Totally stuck and looking for inspiration

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Hello again DVX USER community, it has been a while. I've been out of the filmmaking scene for a few years after having the funding pulled out from under my Texas Western feature in 2011/2012. Back in 2005 I wrote a treatment for a sci-fi short, over the years I came back to it adding different story plotlines, and taking the whole tale in different directions. After a while, it became obvious that the short was the pilot for a whole TV/web series that followed a military family in and out of the service over two generations. My filmmaking partner and I started seriously discussing putting the gloves back on, shooting the short and pitching the whole series to networks/ investors. We watched hours of other indie produced sci-fi and were convinced that we could deliver this story with much higher quality than what was currently being made, plans began to design and assemble the components needed to build our very complicated but small spacecraft set, the script underwent additional revisions, we were on track to shoot in the spring/summer of 2015 and deliver in the fall. Then it was made known to us that we needed to see this series called "Ascension" on Sci-Fi. To our dismay many of the major plot points and story concepts of Ascension mirror those of our script. This isn't the first time this has happened, we were looking at an alien-road-trip comedy with "a lot of pot culture" script when word of the Seth Rogen voiced "Paul" was announced! Needless to say, everything is scrapped. I'm just so frustrated having been plopped back down at square one AGAIN! What do you do when you are forced to start over, and are having creative block? How do you get inspired to get out there and make a movie?

 

[KurtF]

I hear you man. Oddly enough, I've wondered if writers are even a little bit telepathic. Especially when several hundred people (a film crew) are all thinking about the same thing. I know it's happened to me!

Anyway - best idea I can think of is to walk around your own community and look for locations and resources you have available to you, and then create a story that uses those assets. You might have to amp up the situations and get creative, but when you're done writing you'll have a handle on how to actually film the thing.

 

[Egg Born Son]

Plots are malleable. Distinctive likeable characters with an interesting dynamic sell a series, even in scifi. If you have a good character dynamic, change the key plot elements and rewrite. Look for a new hook and use it to write the sequel to your original series. Transplant your characters into the new concept and you retain your original material to give them a credible and real feeling history (because it actually 'happened' any references to the past will be noticeably consistent). Sounds like you've put a lot of work in, I'd be trying to recycle as much as possible. If you already had actors lined up bring them in on the development and increase their personal investment. Even if you write a new script from scratch with new characters, if you've been building sets then write to what you have. At least cut your losses on current investments to make something else. You may even find you come out of it with something better.

 

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Thanks for that, I appreciate your insight. We are doing just that and further molding the plot away from the elements that make it too similar to Ascension. The thing that hacks me off is that we had this outlined with some concept art in 2005, I seriously doubt that Ascension was even in the works at that time. It's so rediculous, that we no longer discuss our plots with anyone outside the creative team, and certianly don't talk about them in open environments. Script paranoia! There's too much work put in at this point to scrap it, just the concepts and science elements of the story will have to be molded and modified. Great minds think alike, often times TOO much alike!