The Process Diary: Work in Progress

2008-10-31

Work in Progress - October 2008

Work in Progress - October 2008 from Paul Caggegi on Vimeo.

...The story so far: Paul Caggegi, a former Senior editor at a small post-production house, wrote a story about a world between ages.

This world had no moon, and was in a process of slow decline. However, because of a heightened degree of volcanic activity, and a substantial depletion of fossil fuels, Geothermal energy technology was developed, and the wilier of corporations managed to make a fortune off of this natural resource.

Economic powerhouses boomed to the point that their profits could sustain small cities, and eventually, larger and larger micro-nations.

On the edge of one such micro-nation lies a desolate wasteland called the Cadian desert, where none fear to venture. Its volatile tectonic shifting and high levels of radiation through its central bands makes it a dry, inhospitable place. None who venture into the Cadians ever returns...

Or so is the bedtime horror tale parents tell their children.

The truth is about to be discovered by Marcus Blair - a geothermal vent miner. He pursues a shadowy figure into the Cadians after his daughter, Sarah, is kidnapped. He is injured while crossing the threshold into the Cadians, and loses the trail. Certain that the desert will now claim him, he is surprised when he wakes up in the Commune of Stanton - a small band of anarchists, nihilists and atheists who have forged a new existence away from the cities they once called home.

He begs them to help him find his daughter, but none know how, so all refuse... but one.

The Captain of the Commune Sandboat (a trading vessel designed to cross the treacherous radioactive lines that run through the Cadians and dock at the Northern trade routes) makes him a deal. He will help him get information on his daughter if he agrees to help him in a conspiracy to bring a stop to the shifting of the plains for good.

The problem of the shifting movement must be stopped. It keeps many of the communes on the move, and many have died when their moisture caves have collapsed due to shifting. Bargaining with the native Cadian traders for information on the shifting proves futile, as they wish to sustain the shifting - it allows them safe passage between the Outland cities, where they pilfer goods and information, and trade to those Communes who have chosen to settle.

Marcus agrees, and so the mission begins.

The story of the Pilot episode takes place some five years after Marcus enters the Cadians.

Any feedback on this version would be welcome - please note that I am posting this as the script has now changed. I post this for posterity, and so you can see the progression of how the story changes, and what elements get kept in future drafts.

Email me at: flawdprefect@gmail.com or leave a comment here on the blog.

Next month, there will be the first "Discussion Point" and the start of the new format for The Process Diary.

Just because I could not resist, and because it IS a WIP episode, here are a current render of Minauld Wallace. I modeled this one myself in Blender, this past week, after sketching a few revisions of Minauld's face. Don't worry - there shall be hair soon. More to show and tell in the weeks to come.