The Plot Thinens

So when I decided I wanted to do a screenplay for this class I already had plenty of ideas milling around in my head. During the summer I had stumbled across an old toy I had called a motorized zolo and a scene was born in my head of this toy being an inter-dimensional visitor and instructing two boys to do some strange mission, initially returning a copy of Chinese Democracy to a drug dealer they knew. So I had a vague start to a story. Other ideas came along: having them drive to Denny's on the back of a lawn mower, shooting bugs with aerosoft guns in a basement, assaulting hobos with jackhammers & other silly things. These were to show in an exaggerated way the childish eccentrisism my friends were prone to. I also wanted to add a lot of odd props into the mix to further this idea. A friend of mine owns a life sized spiderman statue and a plethora of other oddities. This would also subtly clue in the viewer that this was some reality similar but different from ours; kind of like how video game noises/references were injected into reality in Scott Pilgrim or Giant prosthetic beasts in Fear & Loathing.

Anyway during the course of the class I discovered simulism & made some important decisions that warped and expanded the story. The problem then became mapping out two seperate stories birthed from the same starting point (the two simulations: A & A') that effect each other subtly and work together when cut between.

I began by making lots of story maps

General plot over view:

Setting: suburbia in two simulated realities, A & A'. A' is a copy of simulation A created within simulation A. In both worlds there is political tensions that could result in a nuclear weapons exchange.

I decided to split the story into three sections so I could concentrate on what was important in each:

1. Encounters:

Z interacts with the characters and sets the events in motion that will cause simulations A and A' to deviate from one another.

2. Recess:

Acting on Z's influence the characters go about their buisness in different ways and if starts to become apparent there are differences between the two worlds. Characters individual problems come to light in this section.

3. The Party:

The characters all gather at K's party where they are confronted with their problem and either over come or succumb to it.

I managed to map out most of the first and second act, and started writing the screen play for the first act.

Act 1:

A&B are seen walking through a field with A in a wheelbarrow pushed by B.

C is shown sleeping in his room, while Z is shown walking through his messy apartment.

D is seen alone working on his computer, programming simulation A’.

K is shown in his robe watching the news until he turns it off for being too disturbing. He makes some coffee and walks outside.

E is in a rocking chair in his house, his dog is shown sleeping on the floor next to him. He gets up and picks out a deathmetal vinyl to play and sits back down in his chair.

A&B run into K as they go through people’s backyards in their wheelbarrow, he stops and asks them what they are up to. The respond with nonsense and continue on their way.

C is awoken suddenly by Z which starts screaming in sampled audio clips about the end of the world. C is so frazzled after the confrontation he calls E to buy drugs

D calls C to tell him that the simulation is finished but C doesn’t pick up because he is being visited by Z.

In A’ - C wakes up later, calls D to go to The honey harvest festival only to be turned down and told the simulation is up and running.

In A’ - A&B begin digging in a park and are visited by Z (this one controlled by D who is annoyed C not picking up) who tells them to return a copy of Guns N’ Roses Chinese Democracy to E (because he thinks C is out buying drugs from E)

Simultaneously the same event happens in A because of dimensions crossing over.

In A - K goes back into his house and is visited by Z who in a much calmer fashion than with C tells him the world is about to end in nuclear holocaust. In A’ K explains the instability of the political climate of the world while gazing around his house alone.

Act 2

In A - C goes to E to buy drugs, E says he has something special for him and shows him a suitcase bound by many belts and locks.

In A - A&B arrive at E’s just in time to see C leaving with the suitcase in hand. B establishes that C is his brother and his discontent for his drug use.

In A& A’ - The two go into E’s house and confront him. Returning the Cd.

In A& A’ - E tells them to deliver a suitcase back to Z for him, the same suitcase he appears to have given C (in actuality the two events are bled between dimensions where C has/hasn’t gone to E for drugs)

In A - They ask to see what’s inside, and are shown a strange glow ala pulp fiction, and ask what it is? To which E responds “You don’t know?”

In A – D continues his study of simulation A’, but notices in the simulation he is accompanied by C who is not with him in ‘real life’. Realizes something has caused the simulation to change.

In A’ – C arrives at D’s computer lab and D explains the system is up and shows him that he is

Monitoring A&B. C comments that B is his brother and B’s hostility towords the family.

In A&A’ – After A&B have left E’s, K arrives and talks to E about the end of the world and their opinions and existential stuff,

In A’- at the end E tells K he should throw a party.

Meanwhile in A – C is in his apartment tripping out, the suitcase appears unbound and empty att he foot of his bed. He begins to hallucinate various hostile spirits heckling him about his life decisions. Ultimately a hallucinatory humanoid form of Z appears and vanquishes the other specters. He settles C down and returns him back to reality where upon he discovers he is invited via facebook to a party K is throwing.

In A&A’ – A&B wonder how they’re going to find Z to give him the suitcase, they end up waiting around a while, then go searching in their lawnmoawer, shouting at the sky, and eventually end up at Denny’s where B starts talking about computer simulations and the value of life/existence.

D in simulation A will eventually contact himself and C in simulation A’ using the Z body but I’m not sure what that will do/effect the story yet.

After this point the characters all end up at K’s party, in simulation A C ends up attempting suicide but A ends up saving him. Beyond that I haven’t figured out how to resolve the other characters issues.

The suitcase is supposed to represent truth, and what A,B,&C do with it in either reality will vary.

Storyboards & Animatic

Initially I wanted this to take the form of a story board but the more I thought about that the more boring it seemed. DVD extras in movies sometimes include what are called animatics which are basically storyboards put into video form with actors dubbing over them. This seemed infinitely more exciting, but then I remembered this from FLCL:

From fooling around with Motion I knew I could move images and videos around in time so I figured I’d try and emulate this style of animatic, only less hyperactively. FLCL is a bit intense, and they use moving comics for part of it which would mandate drawing gifs.

Anyway I began storyboarding out scenes.

First as little scribble boxes like this…

Then more advanced scribbles….

That finally evolved into full page representations.

Motion Study: Link Here

Characters

Okay so now for the meat and bones of the story.

Here are our heroes

I'm still debating name choices on all of them, so through out my notes I referred to them by letters.

Left to Right: K, C, A, B, D, E, Z

The lettering is intentional. A&B go together, and C&D go together. E is the character that knows both groups, but is aside from either. K is far removed socially from either side, but gets interjected into either groups plot; and Z is the alien/avatar/robot from the world running simulation A where the story takes place.

The Dynamic Characters

A & B represent young adults who cling to their 'childish' habits and tastes while shirking the responsibilities of their budding adulthood. They like to spend time riding around on a lawn mower as opposed to a car, enjoy shooting off aerosoft guns, video games, cartoons, harassing hobos, and just hanging out. Neither has held a job before, or have a license, and have given their futures at community college hardly a thought.

A: irish background, large family including his older brother C, all of whom he quietly resents. He spends much of his time at B's house playing video games. He is the more aggressive of the two, he is socially shy but somewhat of an exhibitionist. Does what he wants in a cold manner, often will leave in the middle of something because he is bored without causing a fuss. In private he is louder and opinionated against opinionated people. Believes taking a side means becoming ignorant to the other side.

His problem is he doesn't want/know how to express his feelings towards other people, so he become frustrated and avoids situations he might become invested in.

B: Brainy. Well spoken. Parents are usually not around, only child. Very cynical and opinionated. Believes most people are more trouble than they're worth. His problem is his emotional coldness towards others, his inability to care about people.

C&D represent young adults who have shunned their childhood interests in an attempt to be more mature. They imitate the behaviors they’ve seen in adults and try to block their childish thoughts/habits/behaviors. They live with nostalgia for the past and don’t understand the future.

C: A’s older brother by two years. An up and coming yuppie with a decent pay check. Lives alone in an apartment that isn’t lavish enough for his ambitious social desires. Currently he is invested in D’s simulation program. He is trying very hard to be what he believes to be the ideal social entrepreneur, which conflicts with his true nature at times. He is currently taking a cocktail of depression drugs and a mysterious pharmaceutical from E.

D: Brainiac running Simulation A’. He is a total recluse asshole. Because he has been so cut off from human interaction he doesn’t really understand sympathy, courtesy, or subtlety. Often he will bark orders, or make crude commentary towards others with no regards for their feelings or taste in general.

The Static Characters

E: Shamanic drug dealer, appreciates death metal. Lives alone with his dog. Doesn’t care much about anything, but spends a lot of time contemplating life and the universe in his own intoxicated fashion.

K: A good few years older than the 4 core characters, he lives alone and has a decent living going for himself. As he begins to realize the world is ending he trys to think of how best to go out, and decides it would be best to be surrounded by all his friends. He acts as the core characters guide in overcoming their respective problems.

Z: A small robot looking thing. Acts as the avatar for the beings running simulation A, as well as the avatar for D to interact with simulation A’ which leads to intentional confusion in the story since there are two Z’s. Ultimately they serve the same purpose, to put the other characters onto the path that leads to the stories end.

Their respective purposes are drawn below.

The characters evolved over the semester design wise so here are some pictures of the progression.

Early designs, D looks a lot more like me, and B looks a lot more like joseph gordon-levett in Brick. Also drawn a lot more anime styled.

From there I did lots of mass sketches of the characters before really focusing in on each one individually.

here is a focus page of E, he was the character i struggled with the most. I wanted him to be a combination of Dimebag Darrell and every stoner with dreadlocks I'd ever seen. I also struggled with C in making him look similar but different from his brother and still older looking.

Simulism

Over the summer a friend of mine kept mentioning the fact that within 50 years or so we will have computers capable of running realistic simulations of reality complete with artifical consciousnesses. I tid-bit I forgot about until We started talkign about the multiplication jars.

The jar has a whole world inside of it and within that world more jars exist with more worlds and so on... Christopher Nolan probably read this book as a child because that shoulds kinda like 'Inception' only instead of worlds within jars, its dreams within dreams.

Now as every critic and haughty hipster I know pointed out: Inception is kinda like 'The Matrix', which is kinda like 'Dark City', which is a totally ripped off from Plato's 'Allegory Of The Cave.' In any case I thought about what if I combined all three of these movies premises into one.

Simulated 'realities' like The Matrix, Layers of 'reality' like 'Inception' and 'Aliens studying us by manipulating 'realities'. So I arrived at the idea that If we build a simulation to study people and the people in that simulation build a simulation, what happens?

I started researching the theory Shane had mentioned in the summer and found out about 'Simulism'. Essentially the argument is: If it is possible to build reality simulators with autonomous intelligent digital beings inside one of these three things must be true.

1. Species are wiped out before reaching the level of intelligence and technology to build such simulations.

2. Species with the capacity to build such simulations don't choose to build them.

3. We're probably living in a computer simulation.

So once again I decided to pursue 'All of the above'. Option two could never be true on its own because of the whole Pandora's box argument. Option one is too absolute to occur naturally, so there would have to be some consciousness causing that to occur.

So I decided that the situation would be:

Simulation B is running Simulation A, and is actively trying to prevent Simulation A from creating a Simulation A'. Thus fulfilling rule 2. But somewhere up the hierarchy of simulations, lets call this layer X, a rule was made that effected all subsequent simulations: If a simulation runs a simulation of itself both worlds would be destroyed.

From there I plugged in my story. The strange Zolo being was to be some kind of avatar for the beings running Simulation A to interact with it and thus change things.

Other things I considered was the connection between the computer/machine running the simulation and the simulation itself. Such as what if the program glitched how would this effect the simulation? If too many simulations were run at once would there be problems, would the realities warp together briefly? Ultimately I decided this distance would be expressed two ways: Anachronisms/out of place objects resulting as a glitch would appear in scenes, and that Zolo could only appear in simulation A and not A' because it would be too difficult to invade one simulation and then invade another within it.

Pulp

While I went into this class with some ideas for the screenplay, Significant developments in its form & story transpired as results of Prof. Moss's intriguing monday discussions.

Stylistically my choice to follow all the characters throughout the time the story focuses on stemmed from one of the in class thought assignments. Tom presented his idea to the class which centered around a timeline of his life, and had sections of it where certain people had held influence over his life. This unnerved me because he was claiming that the influence ends when the object/person putting forth the influence becomes removed from the influencee.

Example of why this is wrong:

I became depressed after my girlfriend had dumped me and I had gone off to college, her being now absent in my life effected how I was acting even though she was no longer actively influencing my life.

Tom had additionally drawn lines showing when influence began and ended. They reminded me of the lines of film clips in video editing software, so I began to think about a director cutting a film of life itself. Where certain parts really "expendable"? Since life is simply a snowball of actions, choices, and coincidences is really any part "expendable?"

This brings me to Pulp Fiction. In Pulp Fiction there is a curious scene involving two of the characters. Out of nowhere Bruce Willis stumbles into Ving Rhames who wants him dead. Ving Rhames is out shopping, and crossing a street when Bruce pulls up to the light. What bothers me about this situation is that there is no good explanation of why Ving Rhames is there. His character is a fantastically rich crime boss, yet he is out doing his own grocery shopping on foot. The director doesn't clue us into why he is there but that information is important.

So I made a diagram of the characters in Pulp Fiction cutting in and out of the story, and then I began to wonder what it would be like if instead they all were a solid wall instead of strips that ended and reappeared. I also thought about how different the film could be if they used different sections of this block of action. Could two films derived from the same mass of information reach different conclusions?

United States Of Eurasia

Before I rediscovered 'Simulism' and introduced it to the story I intended to have Z be an alien, or inter-dimensional being/deity and that the immediate threat of nuclear conflict would drive the characters to contemplate their own mortality. Once I introduced Simulism to the story though, the nuclear threat became less of the focus and more a means to the end destruction of the second simulated reality. In any case I researched nuclear plans from nato and nuclear politics a bit.

Also because this was to be an alternative reality from the start I drew down the map from Risk 2210 AD and brainstormed how certain countries in the game had come to be. Like 'The Northwestern Oil Emerite" (Modern Day Alaska). Maybe The United States sold it to the UAE to pay off its debt to china, who knows.

\

Moral Root Of Story

The overall moral, message, conflict, intelligent idea explored of this whole project I guess would be this: Young Adults are caught up in an emotional dilemma inherent in their transition from teenager to adult.

During my first summer back from college I noticed a stark difference in the mood of my friends from the previous summer. They were typically unhappy, unsatisfied, living in the past, One ran away from home, others were now on depression meds, blah blah blah. Even I was feeling these things. So I tried to diagnose the problem.

I ended up dividing up my friends into two groups based on their behaviors, and my perception of them. Eventually I began to conclude that while these two groups were depressed for different reasons they had many things in common. Namely the tendency towards emotional indifference (A left over defense mechanism from grade school) and inner conflict between the expected behaviors of adulthood and the instincts of childhood