Screenplay

I'm trying to write this screenplay - I have it mapped out.  I love my protagonist, I think she's really endearing and cute.  I know exactly how this story is going to unfold.  But the first five minutes are proving to be difficult.  How do I want this to start?  I want to have a narrator, but can that work without seeming contrived?  Will it seem like I am trying to make a Jean Pierre Jeunet film?  I love saying that name.  I wish I could find a way to say it every day.

It is due in one week.  We started reading each others' screenplays yesterdays, and I want more than anything to write the best one in class; to have mine stand out as being far better than everyone else's.  I feel like the biggest idiot in all of my other classes.  I just want one where I am the best.

So how am I going to do this?  How should Margaret be revealed?  In my outline, we go straight to her.  But that seems too soon.  Granted, this is a 20 minute short, but I think that, for the tone and pacing of this screenplay we need some time before we meet her.  In one of my favorite animated shorts - "The Danish Poet," we don't meet the protagonist - Kasper Jorgenson until a minute in, and that's a 15 minute short.  As a matter of fact, that's another of my favorites with a narrator.  A narrator just adds a whimsical tone.  More proof that I need a narrator.  However, a narrator calls for beautiful, poetic writing that I don't think I'm qualified for.  Oh gosh, decisions decisions.

I want to just watch "A Very Long Engagement" and think this over.  But I have to go to class, and I have to figure out scheduling for project managment, and - OH MY GOSH, I need to leave right now and pay my Maurices bill.  Oh life, can't I just create and live and be happy?