OK, the script is in it’s zillionith re-write, but it’s getting there. I’ve cut out a few characters, simplified it. I’ve suspended the drawings/animatic mission until I’m 100% happy I’ve got the script right, but I remain committed to the animatic idea.
In the meantime, check this out: (in one version of the Oracle Machine, the computer commandeers a drone)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/oct/09/virus-infects-drone-plane-command
I’m back. It’s been 6 weeks since I last posted, but things are still keeping on.
The NFVF got back to me, (5 months after submitting my script) and said they’d like to develop the script on their Master’s program. Which is an honour, but I’d rather have development finance, thanks very much.
I’ve been showing the script to a few people. One super person who’s very involved in internet development, loved it, which is a big boost for me.
I’m still trying to get producers to just read the script, even the first few pages. This is incredibly difficult, so work continues on my animatic. The frame above gives you an idea of what it’ll look like. I’ve always drawn storyboards from my head, but have recently discovered the possibilities of copying…
I went to see an awesome Tretchikoff exhibit recently and noticed how he divided pictured into a grid and copied them. And so did Mucha, one of my favorite drawing inspirations.
So I’m doing the same, taking frame grabs from videos that match scenes I like, dividing the image with prestik-markers on my screen and copying onto my paper drawing pad.
Lena is drawn from grabs of Catherine Deneuve, from a wonderful movie called ‘Manon 70‘.
The frames are scanned, turned into transparencies, then put onto a timeline with music and VO. I’ve done about 90 frames, only another 900 to go… Give me about 2 months…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/31/washington-moves-to-classify-cyber-attacks
Seriously feeling I must hurry up and get it done before it all comes true anyway… I’m busy editing a corporate this week, but next week, the mission continues…
It might not look like much, but this is it – the next stage of my script’s development. I’m laying the script out on an editing timeline, placing a marker for each scene.
In script-writing, typically 1 page of script represents 1 minute of film time. So by judging the length of a scene on a page, I’ve stretched each scene marker to match that length of screen time. Some markers are 10 seconds, others 3 minutes. But by looking at this timeline, I get a pretty good idea of where the film slows down, and where the scene changes speed up the pace.
I’ve also started recording the voices of actors and am about to start laying these sounds up. And with music and SFX. it’ll start sounding like a radio play, but at this early stage, there’s not a lot of emphasis on performance, it’s more about timing and how the story plays out.
In between the scene cards I’m going to start placing simple storyboard images, (just one for each scene to start with). It’s a lot of work, but it’s giving me a great feel for the pace of the script.
This is a very organic process of trying to get as much done as possible to make it easier for producers to ‘see’ my movie. It’s about taking out as much risk as possible. It seems pretty logical to me and I know animation movies follow a similar path. Pixar typically spend the 1 year of a 3 year development cycle doing just this – giving a script to a storyboard artist and working and reworking an animatic with a director, recording voices, placing temporary music and SFX.
Hopefully my process won’t take a year… I’m aiming for getting it done in 2-3 months. Let’s see how it goes…
A page from the beautiful book 'Sadhana'. You don't get those textures and smell of the old paper on an iPad...
Because this is a blog about developing my script, The Oracle Machine, I’ll to try keep this blog film-orientated, and because it’s Easter, I’m going to go spin off into other realms…
Darren Aronofsky‘s first movie ‘Pi’ has been a big inspiration. Not just because he made the film using micro funds raised from friends, and not just because it’s made in Black&White and has such a cool style and soundtrack etc. It’s also relevant to me because of how he deals with the central theme of Existentialism, and I’m using that word without knowing fully what it really means, but it seems to fit.
‘Pi‘ is about a guy who obsesses about solving the equation of Pi, which is supposedly an infinite chain of numbers. In the end, he wisely gives up his obsession and goes on with the business of living life, embodied by his attraction for the girl next door. (obsessive characters are the major theme of Darren’s work, no doubt he draws on his own struggles of being a filmmaker)
My script begins with the female character, now named ‘Sophia’, dreaming of a ‘figure-of-eight’ symbol, that turns out to be ‘infinity’, and the script ends with the computer moving off into another dimension by meeting the wall of infinity, and the two human characters find a new passions for life. I see it as being about the Realisation of the Infinite.
I’ve borrowed that title from the last chapter of an amazing book that I picked up. I loved this book, not just because it was 100 years old, not just because it was R3 at the algemeene handelaar cafe in Arniston, but because it looked interesting. Luckily, it was. ‘Sadhana’, is written by Rabindranath Tagore, a famous Indian poet and writer from the early 20th century.
Tagore writes beautifully about the joy coming with the realisation of God, who is everything, rather than continually striving for pure material goals, which are unsatisfiable, (something Philip K. Dick referred to in ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, and as embodied in Greek mythology by Sisyphus, constantly pushing a rock up a hill). Tagore ends off with a lovely comment about living in ‘the everlasting present’. I’m not going to explain, you should read the book, except to say I related that to the ‘eternal moment’ at the end of my script…
Back to infinity. I’ve started to believe that the symbol for infinity is perhaps an appropriate symbol for the realisation of God.
What happens when we go beyond the end of our known universe? It’s boundaries are ‘The Cosmic Egg’, and currently estimated at some 45 billion light years away? What happened before time began? It’s not a question of us not knowing the answer. We actually can’t know, because these questions go beyond any model of thinking.
For me, this is where all scientific reasoning against the notion of God collapses. How can you criticise the notion, when we have such major holes in our science? And if you do criticise, or defend, God, which exactly are you considering, mine or yours? The Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, or Greek God, the God of the Upanishads, or what? Listening to the arguments from those who choose to take sides, it often seems like a case of the blind arguing with the deaf for the sake of arguing.
Having done some maths at University, I’ve seen ‘infinity’ tossed about many times by supposed atheiests, without any attempt to conceive the significance of it. In times gone by humankind at least had a healthy respect for the unthinkable. In our ‘safe’ modern world, many try not to consider these things at all, and give all our energy to material distraction. We should at least pause and think a bit, at least sometimes, like on Easter. 
For myself, I have instead found a comforting and enabling concept. If you consider that everything you see, touch, hear, smell or think about, is reflected inside us, in our mind’s eye, in our ‘psychic reality’, then you’ll see we are in the center of it all, standing between two vast universes, one outside us, and the other within. No matter how far out you go, there’ll always be an equal depth within us.
Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said ‘it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God’ ?
But to keep it all in context, there’s a great old saying from Confucius or Buddha or someone. It goes: ‘Before enlightenment, man chop wood and carry water. After enlightenment, man chop wood and carry water.’
Hello. Good Morning. A few words.
Firstly, I’ve complained that’s it’s hard to get a script read in this town. Actually, what’s hard is getting a bad script read. I think a good script will move itself.
So up until now, my script hasn’t been that good. However, with all this fantastic help and opinions of others, and with some more insight and careful thought from myself, I’m sure I’ve turned a corner and now have something that will stand on it’s own legs. The Oracle Machine Version 2 is finally here.
If you’ve read version 1 (which was actually about version 500) and are wondering what’s changed, it’s this: I’ve dropped the cheesy intro with the hackers. All the dialogue has become shorter and crisper, thanks to the actor’s. ‘Lena’, now ‘Sophia’, has had her character arc vastly improved, and meaning of the dream has finally been crystalised properly. I really think it now all works, but it remains to be seen if others agree.
Secondly, I was going to write this whole blog about the union of opposites, and the final future, when dreams and computers meet, but ‘eff it, I’ve decided it’s more fun if people work out the meaning for themselves.
Actually the final event of my movie has been written about before, in that amazing book of dreams and visions that also happens to be a couple of thousand years old and is called ‘The Bible‘. Yes, it’s a book of dreams and visions. And, is there a big difference between a vision and a dream?
And while we’re talking about great vision-inspired works, ‘The Bible’ isn’t the only one. ‘The Koran‘, I say with obvious hesitation…, is it not based on the ‘visions’ of the prophet? And the works of Buddha? What moved him under the tree? I believe it’s all coming from the same place, the expression of the Unconscious as Jung would have put it.
Jung is a big influence ( and Joseph Campbell too, who said ‘Jerusalem, where the 3 rivers meet, is actually in your heart, the rivers being your veins…’ – I love that).
One particular book of Jung’s that I consider one of the most interesting I’ve ever come across is ‘Answer to Job‘.
Apart from explaining the ‘union’ I’ve mentioned, Jung also makes an interesting point about psychic facts and the difference between psychic reality and physical reality. For instance, that the sky is blue is a physical reality. If you have a belief that the sky is green, then, even though it’s not green, your belief is real. Your belief is a psychic fact, that does exist, albeit in your head.
Don’t dismiss ‘psychic facts’ just yet. Consider for a moment, that much of our world that we created, exists in psychic reality first before it becomes physical. Every invention, every idea ever thought up, began as a ‘psychic’ fact. (And perhaps the information stored in bits in computers isn’t that different.) Jung’s idea of the collective unconscious, is perhaps a repository of all psychic fact.
So if, like Jung did, we try consider religion as part of psychic fact, (because it can’t necessarily be proven physically) then we are led to the conclusion that the predictions made in religions do already exist in psychic reality. Don’t forget religions only continue and grow because their ideas are considered valid by a large group. So, the star-child of the union has already been born in psychic reality. It’s just waiting to become a physical reality…
At this point, you might well be thinking, so what, who cares about the predictions. Well, if you read Answer to Job, Jung shows how so much of the predictions of the earlier chapters of the bible, came true later, in terms of the progress of the relationship between what we consider God to man. It’s really fascinating stuff. But moving on…
In 1968 Stanley Kubrick released ’2001 A Space Odyessy’, which was a science fiction epic and a huge success. The first half hour of the movie was famously silent of any human speech. It shows apes making a great leap forward in becoming ‘intelligent and conscious’. The second part of the movie shows man confronted by HAL, the Artifical Intelligence computer of his own making.
Up until then, most people got it, but the third and final part of the movie left a lot of people mystified. The astronaut journeys across time and space and the film ends with a giant baby looking over earth. Most people wrote it off as a ‘psychedelic trip’, which in a way, it was.
Kubrick never wanted to explain it either, except for calling the baby the ‘starchild’. I’m sure I know what he intended, but feeling smugly satisfied, I’m not going to explain it either.
Instead I’m going to encourage you to read my script, version 2. Or just read Jung…
Just wanted to give another update before I blog on about computers and metaphysical dream stuff…
Just to say, it’s amazingly difficult to get people i.e. producers, to read your script. Yes I know they’re busy and they really don’t care about you. Well, at least, now I know. To borrow a fantastically cheesy phrase: “I knew it wouldn’t be easy, but I never knew it would be this hard…”
Most film companies here seem to have started out with their own projects first and grown their company from there. Even if they want an outside script, chances are good they’ll want to use their own director. To get someone to take on an external script with an unknown director attached – that’s hard.
However, have just heard from a successful film producer I contacted about 3 months ago, asking if I could get in touch in 1 month’s time… so cool, the wheel keeps turning, that’s another ‘possibly maybe’. This is good.
I’m actually glad producers are so hesitant to read my work, as it gives me time to really get it tight. The fine-tuning continues – had another session with an actor yesterday and cleaned up some weak areas. My dialogue really sucks, but with the help of these actors, I’m learning…
I’ve also been assembling a kind of ‘dream team’ of actors who would be perfect for this script. Once I’ve got them all pinned down, the next step will be to try get them all in a room together at the same time and workshop the script as one. And record it, and edit the recording to check the flow.
The actors have been incredibly supportive, but ‘if only’ I had some funding, I could pay them what they’re worth and pull this together faster. I’ve applied to our film foundation for a little support, we wait and see, but of course, to borrow another song title, we continue ‘with or without them’…
