The thought of a human vs. unhuman protagonist brings up a very good point. Science Fiction, in whatever form, is famous for walking the thin line between brilliant and stupid. If done well, it can stand up there with the best works of art (i.e. Philip K. Dick, Kurt Vonnegut, A Clockwork Orange, Bladerunner) but if done poorly... well I'm sure some of you have seen Plan 9 from Outer Space. When Impulsivelad said he wanted this to be SFX-lite, I agreed with him, and I think I may even agree with him more than he agrees with himself. Had we an infinite budget, I'd be all for the elaborate costumes and set designs, and making it look like the protagonist is truly, really, in a strange and distant future. We don't have an infinite budget, however, and so to even attempt something like that would wind up looking terrible. I guarentee you... I've seen amateur attempts at sci-fi films before, and I can tell you that the people who make them almost always wind up making fools of themselves. Sci-fi fans usually tend to have a fetish for special effects, but I can tell you right now that we don't need them... at all. If need be, we could make this film in a single room, with two actors. Really, it's that minimal. And it's not just the production that kills many an amateur scifi flick, the writing needs to be top notch and cliche free as well. Technical futuristic jargon needs to be kept to a minimum - no talking about the re-authenator 3000 with Prytian powered cryobeams. The thought has come up of submitting this film to sundance; the judges at sundance know what makes a good film and what makes a bad film, and I'm sure most of them aren't sci-fi fans. We don't just need to make a great sci-fi film, we need to make a great film film, a real work of art.
Here's my idea for how we approach the style of the thing:
George Lucas didn't need 5 million dollars to make THX 1138, he needed white room, some black suits, some white suits, some masks and police helmets, and a couple of long black poles. That's it. That's all. I can tell you right now that we probably won't be able to afford black and white suits. We're going to have to use what we can get, what most of us already own, or could pick up from a thrift store. I think we should go with the non-futuristic future approach - make the future look like the present, or maybe even like the past, or like an amalgamation of both. This technique has been used several times to great effect - A Clockwork Orange being the most obvious, but if you ignored the extravagent cityscapes you could also list Bladrunner, AI, and many others. I know some of you are already moaning and groaning about this. But if you look at it in the context of the script it makes perfect sense. This author was from the 20th or 21st century, keep in mind, and if the people who revived him really want him to write something, they want him to feel at home, no?
In fact, thinking about this know I'm having more and more ideas pop into my head about possible plot points:
- the people who revived him might act and speak in a way that seems almost normal, but because they're not familiar with our way of speaking/acting, it's ever so slightly foreign, adding to the protagonist's alienation
- the house/room in which the protagonist is kept could be filled with things meant to remind him of his time period, but history is generalized as it goes on, few people are able to point out artifacts as being part of a specific decade unless it happened in the past few hundered years, so there would be items from all of the 20th century, and maybe even some of the 19th, and even an item or two that would be strange to have in a home
- perhaps our protagonist would find something in his room that he remembers as owning, and his revivers would certify that it was extrapolated from his writings or something else
- later on in the film, the protagonist could demand that he be allowed to leave his house/room (for "inspiration" he says), and to his surprise, his revivers say okay straight out. it turns out that it was only his assumption that he was being imprisoned. when he goes into the town/city, it looks just like a modern-day city, and he becomes very confused. his reviver calmly and nonchalantly explains that this is the city where all of the revived from his time period live. he might even ask to see the rest of the world outside the city, but is told that his city is surrounded by the cities of other time periods, and that venturing into them would "corrupt the assumptions of the people living there, and ruin years worth of work" (or something like that)
- he could meet someone famous, perhaps another sci-fi author which he admires (if anyone knows any famous or semi-famous people that they could get to volunteer for this scene, that would be spectacular). they sit down for lunch or a cup of coffee, and the famous person tells him something along the lines of "you'll get used to it after a while. you'll start to enjoy it. after all, it's not a hard life. just do what you do best and you're provided with food, shelter, and the comforts of home. what more could a man ask for?"
I'd write more, but I have alot of work to do. Hope you like my ideas, and maybe they'll even spark you to come up with some more of your own. |
