Impossible-Misson. Festival / Screenplay 4 – The Opening
Okay, I’ll cheat – a little – you’re not going to read the beginning of a professional screenplay. What follows is a draft.
But before I do, I apologize: my English is a joke. I won’t write the final script, I promise.
I’m going to give you a bit of the first night of the festival.
I’ve just spent the day writing the Last Night of the Impossible Festival, so that night will be connected with Arc 2: the Legendary Festival. But I won’t give you that for the moment.
So, it’s the opening night of the Festival.
The room is packed.
There are people outside following the Evening on the screens.
On the ceiling, because this is Altair, and not just any theatre, you can see the inside of the Altair Twin Theatre Ship. Because, you see, our ceiling is also a screen.
We are snobs. Sometimes, I like it.
For a few days now, they have been moving towards the outer areas of the game map (yes I know which game I want, but I don’t have the rights yet). This is an area designed to be dangerous.
But the artists are not afraid of danger. They’ve got a contract on a planet that’s a bit full of thugs.
They’re not too reassured, that’s true.
Fortunately, our players are with us. They follow us and protect us, there have already been some nice battles that you can see on the ceiling of Altair.
Can you feel the atmosphere? It’s going well. They’re all happy.
Outside the big hall, there is a whole bunch of teenagers and pro-gamers, who are accompanying Altair T.
No mistakes? What I’m writing here is not a movie script. It’s a screenplay for a real festival. – frankly, if that happens, then I think I’ll get fired and go back alone and sad in my little village –
The director is on stage. He’s too moved. At last! This first festival. Ok, we can put a beautiful actress instead, it will be more… entertainment.
In front of her, some sort of rather modern dashboard, which will allow her to interact with Altair Twin.
As a result, all those who hadn’t thought about looking up will realize the presence of the ship and its artists.
And on the ceiling, we’ll see the players in direct play, behind their computers, making ceremonial hurdles around the ship Altair – two young women, both very pretty – easily distinguishable – one very girly unicorn, the other more of a kick boxer.
The director of Altair will be talking with the Captain of the ship – who is an engineer from Altair and will be out of the room.
He will explain to her what to do to take command.
She’s going to try.
Miss a bit – it’ll make a nice ‘oops, sorry’ scene.
Succeed.
And… losing control.
Losing it completely.
She calls the famous Captain for help.
He can’t run Altair Twin either.
There must be something wrong with the machinery.
Since Altair Twin will be a beautiful spaceship, it will have several rooms.
They’ll all be trapped.
The map of the game is displayed: the planned trajectory is deleted.
It is replaced by another one – which will take Altair much further, much further away from the correct areas of the game.
(ok the game I’m dreaming of is Star Citizen, because it has this distribution of space !!! – and it’s awesome)
The control room is empty – but the ship is under malicious control.
Downstairs, in the theatre, it’s going crazy.
And it gets even more frantic when the control console heats up and explodes.
The fire doors are falling down.
Comes ClapTrap (yes I love him – yes he’s the dumb sidekick) before the panic really sets in.
He rushes to open the doors. He’s a robot that was designed to open doors.
Since he’s a game character, that he’ll be a robot in the room and he’s completely nuts, the audience doesn’t know whether to panic or not.
Obviously, he is ClapTrap: he needs his SBIRE to open the door. ( “Sbire” is his French word – I know, he doesn’t use it in English , he uses “minion”)
Did you find out who the henchman is?
Yes it’s him – Modern Perseus, my hero who doesn’t know he’s a hero yet. Not a bad name, Perseus. Sounds a little Matrix. Too, I won’t keep that name.
Perseus gets up, he’s in “yare yare” mode.
At the top, we see the avatar of a girl laughing .
Perseus controls ClapTrap.
Unfortunately… …Altair, this will be a real theater. So you have to really move your body to clear those doors.
So Perseus is going to have to unlock the safety devices that are up there, above the stage.
And most of all, I’m (sorry) really starting to play.
I say (the very pretty actress who will be the director), while he’s going up, that all this is cheating and that of course, it only serves to set the mood. I say this with a little reassurance. Not too much.
But once Perseus is upstairs (in our theatres in France we call it “le grill” – it’s a platform above the stage), he will be stuck: impossible to unlock the control box.
Luckily for him – and us – in the hall, there are artists capable of joining him – and here I am launching my first aerial circus act – I can quite see which troupe is crazy enough to do this to me like gods.
Of course, since we’re a great theatre, there’s not just one control box.
And since we’re totally too modern, they’re not made of plastic or metal. They’re made of crystal. Because it’s pretty – and I need it.
You know why ? Because it’s true: a singer can blow crystal with his voice.
So Perseus will have to follow a sort of route, above the hall, guided by the acrobats, ClapTrap and the singers, to unlock the control boxes.
And these are my other performers on stage. You see the mechanics? Each time, there will be the intervention of the Hero, the secondary characters and the artists.
I wonder about the interest of actively involving the audience. I have a show that they can (should) participate in, it’s designed to. But maybe we shouldn’t over-emphasize their participation. At least on the first day.
Well, this action is being solved – and Clap Trap will be the new high-tech Ali Baba who will be able to shout: door open.
But… I have to make my bad guy appear.
What’s great (for a screenwriter, sorry, obviously it’s horrible) with technology is that it has a huge Achilles’ heel: without energy, no more technology.
So, like in all good movies, when you say: “It’s over”…
Bam, it’s worse.
And then it’ll be worse.
Less than a minute with nothing – a few seconds without sound.
And then the sound of Altair Twin
Finally, the voice of my pro-gamer too in love with Perseus… That’s where we understand the connection between them.
Alas, her lovely voice is cut off by the bad guy’s voice.
Remember? The one who’s not a pervert, sadist or psychopath. The one who fights to save the world and has a terrible sense of humor.
He will be very reassuring.
He doesn’t want anyone’s life.
He doesn’t even want people’s money.
He won’t even take the bank details given to take a place at the Festival.
Well, he will show that he has them –
He even wants to see the real artists. He is cool & clean & ok & what you want.
On the other hand –
Altair Twin, on the other hand, for him, that’s not possible.
AltairTwin is the energy per month of a year in New York City.
It’s servers that make it look like they’re green, hiding in the ice so they can cool down.
So he – and he alone – is going to strike a real blow. He’s going to destroy the digital world – starting by taking control of this O/1 coded little marvel.
And since he’s a serious boy – and he wouldn’t want to be taken seriously – he’s going to have to prove that he has the means to achieve his ambitions.
So, this time, he’ll only destroy one tiny little thing.
One of those little support ships that keeps following Altair Twin.
The ceiling lights up. A little ship appears in visual sight.
Not for long.
In the background, the young woman who was playing is a little collapsed on her keyboard at home in her cute little girl’s apartment, full of unicorns and heart-shaped cushions.
At the same time, it’s not so bad, she was a 4Chan girl.
It’s crazy that people are so sensitive to electrical phenomena.
So: what does he want?
He wants nothing.
He just wants to take control of Altair Twin and destroy the ship.
And everyone will be fine.
From there, there will be several levels of play:
in the Altair Room
in the ship Altair Twin
on my kids’ computers – obviously, I didn’t pick a victim out of 4Chan’s ranks by accident.
It was a provocation– and my hero will be a little less lonely on the “coding and super-geek activities” front.
What is my hero doing right now anyway?
He’s lost in the heights of the theatre –
he wonders how his beautiful friend is doing
he laughs like a jinx at us destroying Altair Twin…
And by the way, nobody in the room cares about Altair Twin, as long as this show stops and we go home. Even those who spent a lot of money to make AT exist.
Luckily for everyone, there’s the beautiful friend: he doesn’t know, his hero, that AT is a computer monster?
He doesn’t know, that because of the infernal obstinacy of Altair’s creators, AT was designed to move? To go from server to server without passwords? To move from game to game? To fit into every computer, every smartphone? To be such a perfect Trojan Horse.
But it was so cool… AT is the “accepted code”.
So what’s the big deal? well… so misused … pffff … it was also good life without the net but … it still hurt.
And while she’s talking, AT disappears. He went on TOR.
And that’s the end of Act One.
A good script has 5 acts.
Five days then.
What will we see in the next act?
Well… we’ll see what’s in Altair Twin…
Actually, no one. Only lines of code.
But some of those lines of code come directly from movements performed by artists – so we’ll have some nice moments of confrontation between those lines of code animated by technology – and my dancers who, from below, will try to regain control –
The great thing about being a dancer is that when you don’t dance, you can’t anticipate the movements.
And go string lines of code together – you’ll tell me some new ones. Day 2….
Of course, we come back to the room – we allow ClapTrap to shine and everything goes back to “normal”.
I think that, in order for it to work without creating absolute hysteria (normally, when we go to see a show, the organizers have the good taste to leave us alone), we’ll still have to announce before it starts that they’re going to see a fiction.
And at the end of Act I, give them the keys so that they can participate, if they want, in the fight against the Madman.
Showing the 4Chan girl alive will be welcome so that people can leave without being totally horrified.
I’m starting to like it – working on this, there’s enough to set up a festival that’s going to be like no other. And, on the surface, I feel a little better about my characters.
I’m going to dig the girl – there aren’t enough great girls in the characters in general.
ALTAIR - Concepts 