Script Sample - Episode 5 - A Helping Hand

Without further adieu I thought I'd better get the script online, my teachers have already seen it but thought I'd better get it online just incase! Here it is:

SCENE 1. NEUTRON STAR

The small Neutron star can be seen in the background spinning rapidly and unpredictably.

The light that it gives off is bright for such a small object and flickering quickly as the star spins.

The ship lingers, drifting helpless in front of it.

SCENE 2. BRIDGE

The bridge is a fairly dark room, lit up by the light from the monitors and instruments. The back of the room is almost totally dark except the door, which is illuminated.

The engineer and doctor are gathered and anxiously watching as the captain paces across the bridge in front of them, deep in thought.

Eventually the silence is broken by the captain turning to the front of the bridge and asking SAI a question.

CAPTAIN

I can't think of any way out of this. SAI, any idea how we can get away from here?

SAI

Yes sir, using basic plasma propulsion we will be able to reach the nearest star in around 100 years, though I'm quite sure that this isn't an acceptable solution.

CAPTAIN

(Patronizingly)

No... No it isn't.

He turns to face the crew behind him.

CAPTAIN
What about you? Any suggestions?

DOCTOR
(Panicing)
Stuck? We can't be stuck here, we'll go mad!

ENGINEER
(Nervous)
Without the energy from a star, the reactor alone will never make enough energy to get us away. She's right, we're going to go mad here.

CAPTAIN
Stay calm the both of you, you'll panic the rest of the crew.

SAI
Captain! We're receiving another transmission, it's much stronger this time.

The monitor switches to show static, which slowly clears and shows an alien speaking to them.

ALIEN
(Speaking slowly)
Human vessel can you hear us? We are aware of your situation. We will be there to help shortly.

CAPTAIN
(Quickly)
Wait! Who are...

Shortly after the alien had finished speaking the transmission was stopped, interrupting the captain.

The captain turns and looks at the crew members in disbelief, who are also staring shocked back at him.

ENGINEER
(Whispering)
Oh I don't like this one bit...

SCENE 3. NEUTRON STAR

The ship is still drifting lifeless through space, with the neutron star still spinning menacingly.

Time begins to slow down, the star appears to slow it's spinning, and space above the ship appear to bend and stretch.

A huge ship appears above the human ship casting a shadow over it.

Time returns to normal and the star is back to spinning rapidly and menacingly.

The ship makes a strange growing humming noise and emits a growing dim glow.

The humming and the glow build up becoming louder and brighter, until a brilliant flash of light engulfs both the human and the alien ship.

The light fades with a crackling sound and the ships have both disappeared entirely. Leaving ripples in space, which quickly fade.

SCENE 4. RIGEL

The ship is now in orbit around a very large blue star, Rigel. The star totally dwarfs the ship.

SCENE 5. BRIDGE

The crew members on the bridge who had braced themselves for an impact begin to recompose themselves.

Once they have all risen, SAI speaks:

SAI
(Emotionless)
It appears that we are now in orbit around the star Rigel of the Orion constellation, around 500 light years from our previous location, there is no sign of the alien vessel. Scans are showing surface temperatures of over 10,000 kelvin and an enormous amount of energy across all wavelengths, over 70,000 times that of our Sun, energy appears to be recharging extremely quickly.

CAPTAIN
(Relieved)
That's all well and good but how exactly did we arrive here so quickly?

Light footsteps are heard from behind the crew. A figure emerges from the dark edge of the bridge, behind the crew.

It is an alien of the same species that spoke on the transmission. Slim with smooth turquoise skin and darker markings over his shoulders and head.

He is holding the tips of his long fingers together in front of him as walks forwards and speaks.

ALIEN
(Calm)
I believe I may be able to offer some insight into that.

It's not the end the episode, it's probably just over half the episode, maybe 2/3rds and seemed like a good point to stop the sample section. The formatting might be a little off since copying from Celtx removes all of the formatting, so I've had to redo it in blogger (not a huge job at least!).

Anyway, back to work for me.

Budget Research: More Property

While doing my budget it occured to me how much more staff I have than expected... I'll certainly be needing a larger office than my originally planned Edgar House, Bath (2,200 sq f). Not much more but I will need more. So I decided to look around for some industrial space, to use as office space. Around 4,000 - 5,000 sq f.

Sadly there's absolutely no available space in Bath, but Bristol turned up a lot of results. Surprisingly cheap results too!

http://www.estatesgazette.com/propertylink/advert/avon_trading_estate_bristol-bristol-3282942.htm

A pretty dingy space in Bristol, 5900 sq f, in what looks like a fairly busy lorry yard. Only £18,000 a year though!

http://www.estatesgazette.com/propertylink/advert/gatton_road_bristol-bristol-3272709.htm

This one looks quite a bit nicer, 6100 sq f at £35,000 per year. Still pretty reasonable. It already has a large office area. There is also a warehouse space, which would be fairly useless to me and coud be converted into more office space if I needed more. The office space is already quite a bit larger than the Edgar House space though, so should be more than enough!

So! New property: 

5B Gatton Road, Bristol

6,163 square feet.

£35,000 per year.

On site parking, warehouse, large office space, security gate.

Merchandise Research: Space Food

Being an at least semi educational series about space, it only makes sense that some of the merchandise be space food. Though the food that they eat aboard the ship would largely be replicated in my film and therefore very much like regular food, I think people would be interested enough to want to try space food as it currently is.

It was only just over 50 years ago that we were able to get the first object into space (1957 - Sputnik) and the first person went into orbit in 1961 (Gagarin); only 50 years ago. Already space food has developed a lot.

In 1961 Gagarin became the first man in space. For food he ate 3 160g toothpaste tubes of pureed food; 2 pureed meats and one chocolate sauce for dessert. 

In 1962 when America began manned space flight they experimented with various foods to establish what kinds of food would be edible in space. They found that surprisingly, low gravity does not affect digestion or the ability to swallow solid foods as previously thought.

In 1973 with Skylab, refrigerators and freezers were included in order to better preserve more traditional foods. They had foods such as canned meat, bread, biscuits etc. 

In modern day space flight, the primary concern is practicality. Taking into account eating and preparing in low gravity, as well as being well preservable. Otherwise, 'regular' Earth food could be and sometimes is used in space, which is a treat for the astronauts. 

Interestingly, carbonated drinks such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi are used in space. The national space station refrigerators have stocked cans of both for several years. Though consumption of them is not recommended, due to the effect that low gravity has on belching; namely 'wet burps'. 

Space food has been commercialized primarily in China, where it is a popular novelty product. It has also been commercialized in other countries of course. Often in the form of high nutrition bars and pre-prepared food such as meat in sachets.

For my merchandise, I'd like to do a range of both savoury and sweet food in bar and packet form. I'll get the drawings up later!

Budget Research: Computer Equipment

Now a look at the equipment we'll be needing in the studio for the staff!

Probably the most important equipment, the animation work stations. These computers are high specced as they will be used not only for the 3D animation and modelling, but also for rendering.

Main Specs:

3.1Ghz Quad Core Intel i7

16 Gb Memory

2 Gb Nvidia GPU

2x 2 TB HDDs (RAID 0)

22" Widescreen 1920 x 1080 Monitor

Comes to £1,419.00 inc VAT from http://www.pcspecialist.co.uk.

I'll need 14 of these machines in total, 4 for animators, 4 for the modellers, 1 for the lighting / camera, 1 for Cloth / Hair, 1 each for the lead artist and animator, and 1 each for the editor and compositor.

The rest of the machines, which will only be using photoshop and word will be lower spec to save money:

Specs:

3.1Ghz Quad Core Intel i5

4 Gb Memory

512 Mb Nvidia GPU

2x 1 TB HDD (RAID 0)

22" Wdescreen 1920 x 1080 Monitor

Comes to exactly £700 including VAT, again from http:www.pcspecialist.co.uk.

I'll need 5 of these, for the admin folk (4), and the sound editor (1).

So that's 19 computers... One for each of the staff who will need one, the software needed for each will go ontop of that.

I'm having some trouble finding the price of software at the moment, I know that you can buy a license for a business that allows you to install software on all of your machines. But it's impossible to find an actual price! I'll have to com back to this, or buy the software for each individually.

On top of that, I need to head over to staples.co.uk or something and find a bunch of desks and chairs, and some stationary equipment.

Budget Research: Staff

With the studio now pretty much decided on, it's time to have a look at the staff I'm going to need:

The animation itself is going to be CG with 9 episodes at 10 minutes each. 

With this in mind I'll be able to make a decision on the size of the team I'll need, then have the teachers check over it before anything is final of course! I'm using our course references for studio staff and their wages, which I'm not sure if I can upload onto my blog... So I won't.

Admin

1 Producer

1 Director

1 Production Manager

1 Human Resources

Written

1 Script Writer (Temp)

Visuals

1 Lead Artist

1 Lead Animator

1 Storyboard Artist

4 Animators

4 Digital Artists (Modellers)

1 Lighting / Camera

1 Cloth / Hair Technician

1 Concept Artist (Temp)

Audio

1 Audio Editor / Track Layer

1 Composer (Temp)

5 Voice Over Artists (Temp)

Post Production

1 Compositor

1 Editor

That seems to be about everything that will be needed, with sound editing being in house rather than outsourced (I'm a bit of a control freak and this is imaginary... So I want everything in house).

That's 20 in house staff for the duration of the production, and 8 temporary contract staff.

Theoretically the production should take around 6 - 8 months.

Next up is the equipment budget!

Merchandise Research

A good starting point for merchandise seems to me to be having a look at Star Trek merchandise, as it's a space sci-fi series aimed at a relatively close target audience to mine.

http://store.startrek.com/

There's even an official store!

Now the merchandise for Star Trek is probably one of the most extensive of any series, so there are quite a lot of items that would be ridiculous for me to use for my merchandise. Things like kitchen wares, glassware, fragrances wouldn't make any sense for me to use, and don't really for Star Trek... But they get away with it because of the popularity of the series. People like to fill their homes with all sorts of star trek stuff!

So some things that I think would be applicable for my series are more related things, aswell as some items aimed at the younger end of my particular target audience.

Clothing

Uniforms, quotations, costumes

Accessories

School satchel

Collectables

Sticker book, fact cards, figurines

Posters

Mouse mat

Beginner telescope

Stargazer kit

satchel, notepad, pen, light, starguide

Books

Starguide, fact book, fiction

Space food

That seems to be a fairly comprehensive list of the merchandise I'd like for the series. Amazingly I don't actually think that mugs would fit in with the series... So I'll be skipping the 'go to' merchandise completely!

Production Budget Research - Properties

An important part of a productions budget, and a pretty sizeable chunk of it too is the property where it will be made. Now then since this is imaginary it doesn't really matter where we actually have our office though it does have to be large enough for our imaginary needs.

So since there's no rule telling me where to go, I can have my office anywhere I like, and where I'd like is in Bath, England, because it's where I'll actually be living after uni.

I'll check for properties in or near Bath and pick whichever I prefer.

Edgar House, George Street, Bath

I like this property, it's in the center of Bath and is a decent size for what I need. The property has 2 floors and they can be rented independently. The rent is calculated at £13.50 per square foot.

Floor 1: 1,245 sq f = £16,807.50 per annum

Floor 2: 1,425 sq f = £19,237.50 per annum

Both: £36,045

Vintry / Wine Street, Bristol

This is a large office block in Bristol, with 3,310 sq f, rentable per square foot at £9 each per annum.

Walcott Street, Bath

A nice looking office in a convenient location in Bath, no information is included on the website about price or size however...

Gay Street, Bath

The cheapest office I've come across so far. Located near the center of Bath and only £350 pcm (per calendar month). No info on the size again, and it looks rather small...

London Road, Bath

Again within walking distance to the center of Bath, no prices are included on the website.

So far, Edgar House is my favourite by a country mile. It is the most expensive of the ones I've looked at, at £13.50 per sq f but at £36,045 for the year it's still a fairly reasonable amount, especially for property in Bath.