Wednesday, February 9, 2011
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Hero Engine: Treatment
We open with a sunrise over a town in ancient Greece, the buildings silhouetted against the amber glow of a new morning. A rooster crows. The people start to go out and start their days. They go about their normal business, tending farms, washing clothes in the rivers, taking horses into the capital, and so on. Hero, a gentleman in his forty’s, comes out of his house, in his arms a box he holds with great urgency. He looks off and starts running to the city. Amon, another inventor from the same mold as Hero, in his lab while closes a small wooden crate on his desk. Strewn about are sketches and blueprints showing various kinds of aeolipile and primitive steam engines. He slowly steps out of his home as well with his box, which he covets and seems happy to have in his hands. He too makes his way to the capital.
We see a gathering of people at a forum. Hero is standing at the center square. Next to him is a table with the box he had earlier and on his other side, a torchlight in a stand. As he gets everyone’s attention, he announces he has made a discovery about steam, that it can be used as a source of power. Everyone looks puzzled. Amon is also in the audience, holding in his lab his box. He becomes nervous and confused and grips it tightly. Hero opens up his box’s lid and pulls out his aeolipile. Amon’s eye’s widen, shocked to see what Hero has. Hero yanks the torch out and lights the base of the aeolipile. Steam begins to billow out of the pipes in the sphere. Then, suddenly, the steam causes the ball to spin. It gets faster every second, and the audience goes crazy. Everyone except for Amon, that is. He gets up and pushes through the crowd and walks out feeling defeated and angry. Meanwhile, everyone continues get excited and shower Hero with attention.
That night, Amon tosses about all his plans and his work in a fit of rage. He then callapses into his seat, hi head down. He then notices a mosaic patter on his floor, but it’s covered by some of the paper he ripped up and threw. He cleans it up and finds a dragon revealed in the mosaic. He then looks over to one of the papers on the floor and sees a design for his aeolipile. This gives him a sinister idea.
We cut to a few months (or years?) later. The sun rises above the town once again. This time, instead of a rooster, a steam whistle like that of a train lets out a squeal. Farmers use rickety looking tractors to plow their fields, people put their clothes through a huge steam press to clean them, and we can see various other primitive mechanical creations being used amongst the townsfolk. Hero leaves his house (which is now a lavish abode) and takes a stroll. Along the way people look up from their tasks (and new machines) and wave to the man who has changed their lives. Meanwhile, Amon toils away in his lab, building something. Something big. We pan across a series of blueprints, each showing bit by bit what it is he is making. The final sheet shows the body of a mechanical dragon. We then tilt up away from the sheets and look into the darkness of his unlit workshop. Two red eyes light up, accompanied by a metallic growl and a jet of steam that fills up the shot and transitions to the next scene.
It’s night, and Hero is in his lab working on something new. He steps back to get a good look at what he’s made. It’s a clock with gears, and it starts to tick, but only to spring apart and send its pieces flying. Hero sighs and is about to continue working until a crash erupts from the roof, sending everything all over the place. Hero makes his way through the rubble until he gets outside. He sees a huge mechanical dragon, and he can hear Amon’s voice coming from it. Inside, Amon sits in the cockpit and yells through a horn at Hero, telling him he wants Hero to admit he stole his idea. Hero doesn’t know what he’s talking about, insisting he doesn’t even know who Amon is. This only anger’s Amon further, and his dragon leans it’s head back and shoots a searing blast of flames at Hero. He manages to just barely jump out of the way, putting out the cinders on his robes. He yells back to Amon and says they can work things out. Amon refuses to listen and swings the dragon’s tail around to knock down a huge chunk of Hero’s house. Debris falls on him, knocking him out. Amon is about to finish Hero off, the dragons head hanging high above him. A drop of water comes down and lands on Hero’s forehead, and just before he blacks out he see’s steam coming from the dragons nose. He realizes what this means.
Just then some soldiers come with chariots drawn by mechanical steam-horses. They shoot arrows and throw spears at the dragon, but they only bounce off its iron hide. Hero begins to regain consciousness and sees the battle. Amon swings the tail around and completely totals one chariot, and shoots flames at another, causing it to heat up so much that it explodes into a cloud of machine bits and steam. Hero begins to fret and struggle to get out of the debris. He grabs a chunk of wood runs toward the dragon while it’s back is turned. However, Amon turns around and grabs him with one of the dragons claws. He brings Hero to the dragons face. This brings Hero just close enough to quickly wedge the wood into one of the steam exhaust ports of the dragons nose. Amon tosses him and the dragons head swings from side to side trying to dislodge it. It’s not use, so he just makes his way over to the battered Hero. He gets the dragon ready for one last flare, but as he tries to unleash it, the wood absorbs most of the steam and there’s a huge back up in the beast. Streams of steam begin to shoot out all over the dragons body and the machine falters as screws come loose and servos fail.
Amon falls out of the rapidly falling apart beast. A couple soldiers come up to him and point their spears at him. Hero runs over to put their weapons down, and he tells Amon that he is amazed by the dragon’s design. Amon is a bit taken aback by the compliment, but he hesitantly accepts it. Hero then tells him he’s sorry if he had ever done any wrong to him, but he would like to help him make more of his machines. Amon says he doesn’t know what else he could do, and Hero asks if he could make a suggestion.
It’s now daytime, and we can see that the dragon that destroyed most of Hero’s home has been remade into a kind of excavator/crane. It’s helping to rebuild the home it destroyed. We then go to a wide shot of the town, and we see one crane, then another then another, and then the buildings begin to get bigger and more modern. The town becomes a thriving place of it’s own. Hero and Amon look on from the hills and see what their creations have made. As they look on, Amon asks what the ticking sound is he hears. Hero pulls out a clunky pocket watch, but explains he can’t get it to ever get the right time. Amon makes a would about how that would be an easy fix, and they make their way down the hill and out of frame, the last shot focusing over the hill and onto the new town.
The End
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Here's something new
I think I have an idea for my thesis. While still kind of rough, it has the elements of something I think I'd thoroughly enjoy working on for the next year and a half.
Somewhere in ancient Greece, the people in a small town start their day. The farmers tend their fields with their mules, people go to the river and wash their clothes, etc. Everything seems low tech and normal for the time period. We then see an older man run out of his shack carrying a box. He's an inventor, and today he will show his greatest creation to the best and brightest minds and in the land.
At a gathering in the city, the inventor presents before a crowd his lifes work; the aeolipile. Everyone goes crazy, seeing the worlds first steam engine. The applications could be endless. As everyone becomes more animated, one person isnt so thrilled. As he grips his own box and takes a look inside, we see he has created the SAME EXACT thing. He was beaten to the punch, and now he can't get the credit for it. He leaves in disgust as the crowd celebrates with their man of the hour.
We then fast forward to a few years later. The same town we saw at the beginning has everyone start their day, however this time we see everything is done with crazy machines that are all steam and gear powered. The farmers use (sorta) tractors to plow their fields, everyones clothes get put through some kind of crazy steam press to get cleaned, and people can ride chariots dragged by mechanical horses. The main inventor takes a long look over everything and feels extremely satisfied with how everything has turned out. Everything seems to be going well, but meanwhile, in the other scientist is in his lab, throwing out schematics and partially constructed experiments. He collapses in his seat, frustrated and defeated. Just then, he get's a brief glimpse of something in the back. He walks over and finds that it's a box. He opens it up and takes out his old aeolipile. He then begins to rapidly make sketches for a new machine using his steam ball as the power source.
At this point, I don't have much of an idea on how we transition to this part, but one day the bad inventor comes to the town in his newest creation; a mechanical dragon that he can drive. Here I wanted to have a big battle scene where the dragon scorthes and destroys the city, and soliders come in with their new war machines as well, but they aren't as effective as they hope. Eventually, the good inventor see's that the dragon has steam exhaust holes where the nostrils are, and manages to cram log in one, which causes immense build up inside the engine and destroys the machine. As far as falling action goes, I don't really have that settled either.
Anyway, this is what I think I'm going to stick with for my final project. It's still a bit in the rough stages, but I've got visuals in my mind of what I want things to look like, and the world building aspect really intrigues me. I also liked playing with the idea of the power of invention and how ideas can be used for different gains. I got the idea for this project when I was reading this article about a scientist named Hero of Alexandria. It nicely condenses a lot of information about what he invented or came up with but never created physically. What fascinated me most, however, is that he came up with things that I think most people would assume were to sophisticated for their time. I wondered what would have happened in history had his work not be seen as merely novelty by the people of the day. I guess we'll never know for sure, but speculation and alternate history are always fun. I mean, who doesn't want to see steampunk antiquity?
Somewhere in ancient Greece, the people in a small town start their day. The farmers tend their fields with their mules, people go to the river and wash their clothes, etc. Everything seems low tech and normal for the time period. We then see an older man run out of his shack carrying a box. He's an inventor, and today he will show his greatest creation to the best and brightest minds and in the land.
At a gathering in the city, the inventor presents before a crowd his lifes work; the aeolipile. Everyone goes crazy, seeing the worlds first steam engine. The applications could be endless. As everyone becomes more animated, one person isnt so thrilled. As he grips his own box and takes a look inside, we see he has created the SAME EXACT thing. He was beaten to the punch, and now he can't get the credit for it. He leaves in disgust as the crowd celebrates with their man of the hour.
We then fast forward to a few years later. The same town we saw at the beginning has everyone start their day, however this time we see everything is done with crazy machines that are all steam and gear powered. The farmers use (sorta) tractors to plow their fields, everyones clothes get put through some kind of crazy steam press to get cleaned, and people can ride chariots dragged by mechanical horses. The main inventor takes a long look over everything and feels extremely satisfied with how everything has turned out. Everything seems to be going well, but meanwhile, in the other scientist is in his lab, throwing out schematics and partially constructed experiments. He collapses in his seat, frustrated and defeated. Just then, he get's a brief glimpse of something in the back. He walks over and finds that it's a box. He opens it up and takes out his old aeolipile. He then begins to rapidly make sketches for a new machine using his steam ball as the power source.
At this point, I don't have much of an idea on how we transition to this part, but one day the bad inventor comes to the town in his newest creation; a mechanical dragon that he can drive. Here I wanted to have a big battle scene where the dragon scorthes and destroys the city, and soliders come in with their new war machines as well, but they aren't as effective as they hope. Eventually, the good inventor see's that the dragon has steam exhaust holes where the nostrils are, and manages to cram log in one, which causes immense build up inside the engine and destroys the machine. As far as falling action goes, I don't really have that settled either.
Anyway, this is what I think I'm going to stick with for my final project. It's still a bit in the rough stages, but I've got visuals in my mind of what I want things to look like, and the world building aspect really intrigues me. I also liked playing with the idea of the power of invention and how ideas can be used for different gains. I got the idea for this project when I was reading this article about a scientist named Hero of Alexandria. It nicely condenses a lot of information about what he invented or came up with but never created physically. What fascinated me most, however, is that he came up with things that I think most people would assume were to sophisticated for their time. I wondered what would have happened in history had his work not be seen as merely novelty by the people of the day. I guess we'll never know for sure, but speculation and alternate history are always fun. I mean, who doesn't want to see steampunk antiquity?
Saturday, January 22, 2011
A few Ideas (and a wall of text)
Ugh, I hate having to pitch ideas. They never sounds as good as they do in my head. But I guess I have to share some of potential project premises, so here we go.
(1) A high school kid suffers from chronic nightmares every time he goes to sleep. One day he's in his psych class and begins to doze off after having a night where he refused to sleep at all in order to avoid another bad dream. As his teacher yammers on the kid sees the teacher write the words "lucid dreaming" on the board. Our protagonist then picks up his book and reads through it until he finds it defined in the text. He learns about how when one is fully "lucid" they can control their dreams. He then relizes this is his best bet for conquering his nightmares.
Later that day he goes home and looks up how to actually attain lucidity, and learns that you need to do things like find symbols you can recognize in your dreams and so on (I really don't want to go into too much detail here, but I'll touch on it in the final project and you can look it up yourself if you want). Basically, this results in him watching cheesy action movies and playing video games as a sort of training. After what I assume I'll cover in a montage, he'll go to sleep and as the monsters that haunt his dreams come out again for another night or torment, he pulls a fast one and becomes some kind of hyper violent badass and decimates everything using the imagery he pulled from the real world (i.e. he uses all kinds of weapons and wire-fu and other ridiculous things). It's cheesy and juvenile, but cathartic and fun.
I like this one because I think it will give me a chance to play around with humor and action, and since it's animated I can be as free as I want to to exaggerate things and just have fun with it.
(2) Another idea I had revolved around a famous explorer who goes on all kinds of fantastic adventures (think Indiana Jones or Edgar Rice Burrows kind of journeys), but really hates doing so. He'll be asked to find an artifact of some kind and while his sidekick ( I have no idea what to do for this character, I just know the protagonist is going to need a foil of some kind). Past this I really don't have much else thought out. I remember Joe made a comment about my sound edit project and he mentioned how he thought it was funny the character I had was complaining the whole time even though he was in an exotic, surreal locale. I thought that was a funny observation and decided to expand on that idea a bit more. I guess it would, in a way, be his idea? Yet it was inspired by something I made, so it's still my original idea? Meh, whatever.
(3) I don't have much of an idea here, but doing a project using only non-human characters interests me a lot. Maybe using animals or abstract representations of living things? I'm not sure. Or perhaps doing a project influenced by early human cave paintings? I'm fascinated by that kind of primal art style, but I also kind of feel like Len Lye has already treaded those waters. I'll think more about this later. It's a nice tangent, but I don't have anything concrete enough to work with here just yet.
(1) A high school kid suffers from chronic nightmares every time he goes to sleep. One day he's in his psych class and begins to doze off after having a night where he refused to sleep at all in order to avoid another bad dream. As his teacher yammers on the kid sees the teacher write the words "lucid dreaming" on the board. Our protagonist then picks up his book and reads through it until he finds it defined in the text. He learns about how when one is fully "lucid" they can control their dreams. He then relizes this is his best bet for conquering his nightmares.
Later that day he goes home and looks up how to actually attain lucidity, and learns that you need to do things like find symbols you can recognize in your dreams and so on (I really don't want to go into too much detail here, but I'll touch on it in the final project and you can look it up yourself if you want). Basically, this results in him watching cheesy action movies and playing video games as a sort of training. After what I assume I'll cover in a montage, he'll go to sleep and as the monsters that haunt his dreams come out again for another night or torment, he pulls a fast one and becomes some kind of hyper violent badass and decimates everything using the imagery he pulled from the real world (i.e. he uses all kinds of weapons and wire-fu and other ridiculous things). It's cheesy and juvenile, but cathartic and fun.
I like this one because I think it will give me a chance to play around with humor and action, and since it's animated I can be as free as I want to to exaggerate things and just have fun with it.
(2) Another idea I had revolved around a famous explorer who goes on all kinds of fantastic adventures (think Indiana Jones or Edgar Rice Burrows kind of journeys), but really hates doing so. He'll be asked to find an artifact of some kind and while his sidekick ( I have no idea what to do for this character, I just know the protagonist is going to need a foil of some kind). Past this I really don't have much else thought out. I remember Joe made a comment about my sound edit project and he mentioned how he thought it was funny the character I had was complaining the whole time even though he was in an exotic, surreal locale. I thought that was a funny observation and decided to expand on that idea a bit more. I guess it would, in a way, be his idea? Yet it was inspired by something I made, so it's still my original idea? Meh, whatever.
(3) I don't have much of an idea here, but doing a project using only non-human characters interests me a lot. Maybe using animals or abstract representations of living things? I'm not sure. Or perhaps doing a project influenced by early human cave paintings? I'm fascinated by that kind of primal art style, but I also kind of feel like Len Lye has already treaded those waters. I'll think more about this later. It's a nice tangent, but I don't have anything concrete enough to work with here just yet.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
Welcome!
Hello and welcome to my blog for my thesis project. As time goes on I will be updating with posts on my progress. I'll also try and make this look a bit nicer too.
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