Welp. This is harder than I thought. I've made the whole story twice. I'm not going to show you the first version. It was Art House Death Metal at its weirdest. You would not enjoy it.
I realized I was being too literal with my message. Vicki Jensen watched it and said, "you're not going to change anyone's beliefs in a movie". Precisely my mistake. The first attempt was a big, bold, boring statement about religion and science.
In the lunch line at DreamWorks, Tim Johnson said now that I have the pieces, I should play with the ideas and how they fit together. Mix, match, rearrange, destroy, reinvent... Kill my babies as they say.
To understand what he meant, I dove into screenwriting. Robert McKee's "Story", Joseph Campbell's "The Hero's Journey", and Blake Snyder's "Save the Cat".
It's fascinating. The traditional story arc touched upon by all these guys is derived from something woven deep into the human spirit itself, since we gathered around campfires as cavemen. It works. It's the heartbeat of everything everything from Star Wars to the Matrix to the Seven Samurai.
As a side note, I listened to RobertMcKee through the earbuds as I was falling asleep at night, a trick my mom taught as a kid. Let it seep into the unconscious. That's how I learned the multiplication tables. "9 times 9 is 81", she would repeat as I dozed listening to the tape recorder. I can still hear it like it was yesterday.
So this is my second previsualization attempt at Lucy.
This one has a whole new set of problems though, not the least of which is The Nightmare monster. It's too similar to Aliens. Also, the story is still too 'out there'. Another stepping stone, not worthy of production.
Lucy short film previz from ben rush on Vimeo.
copyright Ben Rush 2006
Official production blog for the animated film project Only a Dream
