Let's write a movie. How hard could it be?

general topics
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*Clears throat

I want to start by saying that I make a lot of declarative statements below, but that’s just the way I write. This is all just riffing and I don’t imagine any of it to be set in stone.

Yes! The unbalancing effect of the transcendence exodus would initiate the downfall, hoovering up resources whilst destabilising the already ravaged environment.
Now, the destabilisation could invoke all sorts of apocalyptic memes. There should probably be a flood of some kind, biblical in proportion, with deep seated memories ingrained into the survivors, perhaps a zombie plague of some kind thrown in for good measure.
But concurrently, there would need to be fantastic, barely conceivable happenings, chunks of land displaced from one side of the globe to another (mixing cultures), strange and unpredictable negative-energy weather systems, lightning sprites in the lower atmosphere and the like.

‘Need to be’ because we want our wasteland to not just be destroyed and… well, wasted but also as alien to the survivors as possible. Challenging in weird ways (the implications of the powers the entities in ‘Stalker’ exert on time and space in The Zone has always stuck with me). The very fabric of reality, and our assumptions about it are a foe to be overcome, a limb of the meddling post-humans, throwing their might in the faces of the survivors.

What have the survivors done to themselves to gain advantages in this scenario? What has driven Morrigan to seek out and scavenge tech? The humans, living in the shadows of the gods, would seek to emulate them, grafting technology to themselves, gaining advantage but paying terrible, de-humanising prices for that advantage.

The underlying theme, of course, being Transcendence. The trickle down effect debases the survivors, they cannot achieve the pure transcendence hoarded by the elites and must debase themselves with the table scraps (perhaps deliberately put their as experiments) left by the transcended elites.

This enforces the journey that Morrigan takes, the journey to a ‘real’ transcendence from a debased state on the negative side of the equation. Why is she the hero? Because she doesn’t just transcend from wealth, or even relatively comfortable poverty but from a twisted, fallen state. Her transcendence is strengthened by her enlightenment. Buhhda needed to see suffering, the very notion of which his family had protected him from, before he could set out on his quest.

Hmm, I see where you find this to be tricky. You don’t want to make it a clear shot, ‘she would have always been successful because she always was’ kind of deal.
However, there is a part of me that recognises some kind of gem in this rough. Jung’s ideas of the self. Directing our subconscious drives, somehow aware of the full journey we must take, before we have ever stepped out onto it. The Self can be our greatest friend and our most terrible foe. Perhaps something to be explored in there. Perhaps something to be abandoned, made impossible and lamp-shaded accordingly as an impossible plot device. ‘This is not an allowed mechanism!’

Oh! That’s neat. 2001 space-baby approves.

Damn yes! I actually missed this last night, Morrigan has been in my head for a while now, I mentioned her in another thread last year. But we’re obviously on the same page. However, I’d like to make it a little more troublesome. What is morality from the perspective of a god. Do you choose the deaths of a million to save a million and one? (Trolley problem exploration here.)

I agree wholeheartedly with the godess-ness. But I think we can invoke a trinity here.

  • Her scrambling to find advantage with fallen-tech would denote her selfish drive.
  • Her journey toward compassion would lead to her sacrifice.
  • But her transcendence to godess-hood would be the top of the pyramid. ‘Beyond Good and Evil’ to borrow a quote from Nietzsche. She is the true Übermensch; the elites would be merely super powered, super intelligent humans, without a unifying morality.

The technology she encounters is like training wheels, an experiment to see how a human would react to that kind of expanded ability/consciousness.
I agree that the limitations of her experience/powers have to be along the order of what you have described. Still tied to a human conception of time and space but expanded slightly.
Pertaining to the already-transcended, I’m reminded of Iain Banks’ ‘Minds’ from the culture. Some of them are interested in human affairs, some are off in The Land of Infinite Fun and couldn’t give a toss what the bacteria are up to. I’m not sure that putting limitations on the transcended would be explorable with any degree of consistency. But I’m interested in hearing ideas. :smile:

Perhaps it is enough to indicate that at least one of them is using our universe (and it’s closest vacuums in the many worlds), as a kind of sandbox for this experiment. Perhaps that transcended is her (but probably not, it introduces too much ‘fate’), perhaps it is just a chance experiment that can potentially lead to transcendence for a debased human. There are infinite many worlds, perhaps all containing spacio-temporal infinity themselves. Somewhere in those infinities, this story can take place.

I like this, the idea of a hostile side to her powers, this could also be our acknowledgement of a greater sphere, where the transcended who are not interested in human affairs have gone off into. Higher and more inconceivable orders of infinity to encapsulate the environment of the story. This would strengthen the value of her own choice to be our goddess, rather than abandoning or manipulating us as the others have done.

I don’t like the idea of the macguffin being a physical thing that she carries with her and presses buttons on (it could work, but in my mind it would be like a super-iPhone with all the ‘there’s an app for that’ associations. Pet peeve of mine, I’m afraid.). Perhaps more like a retro-virus reprogramming her mind and body. Something that is in some way tied to her physical-emotional state perhaps?
As to limitations; choices where there is no outcome of an acceptable nature? Her powers could also be developing as she came to terms with them, not fully fledged until the last instant before transcending. So, unpredictable, (again with the reference to Stalker but what the hey) based on her true subconscious desires and not on her conscious wants. She may allow friends to die because she envies them or is subconsciously angry at them. The dark reaches of her mind could be the limiting factor. Her shadow the enemy.

Or perhaps they just abandon this sandbox when the outcome is not to their liking, they have infinity in which to play/experiment. For those, of course, that even care about humanity and the earth, under the circumstances of our story, would be limiting themselves by choice.

I also dislike backwards time travel to a degree. I think the smudge of consciousness limitation I mentioned earlier allows some kind of exploration of that whilst imposing a specific limitation on it too.

Aye!

I think that is the ideal outcome that she is trying to learn how to do/cope with. Her inward journey, in learning how to bend her power to her will would lead her to this ability. Initially she would be reflexively ‘snapping’ to safety, with her awareness of the process developing like a skill. Or perhaps like a form of meditation practice. At first she is only following her instincts but soon comes to be able to calm herself in those situations and begin to choose from a myriad of options? Hmm, kinda like the Hulk, I guess. In a way. Maybe not. :smile:

I have not seen it but I’m about to. Cheers!

Phew. Grammar and speeling mistakes ahoy!

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We should agree on a few basics, such as the main character names and a few of the places, as well as some of the objects and motifs. Then, use that short list but we each write our own section independently. I would tend to write an algorithm that writes my section for me. But YMMV, and it would be interesting to see the same character but from the perspective of a thousand random shards of light.

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How long is a screenplay? Should we make this a 3 act thing?

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How about a wallaby then?

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20 wallbies in a car? Starts to stretch belief a little.

Anyway. I apologize for the whole cat-lady thing. That was stereotypical and awful.

What would a female Mad Max be dealing with? How would she be dealing with things? Without going into stereotype-land. That’s what I’m interested in, here.

Also: no need for everybody to be female, that’s too Y: the last man. But more women than men changes things. In that already-changed world, how? (also: no, not Auntie Entity. Forget all that.)

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Apology accepted. Don’t let it happen again.

Mad Maxine would likely be dealing with the same crap Mad Max deals with, but with more martial arts and maybe a katana in addition to firearms. Perhaps she’d be more methodical in her revenge exacting, ensuring each participant in her child’s/partner’s death pay in pain before they expire. I don’t believe she would have to be a super badass to accomplish this, rather using her intelligence to outwit and defeat her enemies, and she should not have a visible bra/bikini top. Her outfit should be appropriate to the work at hand, especially if she’s got a similar used-to-be-a-cop-when-there-was-still-civilization back story.

And definitely no Auntie Entity. That movie was terrible.

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I’m not following you here. You see, this is going to be a female Mad Max.

BUT SRSLY, I did mean “more women than men”, so… things are different. She won’t be dealing with the men’s biker gangs or a male Humongous out in the desert. Not primarily men, anyway.

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Actually, that would be an interesting angle to somehow work into the story, a sort of Kurosawa thing, with the main character somehow getting seen through multiple perspectives. I’m not sure how that would work, though.

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So thinking on this, it’s kind of Malthusian, right? There have long been anti-democratic assumptions about the masses as being a drain on resources. I think George Carlin sort of dealt with this once in one of his stand up routines. He argued, essentially (in a much funnier way than me), that human beings probably don’t have such a huge impact on the planet as we think we do (he says maybe we evolved because the earth needed plastic). He seemed to be argue for a less anthropocentric view of the earth and ecology. There is a similar debate in the subfield of environmental history, whether “nature” exists outside of human ideas/ideology/structures. We use nature/ecology as a term to mean outside of human society, but what is “unnatural” really about human society? So, how do we get around to figuring out a way to have the earth ravaged enough to justify the elites transcendence?

maybe mediaization is the way to go? Maybe the elites are so disconnected from the rest of humanity before the transcendence, that they THINK the world is a wasteland outside of their bubbles? Their singular mode of communication outside their own circles are mediated through TV, internet, or some thing else. They already rarely come down out of their palaces (meaning this metaphorically, not literally). It’s like how some people, who don’t live in cities, think they are deeply dangerous places, because their own really interactions with cities are through TV, movies, and their local news. So, this gets at the notion of the distorting effect of media, and how a powerful elite and shape the world for their own ends, because of their inability to relate to others outside their class bubble?

Thoughts?

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Maxine should have a shirt to help us avoid sexist tropes and to avoid the leather-fetish look of the original movies. It was cheezy back then and hasn’t held up well against the test of time.

I’m also not suggesting that all of Maxine’s foes should be men. At least half should be women. Some she’d be able to beat physically, others she’d have to defeat mentally. Maybe she could have a cat, but it would have to be a Savannah Cat.

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We would agree that John Smith is the name of the character. He is 6 foot 1, 53, brownish hair, blue eyes, wears contacts, is intelligent but not overbearing, has various interests and loves his mother who is still alive and lives across town. He works as a financial analyst contractor/consultant in New York, which takes most of his time but puts him in a lot of different places around the city and occasionally around the country.

Then we leave it at that. Of course, for a novel, we should have, say about 12 slots like this to fill, not necessarily all characters, Some of the slots can be places, things or events that get that same short paragraph that everyone must work from. Or jobs are not necessarily to link up ALL 12 of them, but to at least link some of them. And then see how the story unfolds in installments due on Sunday nights at 12am, Tonga time. For, say a month. I just made up that last part. OK I made up the whole thing.

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I’ve known some of the upper crust as I was growing up and I can tell you from direct experience that it’s not just a conditioning factor of their environment leading to an inability to perceive the truth of the world.
They are also proud of their culture of division and seek to outdo one another in their debasement of ‘the poor’. For sure, everything about their environment has already been set up and enforced by their progenitors but there is a sick pleasure that infects them.
A psychopathy that is engendered and enforced from birth and through childhood. Cruelty is expected, encouraged, lauded. They are made sick by their environment but they revel in it too.

When you know you are in the wrong but your peer group still wins; this is the source of gloating. A psychic protection mechanism. But a mechanism that is deliberately and consciously amplified. Made into a competition, a badge of honour, of belonging.

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The rule of thumb is that a conventionally-formatted script page translates roughly to one minute of screen time, on average. Your basic comedy or ordinary horror film script will often be between 90 and 100 pages, a respectable drama will often run for 120 pages or so, and a Peter Jackson trilogy will require an entire ream of paper.

I’d say, since we’re doing a genre pic, and we’re probably not aiming for a Wachowski-scale epic (though who knows at this point?), we should probably shoot for 100 pages and see where we end up.

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Epic CG Kylie Minogue dragon sequences take 50 pages purely because of their epicness

Edit: And there will be many of them

Edit 2: in 3d

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Are you sure?

DWARVES FLOAT DOWN RIVER FOREVER

takes a long time on screen, but doesn’t take up a lot of space in the screenplay.

Nor does

FUCK IT, KILL TIME WITH INTERMINABLE CGI FIGHT SCENE

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That will henceforth be the 21st century version of

THE INDIANS STORM THE FORT.

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The way this thread is going, I like this perspective. Pick a main theme, and then see how it plays our across multiple universes / singularities / cloud processes. Each written by a different one of us.

It gets to Miasm’s and Donald’s view of multiple iterations / chances, it harnesses the power to disjoint the viewer that only multiple authors/perspectives can provide, and it gives each participant their own sandbox.

And, if we stay true to the theme, it never ends. There are no sequels, only the next batch of iterations.

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At least we’re only writing a movie, not shooting it in a weekend (for tax reasons):

The Making of Cowboy Wally’s Hamlet (small portion)

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It’d be like a comic book series made up of one-shot guest writers. Or somewhat like a TV series (with different writers and directors every week), but with less reliance on thematic and textural continuity. Certainly it’d be a good way for us all to get our licks in, and it can even be made to make sense if we work out a rough beginning and end to each “chapter” or “episode” in advance, so everyone has an idea where they’re starting from and what destination they have to reach (however roughly sketched it is) so that we have a bit of connective tissue to keep it all straight in Morrigan’s mind what she’s doing. Within each individual chapter, though, the leash can come off, since each “trouser-leg” is its own self-contained reality, and the writer thereof can go on pretty wild flights of fancy to make that reality their own dream (or nightmare) world. A fun approach, if we want the story to kind of be more about the journey than about anything else.

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Also, just write. Write anything from a sentence, to a vignette, to an entire chapter. The only rules are to stay true to the few things that we set out in advance; don’t subvert those. Subvert the OTHER stuff - play around with the unfixed items to one’s heart’s content.

And I say don’t pre-organize it. Go Joyce on that shit and let it collect into a pile to get sorted out later. Or not. Let it just fall into a group after we agree that the writing/drafting portion is over and the editing activity begins. THEN, impose connective tissues and other structural devices and surgeries to make it hang on the meathook better.

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