How I Roll

This is the hell that I woke up to this morning when I went to Mocha Madness to meet Chris to catch up and talk a bit about Manifest Destiny.

It is always sad when kids go bad; and our babies have to go into lockdown in the clink every night.

Every time I hear the phrase "it's plain to see who wears the pants in your house" or variants of it, I think...what do pants have to do with anything now. I can understand that when pants were relatively unheard of in terms of women's dress and considered a stamp of masculinity, the phrase had some semblance of meaning. Pants, however, are such a commonplace item in women's closets that the phrase should have been retired decades ago. Yet I still hear it.

So I decided to make an image dedicated to shedding the phrase like an old pair of pants.

Pants. With pants comes great responsibility. Shirk it.

No, I don't get Spring Break...but Marni does. She's driving to Idaho Falls this morning to visit her friend Kim and have a (hopefully) lazy day. She really deserves one! But this is what I was greeted with on this wonderful first day of Spring Break:

Since I was absolutely abhorible when it came to lines last night, I was worked up and annoyed at myself. So I couldn't sleep. Which means that I can't concentrate much today. Luckily I've been reading documentation for the most part, so it hasn't been bad. I only hope that my lines aren't as awful tonight, even though I have not had time to work on them so far. I can't take another night like last night.

To anyone that hasn't played it, it would be rather morbid: shooting yourself in the head to unleash your inner potential. But to a lot of traditional RPG players, the Persona games inspire a rather strange brand of RPG freak.

So captioned an image.

Yeah. This is me much of the time.

My original idea for Manifest Destiny came from a dream that I had. In the dream, there was a girl who could manifest herself psychicly in a number of ways. Her name was, duh-duh-DUN, Destiny. Being able to manifest multiple numbers of herself and perform all kinds of psychic tricks was great for the dream, but I wanted to flesh it out a bit and figure out more about Destiny and "The Box" that had created/warped her. It was also pretty fun to think of a schitzophrenic with psychic powers who escapes the thinktank institution...but what is a loose canon with a serious mental condition to do with it?

From an early draft of my notes:

We are in the Box. All of the "staff" inside the box work four hours shift rotations. The "scholars" sleep when their natural sleep cycles tell them to. When awake, they are subjected to numerous tests, quizzes, psycho-narcotics, study sessions, observation sessions, and other more rigorous physical and mental abuse scenarios. They are put through various test situations which allow them to "think outside the Box" and solve real-world problems.

In the Box, there are Scholars, Scientists, Agents, and Cleaners. Scholars are the patients, or test subjects/lab rats that the Agents capture, Scientists study, and the Cleaners eradicate when necessary. The scientists are objective creatures of habit, studying their specimens in a non-ethical space; if rape-study is required, rape and murder studies are performed and documented in the utmost scientific scrutiny. The Agents deal with finding new Scholars and catching the few escapees; they also deal with the day-to-day security needs of the Box. The Agents also make sure that the world at large know nothing about the Box. It has an exclusive clientèle. The Cleaners clean up any messes. This includes Scholars that get out of hand or anyone who gets wind of the Box.

The scene begins with the Box. White walls, white floors, white lab coats, white gloves. Everything sanitary and clean beyond description. Details fade into the whiteness of the Box. There seems to be no light fixtures of any means of incandescence, yet it is white beyond belief and well-lit to a fault. This is the test environment; all of it. Even the scientists working are lab rats working on lab rats, being evaluated by lab rats, sometimes killing lab rats. The Box is an ultimate in objectivity and scientific reason; it is a self-defined test environment. All are included in the test and evaluation.

It has evolved to a much different place now. It is definitely a hyper-secret, some would say highly unethical, corporate organization such as those represented in Dollhouse or The Pretender or pretty much any film or television series that has incorporated the huge corporation with an illicit science wing. But it isn't as sterile and controlled as in the original notes that I had on the place.

Destiny, and others like her, is a pet project, a case study for them to evaluate and perhaps use in the future. Unfortunately, their scientists have difficulty figuring out what makes her tick, so they have to work with Embeds. Embeds are neural simulations that represent memories. Using nanotechnology (because nanotech is cool and can do ANYTHING, right?), these Embeds can make a subject either believe they have been through a situation or engage a situation as though they are knowledgable of it. It is a far cry away from the wiping or personality infusing technology or situational editing in Dollhouse, Minority Report, or Final Cut.

Right now I'm in the quick-writing phase where I throw as many ideas at the dartboard as possible, write like crazy (when I get time), and try to suss out at least ten 9 minute episodes to film this summer. There are a lot of things happening this summer, but I'm hoping I can jump in and get some of it done beforehand--read: before some of my favorite peeps leave town for the great unknown.

So, here's a little bit of what I'm looking for in case you are interested in passing:

Destiny

Young woman with psychic powers. She has been subjected to so many experiments within the organization that her personality has split severely. Combined with her powers, these personalities can manifest themselves. Age range 16-24. She has several manifestations so wide expression variety is needed.

Character Content: Nudity. Extreme violence. Language.

NOTE ON NUDITY: I am targeting YouTube and Vimeo primarily with MySpace video and my site as secondary  targets. The nudity will be constrained to TV standards, though the violence and language may not be. Varying degrees of nudity may be required during shooting, however, in some scenes.

Young Destiny

Destiny as a child. She is taken to the organization and subjected to a number of tests.

Ross

Ross is a detective at the police department. Age range: 30-38. Has seen a wide variety of action in his days. In a long-term relationship with James which requires intimate scenes.

Character Content: Nudity. Same-Sex Intimacy. Extreme violence. Language.

NOTE ON NUDITY: I am targeting YouTube and Vimeo primarily with MySpace video and my site as secondary  targets. The nudity will be constrained to TV standards, though the violence and language may not be. Varying degrees of nudity may be required during shooting, however, in some scenes.

James

James is Ross's partner. He is an architect and all around good guy. He never expected to have his life turned upside down by a scitzophrenic psychic. He is the guy who puts a smile on the face of everyone who meets him.

Character Content: Nudity. Same-Sex Intimacy. Extreme violence. Language.

NOTE ON NUDITY: I am targeting YouTube and Vimeo primarily with MySpace video and my site as secondary  targets. The nudity will be constrained to TV standards, though the violence and language may not be. Varying degrees of nudity may be required during shooting, however, in some scenes.

Eunice Salinger

Eunice is an agent for the organization. Her job is to track Destiny. She was raised in the organization. She is an addict.

Character Content: Extreme violence. Language.

Bower

Agent Bowers is an agent for the organization who loves his paycheck but questions some of the motives while receiving it. He is the philosophical element of the agency.

Character Content: Extreme Violence, language.

Rais

Rais has a lisp. He is Destiny's handler and the chief researcher responsible for her. He is also deeply interested in everything she does. He is also an extremely creepy man. Definitely not the kind of guy you would want around your children.

Character Content: Extreme violence, language.

G

G is a psychic operative. She works through Embeds, creating potential scenarios. She can be cold, stunningly sunny, or horribly abusive. She has quite the range.

Character Content: Nudity. Extreme violence. Language.

NOTE ON NUDITY: I am targeting YouTube and Vimeo primarily with MySpace video and my site as secondary  targets. The nudity will be constrained to TV standards, though the violence and language may not be. Varying degrees of nudity may be required during shooting, however, in some scenes.

Dog

Dog is an operative without a name. He is considered disposable and is on his last leg while tracking Destiny. While there are a lot of Dogs in the world, this is one that may be put to sleep soon. He has been embedded with a pheremone tracking system.

Character Content: Nudity, extreme violence, language.

NOTE ON NUDITY: I am targeting YouTube and Vimeo primarily with MySpace video and my site as secondary  targets. The nudity will be constrained to TV standards, though the violence and language may not be. Varying degrees of nudity may be required during shooting, however, in some scenes.

Sarah

Sarah is Ross's sister and a middleschool teacher. Her apartment is being painted and she is staying with Ross and James. She is very sweet and very smart and very skeptical. Her life is about to be turned upside down.

Character Content: Nudity, Extreme violence. language

NOTE ON NUDITY: I am targeting YouTube and Vimeo primarily with MySpace video and my site as secondary  targets. The nudity will be constrained to TV standards, though the violence and language may not be. Varying degrees of nudity may be required during shooting, however, in some scenes.

Those are some of the ones I have written now and will be revising. None of the "content warnings" are set in stone at this time and will be revised. But that is where I'm at right now and what I'm thinking.

If you can even begin to think of anyone who might be interested in a quick, public, free film project about secret organizations, psychic powers, and violently whacky situations, let me know.

These are the currently released viral campaign videos for Resident Evil 5. It hits the shelves 3.13.2009.

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Thought I would link to it, the idea is so nummy. Generating C# assemblies for XNA on the 360 would be a fun trick to master. The RPG Kit for XNA is pretty nifty as a starting point. Perhaps in the same way that TorqueX 2D works on top of XNA, though with more built-in functionality and less coding, of course...but with C# rather than Ruby for the code junkies out there experienced with the RPG Maker realm.

RPG Maker for XNA?