WORKS IN PROGRESS

 

1:

Feature film thriller with an accompanying ARG (Alternate Reality Game).

Title: 'Crack'.

Status: Script and treatment currently in progress.

Format: Feature film screenplay (90 min version)

Genre: Thriller/ drama/ suspense (Fiction).

NOTE***

ARGs (Alternate reality games) which are interactive games played by various people online and trends virally.

Other themes address psychological states and challenges, trust, survival of the fittest in a utopian or dystopian world, digitalisation and media dissemination.

*The ARG is intended to replace the traditional film trailer which is designed to both spark intrigue with audiences and defy fact from fiction with an interactive and immersive game.  The ARG would be intended to be released on platforms such as You-Tube with the intent to go viral prior to the films' release.

Logline: 

A struggling writer from the suburbs, discovers an unfinished script in an abandoned house, and is offered to complete it on the condition it is autobiographical.  Unaware he has been lured into an alternate reality game, every person in the city are players in this ARG, where the aim is for the first to push him over the edge.  Literally, until a twist questions if this world is real.

 

Tagline: 'Are you really game?'

 

Synopsis:

Ever wondered if your life could be, or have the potential to be staged for the world to see, which questions your own existence?  With our lives run by digital technology and our addiction to such immersion, this story exemplifies the possibility of this concept through one man’s life unknowingly lured as a character in an alternate reality game (ARG).

Our main character named Dane, is a struggling scriptwriter, living in an uneventful suburb, who by chance discovers a lost film script in an abandoned house where he intends to end his life.  You could say this is a convenient interruption which re-sparks his motivation to find out if the script is legitimate.  The title of the script called ‘Crack’ has the final page ripped off, meaning it appears it needs an ending.

 

After some short procrastination, Dane contacts the production company stated on the title page and invite him to discuss a proposal.  

Dane meets the executive producer named Violette, in the nearby city of St. Malena.  Violette claims the script is their property and offers Dane to write the ending of the script on one condition that the ending is purely autobiographical.  What Dane is not entirely aware is the story in the script very much reflects his own life so Dane is the ideal candidate to complete the script to his credit, but in more sinister ways in one.

Dane accepts the proposal, signs a contract, then his life instantly becomes the main character of an ARG (game) on a global scale.  Though Dane is totally oblivious that his life is monitored 24/7.  The ultimate goal for the players, who engage from a plethora of digital devices, in any private or public space, is to kill off Dane, though the rule is to make it look like an accident.  The rewards attract a community of players, of an entire city, as a billion dollars is on the line once the deed is done by the successful player.  Though each player have their own risks where the realistic immersion involves risks, some even potentially fatal.

Dane’s day-today life gradually becomes surreal and his paranoia sets in leading him to believe that someone is out to get him.  His nativity soon is overshadowed by uncovering clues to this sick and twisted game where literally the whole world is out to kill him.

The truth sets in once Dane reads the script from start to finish, which is one act he did not do entirely before agreeing to be part of the ‘game’. What he discovers is that the story in the script is an exact account of his life.

Dane sees no other way out but to end it all the way it all began by suggesting to jump off a building in the city. 

Soon, Dane makes a surprise appearance on a television broadcast addressed to the city of St. Malena revealing the city are not players, but are characters, in an ARG script he has been developing. 

But how the whole concept of this ARG began with a twist which traces back to a script hidden in a house by a young boy chased by bullies. 

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