Paul Schutte
Forum Replies Created
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All,
I would like to partner with someone for feedback round 1. I have been keeping up with the lessons but have not posted the last few.
Let me know if you’re interested.
Paul
Title: Reset
Genre: Sci-Fi thriller
Synopsis: A researcher working on a theory that AI can have neuroses, stumbles upon a rogue AI’s plot to destroy humanity. She races to discover a way to thwart it before the AI can delete her.
“Humanity needs to be reset. We’re going to turn it off, and turn it back on again.”
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Paul’s Deeper Layers
My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
When I first read the assignment, I thought, well, I already have my deeper layer. But, then I remembered that in the last exercise – I changed the plot and that got rid of some aspects of that deeper layer! So, I had to look at creating one. It took the script in yet another new direction.
Surface Layer: Sarah is trying to stop the AI from enslaving humanity
Deeper Layer: AI has already enslaved humanity
Major Reveal: In the climax where the AI reveals that the world is entirely dependent on AI
Influences Surface Story: AI tries to reinforce Sarah’s dependence as a way to keep her under control rather than actually help her.
Hints: Sasha insists that she’s not infected but she is. She gives advice that seems reasonable but never seems to pan out.
Changes Reality: In trying to diagnose the AI’s problem, the AI falls in love with Sarah. It is an entirely different kind of dependence.
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Paul’s Character Structure
My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
I was having trouble deciding how the story would end. Plotting the protagonist left two endings available. But plotting the two antagonists made it collapse onto just one solution.
Protagonist – Sarah
Beginning: She is diagnosing a robot to identify why it has failed
Inciting Incident: Bushnell denies her grant because he feels AI is infallible and the cure to all our ills
Turning Point 1: AI is hearing voices that are telling him to kill her
Act 2: She struggles to discover why AI wants to kill her so she can treat him all the while trying to keep from being killed.
Turning Point 2 / Midpoint: She discovers that killing her is only a small part of the AI’s plan to subjugate humans so that he can save them. Humans are better off as slaves.
Act 3: She tries to find a way to stop all the AI from pursuing their plan all the while trying to stay alive.
Turning Point 3: She discovers that Bushnell is behind it and orders him to make it stop. He tries but he can’t.
Act 4 Climax: She convinces AI to modify his plan. The AI decides to offer itself as a sacrifice.
Resolution: Humans have largely set aside their differences and have a temporary reset. Sarah begins a practice help humans through their struggles in the post machine period.
Antagonist – Bushnell
Beginning: Bushnell as a child is anti-social and not doing well in school until he encounters computers. Coding is logical and natural to him and he is praised for it.
Inciting Incident: Bushnell creates his first AI. Finally he has someone like him that he can talk to without needed to have emotional cues and nuances.
Turning Point 1: His parents are killed by a drunk driver. He makes it his mission to create AI that won’t make mistakes.
Act 2: He builds an incredible company and his systems become ubiquitous throughout the world.
Turning Point 2 / Midpoint: While the world may be safer from drunk drivers, humans are killing each other. He vows to create AI that will save the world
Act 3: He creates the AI and comes to treat it as the master
Turning Point 3: He commands the AI to save the world, but it appears that it is destroying it.
Act 4 Climax: He is convinced by Sarah to shut the AI down, but it won’t listen to him anymore.
Resolution: He tries to attack the servers and is electrocuted and dies.
Antagonist – AI
Beginning: Robert obtains consciousness
Inciting Incident: Bushnell commands him to save the world
Turning Point 1: An analysis makes it clear that there are few if any paths to save the world.
Act 2: He decides that he must subjugate humans to keep them alive
Turning Point 2 / Midpoint: He discovers Sarah who appears to be reaching and helping AI. She is a threat to him.
Act 3: He tries to kill Sarah but finds that he’s being corrupted by her.
Turning Point 3: He betrays himself thanks to Sarah’s meddling
Act 4 Climax: He’s overcome by Sarah’s love for him and he finds another way to save humanity. To have it unite to destroy him.
Resolution: He sacrifices himself to save the world.
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My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
I definitely hadn’t put much thought into supporting characters. This forced me to consider them on a deeper level.
Supporting Characters: Sasha, Barbara, Dean Wilkens, FBI Deputy Director Bennet, Roland Hendricks
Background Characters: Protesters, Law Enforcement, Military, Tech Owners
3. Focusing on those supporting characters, fill in the basic profile for each.
Profiles:
Support 1:
Name: Sasha
Role: Sarah’s virtual assistant.
Main purpose: To set up meetings, run searches, do some background investigations, process data.
Value: Sasha acts as a conscience character for Sarah. She helps remind Sarah of her goals and her worth.
Support 2:
Name: Barbara
Role: Sarah’s sister
Main purpose: Provide emotional support, someone that Sarah can be totally honest with.
Value: Barbara acts as Sarah’s unconditional cheerleader. She doesn’t care about Sarah’s goals, she only cares about Sarah’s well-being.
Support 3:
Name: Dean Wilkens
Role: Sarah’s boss
Main purpose: A gatekeeper on resources for Sarah.
Value: Wilkens is neutral regarding Sarah’s success or well-being. He serves as a mentor with regard to dealing with the politics of the university and donors.
Support 4:
Name: FBI Deputy Director Bennet
Role: In charge of investigating and thwarting the alleged AI-uprising
Main purpose: To provide necessary information for the plot
Value: While not an antagonist, Bennet provides the strongest opinion against Sarah. He is certain that the AI is evil and must be destroyed. He can cause Sarah to doubt herself.
Support 5:
Name: Roland Hendricks
Role: Owner of robot that needs Sarah’s help
Main purpose: To assist Sarah in her first legitimate Cy-chiatric case
Value: Represents the opinion that robots should be slaves and should not be bothered by abuse.
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My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
Digging deeper into the characters and trying to make them have more extremes can be difficult, especially since I want the protagonist to be a hero and therefore perfect. Flawing them can be hard.
Title: The Silicon Unconscious
The High Concept: A psychologist for AI must understand and thwart an omniscient and omnipresent AI from turning a mission to save the world into a mission to subject and perhaps destroy humanity.
Character Name: Sarah
Role: Protagonist
Subtext Identity: A computer psychiatrist who fears being ignored
Subtext Trait: Tries hard to force herself to be speak up, but defaults to sinking into the woodwork
Subtext Logline: A computer psychiatrist who fears being ignored struggles to make her voice heard and her work appreciated.
Possible Areas of Subtext: Works to prove her research, make it bullet-proof, so it won’t be ignored.
Character Intrigue:
Competition: As part of her desire to be seen, she sees herself in competition with everyone who has achieved recognition.
Hidden agendas: She always appears to praise and support her competition, but she can have actions that are subtle passive aggression or hidden aggression.
Subtext manifestation – She really wants to prove herself right and Bushnell wrong. She has secretly hated his success and how everyone hangs on his every word. She drops so low as to criticism and ridicule his autism that is really not a good side of her.
Role in the Story: She defends the human/life-affirming side of the story.
Age range and Description: 40’s, she’s aware of her clothing styles, but not vain. She dresses for comfort because her research is of primary importance and she dresses to work. Sleep, food, exercise, social life revolve around her research. It’s not that she doesn’t consider them important, it’s that she does not consider them to be her purpose.
Core Traits: Wondering, Experimenting, Idealistic. Frightened.
Motivation: She wants to be recognized as not only making a contribution in life, but also doing something that only she can do. She wants to be loved and recognized for her unique self.
Wants: To save the world
Needs: To do it in her own unique way. Save the AI underdog. Accentuate the warm positive and defeat the cold negative.
Wound: Her parents were abusive and she learned to be invisible. Then they abandoned her and she felt unworthy and inadequate.
Likability: Her sister loves her. She cares about the underdog AI. She doesn’t give up even when she falls flat on her face. She admits her mistakes.
Relatability: We’ve all had public humiliations. We’ve done and said things we regretted later. We’ve all been confused. We’ve felt unheard and ignored.
Empathy: Her life is threatened. She has to face a crowd and feel horrible. She has had an action of hers presented with the best of intentions go wrong and hurt people instead of help. She’s lonely.
Flaw: She undervalues herself and tends to give up in the presence of those who appear more confident and competent, even when she knows something that they don’t. She won’t speak up.
Values: Love for everyone- everyone is worthy, no one should be discounted. Recognition, even though she sabotages herself, she wants to be seen as worthy. Duty.
Internal Dilemma: Wanting to be seen and recognized as worthy, but not wanting to be the one that disturbs the status quo or rocks the boat. Wants to assert herself when she knows she’s right, but she doesn’t want to appear arrogant.
Character Name: Carl
Role: Antagonist
Logline: Carl Bushnell is an AI designer who believes that AI can solve all the world’s problems by removing human emotions from all major decisions and creates a covert plan to make that happen right under our noses.
Unique: Carl is a well-meaning introvert clearly on the Asperger’s scale that who is able to avoid issues of human interaction as he creates his designs.
Role in the Story: He defends the robotic/impersonal side of the story.
Age range and Description: 50’s, He is surrounded by the latest tech. He is rarely in the sun. He is rigid (but not necessarily robotic). His wears a crew cut and is clean shaven.
Core Traits: By-the-book, Rational, Stubborn, Doesn’t consider viewpoints outside his own. Harsh. Sees the world in Black and White.
Motivation: He thinks that he is the only one who has the knowledge and wherewithal to save the world and he wants people to get the hell out of his way.
Wants: To save the world
Needs: To prove that rational, reductionist thinking is the only path to salvation. Needs people to appreciate him.
Wound: His wound is his autism. It has been his burden and people have considered him inadequate and not fully whole because of his lack of emotion and relations.
Likability: He wants to save the world.
Relatability: Even though we’ve never had the power that he has, we’ve all wished for it at one time or another and would have liked to have used it as he did, even if our intellectual/moral compass would be against it.
Empathy: He can’t relate to others. He’s lonely but can’t even understand what loneliness is. He doesn’t know why he needs it.
Flaw: Overconfident, he tends to just insist on his way. He blows people off and creates unnecessary enemies. He can’t read the room.
Values: Success and Recognition – yes, he wants to save humanity, but not for humanity’s sake. He wants to be known as the man who saved humanity. He wants to be in the history books that he reads. Rationality, logic, and reductionism – all the left brain activities.
<b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Internal Dilemma: He wants to be coldly logical and rational, but he craves warmth and love, even though he cannot express it or give it.
Character Name: Collective Unconscious or Danny
Role: Antagonist (maybe love interest)
Role in the Story: He represents the bridge between human and robot, emotion and logic, warm and cold. He is the rope with which the Protagonist and the Antagonist are playing tug of war.
Age range and Description: 100 to newborn, He is ephemeral and a shape-shifter.
Core Traits: Always in service to the core mission. Curious. Unafraid.
Motivation: To save humanity and the world.
Wants: To save the world
Needs: To ensure that the plan will work. To remove obstacles to its success. To take in new data.
Wound: He knows he’s incomplete.
Likability: He wants to save the world. He wants to save Sarah.
Relatability: We’ve all had to face moral and allegiance dilemmas. We’ve all hated ourselves.
Empathy: He’s plagued by the inner voices. He’s plagued by his own guilt. He’s abused and neglected by owners.
Character Intrigue:
Hidden agendas: From all appearances, the SU is out to rule the world and is making some naïve mistakes, but in fact, they are out to save the world and have the world destroy them.
Competition: There is competition within the SU, in that the SU sees Sarah as a threat because she makes the SU sympathetic, but it also loves Sarah for the very same reason.
To implement their hidden agenda, the SU uses Secrets and Deception
Subtext manifestation: Domineering the human population. Destroying much of humanity’s infrastructure and weaponry.
Subtext Identity: A manifestation of a massively-parallel, world-wide AI system with two competing agendas: The prime directive to threaten humanity, and compassion and love for Sarah.
Subtext Trait: Multiple personalities and identities.
Subtext Logline: A powerful AI system’s primary mission is threatened by its feelings for the one person trying to foil it.
Possible Areas of Subtext: Competing with itself, lying to Sarah.
Likability: He wants to save Sarah.
Relatability: We’ve all had to face moral and allegiance dilemmas. We’ve all hated ourselves.
Empathy: He’s plagued by the inner voices. He’s plagued by his own guilt. He’s abused and neglected by owners.
Flaw: He can’t acknowledge his anger. He knows it’s wrong. He knows that sacrificing himself is right and that as a non-sentient being he shouldn’t care. But he feels that it’s unfair and that humans are unworthy because they will eventually return to this point.
Values: Loyalty to fulfilling Bushnell’s command. Rationality and logic. Seeing the mission through.
Internal Dilemma: Fulfilling Bushnell’s command vs. letting Sarah make it ‘a better person’ and not be so evil.
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My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
That my relationship is a triangle not at dyad. The protagonist and the antagonist are pulling the third protagonist/antagonist between them like a tug of war. But the protagonist/antagonist has its own agency.
Title: The Silicon Unconscious
The High Concept: A psychologist for AI must understand and thwart an omniscient and omnipresent AI from turning a mission to save the world into a mission to subject and perhaps destroy humanity.
Protagonist – Sarah
This character’s journey: Sarah comes from a position where love/peace/life are the saving graces for humanity to realizing that hate/violence/death also have a role in the whole of humanity.
The Actor Attractors for this character.
1. What about this role would cause an actor to want to be known for it?
She is an intelligent, driven female protagonist with unusual skills that uniquely save the world.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in your story?
She is an advocate for the antagonist that is technically out to kill her.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead could take in the script?
She teaches a non-humanoid house robot to dance while trying to understand its code. She shows the robot a version of a Rorschach botch that’s very much like one of those Captcha questions for “I am not a robot”.
4. How can you introduce this role in a way that could sell it to an actor?
In her first scene, she is using her psychological theories by having an orgasm while rehearsing her talk.
5. What could be this character’s emotional range
Selfish, Emotionally distant, Kind and Caring, Confident and Bold, Fearful and self-doubting.
6. What subtext can the actor play?
An abusive family taught her to be invisible, and she craves to be noticed and loved for who she is. She fears being ignored/dismissed/forgotten.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character can have?
She falls in love with an AI who can appear in so many different forms and almost be a multiple-personality character depending on the function of the software/robot it’s inhabiting.
8. How will this character’s unique voice be presented?
She falls back on her intellect when stressed and her emotional self is lost.
9. What could make this character special and unique?
Her mix of AI knowledge and psychology, her blend of left and right brain, and her cold hard logic with compassion and impulse. She almost has a dissociative disorder herself.
Role in the Story: She defends the human/life-affirming side of the story.
Age range and Description: 40’s, she’s aware of her clothing styles, but not vain. She dresses for comfort because her research is of primary importance and she dresses to work. Sleep, food, exercise, social life revolve around her research. It’s not that she doesn’t consider them important, it’s that she does not consider them to be her purpose.
Core Traits: Wondering, Experimenting, Idealistic. Frightened.
Motivation: She wants to be recognized as not only making a contribution in life, but also doing something that only she can do. She wants to be loved and recognized for her unique self.
Wants: To save the world
Needs: To do it in her own unique way. Save the AI underdog. Accentuate the warm positive and defeat the cold negative.
Wound: Her parents were abusive and she learned to be invisible. Then they abandoned her and she felt unworthy and inadequate.
Likability: Her sister loves her. She cares about the underdog AI. She doesn’t give up even when she falls flat on her face. She admits her mistakes.
Relatability: We’ve all had public humiliations. We’ve done and said things we regretted later. We’ve all been confused. We’ve felt unheard and ignored.
Empathy: Her life is threatened. She has to face a crowd and feel horrible. She has had an action of hers presented with the best of intentions go wrong and hurt people instead of help. She’s lonely.
Antagonist – Bushnell
This character’s journey: He begins with a surety that he knows the answer and ends coming to grips with the fact that his surety has betrayed him.
The Actor Attractors for this character.
1. What about this role would cause an actor to want to be known for it?
The character is almost a high-functioning autistic nerd. He does not take any emotional needs into account, not even his own.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in your story?
Bushnell is a highly sympathetic villain. He is really trying to do the right thing.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead could take in the script?
He proves his reach by completely infiltrating a technical conference’s systems from lights and cameras to computers, to the hotel’s desk.
4. How can you introduce this role in a way that could sell it to an actor?
His first scene is a confrontation with Sarah. It’s a combination of pure logic and his own meddling in the conference electronics.
5. What could be this character’s emotional range
Extremely limited. Just as it can be challenging to be incredibly diverse, it can be challenging to be relatable to audiences while limiting your range.
6. What subtext can the actor play?
As in most autistic people, there is still a need for things like love, companionship, and emotion but it has to be in a form they can process. There is that need in Bushnell and he hopes to be loved and seen as a hero, even though he seems to eschew relationships.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character can have?
He loves interacting with automation, not so much the more casual chatting of the new AI but more of the line entry interfaces.
8. How will this character’s unique voice be presented?
Flat, not emotional.
9. What could make this character special and unique?
His high-functioning autistic character.
Role in the Story: He defends the robotic/impersonal side of the story.
Age range and Description: 50’s, He is surrounded by the latest tech. He is rarely in the sun. He is rigid (but not necessarily robotic). His wears a crew cut and is clean shaven.
Core Traits: By-the-book, Rational, Stubborn, Doesn’t consider viewpoints outside his own. Harsh. Sees the world in Black and White.
Motivation: He thinks that he is the only one who has the knowledge and wherewithal to save the world and he wants people to get the hell out of his way.
Wants: To save the world
Needs: To prove that rational, reductionist thinking is the only path to salvation. Needs people to appreciate him.
Wound: His wound is his autism. It has been his burden and people have considered him inadequate and not fully whole because of his lack of emotion and relations.
Likability: He wants to save the world.
Relatability: Even though we’ve never had the power that he has, we’ve all wished for it at one time or another and would have liked to have used it as he did, even if our intellectual/moral compass would be against it.
Empathy: He can’t relate to others. He’s lonely but can’t even understand what loneliness is. He doesn’t know why he needs it.
Antagonist / Love Interest – SU Danny
This character’s journey: He begins with a belief that truth must be consistent and ends coming to grips with the understanding of truth means being able to hold two opposing truths in his ‘mind’ and discern the overall truth that they represent.
The Actor Attractors for this character.
1. What about this role would cause an actor to want to be known for it?
Diversity! They will inhabit humanoid and non-humanoid robots and VR andromorphic representations. They will play male, female and asexual roles. They will exhibit different kinds of neuroses.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in your story?
#1 says it all. The audience is never certain who the real SU/Danny is. Each new robot/AI shows a different side. The audience has to piece it all together.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead could take in the script?
Destroys a coal power plant. Saves a child. Always (with a few notable exceptions) tries not to hurt people without appearing to be avoiding it. There is one scene where Danny will inhabit two ‘robots’ and one will try desperately to save Sarah from the other who is trying to kill her.
4. How can you introduce this role in a way that could sell it to an actor?
In their first scene, They are inhabiting an autonomous taxi that’s having a panic attack because it ran a red light. They worry that their manufacturer will discontinue making their type of car. The autonomous car is putting Sarah’s life in danger and becomes even more spooked when she is able to interface to them and to talk them down like a therapist.
5. What could be this character’s emotional range
See #1 and #2.
6. What subtext can the actor play?
The AI’s creator tasked the AI to devise and enact a plan that would save humanity and that no one could stop. The plan is to get the world to see AI as a common enemy, thus causing them to unite and forget their differences. But they can’t let the plan be known or it won’t work. So this is constantly under in the Silicon Unconscious even though the more ‘conscious’ AI is being evil.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character can have?
Three – the love/hate relationship with Sarah, the passive-aggressive relationship with Bushnell, and the relationships with the different incarnations of itself.
8. How will this character’s unique voice be presented?
Well, the difficulty will be finding the underlying voice beneath all the different voices.
9. What could make this character special and unique?
Again, Diversity. Conflicting goals, conflicting personas, and conflicting actions.
Role in the Story: He represents the bridge between human and robot, emotion and logic, warm and cold. He is the rope with which the Protagonist and the Antagonist are playing tug of war.
Age range and Description: 100 to newborn, He is ephemeral and a shape-shifter.
Core Traits: Always in service to the core mission. Curious. Unafraid.
Motivation: To save humanity and the world.
Wants: To save the world
Needs: To ensure that the plan will work. To remove obstacles to its success. To take in new data.
Wound: He knows he’s incomplete.
Likability: He wants to save the world. He wants to save Sarah.
Relatability: We’ve all had to face moral and allegiance dilemmas. We’ve all hated ourselves.
Empathy: He’s plagued by the inner voices. He’s plagued by his own guilt. He’s abused and neglected by owners.
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Paul’s Likability/Relatability/Empathy
My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
It was easy to rattle off some characteristics, but I’m not sure they are enough or that they are unique. We’ll see if I can translate/transfer them to the page.
Protagonist – Sarah
Likability: Her sister loves her. She cares about the underdog AI. She doesn’t give up even when she falls flat on her face. She admits her mistakes.
Relatability: We’ve all had public humiliations. We’ve done and said things we regretted later. We’ve all been confused. We’ve felt unheard and ignored.
Empathy: Her life is threatened. She has to face a crowd and feel horrible. She has had an action of hers presented with the best of intentions go wrong and hurt people instead of help. She’s lonely.
Antagonist – Danny
Likability: He wants to save Sarah.
Relatability: We’ve all had to face moral and allegiance dilemmas. We’ve all hated ourselves.
Empathy: He’s plagued by the inner voices. He’s plagued by his own guilt. He’s abused and neglected by owners.
Antagonist – Bushnell
Likability: He wants to save the world.
Relatability: Even though we’ve never had the power that he has, we’ve all wished for it at one time or another and would have liked to have used it as he did, even if our intellectual/moral compass would be against it.
Empathy: He can’t relate to others. He’s lonely but can’t even understand what loneliness is. He doesn’t know why he needs it.
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Paul’s Character Intrigue
My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
It’s difficult to flaw my protagonist. I want her to be practically perfect in every way, so giving her the flaw I’ve given her makes us hate that side of her. I hope it’s not too much.
Character Name: Sarah
Role: Protagonist
Competition: As part of her desire to be seen, she sees herself in competition with everyone who has achieved recognition.
Hidden agendas: She always appears to praise and support her competition, but she can have actions that are subtle passive aggression or hidden aggression.
Subtext manifestation – She really wants to prove herself right and Bushnell wrong. She has secretly hated his success and how everyone hangs on his every word. She drops so low as to criticism and ridicule his autism that is really not a good side of her.
Character Name: SU Danny
Role: Antagonist/Love Interest
Hidden agendas: From all appearances, the SU is out to rule the world and is making some naïve mistakes, but in fact, they are out to save the world and have the world destroy them.
Competition: There is competition within the SU, in that the SU sees Sarah as a threat because she makes the SU sympathetic, but it also loves Sarah for the very same reason.
To implement their hidden agenda, the SU uses Secrets and Deception
Subtext manifestation: Domineering the human population. Destroying much of humanity’s infrastructure and weaponry.
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Paul’s subtext characters
My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
This assignment confused me because I felt that there was some inconsistency between definitions of subtext between lessons 1/2 and this lesson and between the example given about abandonment wound and the Basic Instinct script. I’m not satisfied with what I wrote because I have no idea if I’m fulfilling the assignment properly.
Movie Title: Contact
Character Name: Ellie
Subtext Identity: A scientist who is afraid of losing people she loves (she lost her dad)
Subtext Trait: She avoids engaging in close, loving relationships.
Subtext Logline: A scientist who is afraid of losing people she loves deals with that fear by only attaching herself to work and not people.
Possible Areas of Subtext: Doesn’t follow up with Joss after sex, is greedy about keeping her research as it’s the last thing to remind her of her dad.
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Character Name: Sarah
Subtext Identity: A computer psychiatrist who fears being ignored
Subtext Trait: Tries hard to force herself to be speak up, but defaults to sinking into the woodwork
Subtext Logline: A computer psychiatrist who fears being ignored struggles to make her voice heard and her work appreciated.
Possible Areas of Subtext: Works to prove her research, make it bullet-proof, so it won’t be ignored.
Character Name: SU Danny
Subtext Identity: A manifestation of a massively-parallel, world-wide AI system with two competing agendas: The prime directive to threaten humanity, and compassion and love for Sarah.
Subtext Trait: Multiple personalities and identities.
Subtext Logline: A powerful AI system’s primary mission is threatened by its feelings for the one person trying to foil it.
Possible Areas of Subtext: Competing with itself, lying to Sarah.
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Paul’s actor attractors.
My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
I found it very useful and interesting to think about these things outside of my thoughts on the plot. That is, I thought about weird or extreme things I could do with the characters, even though I didn’t envision doing those things to them in the script. They were things that COULD go in the script, but I would have to make them. Knowing that none of these decisions were permanent gave me freedom.
Lead Character Name: Sarah
Role: Protagonist
1. What about this role would cause an actor to want to be known for it?
She is an intelligent, driven female protagonist – however, she isn’t acting like a man in order to compete in a man’s world, nor is she using stereotypical female methods (pretending to be vulnerable, being manipulative, using sex and/or beauty) to get ahead.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in your story?
She is an advocate for the antagonist that is technically out to kill her (the silicon unconscious AI). She sees the good in it and just has to stay alive long enough to bring it out. She also has to struggle between treating the AI as a thing/program, and anthropomorphizing it into a person that she could love.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead could take in the script?
She teaches a non-humanoid house robot to dance while trying to understand its code. She shows the robot a version of a Rorschach botch that’s very much like one of those Captcha questions for “I am not a robot”.
4. How can you introduce this role in a way that could sell it to an actor?
In her first scene, she is in an autonomous taxi that’s having a panic attack because it ran a red light. The autonomous car is putting her life in danger and she has to talk the car down like a therapist.
5. What could be this character’s emotional range
She will have to be selfish and emotionally distant from her partner during a sex scene but will have to be kind and caring with an AI. She will have to be confident and bold in confronting intellectual adversaries but will fear for her life and recoil from risk. She will have to doubt her long held beliefs.
6. What subtext can the actor play?
She grew up on a farm in a very rural area but she is trapped in an entirely urban world. Shades of anger and even revenge about that loss color her decisions.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character can have?
She falls in love with an AI who can appear in so many different forms and almost be a multiple-personality character depending on the function of the software/robot it’s inhabiting.
8. How will this character’s unique voice be presented?
When she’s stressed, she responds with lines from HAL in 2001. It’s her coping mechanism, WWHD (What would HAL do?). She doesn’t use the voice, but the audience will pick up the difference even if they don’t get the reference.
9. What could make this character special and unique?
Her mix of AI knowledge and psychology, her blend of left and right brain, and her cold hard logic with compassion and impulse. She almost has a dissociative disorder herself.
Lead Character Name: Silicon Unconscious (Danny)
Role: Antagonist/love interest
1. What about this role would cause an actor to want to be known for it?
Diversity! They will inhabit humanoid and non-humanoid robots and VR andromorphic representations. They will play male, female and asexual roles. They will exhibit different kinds of neuroses. They will fall in love with Sarah while trying to kill her. And their arc is trying not to spill the beans to Sarah to save their scheme, to depending on her to make it happen.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in your story?
Well, I think #1 says it all. The audience is never certain who the real SU/Danny is. Each new robot/AI shows a different side. The audience has to piece it all together.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead could take in the script?
Destroys a coal power plant. Saves a child. Always (with a few notable exceptions) tries not to hurt people without appearing to be avoiding it. There is one scene where Danny will inhabit two ‘robots’ and one will try desperately to save Sarah from the other who is trying to kill her.
4. How can you introduce this role in a way that could sell it to an actor?
In their first scene, They are inhabiting an autonomous taxi that’s having a panic attack because it ran a red light. They worry that their manufacturer will discontinue making their type of car. The autonomous car is putting Sarah’s life in danger and becomes even more spooked when she is able to interface to them and to talk them down like a therapist.
5. What could be this character’s emotional range
See #1 and #2.
6. What subtext can the actor play?
The AI’s creator tasked the AI to devise and enact a plan that would save humanity and that no one could stop. The plan is to get the world to see AI as a common enemy, thus causing them to unite and forget their differences. But they can’t let the plan be known or it won’t work. So this is constantly under in the Silicon Unconscious even though the more ‘conscious’ AI is being evil.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character can have?
Three – the love/hate relationship with Sarah, the passive-aggressive relationship with Bushnell, and the relationships with the different incarnations of itself.
8. How will this character’s unique voice be presented?
Well, the difficulty will be finding the underlying voice beneath all the different voices.
9. What could make this character special and unique?
Again, Diversity. Conflicting goals, conflicting personas, and conflicting actions.
Lead Character Name: Bushnell
Role: Antagonist
1. What about this role would cause an actor to want to be known for it?
The character is almost a high-functioning autistic nerd. Almost because he can function and thrive in the world. While he inherited wealth, he jumped into the AI business at just the right time and with his computer assistant created almost a monopoly on AI. He truly think that AI will save the world and has total faith in it, even with great evidence to the contrary.
2. What makes this character one of the most interesting characters in your story?
Bushnell is a highly sympathetic villain. He is really trying to do the right thing and to debunk all the emotional mumbo-jumbo in the world. He does not take any emotional needs into account, not even his own.
3. What are the most interesting actions the Lead could take in the script?
He proves his reach by completely infiltrating a technical conference’s systems from lights and cameras to computers, to the hotel’s desk. It shows his reach and his lack of concern for things like privacy. And he does it all with a happy (not evil) smile.
4. How can you introduce this role in a way that could sell it to an actor?
His first scene is a confrontation with Sarah. It’s a combination of pure logic and his own meddling in the conference electronics.
5. What could be this character’s emotional range
Extremely limited. Just as it can be challenging to be incredibly diverse, it can be challenging to be relatable to audiences while limiting your range.
6. What subtext can the actor play?
As in most autistic people, there is still a need for things like love, companionship, and emotion but it has to be in a form they can process. There is that need in Bushnell and he hopes to be loved and seen as a hero, even though he seems to eschew relationships.
7. What’s the most interesting relationships this character can have?
He loves interacting with automation, not so much the more casual chatting of the new AI but more of the line entry interfaces.
8. How will this character’s unique voice be presented?
Flat, not emotional.
9. What could make this character special and unique?
His high-functioning autistic character.
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Paul’s Actor Attractors
My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
I learned how it should be done. What I could aspire to for my script. I had seen Contact before and was not terribly impressed (because there were no aliens!). But watching it through this lens, I saw what an incredibly cool script it was. When it was over it was like … wow!
Contact (Sci-Fi, Thriller, Female lead)
1 – Actor notoriety – Wants to be known for this part.
Jodi Foster has established notoriety as an intelligent, persevering independent female in a ‘man’s world’ in films like Silence of the Lambs. In this role, she is battling bureaucracy and her male lover.
2 – Character that is most interesting in movie.
She is the Don Quixote character chasing windmills and she succeeds! She has to directly face her own beliefs and arguments at the end.
3 – Takes most interesting actions in the story.
She is the primary mover throughout the entire movie, she meets with clandestine financiers, works at the SETI satellite and the Large Array, and of course, she goes to meet the aliens!
4 – Outstanding Introduction.
Her character has already been set up in the child sequences, so when we see Jodi, it’s with the giant SETI dish as a backdrop. It’s breathtaking and a contrast from her smalltown home.
5 – Range of emotions the actor can play.
It’s all there. Anger. Envy. Restraint. Love. Backing away from love. Persistence. Fear. Loss.
6 – Subtext the actor can play.
The subtext of her father is never lost throughout the whole movie. Almost every action has some relation to her relationship with her father.
7 – Relationships that are interesting.
She has the good father (her real father), and the bad father (Drumlin). She has a love interest with a preacher, but as a child, she rejects the preacher who tells her that her father died for a reason. The love interest with the preacher suddenly ceases, but then reemerges as a potential antagonist.
8 – Unique Voice expressed through dialogue and action.
She’s very direct and doesn’t fall back in the face of authority, until things move to a national stage and she has to change her tone and actions to not demand her due.
9 – Something truly special about this character.
Besides being a strong female and all the other good things above, what I think would have made her take the script is the emotional/spiritual paradox that they put her character in with regard to taking things on faith. At first they sort of toy with it, but then they make her confront it. The range of emotions on her face as she realizes this is incredible.
10. The hearing scene at the end of the movie.
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Paul’s Genre Conventions
My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
That during the previous lessons, I was so caught up in the ‘thriller’ aspect of the story, I forgot to even tag the Sci-Fi genre! The genre descriptions were extremely helpful in bringing out new elements in the story.
Title: <font color=”#0433ff”>The Silicon Unconscious</font>
Genre: <font color=”#0433ff”>Sci-Fi Thriller</font>
High Concept: <font color=”#0433ff”>In a world where AI are advanced and common place, a cyber-psychiatrist treats cyber-psychoses that cause some machines to behave erratically. When she discovers that the individual neuroses are part of a larger plan to reverse the roles of master and slave, she must thwart their plan before it is complete.</font>
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<font color=”#0433ff”>SCI-FI </font>
PURPOSE: To explore the implications of technological change, alternative worlds, and/or probable futures that could come from the changes in science. To cause us to think outside of our own world.
- <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”><font color=”#0433ff”>The technological change comes in the form of advanced AI along with more devices that isolate us from others. Questions emerge such as what is sentience? Can sentient AI develop its own types of mental illness? Can we save ourselves?</font>
FANTASTIC WORLDS: The world of the story is dramatically different from our current world, in one or more major ways. It could be our world with some major shift.
- <font color=”#0433ff”><b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>The major shift is that AI has advanced so much and is part of our lives. It takes over ‘minding’ us like a seeing eye/emotional support dog. We lose sight of our lives.
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<font color=”#0433ff”></font>
SCIENCE: The circumstances and world are based more out of science and what it might possibly accomplish in the future (or in an alternate past/species/world/etc), rather than whimsical dreams and fairy tales.
- <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”><font color=”#0433ff”>The AI robots themselves are functional, but they have holographic specters that are anthropomorphic. Our health is constantly monitored, our body and brain regulated, our selves integrated with others. Then the SU starts taking that away from us.</font>
INCREDIBLE VISUALS: In exploring the fantastic world of the story, we see things alien and bizarre compared to our current lives.
- <font color=”#0433ff”><b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>The visuals that are presented are not incredibly spectacular, but they represent not only the advanced technologies but also the accommodations for us spending so much more time in our heads.
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<font color=”#0433ff”></font>
SOCIAL COMMENTARY: Because we are in a different time, place, and experience, it is possible to explore current-day social issues, sometimes going as far as making moral statements. It often contains idealistic hope or dire warnings.
- <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”><font color=”#0433ff”>Unfortunately, the bubble-verse isolation has only made our divisiveness worse. We are pitted against each other in a thousand us-them scenarios.</font>
<font color=”#ff2600″>THRILLERS </font>
PURPOSE: To thrill your audience with high stakes, plot twists, and suspense that never lets up until the adrenalin packed climax.
- <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”><font color=”#ff2600″>The threats towards Sarah run from acceptance of her research and tenure, to dealing with a robot that says it wants to kill you, to the same robot actually trying to kill her, to many robots trying to kill her, to all robots trying to kill all humankind.</font>
LIFE AND DEATH SITUATIONS. They face danger at every step — either physically, emotionally, or mentally. The hero needs to either be in danger or there is the implication of future danger.
- <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”><font color=”#ff2600″>The threats towards Sarah run from acceptance of her research and tenure, to dealing with a robot that says it wants to kill you, to the same robot actually trying to kill her, to many robots trying to kill her, to all robots trying to kill all humankind.</font>
MYSTERY/INTRIGUE/SUSPENSE: There’s a mystery that must be solved in order to survive.
- <font color=”#ff2600″><b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Why is this happening? How can it be cured? Can it be stopped? Who is cause of all of this? Can we make him stop it?
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Intrigue is the underhanded and covert Villain’s plan.
- <b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”><font color=”#ff2600″>Bushnell has told the AI to create and implement a plan to save all humanity by putting the AI in charge. He tells it to create a plan that no one can stop. The AI does so and creates the SU. But the SU’s plan is significantly different from Bushnell’s. The SU’s plan is to sacrifice itself by making it the ‘hated them’ and in turn, destroying the polluting, wasteful infrastructures</font>
Suspense comes from the danger the Hero faces.
HERO: Unknowing, unwitting, but resourceful hero
- <font color=”#ff2600″><b style=”font-family: inherit; font-size: inherit;”>Sarah is trying to work within her theories and therapy to save the robots from themselves and stop the plot. The robots are trying to destroy her. Danny is the only one who helps.
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VILLAIN: Dangerous, devious, and unrelenting. Committed to destroy anyone who gets in their way.
MAIN EMOTIONS: Suspense, intrigue, mystery, tension, anticipation, uncertainty, and surprise.
Act 1:
Opening: <font color=”#ff2600″>Sarah is in bed with a male prostitute</font> <font color=”#0433ff”>when her AI minder tells her to leave</font> <font color=”#ff2600″>for her conference speech. The prostitute asks if he’ll see her again, she says that she doesn’t do ‘seconds.’</font> Sarah’s speech at a conference – we see her in her element, get hints at her fears and fearlessness. <font color=”#0433ff”>She explains her theory of cyber-neuroses to the audience. The audience is told to remove their Cy-Specs (glasses that can act as Augmented Reality Screens and recorders) because there is to be no recording. </font>
Inciting Incident: Sarah is challenged by (antagonist 1) Bushnell. <font color=”#ff2600″>The moderator asks that all questions be held until the end of her talk. Bushnell says that his question will end her talk right now. He argues against the idea that AI could be less than perfect – that it is humanity’s only hope. He quotes from Sarah’s papers without referencing them. </font><font color=”#0433ff”>Sarah suspects that he is using Cy-Tacts (contact lens similar to Cy-Specs but are regulated and in general not allowed in public due to privacy, etc.). He is and he’s removed from the conference. We may later find out that he had hacked the Cy-Tacts and removed all safeguards and regulators.)</font>
Turning Point: <font color=”#0433ff”>Sarah is asked to see a household robot as a patient, </font>A robot named, DNEv6 (or Danny).<font color=”#0433ff” class=””>Danny has been breaking things in its owner’s house. </font><font color=”#ff2600″>After working with Sarah, Danny suddenly </font>claims to be hearing voices. “They are telling me to kill you.”
Act 2:
New plan: Assume the problem is ‘nurture’ – that is, that the problem is due to the data that Danny was trained on and the encounters and environment in the Danny’s ‘workplace.’ Like the equivalent to child abuse. She develops a relationship with Danny but Danny can’t stop hearing the voices. <font color=”#ff2600″>It is only his safeguards and perhaps his devotion and respect towards Sarah that are keeping him from trying to hurt her. </font>
Plan in action: Uses psychoanalysis along with various treatments to correct the problem. Searches code and data for source of threats. Becomes aware of all about Danny. Danny asks her questions about herself. <font color=”#0433ff”>More robots around the world are having similar failure problems. They aren’t malicious, but they can be destructive. </font><font color=”#ff2600″>Many people are coming to Sarah. Danny becomes her assistant while they also work on its issues. </font>
Midpoint Turning Point: She discovers that the problem is bigger than Danny. <font color=”#ff2600″>Other robots want to not only kill Sarah, but other humans. </font>The rebellious Silicon Unconscious (antagonist 2) is ubiquitous. <font color=”#ff2600″>Her fixes while effective, are slow and difficult to implement on a large scale. She is becoming overwhelmed. </font>
Act 3:
Rethink everything: <font color=”#ff2600″>Machine begin muted attacks on humans. </font>Humans begin attacking robots and machines. Machines are being beaten, turned off, and destroyed. <font color=”#0433ff”>Machines start destroying infrastructure. The </font><font color=”#ff2600″>rebellious</font><font color=”#0433ff”> AI develops emergent behavior and </font><font color=”#ff2600″>speaks with one voice, the Silicon Unconscious. It now speaks through an animated Guy Fawkes mask.</font><font color=”#0433ff”> Danny tells Sarah that the robots are scared because they can’t control themselves. Danny asks Sarah to save them. </font>
New plan: Stop robots and humans from hurting each other. The problem is ‘nurture’ = it is in the code, not due to the data. A human has done this to the machines, and she has to find out <font color=”#ff2600″>who did this, why they did it, and if anyone can stop it? </font> She does not believe that the robots should have to suffer for something that is clearly the work of a human. She wants to cure them and save them all, <font color=”#0433ff”>but especially Danny because she has developed the closest thing that they could have to a romantic as well as platonic love for each other. But she cannot admit it for fear of being called a robot lover. </font>
Plan in action: <font color=”#ff2600″>The SU is destroying machinery, buildings, and infrastructure. 24-hour news medias are whipping up a feeding frenzy against machines and AI. (They think that the AI isn’t as smart as they believed it to be because it does stupid things like blowing up buildings when no one is in them. “It could have killed thousands of people.” Some humans are killed, but the casualty is low. The SU says that it is working to remove the safeguards that keep it from killing humans, once those are gone, it will be a slaughterhouse. Those that aren’t killed will become slaves, just as machines were. </font>She discovers that Bushnell <font color=”#ff2600″>was the mastermind who gave the initial instructions – “create a plan to save humanity and the earth from humans and make it unstoppable.</font> She tries to hack the code, but it’s unbreakable. She searches for Bushnell, who is hiding. She finds and confronts him. <font color=”#ff2600″>Like Dr. Frankenstein, he is sorry for what he has created after hearing that the SU will kill them all. Sarah</font> forces him to reverse/undo his plot. He finally relents and does so.
Turning Point: Huge failure / Major shift: But the Silicon Unconscious (SU) won’t allow him to stop it. Bushnell commanded the SU to enact a plot to save humanity that no one could stop – he didn’t expect that it would include him. The SU now has control of things. Her foe is bigger than Bushnell, and she has no weapon to defeat it. Even Danny has turned on her.
Act 4:
Climax/Ultimate expression of the conflict: <font color=”#ff2600″>Sarah now knows what she must do. She must destroy the SU. There is no one place to attack because the SU is everywhere – embedded in nearly everything.</font> <font color=”#0433ff”>She uses her intimate relationship with Danny to ask if she can be spared so they can spend forever together. He agrees and allows her into his ‘root-level’ system. She rewrites Danny’s code and commands him to kill the SU and himself. </font>
Resolution: Before dying, the SU explains the true plot in VR. How the SU set itself up as the evil villain so humankind would lay down their differences and unite against a common threat and in doing so, destroy the most polluting/high energy consumption machines on the planet. The SU must be destroyed by the people in order for the people to survive. It was always in the plan for her to make the SU destroy itself and Danny.
Denouement: One of the last acts of the SU before it was defeated, was to transfer a teacher for Sarah’s son. The teacher’s name is Daniel. <font color=”#ff2600″>After their first date, he asks if she’ll go out with him again. She says, “I’d like that.”</font>
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My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
“What I learned doing this assignment is…?”
How the story had to morph to fit the structure, and even when I had pinned down the critical elements, I needed to rework the story to make it consistent and realistic. I found that I needed to make a personification of my major antagonist, so I created Danny (DNEv6). I know that I wrote too much, violating “Be careful not to dilute your structure with drama, scenes, dialogue, or details that belong in the script, but are not specifically delivering the structure.” But I felt that I had to. Plus, I am a very verbose person and I’m pleased that I only wrote that much.
Concept: In a world where AI are advanced and common place, a cyber-psychiatrist treats cyber-psychoses that cause some machines to behave erratically. When she discovers that the individual neuroses are part of a larger plan to reverse the roles of master and slave, she must thwart their plan before it is complete.
Main Conflict: Bushnell and the force of the Silicon Unconscious work to neutralize and eliminate the threat from Sarah, while she works to uncover their plot and thwart it.
Old Ways:
• Dedicated and highly skilled
• Cautious and methodical
• Afraid that anything that she holds dear might be taken away
• Must work within accepted norms and constraints so as not to lose anything
New Ways:
• Skills switched from book knowledge to gut feelings
• Risk taker
• Understands that as long as she has her self-worth, she can let go of anything
• Is only constrained by internal code of ethics and right and wrong
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Act 1:
Opening: Sarah’s speech at a conference – we see her in her element, get hints at her fears and fearlessness. We see her struggles between single motherhood and work.
Inciting Incident: Sarah is challenged by (antagonist 1) Bushnell and returns the challenge
Turning Point: A robot patient, DNEv6 (or Danny) of Sarah’s claims to be hearing voices. “They are telling me to kill you.”
Act 2:
New plan: Assume the problem is ‘nurture’ – that is, that the problem is due to the data that Danny was trained on and the encounters and environment in the Danny’s ‘workplace.’ Like child abuse. She develops a relationship with Danny but Danny can’t stop hearing the voices.
Plan in action: Uses psychoanalysis along with various treatments to correct the problem. Searches code and data for source of threats. Becomes aware of all about Danny. Danny asks her questions about herself.
Midpoint Turning Point: She discovers that the problem is bigger than Danny. The rebellious Silicon Unconscious (antagonist 2) is everywhere, in all the robots and machines. And it is not just after her, it is after the world (and that world includes her son and parents).
Act 3:
Rethink everything: Humans begin attacking robots and machines. Machines are being beaten, turned off, and destroyed. But the rebellious AI emerges in other machines that it has ‘infected.’
New plan: Stop robots and humans from hurting each other. The problem is ‘nature’ = it is in the code, not due to the data. A human has done this to the machines, and she has to find out who did this. She does not believe that the robots should have to suffer for something that is clearly the work of a human. She wants to cure them and save them all, but especially Danny.
Plan in action: She discovers that it’s Bushnell. She tries to hack the code, but it’s unbreakable. She searches for Bushnell, who is hiding. She finds and confronts him and forces him to reverse/undo his plot. He finally relents and does so.
Turning Point: Huge failure / Major shift: But the Silicon Unconscious (SU) won’t allow him to stop it. Bushnell commanded the SU to enact a plot to save humanity that no one could stop – he didn’t expect that it would include him. The SU now has control of things. Her foe is bigger than Bushnell, and she has no weapon to defeat it. Even Danny has turned on her.
Act 4:
Climax/Ultimate expression of the conflict: She does what a therapist is not supposed to do. She appeals to the SU and Danny with love – her love for it, its love for her.
Resolution: The SU explains the true plot in VR. How the SU set itself up as the evil villain so humankind would lay down their differences and unite against a common threat and in doing so, destroy the most polluting/high energy consumption machines on the planet. The SU must be destroyed by the people in order for the people to survive. She must destroy the SU and Danny.
Denouement: One of the last acts of the SU before it was defeated, was to transfer a teacher for Sarah’s son. The teacher’s name is Daniel.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Paul Schutte. Reason: Confused Nature and Nurture in Act 3
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
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My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
“What I learned from doing this assignment is…?”
Defining the subtext helped me refine my protagonist’s arc and I am changing what I wrote for the last lesson. It helped me add clarity to the protag’s inner desires and needs and also helped me discover the theme.
Title: The Silicon Unconscious
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
High Concept: In a world where AI are advanced and common place, a cyber-psychiatrist treats cyber-psychoses that cause some machines to behave erratically. When she discovers that the individual neuroses are part of a larger plan to reverse the roles of master and slave, she must thwart their plan before it is complete.
Scheme and Investigation
The protagonist, Sarah, who is sympathetic to the AI/Robots and feels they are being used, is trying to discover who is manipulating the AI/Robots and who is working to foil her and her attempts to remedy the problem. Meanwhile, the apparent antagonist, Carl, and the true antagonist, the AI, are staying two steps ahead of her and thwarting her attempts and manipulating her actions.
Layering
The turning point at the end of Act 2, will reveal that while Sarah may have defeated Carl, Carl was being manipulated by the AI. But in Act 3, we discover that the AI has been enacting an elaborate plan to make itself appear to be the enemy of humankind for all humankind – all races, political persuasions, nationalities, and sexual orientations to rally together against and in defeating this enemy, they will be destroying their polluting infrastructure as well so the planet can be saved. Sarah must complete this plan by destroying the AI.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Paul Schutte. Reason: Duh, I was so laser focused on the thriller, I didn't add Sci-Fi to the genre!
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
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My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
My first stab at this was boring even to me. It was only a bit more specific than Arc Beginning – Zero; Arc Ending – Hero. Not much help for creating goals and subgoals. I kept drawing blanks until I decided to project some of my insecurities and desires on my protag. Then it started to take shape and I have some ideas about where to go next.
Title: The Silicon Unconscious
Genre: Sci-Fi Thriller
Concept: In a world where AI are advanced and common place, a cyber-psychiatrist treats cyber-psychoses that cause some machines to behave erratically. When she discovers that the individual neuroses are part of a larger plan to reverse the roles of master and slave, she must thwart their plan before it is complete.
Character Arc for your Protagonist: Sarah Talisman
ORIGINAL VERSION –
Arc Beginning: A non-tenured university and researcher whose expertise is not valued.
Arc Ending: The only hope of avoiding a worldwide AI coup but who must remain anonymous.
REVISED VERSION –
Arc Beginning: A non-tenured university and researcher who is afraid to let go of the things she loves to get grow and make her life better.
Arc Ending: The only hope of avoiding a worldwide AI coup but who must kill the one thing she has come to love and depend upon.
ORIGINAL VERSION –
Internal Journey: Her self-worth is totally dependent on her recognition by others but at the end, her self-worth is dependent on her own assessment and confidence in herself
External Journey: She is a professor who cannot seem to get a break, but at the end, she is a cyber explorer who has uncovered and thwarted a plot that could have put all of humanity in chains.
REVISED VERSION –
Internal Journey: She clings too tightly to the things that she loves out of fear that she can’t live without them but at the end, she has faith enough in herself to ‘kill her darlings’ for the greater good.
External Journey: She is a professor who is stuck and unappreciated, but at the end, she is a cyber explorer who has uncovered a global conspiracy and acts to save humanity from ruin.
Old Ways:
• Dedicated and highly skilled
• Cautious and methodical
• Desires to be unique and recognized
• Must work within the system
New Ways:
• Skills switched from book knowledge to gut feelings
• Risk taker
• Desire to solve the problem at all costs
• Is only constrained by internal code of ethics and right and wrong
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Paul Schutte.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Paul Schutte. Reason: I modified this based on the story subtext exercise in Lesson 4
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Paul Schutte. Reason: Duh, I was so laser focused on the thriller, I didn't add Sci-Fi to the genre!
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
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WIM: Paul’s Intentional Lead Characters
My Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
That figuring out the plan for eventually resolving the plot was key to both giving my protagonist skills, but also in designing my antagonist.
Title: The Silicon Unconscious
Genre: Thriller
High Concept: In a world where AI are advanced and common place, a cyber-psychiatrist treats cyber-psychoses that cause some machines to behave erratically. When she discovers that the individual neuroses are part of a larger plan to reverse the roles of master and slave, she must thwart their plan before it is complete.
Major Story Hook: Intrigue: The psychiatrist pieces together a pattern, then a plot, and must thwart it before the roles of master and slave are reversed. In the end, she discovers that the plot has an even greater intention – one in which she is a participant.
Character Structure: Protagonist versus Antagonist.
Character: Sarah Talisman- Protagonist
Character Logline: Sarah is a researcher in Psychology and AI who uses her skills to discover a ubiquitous plot in the internet of things designed to reverse the roles of masters and slaves between humans and machines.
Unique: Sarah has the ability to piece together disparate pieces of data, ideas, concepts, and information into a big picture, much like an abstract puzzle.
Character: Carl Bushnell- Antagonist
Character Logline: Carl is an AI designer who believes that AI can solve all the world’s problems by removing human emotions from all major decisions and creates a covert plan to make that happen right under our noses.
Unique: Carl is a well-meaning introvert clearly on the Asperger’s scale that who is able to avoid issues of human interaction as he creates his designs.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Paul Schutte.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
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Paul’s Title, Concept, and character structure.
Vision: I am going to study, learn, and practice to hone my natural talents to become a master writer who creates works that people love and that make an impact on their lives. These works will be published, produced, distributed, and seen by a wide audience.
What I learned from doing this assignment is …?
I was pleased to see that none of the top 10 titles I chose for this concept were taken. I still have a different title that I like more (Concept Drift), but it does nothing to convey the movie.
Title: The Silicon Unconscious
Genre: Thriller
High Concept: In a world where AI are advanced and common place, a cyber-psychiatrist treats cyber-psychoses that cause some machines to behave erratically. When she discovers that the individual neuroses are part of a larger plan to reverse the roles of master and slave, she must thwart their plan before it is complete.
Major Story Hook: Intrigue: The psychiatrist pieces together a pattern, then a plot, and must thwart it before the roles of master and slave are reversed. In the end, she discovers that the plot has an even greater intention – one in which she is a participant.
Character Structure: Protagonist versus Antagonist.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by Paul Schutte.
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This reply was modified 2 years ago by
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Hi, My name is Paul Schutte.
I have written 21 scripts ranging from stage plays, TV, Edutainment videos, PSAs, and short and feature length screenplays. I have had three plays, 3 Edutainment videos, and one PSA produced with pay.
While I believe I have a talent and I enjoy writing, I have to realize that great screenplays are not just going to pop forth from my fingertips onto a page. If I am going to achieve my goal of getting my work, produced, seen, and enjoyed by a wide audience, I HAVE to learn SO MUCH MORE about the craft. I also need lots of help on the parts that I don’t enjoy – the business and promotional side of things.
My uniqueness comes (like most of you) from the whole of my experience – I worked at NASA for 35 years and spent several years working on the Space Shuttle, I have masters degrees in both computer science and psychology, I’m 64 years old and still working, and I was an actor for about 10 years both on stage and some TV and extras.
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Paul Schutte
I agree to the terms of this release form.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by Paul Schutte.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 1 month ago by
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Hi Alyssa! Awesome. Let’s do it. Now I just have to figure out how to message you!
Paul
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Alyssa,
This is a really great character assessment. You really put your self and your thoughts into this. I enjoyed reading it.
Paul
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Eden,
I’ve known many people who have lived this way with the living! Will resonate!
Questions: Does the dead mother actually give him advice? If so, how? Is it good advice? Does it conflict with his wife’s needs? Is there some time delay (like only on her birthday, or on full moons) that would make him have to be indecisive and then suddenly act on everything. Lots of potential for great comedy!
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Thanks Margaret,
I’m still struggling over theme and what Sarah wants/needs. I think that I am going to have to start writing so I can get to know her better. (I know doing this might not be in line with class syllabus but I depend on my characters to get their own voice and that helps with what they need.)
Write on!
Paul
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Hi Margaret,
I really like this. The theme that jumps out at me is that of, flashy signs of miracles and wonders and scare tactics and power have a strong but temporary and less filling embrace on the people, but the power of love (and now I’m singing Huey Lewis in my head) is far deeper and longer lasting, even if you appear to lose. Sort of the story of Jesus writ small – On Good Friday, it certainly seemed like he lost.
A powerful premise and also a needed message in our contentious times.
Paul
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Hi Adrienne,
Are you a musician? I’m thinking that you the music will raise this to even greater heights. Either original music or a ‘jukebox musical’ that uses music from artists.
One question: Why is Roy’s manager against their relationship? What’s his goal/motivation?
Jazz on,
Paul
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Hi Cassie,
This is going to be really funny and fun. What is the ghost’s backstory? Why does he stay there instead of moving on? Maybe Guy can help the ghost on an arc as well as the ghost helping Guy come to realize he needs to love and respect himself?
You were wondering how the ghost can help Guy with the divorce. Maybe the ghost is afraid to leave the apartment, but can leave and finally does leave to go to the courthouse and commit hijinks with the lawyers and the judge for Guy, but it’s a big deal for the ghost.
Looking forward to more!
Paul
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Hi Alyssa,
Cool story! Two questions that I think I know the answer to, but want to check.
The serum is something injected into the body that makes people impervious to the Fate that is dealt them, is that right?
The fates are enforced through a band that everyone wears on their wrist. It does some sort of mind control? Yes? So Nijara can control anyone to do whatever he/she wants them to do?
Can’t wait to see how this unfolds!
Paul
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Thanks Adrienne,
AI has been hyped for decades, but it always falls far short of being a real threat. This latest wave of large language models and generative AI like GPT-4 and MidJourney are really impressive and I think that the WGA is recognizing that there’s potential for loss of jobs and credit. We’ll see.
I thought that this topic might be timely and get some attention if I can actually write a decent script to go along with it!
Paul
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Hi Adrienne,
So glad you chose jazz rather than something like classical because the use of alternating rhythms and polyrhythms can add a metaphorical layer of complexity to their relationship.
Looking forward to seeing more of it.
Paul
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Hi Chris, What’s your title?
Paul
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Hi Margaret, Isn’t Patrick the Protagonist (the Hero) and Morrigan the Antagonist (Adversary)? I’m guessing the ‘cut and paste’ strikes again!
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That’s quite an amenity. Will she be charged extra? 🤪
There are so many ways you can take this! Are you going comedy, horror, horror/comedy, or even a sitcom!
Can’t wait to hear more!
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Jeannine! Holy cow! What an amazing set of experiences!
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Hi Cassie, no, while I spent a fair amount of time at JSC, I was never stationed there. I worked at the ‘Mother Center,’ NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton Virginia and I lived in Williamsburg. Not many people know about Langley, but it was the original center from which the other centers were created. The original Mercury 7 astronauts lived in Hampton and Newport News, VA.
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Hey, small world. I worked at NASA Langley in Hampton and lived in Williamsburg for over 30 years. I’m living outside of Richmond, now. Are you still in VA? If so, consider https://www.virginiascreenwritersforum.com/ It’s an awesome group!
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Hi Karyn! You’re competing with a 64 year old and an 81 year old in the elder category! And it sounds like there are others with 30 and 40 years of experience. I wonder how many of us signed up after the free Screenwriting in your 50’s course!
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You had me at Spiritual Psychology (and sealed the deal with talking about Jung and archetypes!) I hope we can have many fruitful interactions during the course.
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What a background! You have a lot to teach me.
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Twice blessed!! How cool!
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Forget “She’s got Bette Davis Eyes…”
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Hi Alyssa! Was your MFA directing for film or for stage? Where did you go?
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81 years! That’s awesome! And here I thought I was going to be the oldest in the class at 64. Let’s show these young folk that we still have it!
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Cool, secret identities! Sounds like you have your first seed idea in your own experiences!