A Stain on the Hardcourt
Within the flickering fluorescent glow of a Winnipeg convenience store, strange whispers of a local basketball team's uncanny fortune and precipitous fall begin to coalesce into an ominous premonition.
### **A STAIN ON THE HARDCOURT**
**A Film/TV Treatment**
**1. LOGLINE**
After discovering a forgotten basketball jersey with an otherworldly stain, a pragmatic convenience store clerk and two siblings must confront a creeping supernatural entity that fueled their high school team's meteoric rise before consuming it from within.
**2. SYNOPSIS**
On a rain-slicked night, JESSIE, a meticulous convenience store clerk, discovers a Northwood Wolves basketball jersey in the lost and found. The jersey, number 11, bears a strange, iridescent smudge that gives off a sickly-sweet, metallic odor. His co-worker, ANABELLE, links the oddity to the high school team's recent, inexplicable collapse after a legendary winning streak, and the superstitious rumors surrounding their inscrutable coach, MRS. PETROV. Their conversation is interrupted by Anabelle's older brother, CARSON, the team's former star player, who is visibly haunted by the season's events. He reveals Petrov's bizarre pre-game rituals, confirming that something felt deeply unnatural about the team's success. The mystery escalates when ORSON, the team's current star, bursts into the store in a state of terror. He claims the lines on the school's basketball court began to pulse with the same iridescent energy as the stain on the jersey, as if the court itself was being devoured. The abstract horror becomes terrifyingly real when the same shimmering stain begins to slowly manifest on a toy basketball in the store, proving the malevolent force has followed them and is no longer contained to the hardcourt.
**3. CHARACTER BREAKDOWN**
* **JESSIE (20s):** The Pragmatist. Methodical, grounded, and a firm believer in logic and order. He manages the convenience store with a quiet efficiency. His worldview is fundamentally challenged when confronted with an unexplainable phenomenon, forcing him to move from cynical observer to terrified participant.
* **ANABELLE (18):** The Intuitive. Sharp, observant, with a latent curiosity for the strange and unexplained. While her peers are scrolling through social media, she's looking for the patterns beneath the surface. She is the first to connect the dots and believe something supernatural is at play.
* **CARSON (19):** The Haunted Veteran. Anabelle's older brother and the former star player of the Wolves. He carries the weight of knowing the team's success was built on something "wrong." Once a confident athlete, he is now withdrawn and burdened, serving as the bridge between the team's past glory and its present horror.
* **ORSON (17):** The Catalyst. The current star player who inherited Carson's number and became the focal point of the coach's rituals. He is the direct witness to the supernatural event, arriving as a frantic, terrified harbinger who brings the immediate threat crashing into the other characters' lives.
* **MRS. PETROV (40s, mentioned):** The Architect. The enigmatic and unnerving new coach. Her presence is felt through the other characters' stories. Described as cold and intense, with a polished obsidian pendant she uses in strange rituals, she is the suspected source of the team's unnatural prowess and its subsequent downfall.
**4. SCENE BEATS**
* **THE DISCOVERY:** In the quiet, sterile environment of a late-night convenience store, Jessie discovers the maroon #11 jersey. He is immediately unsettled not by the item, but by the *stain*—an iridescent, oil-slick smudge that smells of rot and metal. It is an anomaly, a disruption to his orderly world.
* **THE THEORY:** Anabelle introduces the central mystery: the Wolves' bizarre collapse. She voices the town's hushed, superstitious theories about the new coach, Mrs. Petrov, and her "deal with the devil." Jessie scoffs, attempting to ground the conversation in logic, but the physical evidence of the stain defies his rational explanations.
* **THE INSIDER'S TESTIMONY:** Carson arrives, his presence heavy and grim. He sees the jersey and his demeanor shifts from weary to haunted. He validates Anabelle's fears, describing the team's "unnatural synchronicity" and revealing Petrov’s chilling rituals—making players touch her obsidian pendant and whispering a guttural, unknown phrase to Orson before games. The threat is given a source and a methodology.
* **THE WITNESS:** The bell jingles frantically. Orson, the current #11, stumbles in, drenched and hyperventilating. His raw, visceral terror immediately shatters the theoretical nature of the conversation. The horror is no longer a memory; it is an active, present danger.
* **THE VISION:** Orson recounts his horrifying experience in the empty gym. He describes the court's painted lines pulsing with the same sickly, iridescent light as the stain on the jersey. He speaks of the court feeling "alive" and then being "drained" or "consumed," as if its very essence was being siphoned away. This confirms the stain is a mark of a much larger, parasitic phenomenon.
* **THE CONTAGION:** As Orson’s story hangs in the air, Anabelle’s eyes fix on a cheap, plastic souvenir basketball on the counter. A faint shimmer appears on its surface—the same sickly green and purple. It grows slowly, steadily. The camera pushes in on the shimmering ball as the characters watch in frozen horror. The entity is not confined to the gym. It is infectious, it has followed them, and it is here, in their small, brightly-lit sanctuary. The mundane has become menacing.
**5. VISUAL STYLE**
* **TONE:** Suburban Gothic meets Cosmic Horror. The story grounds its supernatural elements in a mundane, recognizable setting, making the intrusion of the uncanny all the more jarring. The feeling is one of creeping dread rather than jump scares.
* **LIGHTING:** A stark contrast between the harsh, sterile, fluorescent lighting of the convenience store and the deep, wet darkness outside. The iridescent stain should be a source of its own unsettling light, catching and refracting the artificial light in an unnatural way. It should feel alien.
* **COLOR PALETTE:** The world is rendered in a palette of muted, rainy-night blues, grays, and damp concrete. This is punctuated by the deep, blood-like **maroon** of the Wolves' jersey and the sickly, shifting **greens and purples** of the supernatural stain. The bright, artificial colors of the store's products should feel garish and out of place as the dread builds.
* **CAMERA & ATMOSPHERE:** The film will open with stable, locked-off shots, reflecting Jessie's orderly perspective. As the tension mounts, the camera will become more subjective and claustrophobic, using subtle push-ins and tight, handheld shots that mirror the characters' rising panic. The incessant, drumming rain on the windows and roof is a constant auditory presence, enhancing the sense of isolation and entrapment. The final shot is a slow, terrifying zoom onto the shimmering plastic basketball, its unnatural glow reflecting in the characters' wide, horrified eyes.
**A Film/TV Treatment**
**1. LOGLINE**
After discovering a forgotten basketball jersey with an otherworldly stain, a pragmatic convenience store clerk and two siblings must confront a creeping supernatural entity that fueled their high school team's meteoric rise before consuming it from within.
**2. SYNOPSIS**
On a rain-slicked night, JESSIE, a meticulous convenience store clerk, discovers a Northwood Wolves basketball jersey in the lost and found. The jersey, number 11, bears a strange, iridescent smudge that gives off a sickly-sweet, metallic odor. His co-worker, ANABELLE, links the oddity to the high school team's recent, inexplicable collapse after a legendary winning streak, and the superstitious rumors surrounding their inscrutable coach, MRS. PETROV. Their conversation is interrupted by Anabelle's older brother, CARSON, the team's former star player, who is visibly haunted by the season's events. He reveals Petrov's bizarre pre-game rituals, confirming that something felt deeply unnatural about the team's success. The mystery escalates when ORSON, the team's current star, bursts into the store in a state of terror. He claims the lines on the school's basketball court began to pulse with the same iridescent energy as the stain on the jersey, as if the court itself was being devoured. The abstract horror becomes terrifyingly real when the same shimmering stain begins to slowly manifest on a toy basketball in the store, proving the malevolent force has followed them and is no longer contained to the hardcourt.
**3. CHARACTER BREAKDOWN**
* **JESSIE (20s):** The Pragmatist. Methodical, grounded, and a firm believer in logic and order. He manages the convenience store with a quiet efficiency. His worldview is fundamentally challenged when confronted with an unexplainable phenomenon, forcing him to move from cynical observer to terrified participant.
* **ANABELLE (18):** The Intuitive. Sharp, observant, with a latent curiosity for the strange and unexplained. While her peers are scrolling through social media, she's looking for the patterns beneath the surface. She is the first to connect the dots and believe something supernatural is at play.
* **CARSON (19):** The Haunted Veteran. Anabelle's older brother and the former star player of the Wolves. He carries the weight of knowing the team's success was built on something "wrong." Once a confident athlete, he is now withdrawn and burdened, serving as the bridge between the team's past glory and its present horror.
* **ORSON (17):** The Catalyst. The current star player who inherited Carson's number and became the focal point of the coach's rituals. He is the direct witness to the supernatural event, arriving as a frantic, terrified harbinger who brings the immediate threat crashing into the other characters' lives.
* **MRS. PETROV (40s, mentioned):** The Architect. The enigmatic and unnerving new coach. Her presence is felt through the other characters' stories. Described as cold and intense, with a polished obsidian pendant she uses in strange rituals, she is the suspected source of the team's unnatural prowess and its subsequent downfall.
**4. SCENE BEATS**
* **THE DISCOVERY:** In the quiet, sterile environment of a late-night convenience store, Jessie discovers the maroon #11 jersey. He is immediately unsettled not by the item, but by the *stain*—an iridescent, oil-slick smudge that smells of rot and metal. It is an anomaly, a disruption to his orderly world.
* **THE THEORY:** Anabelle introduces the central mystery: the Wolves' bizarre collapse. She voices the town's hushed, superstitious theories about the new coach, Mrs. Petrov, and her "deal with the devil." Jessie scoffs, attempting to ground the conversation in logic, but the physical evidence of the stain defies his rational explanations.
* **THE INSIDER'S TESTIMONY:** Carson arrives, his presence heavy and grim. He sees the jersey and his demeanor shifts from weary to haunted. He validates Anabelle's fears, describing the team's "unnatural synchronicity" and revealing Petrov’s chilling rituals—making players touch her obsidian pendant and whispering a guttural, unknown phrase to Orson before games. The threat is given a source and a methodology.
* **THE WITNESS:** The bell jingles frantically. Orson, the current #11, stumbles in, drenched and hyperventilating. His raw, visceral terror immediately shatters the theoretical nature of the conversation. The horror is no longer a memory; it is an active, present danger.
* **THE VISION:** Orson recounts his horrifying experience in the empty gym. He describes the court's painted lines pulsing with the same sickly, iridescent light as the stain on the jersey. He speaks of the court feeling "alive" and then being "drained" or "consumed," as if its very essence was being siphoned away. This confirms the stain is a mark of a much larger, parasitic phenomenon.
* **THE CONTAGION:** As Orson’s story hangs in the air, Anabelle’s eyes fix on a cheap, plastic souvenir basketball on the counter. A faint shimmer appears on its surface—the same sickly green and purple. It grows slowly, steadily. The camera pushes in on the shimmering ball as the characters watch in frozen horror. The entity is not confined to the gym. It is infectious, it has followed them, and it is here, in their small, brightly-lit sanctuary. The mundane has become menacing.
**5. VISUAL STYLE**
* **TONE:** Suburban Gothic meets Cosmic Horror. The story grounds its supernatural elements in a mundane, recognizable setting, making the intrusion of the uncanny all the more jarring. The feeling is one of creeping dread rather than jump scares.
* **LIGHTING:** A stark contrast between the harsh, sterile, fluorescent lighting of the convenience store and the deep, wet darkness outside. The iridescent stain should be a source of its own unsettling light, catching and refracting the artificial light in an unnatural way. It should feel alien.
* **COLOR PALETTE:** The world is rendered in a palette of muted, rainy-night blues, grays, and damp concrete. This is punctuated by the deep, blood-like **maroon** of the Wolves' jersey and the sickly, shifting **greens and purples** of the supernatural stain. The bright, artificial colors of the store's products should feel garish and out of place as the dread builds.
* **CAMERA & ATMOSPHERE:** The film will open with stable, locked-off shots, reflecting Jessie's orderly perspective. As the tension mounts, the camera will become more subjective and claustrophobic, using subtle push-ins and tight, handheld shots that mirror the characters' rising panic. The incessant, drumming rain on the windows and roof is a constant auditory presence, enhancing the sense of isolation and entrapment. The final shot is a slow, terrifying zoom onto the shimmering plastic basketball, its unnatural glow reflecting in the characters' wide, horrified eyes.