Dancaster's Pardon

Notable Projects
Creator: Ed Gray
Age rating: 17 and older
Captured and forced into labor in a French castle, an English archer with a checkered past escapes when his French lover shows him a weakness in the castle wall. She gets caught in the process, and now he and his renegade mates must retake the castle to save her.
Project collaboration: By Permission
Full synopsis
Dialogue tracks
Discussions (7)
Synopsis: How much can one man take? How much can he lose? And in the end, how much can he save?

These are the movie-poster questions for DANCASTER’S PARDON.

It's 1352, the height of The Hundred Years War between England and France. John Dancaster, a skilled archer still at home in England, is condemned to be hung for a crime he didn't commit. Saved on the morning of his execution by an order from the king sending him to France as part of the garrison protecting Calais, the coastal French recently city captured by the English, Dancaster joins the skirmishes and raids out in the French countryside. Tasked with protecting the headstrong wife of the garrison commander as she rides outside the walls - and with whom Dancaster had been having a secret affair back home - Dancaster falls prisoner to the French as he saves her from being captured. Dancaster is taken to the French walled city of Guines where he must serve two years of wall-repair labor to earn his ransom and freedom.

Twenty months later Dancaster has made friends and enemies inside Guines. His nemesis is the brutal French sergeant who oversees Dancaster and the other laborers. He meets Lucy, a laundress working for the French nobility, starts an affair with her, and falls in love. But she's spoken for - Lucy is the sergeant's woman, though not for long. One day she takes Dancaster into the countryside to meet her father and in the process shows Dancaster a weakness in the town's defensive wall. At the country house, they learn that Lucy's father has died. While they are there, French soldiers arrive looking for her - the sergeant has sent them. She leaves with them so they won't find Dancaster outside the walls with her, but before she goes, they agree to meet at wall the next night. They do. Dancaster climbs back up the rope, but they are spotted by a sentry. Dancaster kills the sentry, but now they both know Dancaster can't stay in Guines. Promising to return, he climbs back down the rope and Lucy drops it behind him. All he has is the dropped rope, but it's the key to the city: It's the exact height of the wall at its weakest and least defended point. He runs off into the night, returns to Calais, reunites with his old raiding party comrades, and convinces them that they can sneak inside Guines, surprise the defenders, and capture the city. Meanwhile, in Guines and unknown to Dancaster, Lucy is tortured and thrown into the dungeon by the sergeant who has learned she helped Dancaster escape.

The rest is history. Literally. There really was a John Dancaster and he really did escape and sneak back into Guines with 30 of his mates, dressed in blackened armor and fully bent on capturing the city for themselves. How that turned out - how he saved Lucy and took on the sergeant in brutal one-on-one combat, how he and his men then offered the city first back to the French and then, when that resulted in a double-cross, to the English, and how that resulted in Dancaster's pardon can all be found in the final act of, well, DANCASTER'S PARDON.

Oh, and one more thing: When the real John Dancaster returned home, it was to a forest near Nottingham. Some historians think he was the actual person behind the Robin Hood legend. But that's another story. The sequel, in fact.

Latest Work

  • Trailer 4 - Premise Trailer Made by C. Martinelli for Ed's Project
    01/10/12
    Creative Notes:
    A premise-trailer 1.28 long. Dialog track clips from the award-winning dialog track. Action-Adventure-Romance along the lines of "Robin Hood". Made by C. Martinelli for Ed's project. Public domain images. AS archive music: "Big Brass" by Foust.
  • Test Movie 3 - Test Movie Proposal
    08/19/11
    Creative Notes:
    The visual tone of this movie should be portrayed with a soft Davinci- like technique. The characters facial features should play an important role in the overall look of the test movie, so I would make them strong and convincing. I'd give Dancaster's Pardon an unique artistic touch that will truly keep it's audience satisfied, and make this test movie one of a kind.
  • Script 3 - Ed's 4th Draft
    05/07/12
    Creative Notes:
    Embedded larger-theme elements throughout (see synopsis opening), added backstory to Dancaster's early scene with Anne, deepened his arc with Lucy, and clarified his motivations at the end.
    PDF

All Work

  • Trailer 3 - Short Premise Trailer Made by C. Martinelli for Ed's Project
    01/10/12
    Creative Notes:
    A short premise-trailer. Action-Adventure along the lines of "Robin Hood". Fast and fun. Dialog clips from the project's award-winning dialog track. Made by C. Martinelli for Ed's project. Public domain images. AS archive music: "Epic" by His Boy Elroy.
  • Trailer 2
    11/29/11
  • Trailer 1 - Drama, Action
    10/28/11
    Creative Notes:
    A take on the romantic and action exploits of our hero, John Dancaster.
  • Test Movie 2 - test storyboard -financial asst.
    08/12/11
    Creative Notes:
    This test storyboard is for the August 2011 test movie financial assistance contest. Dancaster's Pardon is a historical drama with conflict, action, and adventure. It is about redemtion. A movie produced would be live action. History knows John Dancaster by another name.
  • Script 2 - Ed's 2nd Draft
    06/20/11
    Main1308606384._sx304_sy171_
    Creative Notes:
    Revision in response to AS Story Department feedback posted in the project forum here.
    PDF
    RTF
  • Test Movie 1 - Dialogue Track
    05/22/11
    Creative Notes:
    First Dialogue Track for a test movie.
  • Script 1 - Ed's Original Draft
    01/24/11
    Main1336406768._sx304_sy171_
    Creative Notes:
    Based on actual history and on an archer who may or may not have become the real Robin Hood, this is a speculation on how it all might have gone down. Make that "should have gone down." This is a movie, after all.
    PDF
    RTF