the other members, and can be voted out by the same majority; not unlike a Reality TV show. In reality, Cammie is the puppet-master (at least at the outset), pulling strings; manipulating her fellow Zoomers without them realizing it.
Is Cammie really who she appears to be at the outset: a single-child in her final year of home-schooling during a pandemic, whose mother is a doctor working in a hospital with infected victims? Or is she a highly intelligent and manipulative con artist who plays at being a ‘blonde bimbo’, ‘little girl lost’, ‘gender warrior’ and a variety of other roles when it suits her agenda? Is Cammie suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder, perhaps? Or is this yet another identity she has created for herself?
Cammie’s name is actually Olivia. Cammie is short for ‘chameleon’, the nickname her (now deceased) father, Dan O’Reilly, gave her as a child. Living in her own dream-world, with a vivid imagination, young Olivia revealed a talent for story-telling, impersonation and playing fast and loose with the truth so convincingly that she could easily manipulate her mother and father into letting her have her own way. Her dad, Dan, referred to her, affectionately, as “my little chameleon”, eventually shortened to Cammie. Olivia has been true to her chameleon persona ever since. She is not as she appears to be to her fellow Zoomers. Or to the TV audience, as will become apparent as the story unfolds.
Cammie’s father, whom she saw only rarely as she was growing up, worked for ‘the government’, after a 20 year career in the army. This is all he ever told her; all he would or could reveal to Cammie’s mother, Linda. He died under mysterious circumstances – an apparent suicide from a self-inflicted gun wound that left many questions unanswered. Dan left behind a video diary containing cryptic clues as why he could, as a ‘whistle-blower’ be ‘terminated. The thumb drive containing this diary has only recently come into Cammie’s possession. Is what Dan reveals unlikely concatenation of paranoid conspiracy theories, or was Dan privy to government secrets that people in high places did not want to see the light of day? It is Cammie’s mission in life (one of many) to find out why her dad died under the circumstances he did. And if he was murdered, why? And by whom?
Cammie’s dream at the outset, we learn as the story unfolds, is to create a web series unlike anything broadcast online before; a series that challenges the conventional wisdom of what can (and can’t) be broadcast, in content, form and style. “No rules,” she declares to her ‘personal video diary’. She wants, she declares to herself, to sail as close to the wind as she can, in terms of censorship, in exploring the sexual desires, frustrations and practices of her generation as they grapple with forming intimate relationships without physical contact.
Cammie’s possible motives for gathering together the members of this ‘tribe’ include.
Loneliness. Cammie is an only child. Her mother and father divorced when she was very young. She has never known what it is like to be part of a family and wants to create an ideal family for herself. “The family of my dreams,” she confides one night to a fellow Zoomer.
Anthropological research. When she finishes school, and if the pandemic ends, Cammie wants to study anthropology. She is not so much interested in primitive cultures but in the various ‘tribes’ that make up the Australian culture of which she is a part. What better way than to create a ‘tribe’ from scratch and observe how it grows.
Fame and fortune. If ‘Zoomers TV’ takes off as a web series, goes viral, she can make a lot of money and become famous.
Whatever Cammies motivations might have been, the 8 Zoomers all revel in the new online connections they have made as a result of Cammie’s efforts. They enjoy being part of an alternative ‘family’ or ‘tribe’ and perhaps (just perhaps?) this is what Cammie hoped for all along?
When Cammie does share with her fellow Zoomers her ideas about their collaborating in a production of Reality TV web series, reactions are mixed. The idea is voted down, much to Cammie’s disappointment. The Zoomers agree, in a vote, that all their interactions with each other are private; not to be either recorded or shared with others. Do they all abide by this pact? Or is one (perhaps more than one) recording….everything? Clues that this might be the case gradually emerge.
It eventually becomes apparent to all the Zoomers that all of their Zoom conversations have been recorded; that shared intimacies they thought to be private are, potentially, in the public domain; leaves many of them open to a form of blackmail: “Do as I say or the most private and intimate details of your life will be posted on the internet – including your online sexual encounters.”
This implied threat gives enormous power to whichever of the Zoomers is responsible for recording their interactions. Cammie is the prime suspect, but she insists that she is not guilty. Is she telling the truth? By her own admission she is a liar, though she now insists that she was lying when she said she was a liar.
It could be that the person recording is not one of the Zoomers but an anonymous hacker. If so, who is it? And who has installed a tiny CCTV camera in Cammie’s bedroom and is monitoring all that goes on in it without Cammie’s knowledge? Her mother? Someone whom she has pissed off with her online and Dark Web investigations into her father’s death? Or is there another explanation? And who is in control of the tiny drone that is spying on, harassing, Cammie?
The breach of the Zoomer’s agreed upon privacy rules comes to a head when edited versions of their Zoom interactions start to appear online under the banner: ‘Zoomers Uncut’ – an online Reality Web series that attracts only a small online audience at first.
It is not just the privacy breaches that give rise to panic amongst the eight ‘Zoomers’, but the way in which their intimate online Zoom interactions have been edited together to change the context (and hence the meaning) of what has actually transpired between them.
Whoever is in control of ‘Zoomers Uncut’ has not only appropriated all of the interactions between the eight, but has hacked into their computers and vacuumed up all information about them stored there and in the Cloud – their private diaries, family photos, personal emails, shared sexts, sex videos, visits to porn sites, encounters with police… everything. This has a huge (and damaging) impact on the lives of them all, whilst at the same time turning them all into internet celebrities. Some enjoy being celebrities; some do not. Rifts between them appear: “Should we be outraged by this invasion of our privacy? Or should we welcome it with open arms, now that we are famous?”
Just who is in control of the ‘Zoomers Uncut’ web series (again, Cammie is the prime suspect) becomes increasingly important as the ‘series’ goes viral and it becomes clear that whoever is producing ‘Zoomers Uncut’ with pirated personal material is now making a lot of money through paid advertising. The Zoomers attempts to have ‘Zoomers Uncut’ removed from the internet only serve to make it even more of a ‘must-see’ web series.
‘Zoomers Uncut’ seems (and the operative word is ‘seems’) to be in sync with Cammie’s original plan to create an online web ‘Reality TV’ series that would, as she told her fellow Zoomers, “Go viral”. But is she responsible for ‘Zoomers Uncut’? Or is it one of the other Zoomers? Or a random hacker from anywhere in the world who has stumbled upon the ‘Zoomers’ and saw a way to exploit and monetize their shared intimacies?
The weight of evidence points to Cammie as being responsible for the recording and ‘Zoomer Uncut’ and provides a few of her fellow Zoomers with ample reasons to kill her. If, indeed, she has been killed?
Nothing in ‘Zoomers’ is quite what it seems to be, however. (Think “Twin Peaks”). Multiple plot twists and turns will keep the audience uncertain, from episode to episode, as to what is real and what has been staged by Cammie including, perhaps, her own ‘death’. Is the body we see in Episode One actually Cammie’s? All the circumstantial evidence suggests that it is, but might she have ‘faked’ it? If so, why? Or is the body real, but not Cammie’s? And who is monitoring all that takes place in Cammie’s bedroom through a tiny CCTV camera installed in the ceiling? And why? Has her mother installed the tiny camera to keep an eye on her errant daughter? If so, has the footage fallen into the hands of someone who has good reason to want to monitor all that Cammie is up to in her life? Has Cammie, in her investigations into the Dark Web, in search of clues as to why her father died as he did, opened up a hornet’s nest and led her father’s enemies, who may be responsible for his death, to fear that Cammie is getting too close for comfort to discovering the truth; a truth that many people in high places do not want to be revealed.
Underlying the murder-mystery and thriller plot element of ‘Zoomers’ (with no apologies for the mixing and melding of genres) the series is intended to be challenging, thought-provoking, provocative and to both give members of Generation Z a voice and a form of entertainment that speaks to the world they lived in before the pandemic and the one tht they must adjust to for month, or possibly years, to come.
There are many subplots in ZOOMERS. These relate primarily to the shifting relationships between the 8 central characters and to their relationships to the people close to them in their lives – her mother, Linda, in the case of Cammie; her grandmother Nai Nai, in the case of Li Na; her relationship with her extended family in the case of Fatima.
NOTE: The number of Zoomers could well be increased during the next stage of development, when young screenwriters join the production team.
THEMES
What the young Zoomers have in common is that they have all recently been confronted by harsh realities of life that have hitherto eluded them. They all know someone they love, someone they have made love with, a friend, who has contracted ‘the thing’; someone who has died. They are all worried, scared and/or terrified of what the future holds for them. Is there any future for them if no vaccine for the virus is found? They must all deal, for the first time in their young lives, with the existential questions arising from the possibility that they too could die in the cruel indiscriminate ‘death lottery’ that they have no choice but to have been given tickets in. How resilient are they in the face of hardship? How resilient must they become to survive emotionally and psychologically as weeks of isolation extend into months, with no end in sight?
Cammie, Sandy, Li Na, Gabriel and Fatima, (all of whom we meet in Episodes One & Two), along with three others yet to be created, (a diverse, multi-cultural group) each ‘imprisoned’ in their bedroom, chat intimately, animatedly (and with generous doses of black humour) about ‘meaning of life’ questions. As lucky beneficiaries of 21st C safety-netted Australian consumerism, they have largely they have, until lately, been able to live carefree, responsibility-free, pleasure-driven lives in which ‘likes’ on social media, Tik Tok, playing Fortnite and the posting of ‘selfies’ have been highlights. They have no choice now but to question their priorities; to question everything in their lives that they have taken for granted.
Denied the chance to kiss, to cuddle, to touch, to be in the same room with each other, the Zoomers have no choice but to conduct their emotional and sexual relationships online. They learn that whilst online romance is difficult (to say the least!), and while cyber sex may be safe, it is no substitute for the joys of kissing, cuddling a warm partner; for making love. (Trying to replicate physical intimacy in the privacy of their bedrooms gives rise to a good deal of humour and, as one Zoomer discovers when his mother walks in during an R-rated cyber sex session, being able to lock your door from the inside becomes an issue for young men and women who crave privacy.)
The world these young Zoomers have grown up in no longer exists. It was a world in which there were few constraints (financial or cultural) on what they were allowed to do. Parents and grandparents, more concerned with protecting them from harm (physical and emotional), nurturing their self-esteem, with being ‘friends’ to their kids and grandkids and making them ‘happy’, have not equipped these young adults with the resilience they need to deal with hardship, uncertainty and the possibility that they could catch ‘the thing’. Their obsession with individual ‘rights’ is challenged in a way that it has never been before as they have no choice but to live without so much they have taken for granted and learn to live within boundaries imposed by government edict. Questions of gender identity and sexual orientation, so important until just recently, now seem so much less relevant now that the big questions they face have to do with: “How can I pay my rent? How can I complete my university degree? Will I ever have a job?” And, of course, “Might I die alone, in a hospital, with not even the opportunity to say goodbye to my mum, my dad, my brothers and sister.” Or, in the case of Fatima, her grandmother, Nai Nai.
The culture that has nurtured the Zoomers into young adulthood, obsessed with consumerism, celebrity worship and questions of gender and identity, (to name but a few influences) has taught them next to nothing about how to identify themselves as members of the planetary tribe that is the human race.
The Zoomers, also known as members of ‘Generation Snowflake’, must learn fast how not to melt as the world they have grown up in, that is so familiar to them, that they have taken for granted, crashes and burns around them.
As with the kids stranded on an island in “Lord of the Flies” the Zoomers, stranded in cyberspace on ‘Zoomer Island’ (as one member describes it) are faced with the challenge of re-inventing an online tribe that fulfils their emotional needs in a way that the increasingly discredited and fraying mainstream culture of which they are a part cannot; a tribe that inculcates its members with the new set of values and priorities that see the health and continuity of the tribe as more important than the rights of each individual member. All this in theory, of course. In practice it’s a different matter!
As the world grinds to a halt the Zoomers are on a sharp learning curve; their emotional, social and economic survival depending, more than ever before in their lives, on focusing less on their individual rights and questions of identity, than on caring and sharing with other members of their ‘Zoomer tribe’ and the larger Australian and world ‘tribes’ that they must now acknowledge they belong to. As their relationships with each other deepen and become more complex, this is how they come to see themselves – as members of a tribe that is not all that different from tribes in ancient times, other than the size of the tribe.
Just as their ancestors, in pre-historic times, sat around actual fires, (warm, with flickering flames and hot coals) these young Zoomers sit with their warm laptops, their iPads and smart phones in their bedrooms, dealing with existential angst as they confront an unknown (and unknowable) future, and the very real possibility that one or more of them may not survive the pandemic.
The development of ZOOMERS, to this point, has taken me one month. It will inevitably undergo many changes in subsequent drafts, when new writers join the team and when new characters come into being as a result. It has always been my wish that each new (and preferably young) screenwriter, would take ‘control’ of a character of their own creation.
Fast-moving, entertaining, challenging, confronting, outrageous, dangerous and often frivolous drama though ‘Zoomers’ will be (again, think “Twin Peaks”), beneath the surface there is a seriousness of intent. These kids, a microcosm of their generation, are asking the same questions, facing the same challenges we all face as we look to an uncertain future. The questions they ask are not that different from the questions all cultures have asked of themselves since time immemorial, and neither are the answers.
James Ricketson
23rd April 2020
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