What about a really artsy mars movie

John Creighton · 2005-07-25 14:05:13

What about a really artsy mars movie. Something with a lot of poetry and imagery of earth, history, mars, the cosmos. Perhaps the images could show the contrast between death and birth, pain and suffering. As we show the contrasting images on earth between the rich and the poor and the main characters could have there own trials and tribulations.

It could be about a Mars mission meant to be a two way mission but it ends up being a one way mission. The crew are separated from there families and forced to spend two 2 years together. Some of them hate each other some of them develop feelings for each other and some of the people who develop feelings for each lose the person they develop feelings for.

In the end of the movie the facilities needed to get the crew home are destroyed by terrorists who consider the space race a crime against those who die of hunger. But the movie could try to make the point that we solve problems by moving forward. It is a necessity to develop the technology we need to combat the Malthusian philosophy.

The movie could open with the main character sitting in a university lecture in economics or philosophy about Malthus and decrease in arable farm land. Perhaps we could do flash backs between the voyage to mars and past seens from the characters lives like there university lectures and personal experiences.

P.S. I edited my post about this in civilization and culture to delete this. I am not sure the protocol in this forum to start a new thread. I hope this is and adequate start of a new thread.

John Creighton · 2005-07-25 14:29:32

New idea for an opening seen.

Seen 1. The Garden

A young boy helps his grappa a former asternaught shovel compost into the garden. The boy cares about space while the asternoaught cares about the garden. The boy asks: what was it like to ride the Slattern V?

The asternogught replies, “take the most wild roller costar, you’ve ever been on and multiply it by 10, imagine buggie jumping and coming an inch close to the ground. I was young, foolish, I thought I could conquer anything.”

The boy replies:
“you climbed higher then any man before you. When I grow up, I am going to climb olimpus moon”

The astnogught replies, “Olympus moon is a flat ariless dead volcano on a lifless world. Conquerring Mount Everest is a bigger feet and equally as foolish”

“why don’t you care about space anymore”, you use to speek so pationtly when you were younger.

“you speek well for your age”. Says the asternoaught. “My died died, when I saw us circle the earth for ever and never going any further. When I saw people sent up time and time again on a vehicle not fit for humans, that was going no where. ” I realized that is not courage it is stupidity. That is not investment it is affluence.”

“We spend billions to send our people to die, well hundreds of millions go hungry in this world. Our governments racked up huge debts and we are running out of oil, can we affoard to go into space?”

Just then the boys father walks into the garden and says, “can we afford not to? Your mother has supper ready and you have homework to do?”. The boy wondered, “what did my father and how come I haven’t heard him talk about space much any more?”.

Seen 2: The car drive

On the car drive home the boy says, “daddy what do you know about mars?”. The father replies, “a lot son but you have much to learn about earth first. Keep you head out of the cloweds for a sec. Look around at the tulips aren’t they beutifull. This weekend my mother and I will be going hiking, want to come along?”. The boy says, “yes, but only if I we can talk about mars.” The father says a little.

. Something with a lot of poetry and imagery of earth, history, mars, the cosmos. Perhaps the images could show the contrast between death and birth, pain and suffering. As we show the contrasting images on earth between the rich and the poor and the main characters could have there own trials and tribulations.

It could be about a Mars mission meant to be a two way mission but it ends up being a one way mission. The crew are separated from there families and forced to spend two 2 years together. Some of them hate each other some of them develop feelings for each other and some of the people who develop feelings for each lose the person they develop feelings for.

In the end of the movie the facilities needed to get the crew home are destroyed by terrorists who consider the space race a crime against those who die of hunger. But the movie could try to make the point that we solve problems by moving forward. It is a necessity to develop the technology we need to combat the Malthusian philosophy.

The movie could open with the main character sitting in a university lecture in economics or philosophy about Malthus and decrease in arable farm land. Perhaps we could do flash backs between the voyage to mars and past seens from the characters lives like there university lectures and personal experiences.

clark · 2005-07-25 14:38:36

deleted

John Creighton · 2005-07-25 15:01:19

This is a great idea John!
You don’t need to worry about stepping on any toes here. I fully expect members to create threads for all manner of ideas and discussions. However, I think the idea of this forum is best served if we all try to stay thematically on topic. The reason for this area is so we can have a private area to help develop some of our creative content, not a walled off preserve to engage in debate we can just as easily have outside.
Basically, anything related to “creative expression” goes. Anything else goes outside. ':)'
And I want to make it clear that posts will not be deleted, edited, moved or modified without the author’s consent. I don’t even think this is going to be an issue as everyone has been really responsive and respectful of the ground rules.
I really like your idea by the way. I’ve had some personal experience in developing scripts. I’ve been kicking this idea around though about developing a radio play along the same lines.
I thought it might be neat to develop a collaborative radio play and get different people to contribute the voices (and find someone to do the sound effects) and produce it as a pod-cast, or something similar.
Call it something like “Terran Invasion,” regarding the second wave of Terran colonists who land and displace the first wave of Terran colonists who are now Martian natives. There are a lot of possibilities, but I think a radio play could be a lot more “doable” among a disparate group.
Of course I would love to hear what C.C. has to say on this subject since her has hinted about some “strictly pizza and beer stuff” CGI movie development. ':)'

Thanks for the feedback. Radio is a great medium because people are always looking for something to listen to on there drive and I think it is fairly easy to get something on the radio. It will mean though that certain imagery stuff can't be done and I don't know exactly how you signal a flash back on a radio. Anyway here is my next seen. I hope I am not making the boy sound two grown up. I might have to explain that later in the movie:

Seen three the start of the hike

The boy asks, “The boy, when are you going to tell me about mars dady?”. “Mars”, says the dad, “has physical features that darf anything you see on earth, it has a land mass as large as all the conentents combined, it has antient volcanoes that streatch into space, it has dead valies that were once oceans” The father pauses, but it is nothing besides earth. “With all our cities and roads, we are polluted by nature. Look around you, look at the water how blue it shines, look at the reflection of the mountain in the pond. Listen to the birds chirp [insert name] once wrote

[inscert poem]

“Poetry is boring” says the boy “and nature we can live without. Were is the basketball stadium, the pool, where do I plug in my Nintendo? Who needs grass when you have astro turf. Who needs trees when you have sky scrapers and playgrounds? Give me a tetter totter over a log, Give me a jungle gym over a tree.”

The dad replies, “those are big thoughts for such a little boy. We gave you knowlde but you lack experience. You’ve lived in the city and we were busy. One day, you’ll apreacate all so many take for granted. One day when you are at work staring out the window, you will say,

“I wish I could climb a real tree, or swim in a real sea, this concrete jungle in unnatural to me, a lifeless prison , with fashion in place or love, where a yearn to level. I grieve the loss of naive youth, the dreams a held which went the truth, day by day I grid a way, to fertilize the land for new youth.”

“The boy says, your corny dad” The dad replies tomorrow we are going to watch a great movie. One of Robon Williams tour deforce. It is called, “The dead poet socity”. The boy says “that sounds geeky.” The father shakes his had and says, grappa is right. You are young and foolish.

John Creighton · 2005-07-25 15:19:11

Looking back I have a lot of editing too do. I was thinking perhaps the movie should start with them blasting off in the rocket. Then go to seen one, where the grandmampa describes blasting off in the shuttle. Might need some flash backs about other characters before we get to the car drive seen because I don’t want the car drive seen too early. Because I think the opening seen should be about the intial excitement. Or perhaps I could then throw in some flash backs about them leaving there families before they blast off. Of course it should be atleast suggested that one of the couples has sex, and later in the movie we’ll find out that it results in a pregnancy.

edit:

Now should the partner in space get pregnant the partner left on earth or we have two couples where the opposite happens for each couple. Perhaps the couple that had the kid on earth could get together with the couple that had the kid in space by the end of the movie, or is that too predictable?

clark · 2005-07-25 17:40:30

deleted

Cobra Commander · 2005-07-29 07:54:24

Just a few comments.

I get the impression this would be covering a very long span of time. Journey to Mars, flashacks among the crew, all in addition to what actually happens on Mars, children of these people hooking up, etc. As clark mentioned, a page of a screenplay is roughly a minute of screen time. Showing all this will likely result in a Tolkienesque brick that while having some very interesting concepts is boring through large chunks and if produced would be. . . ever seen David Lynch's Dune?

Might I suggest not only focusing on a small group of characters but implying much of their background rather than showing it. A common screenwriting maxim is "show, don't tell" but taking that even further, sometimes leaving enough hints for the audience to figure things out for themselves is more effective than showing it, and it saves valuable time.

In short, while a movie can say all kinds of things about Mars the audience will only be absorbed by it if they care about the characters. They have to relate to them and throwing too much stuff in hinders that. Beware the artsy, a little goes a long way.

That said, it's an interesting idea and very much worthy of pursuing, at least from the writing standpoint.

Incidentally, at the last Mars Society conference in Chicago Sam Burbank (he's done some documentary work for the Mars Society among other things) announced with Bob Zubrin that they are going to produce a "truly realistic" movie about a mission to Mars. I talked with Sam and the effects guy (who's name slips my mind) about it after the announcement and it sounds very promising. They've decided to shoot on 35mm film instead of 4:4:4 HD video, but nobody's perfect.

John Creighton · 2005-07-30 12:53:26

Thanks for all the feedback so far. I wasn’t sure when clarck said a page equals a minute of screen play would end up in a movie being to long or too short. Anyway, here is what I think I’ll use as an opening seen.

Opening of the move:

The camera starts zooming in from a distance towards two people standing beside a Hum V. On of the individuals appears to be a general and the other individual is dressed is a suite.

General: You will have to clear out soon.

Engineer: I know but I am spell bound by the beauty. This is largest rocket ever built. The precision in it’s curves would humble the great master of the renaissance. Look at it glisten in the sun, look at it stretch up to the sky. This rocket represents our hopes and our dreams. It is not a billion dollar boondoggle, it is the collective work of our best engineers, technicians and machinists. Like the gothic cathedrals of medieval times we push our structures higher towards the heavens. (*Note perhaps some imagery of renaissance paintings and gothic cathedrals could flash in the background and maybe some faint church coir music by Handle)

General: To you it is a beauty, to the poor it an abomination of creation, a symbol of the affluence and decadence of those that have too much. Don’t let your creation be your siren. The shores of this rocket will do far more damage to this armored hum V then any rocky coast will to the most fragile ship. The heat is enough to melt it, the fumes are acidic enough to dissolve it and the poison unleashed under the stick is too toxic for even a cock roach.

We must go now. The engineer and the general get into to the HumV and depart. The camera follows the ground towards the rocket at first not reveling anything but the ground. The camera enters the elevator that the crew would take and looks at the rocket though the Plexiglas window as the crew would ascend to the top of the vehicle but perhaps in slow motion. Music by Handle continues to play in the background. Then the crammer enters the crew hatch. The music fades out and there is the chatter of the antsy crew.

Some look excited, some look nerves, some look serious, some happy and some sad.

Rake · 2008-03-17 09:00:58

i think that sounds great!
i would love to see this movie
any other similar ideas around here?

Tom Kalbfus · 2008-05-03 11:58:47

I think Von Braun's book The Mars Project would make a real artsy movie. Imagine those Bonestell pictures made to look real on the silver screen with graphics and computer generation. Could Von Braun have pulled it off the way he envisioned it in 1949? That's the question. What if Congress and the President gave him a blank check, and he mustered the resources of an entire nation to get to Mars as quickly as possible? That would be interesting to see.

cIclops · 2008-05-07 16:00:31

Might work. With a retro feel, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow style but set in the early 1970s - alternate future etc etc - but accurate. The magic ingredient would be a story.

Tom Kalbfus · 2008-05-09 10:01:05

Might work. With a retro feel, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow style but set in the early 1970s - alternate future etc etc - but accurate. The magic ingredient would be a story.

I like the one Von Braun wrote. His physics was certainly accurate. The Mars he wrote about had an atmosphere that was approximately 10 times thicker than what we now know it to be, there were in fact humans living on this Mars, living underground. For all practical purposes, this would be very much like a partially terraformed Mars.

This Mars has underground covered canals, liquid water can exist on its surface, though there is not much of it. The lines Pecival Lowell saw through his telescope was actually vegetation feeding on waste water leaking from these underground habitations or canals.

Von Brauns spaceships are surprisingly primitive yet tough. Massive conical staged rockets with winged orbiter gliders on top. Each stage has parachutes when it seperates and it is recovered from the ocean and refurbished. Launches are from Hawaii, or Christmas Island in the Pacific.
There is a world government called the United States of Earth with each former nation as a state, this occurs in the shadow of a recent World War III fought with atomic weapons. Computers and radios are still massive affairs with vacuum tubes, as the microelectronics revolution has not occured. Radio range is limited because of this vacuum tube technology. The best the spaceships can transmit from Mars is wireless telegraphy messages using Morse Code. The Martians on the other hand are so advanced that they have television and a version of the Internet on their home planet. How the Martians got on Mars is something of a mystery, but it seems that Von Braun was something of a theist when he wrote that book.

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#1 2005-07-25 14:05:13

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#2 2005-07-25 14:29:32

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#3 2005-07-25 14:38:36

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#4 2005-07-25 15:01:19

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#5 2005-07-25 15:19:11

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#6 2005-07-25 17:40:30

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#7 2005-07-29 07:54:24

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#8 2005-07-30 12:53:26

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#9 2008-03-17 09:00:58

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#10 2008-05-03 11:58:47

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#11 2008-05-07 16:00:31

Re: What about a really artsy mars movie

#12 2008-05-09 10:01:05

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