Dreaming Up A Whole World
Hello and welcome back to this week’s installment of Why Aren’t You Famous Yet, a blog where Janette and I bring you along the journey of growing as artists, and entrepreneurs in Hollywood, without being famous lol. This week you’ll be hearing from me, Fred, on how I came up with my idea for my pilot In Time. Read on friend and thanks for being here!
I often have really intense and vivid dreams that usually scare the hell out of me, but also give me ideas for scripts. That’s how my idea for my pilot In Time came around.
I had a dream that I was mid lecture from a man in ceremonial indigenous garb, around a large campfire. He moved his hand in the air in a circular motion and it stirred up the forest floor. When he finished an image appeared, perfectly frozen in air. I asked him what it was, he told me that as carbon rests in the earth it holds the footprint for what it once was. With his abilities, that all people in his time had, he could recreate an image like holographic teleportation. I woke up after that.
I started to see the story unfold in front of me. A future world, so far in the future that the AI wars all our sci-fi media predicted has come and gone, like modern people remembering the fall of Alexandria. A world where we went further than using technology to help us as a species, where instead we learned to manipulate our biochemistry to do more than technology ever could.
We progressed so far that we became reconnected with the earth around us. We learned how to hone it and work with it on a level a Homo Sapien in the 2020’s couldn’t conceptualize. It would resemble an indigenous culture, because industrializing is too detached from the elements this new species needs. We not only unlocked the laws of physics but learned to master them.
I also wanted this script to be grounded in real physics around the current spacetime conversation. I got a bunch of lectures, papers, and books like Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Art & Physics by Leonard Shlain to help fill in some gaps. You know, I may have even unlocked the secret of time travel… but you'll have to stick around to find out. It’s been a really fun journey learning about a subject I’m super interested in.
After I created this world I had to figure out a way in. A plot line that would allow this world to be built and in the same breath, decimated. By page 10 of a script, you have to completely rip apart the world you’ve built to make room for the adventure to begin.
So I thought about ripping time apart completely. Here is my into for In Time:
Dr. Tayen Bender is always exploring new concepts of time and space as a theoretical physicist in 2023, but recently her dreams have begun to cloud her waking thoughts about what time means. She soon realizes that her dreams aren’t figments of her imagination but rather, messages sent from the future via a mysterious woman named Willow.
On the heels of another apocalypse, Willow’s people may have learned how to master the elements of the earth, possess the ability to manipulate their biochemistry, and bend physics to their will through evolution and unlocking Elementalism as they call it. None of it matters though because with Elementalism came the realization that their time is the end of time as we know it. As her world begins to rip apart literally, Willow resorts to her last option that just might save her and her species. Tayen Bender, a homo sapien from the year 2023 is the mother of Elementalism.
I can’t wait to share more. What’s been so fun is taking a stab at building a whole new world. Janette and I build little worlds for every script that fits into our reality (more or less) so letting my creativity run wild was a real treat.
I know we say this a lot but we can’t thank you enough for being a part of this writing and producing journey with us. We have so much in store that we can’t wait to share. As they say in Hollywood, we’re raising the stakes.