Dramedy - Animation - Food
© 2023 | Noya Creative
An aspiring content creator who suffers from a mental disorder becomes unhinged due to a head injury. Through adversity, she creates an unconventional, viral cooking show and embarks on a healing journey.
About
A Veggie Storm is a cooking show with a plot; it’s a story about mental illness, resilience and creativity under extreme circumstances.
On October 20, 2018, I was in a freak bicycle accident that changed the trajectory of my life. As a woman living with Bipolar disorder, I’ve always struggled to find balance and stability. In retrospect, this accident has taught me how to live in harmony with myself.
I believe that in order to create real solutions and resolve the unfortunate outcomes and stigma surrounding mental illness, we should openly discuss the symptoms and the history of trauma. In this series, I aim to put Bipolar and Schizophrenia on full display and invite viewers to observe the colourful aspects of these conditions. Combining food, animation and humour is a pretty entertaining way to present my message.
A Veggie Storm is based on my personal experiences. The story and characters are fictional.
Read the first 10 pages of the pilot!
Fill out the form below to request a copy of the pilot script!
Media and Character Breakdowns
Ella Greenfield, a content creator, commercial actor, and cook/waitress based in Vancouver, Canada, rushes to the grocery store on her bicycle to pick up ingredients for her online cooking show. As she speeds up, the front wheel detaches from her bike and Ella falls on the sidewalk breaking the right side of her face and three front teeth. She sustains a severe concussion and as soon as she gains consciousness, the world around her turns animated. Ella, who suffers from Bipolar disorder starts living in a state of psychosis in a hyper-colourful cartoon reality. Her studio apartment and herself are the only live-action elements in the series, and Ella’s wild imagination takes the viewer on a whimsical journey featuring Bo, her imaginary friend, her animated Jewish family, and other entertaining characters in the forms of fruits, vegetables, animals and humans.
The series features multimedia sequences:
Live action scenes: Ella by herself inside her apartment + Recipe segments (each episode features two plant-based recipes.)
Live action + 2D animation: Ella interacts with other characters outside her apartment.
2D animation sequences: the world and stories of the characters outside Ella’s apartment.
Live Action + 3D animation: the animated characters inside Ella’s apartment.
Motion Graphics: text message sequences featuring motion graphics and VOs. In the recipe segments the ingredients and instructions will appear on the screen in motion graphics while the story continues to play out.
Main Characters
*To read the description click on the name of the character.
Ella Greenfield is an aspiring content creator in her 30s. She lives in Vancouver, Canada and works as a cook, waitress, and commercial actor. Ella sufferers from Bipolar type 2, but she refuses to take medication for it. Her lifestyle is unbalanced, lonely and financially unstable. Though Ella is passionate, proactive, highly creative and imaginative, she’s inconsistent due to rapid cycles of depressive and hypomanic episodes. After her bicycle accident, Ella becomes completely delusional and her world turns into an animated reality.
Fun fact: Ella and her identical twin sister, Bella, were born in a Kibbutz in Northern Israel and moved to Vancouver with their parents in the 90s.
Bella Greenfield is Ella’s twin sister. She is 5 minutes older. She also has Bipolar type 2 but unlike Ella, she is medicated and goes to therapy on a regular basis. Bella works as a marketing director for a tech company in Yaletown, she is financially stable, a social butterfly, and a single mom to five-year-old identical twin boys she calls, The Hooligans. Bella’s vice is one-night stands.
Fun fact: Bella had numerous cosmetic procedures to alter her appearance.
Bo is Ella’s imaginary friend. He “grew” inside Ella’s compost bin while she was recovering from the accident. Bo is a wanna hip-hop artist, internet troll and conspiracy theorist in his 40s. He is obsessed with social media and crypto and he is a micro-influencer who dreams big.
Bo enjoys teasing Ella about her eco-friendly lifestyle
and veganism but he always offers expert advice
regarding Ella’s content creation career.
Fun fact: Bo is a devoted carnivore.
Gary and Ruth Greenfield
Gary (Gershon) grew up in Northern Israel. He fell madly in love with Ruth, a hippie Vancouverite who volunteered
in the Kibbutz where Gary grew up – they got married in Israel, had Bella and Ella there, and moved to Vancouver in the 90s.
Both Gary and Ruth have family members who suffered from mental illness, but the most prominent figure was Gary’s mother (Savta Rivki) who had Bipolar type 1 and schizophrenia. She ended up taking her own life when Bella and Ella were in elementary school.
Fun fact: Ruth is a retired art teacher and an author, and Gary runs a successful gardening business. They live in Kerrisdale and are involved in the local Jewish community activities.
Sad Fact: Ruth passes on at the end of the second season but she stays on the show as a ghost!
Series Arc + Episode Breakdown
Episode 1
On the way to the grocery store, Ella’s front wheel detaches from her bike. She falls, breaks her face and blacks out. As soon as she gains consciousness the world and the characters around her appear to be animated. Bo, her imaginary friend jumps out of her compost bin and suggests that she creates an online fundraising campaign to pay for teeth implants. Ella’s family is helping her but they keep pointing out her failures, flaws and her mental health issues. During a three-day hypomanic episode, Ella creates and launches an online fundraising campaign to fund her teeth surgery.
Episode 2
Exhausted from a 3-night hypo-manic episode, Ella becomes suicidal. She doesn’t check the results of the campaign, assuming it failed. Gary and Ruth discover Ella’s fundraising video on social media – they are astounded by how much money she had raised. Bella is annoyed by Ella’s success and takes it out on The Hooligans. Bo releases a new song and it goes viral. He convinces Ella to invest some of her fundraising cash in a new Cryptocurrency.
Episode 3
Ella gets temporary false teeth to help her feel more confident. Her crypto portfolio is stable and growing so she invests more funds. Bella is suspicious and confronts Ella about being irresponsible with money. Gary’s garden is full of aphids. He starts a war against the pigeons in his yard and sprays hot paprika all over his garden which triggers Ruth with a severe asthma attack. Ella’s investments crashed overnight and she’s left with less than one thousand dollars from her fundraising campaign.
Episode 4
Gary is still bothered by the cause of Ella’s bicycle accident, he decides to hire a private investigator – they find Bella, the Hooligans, and Ella’s fingerprints on the bike but no other leads. Ella is desperately looking for jobs when she receives a call to audition for a role in an insurance commercial, which could potentially pay for the teeth surgery. Bo gets suspended again from social media because of a vegan sex toy gallery he posted on Instagram – all of his social accounts get reported and he is furious. Bella offers Ella a babysitting job. Ella declines the offer.
Episode 5
Ella gets a callback from the insurance commercial. She doesn’t sleep all night before the audition. Late in the morning, She returns home unsatisfied with her performance, feeling defeated. Bo is praying and begging the social media goddess (a shadowy silhouette with a dominatrix vibe) to help him get his social accounts back. Bella has a nervous breakdown and calls Ruth and Gary to take care of the kids while she go to see her therapist, but instead she goes on a hot Tinder date. Ruth convinces Ella to work for her sister as a babysitter.
Episode 6
Ella books the insurance commercial. Bo gets his social media accounts back and immediately starts working on a new controversial song for his big comeback. Bella continues pretending that she is having a nervous breakdown, she drops off the kids at Gary and Ruth’s house and goes on another date. Ella receives the script for the commercial and realizes that she will be playing an injured woman who lost her teeth in a bicycle accident.
Episode 7
Bo’s new video goes viral with over 20 million views, and record labels come knocking – he starts negotiating a deal. Gary and Ruth are going to the Sunshine Coast for the long weekend. Ella comes back from the commercial shoot traumatized and exhausted, she almost falls asleep when Bella calls her begging for help with the kids so she can meet her therapist for an “emergency appointment.” Ella reluctantly complies. Bo receives a phone call that will change his career forever.
Episode 8
Bo is the opening act for Eminem at Rogers Arena and he is obsessively preparing for the show. Gary and Ruth are still away on their Sunshine Coast romantic getaway, they video call Shabbat dinner with Ella and the Hooligans while Bella is out on another Tinder date. After the kids fall asleep Ella looks through Bella’s journal and she finds out that Bella intentionally tried to harm her by twisting the bike’s QR. When Bella comes home Ella confronts her and they get into a huge fight.
Season One
As a result of a freak bicycle accident, Ella, who lost three front teeth and suffered a severe concussion is convinced that the world around her is animated. Bo, Ella’s imaginary friend, appears in her apartment and becomes her confidant and a source of motivation. He inspires Ella to create an online fundraising campaign so she can pay for teeth implants. Ella raises more funds than she pledged so Bo suggests that she invests some of that money in Cryptocurrency but soon thereafter, the coin she invested in takes a nose dive and Ella must find another way to recoup her “teeth money.” She’s chaotically looking for jobs while creating her online cooking show between hypomanic and depressive episodes when she eventually books a commercial shoot for an Insurance company which pays $17k. Bo’s hip-hop/influencer career skyrockets and he becomes an internet celebrity, but he keeps getting suspended from social media platforms for his provocative conduct. Ruth and Gary support Ella financially, they’re eager to find the person who messed with her bicycle and caused the accident, and they try to help their daughters overcome the complexity of their relationship. Bella struggles to be a career-driven single mom, she copes with her frustrations by sleeping around with Tinder dates. At the end of the season, while Ella babysits the Hooligans (Bella’s kids), she reads her journal and discovers that Bella twisted the QR of Ella’s wheel, and the conflict between the two sisters becomes almost impossible to repair.
Season Two
Ella gets her teeth implants. She finally feels cosmetically “normal”, but as soon as she recovers from the surgery COVID starts impacting everyone’s lives for the worse. Ella loses all of her casual cooking/serving jobs, auditions are halted, and her financial situation becomes unbearable… She goes bankrupt. While relying on government support, Ella focuses solely on her cooking show and it goes viral thanks to a few TikTok videos. Her online audience rapidly grows and she decides to write a cookbook called ‘7 Days of Bitchen in the Kitchen’ (to be released at the end of the season.) Bella loses her marketing job and decides to create an Only Fans page – she experiences instant success! Bo’s life and hip-hop career are sinking because of his provocative opinions and conspiracy theories regarding the pandemic but he keeps producing and releasing his hip-hop tracks independently. Gary and Ruth both get COVID and while Gary recovers quickly, Ruth (who has asthma) ends up in ICU and spends 1-2 episodes in the hospital and then she tragically passes on.
Season Three
The Greenfield family is devastated by their loss but Ruth’s spirit keeps appearing in everyone’s dreams and in their day-to-day activities. Gary’s mental health is at rock bottom, he is numb, he stops caring for himself – he turns into a couch potato (literally) from grieving so deeply. Ella and Bella collaborate to help their dad overcome this crisis which brings them closer together. Ella’s online business is generating a substantial income and for the first time in her life, she is experiencing financial stability. She meets a virtual love interest who later turns out to be a catfish. Bella’s Only Fans career is so successful that the father of her children whom she met on a Tinder one-night stand discovers her Only Fans. They immediately get into a long-distance relationship and at the end of the season, they get married and move to Ottowa. Gary decides to go back to the Kibbutz in Israel, he can’t stand life without Ruth in Vancouver. Bo signs with a major record label but gets dropped days before the release of his first album… He doesn’t give up though and keeps releasing music independently. The series concludes when Ella is prescribed anti-psychosis medication, and as soon as she starts taking it the animation around her starts glitching. In the very last scene of the show, Ella is walking down the street and everything turns back to live-action.
