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my first idea for the movie plot

Ringu

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Okay, here is what was my idea some time ago.



There are two story lines: one takes place in the past long time ago, and another takes place in our time.



The movie starts with images of a tropical forest and mist coming up from the ground.



There's a girl, who's a scientist, and archeologist. She's young and enthusiastic, and works in some university doing research work. She is not a believer or not even a seeker. From her family she only has a stepfather who lives far from her and is sick with something. And he has a boyfriend, and their relationship is past the time when they are happy and in love. But they live together and sometimes talk, sometimes fight, sometimes are intimate.



She has friends who come back from a trip to Egypt, and bring her a souvenir – a fragment of clay pot or some vessel with some letters carved on it. The fragment catches her attention as the writing on it is in an unknown language.



She starts examining the fragment on her own and finds that it belongs to an ancient unknown culture.



As she works more on this, in her night dreams she starts hearing a voice that is calling her. And in some time she understands that the voice calls her to search for the paradise. And shows her a way to it. Her boyfriend does not believe in her visions and thinks that she's becoming strange.



She starts exploring to find out as much as she can about the Garden of Eden because this is what she thinks the voice means by "paradise". And she sees how the vision she has with the way to the Garden can actually be found on the 3D maps of mountainous areas somewhere in the Middle East.



She decides that she has to take a scientific trip there and see if what she knows is true. And she forms a group with some university students who are willing to take the expedition trip to that country. One of the students might be a Christian.



As they fly across the Atlantic, she falls asleep, and we see a flashback.



We see panorama of a virgin tropical forest, with mist rising from the ground. Camera flies across the forest and glades and small streams of water. Then we see a place where there is evidence of clay being mined. Then we see a man (who obviously is nude but we can't see below his waist) who makes clay pots. Next to him we see a lot of clay pots. As he does that, he has conversations with God, who appears only as a voice. And these conversations are very personal, meaningful and deep. There we can see a reconstruction of his primitive way of life.



These visions keep appearing to the girl who's our main character on the way their destination point. Basically these visions show first man's life and relationship with God before falling into sin.



As the group arrives into the country believed to be the location of the Garden of Eden, the girl receives a message that her stepfather dies. She has never been really close to him, yet he was the only immediate relative of her as her mom has been dead for a long time already. The message strikes her with the thought that she didn't even have a chance to see or talk to him before he died.



They travel to the desert land in a van, and from there they walk. The land is mountainous and empty with no trees or and not many animals. They walk through the land according to the map she has drawn. As they go, they have conversations about life and their trip and their expectations for the trip. The Christian person on the group shares a little about his faith, but admits, that he still can't really believe that they would find the Garden.



We see another flashback of how Adam makes pots and writes names on them, and stores them. In the evenings he's not alone, and he's having more conversations with God. There we see how God instructs him not to eat of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And we can see that tree. It's not large, and is pretty, and has beautiful buds on it. God tells Adam truths about both trees.



The group approaches a crack in a rock. Couple of people are selected to wait outside, the rest of the group goes inside. And there they travel deeper through passages and corridors in the rock, and finally approach a massive opening, like a huge cave. It's so wide and so long, and dark. And there's nothing inside, yet on the far end they can see a wall that does not look naturally made.



Here they stop to rest before they move on.



And we see another vision from the past. Adam talked with God and asks about what's going to happen if he eats from the tree of knowledge. And God explains him pretty much everything about what's going to happen. And Adam swears he's never going to eat of it.



As the groups starts moving on, they come to a place not far from a huge black wall with massive stone doors, which are closed. On the left and right from the doors they see two massive figures of angel like creatures that seem to be immovable and inanimate. But near them they find old skeletons and pieces of armor of men of different ages. As some picks up a helmet, cracked in the middle, he sees a flashback of this person's death of a sword.



They stop to think, how are they going to pass, as they are afraid it is impossible.



The girl remembers about her fragment of clay. She picks it out of her backpack and we can see how it reacts to the place, and how the place reacts to it. We see a small glow in the place where the angel like creatures should have their eyes.



Meanwhile, they approach the massive doors. And the doors open seemingly by themselves, and through a little crack between them the group comes into the place behind the doors.



As they get in, they enter a huge open space, it's dark and flat as far as you can see. And the earth below is black like cold glassy lava. Everyone is both excited and frustrated. The girl, our main character, is frustrated more then everyone as this is so much not what she expected to see, as the closer to the place she was, the more she believed she is about to enter the flourishing paradise like garden. You can see it in her face. For a moment we see the beautiful garden that morphs into the black void glassy plain.



They keep walking, and as they walk, they bump into what resembles the place where Adam lived and made his clay pots in her visions. They see the old fossilized potter's wheel and bench and other items, also fossilized. And as they look, we can see flashbacks of what it was like in the beginning of the human era. Everyone has his own thought about what they see.



Further they come to the tree of life. And it is a small and short birch like tree with white branches, and it's the only thing in the entire land that seems to be alive. The soil around it is moist, and the leaves shiver as if there is breeze, yet there is no breeze, not even a draft, not even a noise, in the whole place.



They keep walking and come to what seems to be the end of the garden. They see a tree there, pitch black, also short with no leaves, but with beautiful glowing buds. A thick black liquid resembling oil is slowly flowing down the branches and drip into a very small stream, that flows into a huge mass of "water" like a sea, where you can see no end, and it's filled with this black tar from the small tree.





Anyway. I will finish here for now. I wanna somehow show how paradise (in Russian paradise is the synonim to the Garden of Eden) is not like people might think of it. It's not the same since long time ago, and what the girl thought she's looking for is not that paradise. Also I wanted that these pots Adam was making had some meaning. And that on each pot there would be a name. And she found her pot. And we'd see how paradise changed after the fall of Adam. And also I want her to find a truth. Not necessarily pray the sinner prayer, but at least realize something about God. I am not sure. I just had this vision of a abandoned Garden of Eden, and people looking for things they think might have some meaning, but inside they are as well abandoned.

Well, if you have any comments or anything, please write. If you don't like this plot, suggest another plot we might all consider and write a script for.
 

FireRock

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Wow, that's a really cool idea!!!

Seriously, I like it. There is a lot of fine tuning to do, of course, but overall this is a really unique idea. Obviously it takes place in modern times for the most part, with the expception of the flashbacks.

Two questions come to mind immediately...
What character ideas did you have in mind?
Was Eve going to be present in any of the flasshbacks, or do they take place before she was created?

I'll have to read over it again a couple of times, but I was really drawn into the story in my mind's eye. If this is the script we choose to write, I'm way excited! Otherwise, I'm sure there'll be some great competition! ;)
 
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Ringu

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FireRock said:
Two questions come to mind immediately...
What character ideas did you have in mind?
Was Eve going to be present in any of the flasshbacks, or do they take place before she was created?
Thanks for reply!
I was thinking about Eve. I am more inclined to NOT putting her in the story. Because we'd have to go really deep in detail of her relationship with Adam and about WHY he followed her mistake. At the other hand it could be something beautiful if she was in the story, because obviously they were in love and Adam was with her even after the fall, even knowing that what he's doing is wrong.
And yes, flashbacks take place before she was created.
I mean, if you start with the whole Eve story line, you should lead it to a logical conclusion. And it's beyond the gates of the Garden... but how far? It looks like it's gonna confuse the story. But it can help the story. So what do you think?

As for characters, I don't have a clear picture.
The main character - the girl - is probably 25-29 years old, which is, about my age, educated, more of a closed person, a thinker, so outside she's quite calm, but she's emotional when she's alone or with people she trusts. Her relationship with her boyfriend is not great, past the "in love" stage. Overall she's quite ordinary. I would not like to portray her as some kind of a looser or a depressed person, who would obviously be counted as a God seeker, nor a brilliant and prideful person, who would not care about God at all.

The other significant people would be her friend (female) who is her colleague, maybe, couple of students who work with her... I don't know really. Never gave a lot of thought to this. Have any suggestions?

That's why I posted it here so we can discuss it if anyone likes it.
 
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FireRock

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Thanks so much for the reply!

As for the Eve deal, I was thinking about that and maybe it could reflect the main charater's own relationship. How Adam and Eve loved her other so much and everything, and how she has none of that in her relationship. So that could lead them to begin to come closer or cause her to realize that she needs to move on. Just a thought. Otherwise I agree that it might complicate the story more than help it. The flashbacks could take place mostly when God walked with Adam in the cool of the day time of thing.

I like what you have with the characters so far. The main character seems really believable, and you hardly see just a regular human being in movies anymore, so it could be very refreshing. Also, how much of her friend and the other collegues are we going to find out? Are they also wrestling with personal issues, or are they mostly there to help move the story along? Either way it works, but it'd be an important thing to figure out before we start writing. Another thing I was wondering is whether or not we really see her boyfriend at all. In a way it seems like we totally would, but then after reading it it almost sounded like we wouldn't ever see him. Just wondering on that one.

Another cool thought I had was with the pots that Adam makes. You were talking about how there are all these pots down where the group finds everything, and she finds her pot and whatnot. I was thinking that maybe there could be just a symbol on it. You know, like what speaking in tongues would looks like if it were written down. ;) But then she could almost have a cool sort of revelation between her and God where she realizes that it's her pot and that God knew all about her from the beginning and etc. etc. etc. Mostly kind of a cross between pictograph-type drawings and simple scribbles.
 
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Viola_Strange

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Okay, great story. Problem: Why is an atheist following this improbable journey across the earth based solely on these voices she hears from this artifact?

A true skeptic, which I assume she is, if she was hearing these voices, would want to know why she was hearing these voices first, and she may stumble upon the mystery of the Garden along the way.

Me, I wouldn't go the voices route. I'd try to have your lead character discover this lost city using only conventional, actual, real world methods. No fantasy. No science fiction. Now, her motive for this is harder, because she's no longer trying to prove she isn't going crazy.

I still find it hard to believe that an atheist would take up such an improbably, wild goose chase. However, if she were tagging along with someone else's mission, someone who is Christian or maybe even Jewish (both have the Garden story), if she were joining them to offer her expertise as a recommended botonist or whatever, and is in for scientific and financial reasons only, that I can see. And this contrasting religious character can rub her the wrong way, but eventually rub off on her.
 
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FireRock

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Rock on, Viola_Strange, I didn't even catch that! That is a very good point. I like the thought that she's tagging along with someone who's Christian or Jewish, but the story still focuses mainly on her, right? It's her story and conflict we're going after, right? Maybe the "colleague" could be the Christian or Jew we're looking for??

Have you started writing anything yet, Ringu???
 
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Ringu

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FireRock, hey, I kinda worked on it a little after my last post here, but didn't move too far.
Right now I am thinking a lot about another story. A story for a WW2 movie, an adaptation of Saint-Exuperi. I had a couple more ideas after that that I didn't post here. But right now I am trying to, well, not even finish, but get at least somethingn serious done with the war story. Right now I am working on the concepts and the overall plot.

But I liked your ideas about the idea that was in my original post. I didn't fully undersand what you meant, though, because I have to read some posts before yours to remember what was it all about. What do you think about the story, anyway? And do you have experience writing for film, or just writing?
 
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FireRock

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Hey Ringu! I'm happy to hear that you've been writing and using all that creative genius of yours!! :)

Anyways, to answer your question, yes, I do have experience writing both prose and scripts. I've been writing stories and such pretty much since I learned to write. I've dabbled a little in poetry as well. But yeah, what exactly do you mean by "experience"? Because if you mean writing stuff that people have read and said, "I like that, it's very good." then yes, I do have experience. If you mean experience where what I've written has been filmed or such, then I have a taste of experience there. I have gotten A's in I think every writing class I've ever taken and teachers have really enjoyed my work...personally telling me they like my work type of thing. I've only filmed two or three things that I've written, and those were little commercial quick things. I'm working on getting a full-fledge movie going this summer. It's a skater movie that makes fun of skater movies mostly, but it's got this funny, overtly christian theme to it, which adds to idea very well. I've got almost a full cast together and we're hoping to start filming next month. I'm so excited!!!

Ummm...I hope it didn't sound like I was bragging or being arrogant, because I wasn't trying to. I'm not all that great at talking about myself, so I hope that answered your question. I was actually thinking about trying to start a draft of this concept myself and then post it up here or something for you to look at. That whole collaborating creative team thing, I guess. :)

Let me know what you think and what ideas you've got! (btw, that WWI idea sounds very interesting! I hope you get something really good out of it!)
 
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