I’ve never written a screenplay. Sometimes as I watch shows, I think I’d be pretty good at it. But what do I know? I also would guess that the art of writing a screenplay could have nothing to do with the ability to come up with IDEAS for a screenplay, and that the two abilities might not frequently meet up in the same person.
(side note: I noticed during the beginning of the Evan Almighty movie that the screenplay was done by none other than Steve Oedekerk. The only reason I know about Steve Oedekerk is that I love Thumb Wars. Thumb Wars is easily in my top 10 “gotta make me laugh” flicks and is quite quotable when you’re with someone else who knows the “movie” well. (“You must be, the crybaby” or “touch your tongue to mine…” or “No problem, Nasty Butler!” It’s only 30mins long and if you ever get a chance to see it, DO IT. It’s hilarious, especially if you know anything about or like about Star Wars. I actually first saw it on my computer via viral multimedia emails many years ago, but I’ve also rented it at Blockbuster and then ordered it from his site.) I’ve since found from IMDB that Oedekerk actually has written / screenplayed several movies as well as been producer of not just a small few.
So, back to the screenplay idea.
It has to do with infinite mirrors. You know what I’m talking about – you get two mirrors facing each other, and then you look at one of them, and you can see yourself in the mirror behind you, and then THAT image gets reflected again, and you see yourself again inside THAT mirror, and it continues ad infinitum until it just blurs out. I believe it’s called video feedback. You can see some examples online at the mirror project.
So let’s say there’s a guy who’s really into photography and technology. He’s out to prove himself in the big world of high definition LCD display technology and super-fine control of camera robotics. Always looking for bigger and bigger challenges, he moves from slow-motion photography of being able to watch a bumblebee’s wing go through it’s artful beating to developing new processing algorithms to be able to discern detail from a blurry image, such as those from Hubble space telescope reaching out too far, or maybe even crime-solving help to determine identities from people in cell-phone shots but who are too far away for normal detail. (insert some back story that involves his passion for video to start when he’s 6 or 7 years old, and is passing by a large mirror in his front hallway, and his parents had ordered a large mirror for upstairs and the delivery guy left it downstairs in the hallway in order to check the leeway of the stairwell to make sure it fits. The guy leaves it facing the large mirror. The main guy stops and looks and notices himself multiplied 50 times, and as he tilts the new mirror, he can see deeper and deeper into this maze of himself. Maybe he breaks it and it causes strife or something; TBD)
Read the extended entry for more.
