Musical Finale...

One more thing needed to happen for the total concept to come together. I was listening to a CD single, the Ferry Corsten Remix of William Orbit’s performance of “Adagio for Strings” by Samuel Barber. I’ve always loved “Adagio for Strings” but the orchestral string version has become almost a cliché in films. But William Orbit and Ferry Corsten brought something quite new out of the piece without losing its deeply spiritual essence. The mix of classical and techno was the perfect feel for the piece. A new vision exploded in my head…

“Outside In” was to become a three-part short film, made for the large screen, an “experiential film”, part star-gate sequence from “2001, A Space Odyssey”, part theater, part personal documentary. So by fall, 2004, the concept, script and plan for the film was complete.

PART 1: Zeitgeist

An dizzying 3-d animated journey through the cultural zeitgeist of our times (inspired by Google).

PART 2: Universal Man & Woman

The scripted part.

PART 3: Saturn Reveals Her Majesty & Glory

A regal animated exploration of Saturn using only the high resolution images taken by Cassini.

I finally knew exactly what the film was about. I thought the hard part was over. What did I know?

Man & Woman, the second draft.

My first draft had the 5 pages of dialogue as internal, between a my own masculine and feminine halves, but that seemed to not lend itself to a film, but more to poetry or stage. But one day it occurred to me that rather than fight the lack of naturalism in my first draft, why not just go for it?

I had a vision of a man, woman and something like a "Chorus" that would echo the man's lines in a very theatrical, formal manner. So I started re-writing it, eventually ending up with a stylized dialogue between a man and a woman with plans for the man's dialogue to be repeated as the Chorus. I liked the result, but was unsure if anyone would "get it" or even care.

I took it to a local script reading and was surprised how well people related to it. As we sat around and discussed the script, I felt encouraged and inspired; realizing lots of people wonder about this stuff as well. I started to feel I just might have a good story and a solid, if unusual, script.

Several previous ambitious (read ambitious = expensive) projects of mine had failed to either come together as I envisioned or even get finished at all. The reasons always came back to the original script. A filmmaker needs a vision, we know that. I had also learned from these previous projects to not start making a film until I knew in my heart what the film was really about.

I felt "Outside In" was getting there, but I was still not exactly sure how this would turn into a film...