script draft 1 (and notes)

NOTE: this script has been discarded for now. Instead I am working visually.

Didn't know how to submit a PDF to this blog, so here it is hosted on Deviantart:
Draft 1, part 1


Problems with the current script:

The old mothlike. The old and young should have a conversation, rather than the old man's monologue. Things to discuss: Short lifespan, fear of dying. Self-centeredness springing from that.

The young man must listen to him even if he says nothing, we must feel he has absorbed and not dismissed what he says.

"And then one day you find 10 years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun." (Pink Floyd, Time)

"There is so little time, so of course I would take the chance here. They offered me more time. I was so sure with all this time, I could (do/find), I would have enough time to (make it the best it could be). I could use time to learn, to assist, to rest when life made me weary. But instead all it did was help me to forget the end was coming, and it became more and more reasonable not to mind it. To seek comfort, and forget everything else. And time began to run together, until every day was the same, and the end was all I was waiting for."

-Depression from feeling trapped; a sense of knowing everything already, that things will always be the same, or interrupt the few comforts one can take in doing nothing. That nothing is exciting or worth pursuing.


The thinkers and the hearing place.
This government is in the story to show how people fool themselves and completely reject their mortality, voiding the potency of their lives. One of the traps on the path to self awareness is the fear of failure*. But another is those manipulators who benefit from the mindless complacency of others. Who are also only thinking of immediate gain and pleasure; maximum exploitation without plans for sustainable good or minding the consequences to anyone but themselves.
The urgency to unplug doesn't come through. It needs to be the popular opinion, with the other, branching opinions continuing off that train of thought.
*What are all the traps? Distraction (being entertained), apathy (the result of too many disappointments), misdirection (being sold a story that is incongruent with truth)

Why are there 7 thinkers? Do there need to be more or less, and do we need to meet all of them?
(Children are taught to become designers, engineers, producers, or polishers. But most of the great thinkers have their status because they were voted onto the board by friends and relatives. Even a prodigy would have to fight tooth and nail to earn their way in. * REFLECT THIS IN THE PERSONALITIES OF THE THINKERS- some are soft, selfish, and clueless, but others are hard as nails, fighting the group*
Maybe there should be a legion of thinkers, as it is the most desirable role in the city. But we don't need to hear from all of them. Only understand the conflict between those who earned their way in and those who didn't, as well as their dissenting goals/opinions.)
Is there a mayor or not? How would he be different than the thinkers? (For now, let's nix the mayor entirely)

There are so many thinkers because they are rewarded with extra energy and other perks? Like what? (They don't have to "work" in the way the others do)
How do the people react to these extra luxuries?
(They need the extra to think harder. They deserve it because they got there by being better than everyone else)