I give you the whole story here, including the character descriptions. Feel free to add a comment below. If you want to comment on parts of the story directly, you can go to the online google doc and give your feedback right there by right clicking in the document.

The Characters

Benjamin Michaels

Called Ben.

A hard and ruthless business man with a penthouse office with panorama windows on wall street.

A childhood drama/event causes him to hide his feelings.

He has been brought up in a capitalistic family and to him the world is either communism or capitalism, and he is very scared of communism and thinks everyone in the Occupy and Zeitgeist movement is a communist.

Ben is also afraid of heights, flying and death.

Ben is terminally ill with an incurable cancer and has lost his hair from chemotherapy.

He has less than 6 months to live.

His fear of death and love of HIS life with lots of money, properties, businesses, servants, cars, boats, leisure activities, etc. etc. makes him decide to freeze himself in the hope of waking up at a later time to continue his life of wealth.

Ben is ruthless as a businessman and has broken up a lot of companies causing many employees to lose their jobs and homes. He thinks mainly of himself, his company and his profit.

Despite all of this, he does have a heart deep inside. He shows this in interaction with his daughter. Deep inside, he also loathes some of what he does at times, even though he is not aware of this himself, totally brainwashed as he is from the money and profit driven world he lives in.

Aweena

Aweena is Ben’s great granddaughter.

She is about 30 years old when Ben wakes up in 2112. Ben is then at his ‘death age’ at about 35.

Aweena is very interested in history and is a hopeless romantic.

She has known about ‘Ben in the freezer’ for a long time and has been eagerly awaiting his revival, wanting to learn from him about how it was in ‘the old world’, look at his reaction to this new world, show him this world, etc.

Without wanting it she gets unexpected feelings for Ben.

Biancha

Ben’s daughter.

She is 4 at Ben’s freeze. Already then she is concerned about the planet and Humanity.

After Ben’s freeze she grows up to become a doctor, researcher, spiritual person and leader in ‘the resource based movement’.

She gets a son (Ayo) with an African man and lives in Africa before moving to India.

Ayo

Aweenas father.

Still lives in Africa. Divorced from Aweenas mother, Eara.

Eara

Aweenas mother.

Lives in a Kin Domain in America with a new man.

The Story

Year: 2014

Wall Street. Thousands of voices thundering in protest. The streets are packed with people. Shouting, waving signs, fists raised in dissent. Concrete barriers line both sides of the street. Police and military guards keep protesters far from the barrier.

We see them from above (camera on a flying drone…?), passing over angry people, and then, up up up up along the tall Freedom Tower building until we reach the top office. Through the window we see Ben talking on the phone. (Or cut directly to Ben in the office).

We see him from behind talking on the phone against a huge panorama window with a view over New York city.

He is having an angry conversation with a client, saying something like ‘I don’t care what they say! Buy this company now! We’ll brake it up and sell it off in pieces later. (the other person says something) Ben: Are you doubting my ability here? I own 15 mansions around the world, lots of property and more than 50% of over 40 companies in 10 countries. Do you think I know what I’m doing? Buy it!’. He slams down the phone.

We see that he is bald, with only some wispy hairs on his head. When he turns around, we see he looks pale and sweaty. He’s obviously on chemo therapy. He calls to his secretary for a glass of water. As she comes in, he looses his tie and dries his sweat. He asks her to get the car to the front door.

When she leaves, he packs up his briefcase, straighten his tie, puts on his jacket and puts on a wig that lies on his desk. He tells his secretary to cancel his last appointment that day as he walks out.

Outside is the waiting crowd.

Through this melee, a sleek black Escalade slides up to the entrance of the Freedom Tower. A contingent of armed guards form a line from the building to the rear door of the Escalade. A man dressed in dark blue Armani emerges and strides confidently into the limo.

The roar of the crowd increases. “It’s Ben Michael’s.” The crowd grows even more agitated… “Stop the destruction! Stop the destruction!”. Ben disappears into the Escalade.

They drive through some poor areas with homeless people, etc. Ben asks the driver why they go this way. The driver answers that the highway is blocked, and the GPS suggested this route.

They finally get home to his big mansion outside of the city. He goes in and is greeted by his wife and 4 year old daughter who runs up to him with a drawing.

The wife goes into the living room, while he picks up his daughter and looks at the drawing, which is a drawing of planet earth. She already shows interest in Humanity… He comments on the drawing, puts her down and goes into the living room, while the daughter runs into another room.

His wife looks concerned. They are having a conversation about Ben having this disease which is determined untreatable. He has been given less than a year to live. The wife asks the nanny to take the daughter to her room.

They start to have a discussion about Ben’s decision to freeze himself. ‘I don’t want to leave this’, Ben says. Wife: ‘You’ll leave it no matter what! You don’t know when you will wake up again or IF you’ll wake up again. It might all be gone then’. Ben: ‘I’ve been living my life taking chances, and that is just another chance I have to take’.

She’s overwhelmed, shaking her head, looking down. ‘This is too difficult for me, Ben’. ‘I can’t live with you in a freezer. Maybe you’ll wake up again before I die! How can I (crying) live with this…?’. Ben: ‘We’ve talked about this. This is what I have to do. I have to do it’. ‘Maybe I’ll wake up again, maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll wake up in 50 years, a 100 years or 200 years, or maybe never. But I want to have the chance’.

Wife: ‘If you wake up again before I die, Ben, I don’t think I want to know about it. When you’re gone now, I have to consider you gone’. Ben: ‘I understand that, and that’s ok. But you can freeze yourself as well when you die…’. Wife: ‘We talked about that. I don’t believe I can freeze my soul. I believe my body is just a shell, and when it dies, my consciousness moves on’. ‘Well, we’ll see’, Ben says.

Ben’s daughter comes in. She looks at Ben with big eyes. Ben bends down to her, looking into her eyes. Before Ben gets to say anything to her, she says: ‘Promise you will come and find me when you wake up again’. ‘I promise’, Ben says.

Ben Dies

Cut to a hectic hospital scene with Ben being rolled down a hallway with doctors and nurses conversing. ‘Quick quick, we have to get him to the preparation room’.

They get to the room where the cryo staff is waiting. The doctor comes in with Ben on the rolling bed and says ‘He is declared dead now, he’s all yours’. The cryo doctor: ‘Thank you’ To himself: ‘He might be dead to you, but to me his body is only temporarily on pause until we find a cure for him…’.

While he start to drain Ben’s body for fluids he starts to explain the cryogenic process. ‘With the techniques we have available today, it’s very likely he will be revived some day’. Patting Ben’s head: ‘Don’t you worry, you’ll probably wake up’.

They continue to prepare the body. Cut to cryogenic tank put into storage. Fade slowly to black, with only a musical note hanging from the music into the blackness.

Time: ca. 00:10:00

HERE COMES THE TITLE OF THE FILM

Then, out of the blackness credits come up mixed with some of Ben’s memories from childhood, and maybe some of what he’s experiencing during the 100 years in cryo, assuming his mind is a separate entity from his body. He can see dead relatives and maybe ‘the Light’ during a little sequence. Then into blackness again.

Titles and credits are mixed in here.

Waking Up 2112

Time: ca. 00:12:00

Ben is being pulled out of the ‘freezer’ and is put on a table, still bold. We see a timelapse with doctors are working on him. He lies in bed for a good while, restituting. His hair grows while he lies there. We see the hospital surroundings. Cool. Modern. Automatic. Not many people. Caring robots.

It takes time to revive him and his cells to regain themselves, and it’s all done before he regains consciousness.

‘All systems are working now’. We hear doctors talking about parts of the process it took to revive him. Specifics with Ben. Male voice: ‘This guy was pretty easy’. Female: ‘Yeah. Very little cell damage’. Male: ‘Yeah, they had come quite far in 2014 with the vitrification process. These people actually have a chance. Only 10 years earlier and they are mish mash. With this guy we only had to do some minor cell restructuring. Female: ‘His heart is beating by itself now, and he should breath when we remove the respirator’.

Time: ca. 00:13:00

Ben wakes up in 2112. Science has come much further; now they thaw many of the frozen people and revive them. Not all come alive, but Ben is one of the few who ‘makes it’. They thaw him up in a very modern hospital. Eventually he wakes up feeling very disoriented. It takes a long time for him to understand where he is, what has happened and that he has actually awakened in a completely new world.

The Hospital

Eventually he remembers that he used to be a very rich man and scenes from his previous life comes back to him. Ben starts to think about his money and his properties and everything he owned, wondering where it all is now, and wondering about this new world.

He asks the hospital staff about where he is, about his company, money, properties, family and what’s ‘out there’. They don’t tell him too much as they want to brake it to him slowly. All they say is that ‘There is no money or property anymore. You’ll see when you get out there…’.

In Ben’s former life, there could only be one of two ‘economic systems’. One was capitalism and the other communism, which he loathed fearfully.

He fells asleep again and starts having a nightmare with hellish images about what he pictures as communism. He wakes up with a jerk, sweaty and scared.

He has only one thought in his mind: ‘Communism! I have to get out of here!’.

It’s early morning, and no one is around. Since he is allowed to get out of bed when he feels like it, no one, or thing (robots), reacts when he gets out of bed and start to put on some clothes left by the bedside.

The clothes are basic hospital clothes, and not really meant for outside, thus he look a bit silly, but there’s no other clothes choice. He hasn’t been shaved since his wake up either, and he has a healthy hair and beard growth, which makes him jump when he passes a mirror in the hallway, looking at himself.

He walks down the hallway and encounters a robot that asks him how he is. ‘Very good, thank you’, he says. ‘Only stretching my legs…’. ‘Have a nice day’ says the robot. He gets out on the street, with thoughts blurry and confused, and all he can think of is to ‘not be captured’. His only thought is to ‘get home’ and back to ‘his world’ in New York City.

Trip to NYC

The hospital is in Arizona (this fits with Alcor, the cryogenic institute, where he was frozen).

Ben is afraid and suspicious. He walks fast with a bowed head, looking over his shoulder. He bumps into a guy who asks if he can help him, as he senses Ben’s distress. Ben answers that he want to get to New York, by land (Ben is afraid of flying).

They have a little discussion about why Ben doesn’t have lenses, etc. until the guy orders some transport and sends Ben on his way towards the ET3 station in an autonomous electric car.

Before Ben gets to say anything he rides alone in a car driving by itself insanely fast out of the city. Scared to his wits, he ends up at the ET3 station. The door opens, and he can obviously leave the car without paying. Still, he looks around and expects he has to pay or something, but none of that is demanded.

Ben gets out and gets on an ET3 transport which takes him directly from Arizona to NYC in less than 60 minutes. Somewhat shaken, he gets out, still puzzled no one is asking for a ticket, after having heard the call for ‘New York Green City’ (we have to find a new name for both USA and NYC).

Meanwhile at the hospital – Aweena

Aweena is Ben’s great granddaughter. She is a hopeless romantic and has been very eager awaiting Ben’s awakening as she is very interested in history and can’t wait for the chance to be able to question and learn from a ‘man from history’, not to mention, show him this new world and see his reaction…

Looking at him asleep at the hospital (before he regained consciousness but after his hair had grown back) she got unexpected feelings for him. She pushes them away as yet some hopeless romantic infatuations.

The morning Ben escaped was the day Aweena had planned to visit him again. But this day, Ben is gone.

Aweena puts two and two together, asks some people and decides to go after Ben to NYC.

NYC transformed

Time: About 00:30:00

Ben gets of the ET3 and steps out at the platform in ‘The Green City’ (formerly NYC). He stops as he looks up at a green and totally transformed city that shines at him. He is gaping at what he sees and can’t believe his eyes. Most of the houses are replaced with greenery. Of the few skyscrapers that are left, most are used as ‘vertical farms’.

Aweena has caught up with him, and comes up at him from behind.

AWEENA
Do you like the city…?

BEN
(turn around)
Who are you…?

AWEENA
I am Aweena. I am your great…guide.

BEN
My great guide?

AWEENA
Your guide. I have been awaiting your awakening, coming to the hospital every day for the last week. But today you weren’t there. I took a chance and went after you here.

She had planned to tell him she is his great granddaughter, but holds it back the moment she sees him in real life. Instead, she says she is ‘his guide’, which of course isn’t a lie, since she was going to be that as well.

Seeing the new world

From here, over several days, Aweena takes Ben to his old office (which is a part of a vertical farm), they meet Aweena’s friends, they see a new city being built, etc.

Ben becomes confronted with this new world along with his old mindset and way of living.

This part isn’t developed in detail yet, but elements will include:

• Ben gets lenses and discovers a ‘whole new world’.
• They go to a city being built automatically.
• They go to a resort in the Caribbean.
• They go to a meditation session where focused thought is used to clean and energize water.
• They experience a spontaneous ‘dance party’ where everyone dances in ‘silence’ with synchronized individual sight and sound through their CD/lenses.
• They visit some of Aweena’s friends in The Green City, and Ben gets to know some of them and what they do.
• They meet several people and experience several things representative for different aspects of this new world.
• Ben, afraid of flying as he is, involuntarily ends up in and IGV (Inverse Gravity Vehicle), which takes him straight up into the air, scaring him stiff.
• More….as much as we have room for. Funny quirky stuff too.

They meet several people and experience several things representative for different aspects of this new world.

Ben, afraid of flying as he is, involuntarily ends up in and IGV (Inverse Gravity Vehicle), which takes him straight up into the air, scaring him stiff.

During their travels and experiences, Ben senses that Aweena has some feelings for him, and he gets attracted to Aweena as well. In one scene they might even kiss…

Aweena’s Family and their Kin Domain

Eventually, Aweena takes Ben to see her family, which of course is Ben’s family as well, except he doesn’t know it yet, since Aweena still haven’t told him.

Aweena’s family lives a bit outside TGC (The Green City or maybe The Green Apple) in their Kin Domain.

A Kin Domain is a plot of land about 1-3 hectares in size, that one family uses and has responsibility for as long as they want. Here they can raise their kids, grow their food, be close to their own nature, invite friends, get born, die, be buried, relax and enjoy life.

Most families have these kinds of ‘KinDoms’. Still, many, especially younger people, choose to live in the cities, travel around the world, meet a lot of people and have a lot of experiences before they ‘come back home’ after some years. Still, with the transportation of these times, they are never far away from their Kin Domain, even if they’re on the other side of the planet. Aweena is one of these youngsters, and Ben is her ‘latest excitement’.

They land in the KinDom with an IGV. The place is very idyllic, with a beautiful food forest surrounding the houses.

Eara

At Aweena’s house, Aweena’s mother Eara, understands that Aweena hasn’t told Ben she is his great granddaughter.

Eara knows Aweena is a hopeless romantic, as she has fallen in love with too old men before. But THIS surprises Eara.

Ben is in the living room, while Aweena and Eara is in the kitchen.

EARA
You haven’t told him yet???

AWEENA
(whispering)
I will! I will!

EARA
(also whispering)
He is your GREAT GRANDFATHER! For Oneness’ sake!

AWEENA
(still whispering)
Please don’t tell him, let me tell him myself. I promise!

Aweena’s other boyfriend

After her mother’s reprimande, Aweena decides to ‘forget Ben’, and starts spending more time with another friend/boyfriend of hers.

Ben experiences some of this world by himself.

In a scene somewhat later, Ben, who have not suspected anything, and has developed feelings for Aweena, sees Aweena and her ‘new boyfriend’ kissing.

Ben, still in his old mindset, gets angry and starts to pick a fight with this other guy. The other guy has trained Aikido, and not wanting to hurt Ben, dodges every Ben’s moves, while Aweena shouts to Ben to STOP!

Ben gets thrown around and ends on his back with all his air blown out of him. The other guy; ‘I’m so sorry! Are you OK? I don’t want to hurt you’. Ben gets up but is exhausted and can fight no more.

Aweena is devastated by this, and clearly in heavy distress.

BEN
(panting)
Who’s this guy?!

AWEENA
Ben….I’m so sorry…! There’s… omething I should have told you a long time ago.

Ben just looks at her, panting.

AWEENA
I am your….great grand daughter.

BEN
You’re what?!

AWEENA
I know. I…I was going to tell you right away, but…I’m a hopeless romantic, and I got some sudden unexpected feelings, and….I skipped the great granddaughter part, and…

Ben is clearly disappointed.

AWEENA
But during this time, I’ve started to really….

BEN
(interrupts her)
Forget it.

Ben starts walking away.

AWEENA
Ben! Where are you going?

BEN
(without turning around)
What do you care?!

Ben goes looking for his daughter

After this, Ben is really pissed and disappointed about Aweena and this whole thing. He has heard Biancha used to live in a small city in Africa, and Ben decides to go there.

He is tired of this whole technological world, and takes of his lenses and earpieces. Also since he doesn’t want to be contacted by Aweena or anyone.

Ben takes a gravity train to Africa, which can go to many places on (through) the planet in only 42 minutes. The city he has heard Biancha might be in is remote, and Ben is told he can only go there with IGVs. Since he hates flying, he goes out of his way to find other transport, and finds an old electric car with an old GPS screen and manages to punch the address into the GPS, which finds it.

He has to drive the car himself, and drives on a road that gets more and more dusty and bumpy, and he is wondering if he is on the right track, or if he’ll ever get there.

Finally, he arrives at a town that looks completely abandoned.

It turns out the town is scheduled for demolition, but Ben doesn’t wear his lenses, and doesn’t know. The car he drives is very old, and even though it’s battery lasts for a long time, it is now drained, and the car stops, but not too far from the city. Ben gets out and does the rest of trip on foot.

In his head on approach, he doesn’t see/heed the signs around the city, saying ‘Warning! Do not enter city! Scheduled for demolition!’.

The city is empty and abandoned and dusty. It doesn’t look like anyone has been there for a good while. He finds the street and number, but no one is there. He looks into the windows, looks around, until he hears a frightening rumble in the distance.

The rumble closes in rapidly, and a huge cloud of dust rises up over the houses. Big eyed, he stares at this spectacle, until he sees the contours of some huge machines in the dust, tearing the whole city down.

He starts to run, but the machines are faster, and catches up with him. He is hit in the head by a flying rock, faints and falls to the ground. The machines gets frighteningly close, until they suddenly stop. Their sensors had sensed him in the nick of time.

The dust settles and an IGV comes flying in. Two persons come out and pick up Ben and flys away.

Ben is taken to the new city they have built not too far from there. When Ben wakes up, it turns out his rescuer is his grandson, Ayo.

As Ben is opening his eyes.

AYO
Are you ok?

BEN
Aaaahhh….I think so…apart from a terrible headache.

AYO
What on earth was you doing there in the old city??? Didn’t you see the signs??

BEN
Obviously, I didn’t see the signs…

AYO
What were you doing there?

Giving Ben a pill.

AYO
Here, take this, it will ease the pain.

BEN
(holding to his head while taking the pill)
Thank you. I was….I was looking for my daughter.

AYO
Your daughter?

BEN
Yes. Maybe you know her? Her name is Biancha.

AYO
Biancha? You must be kidding me. You say you are Biancha’s father?

BEN
Well…yes.

AYO
But that’s….that’s impossible. There’s only one Biancha here, well, was, here, and she’s now… over a 100 years old.

BEN
So…you know her?

AYO
I sure do… I’m her son.

BEN
Which makes you my….grandson…. You see….I was frozen….and got thawed up again…..

AYO
So….it is true…. Biancha didn’t want to talk about it, but I heard it as a rumor from someone else… Wow….
Ayo tells Ben Biancha doesn’t live there anymore, but is in India. Ben gets the name of the city in India and, after having talked to Ayo for a while, and healed his head, he sets off to India.

Ayo strongly advises Ben to put his lenses back on. Ben complies, as he doesn’t want to experience something like this again.

Ben in India

Biancha is a bit difficult to find. Partly because she went ‘underground’ after having been threatened during her RBE work, and partly because she moved more or less to an ashram and changed her name, and left the ‘old world’ behind.

Ben ventures on to India to look for her, but he gets complications with his body. After being frozen for so long, he needs to get regular treatment for a while to stay healthy. His CD (communication device) lenses informs him that he needs to visit a hospital since some cells are starting to malfunction and they need to be repaired.

But now he is so determined on finding his daughter that he doesn’t heed the signals and messages he gets. He starts to feel it in his body as well, but he keeps going. He gets worse and worse and collapses in the city he thinks his daughter is. Here he is picked up by someone again and taken to the only hospital that is there.

He gets the treatment he needs and after waking up yet again, he is met by Biancha, who has taken part in establishing this hospital. She has gotten word Ben is there, and comes to his room to see him. It is a tear dripping meeting and a surrealistic scene, since he is no older than 35 years in body, while she is 102, but looking remarkably good because of new medical technology.

Aweena comes

Ben and Biancha is walking together on a path outside the hospital while Aweena turns up down the path.

Biancha and Ben stops. Aweena has found Ben, since Ben made himself available again through his lenses.

Aweena gets closer to them, and it is yet a tear dripping meeting between Aweena and Biancha, who hasn’t seen each other in over 20 years. Biancha is Aweena’s grandmother, and Aweena has had fond memories of her all her life after Biancha left and didn’t stay in touch.

They talk a bit, until Aweena looks at Ben.

AWEENA
Ben, I….did a DNA test of us.

BEN
You did…?

AWEENA
Yes. And….for all practical purposes….we are as good as from two separate families…

BEN
So…you mean that…

Aweena nods.

BEN
(smiling crooked)
Hm…. I have to think about this for a while…

Ben puts an arm around Biancha and the other around Aweena and starts walking down the path.

BEN
It feels quite weird…but… I think I might get used to it… For now, I’m just happy I have gotten my family back.

Alternative ending

Aweena has found out she’s adopted, and tells Ben this when she meet him at the hospital. ‘Incest problem’ solved….

The End…?

Click here to view the embedded video.

In this film at 3:38, the guy pulls out a printed glove! Already, in 2012, we can print clothes! Obviously, there is no doubt at all we can print whole outfits in any kind of material, style, shape and color in 2112, a 100 years from now. So the scene is legit.

I think it is really exiting to see what comes true and how it comes true of what is going to be predicted in Waking Up movie. At the moment, there are a lot of discussions about the predictions on this site and in the google docs.

I stand my ground when it comes to some things I simply WANT to come true in the future and in this film, like ‘free energy’ and ‘anti gravity’. I’d rather look stupid and silly with them never coming true in my life time, than NOT believing it coming true, and then it does. I also think imagining and ‘predicting’ something creates a self fulfilling prophesy.

So far, it looks like the future will overshoot any of my wildest imaginations. In any case, we will have to monitor development crucially so that the screenplay for Waking Up movie can be updated as far as possible in those regards. It certainly can happen that what we have imagined today undershoots reality by far in only 5 years.

Here’s another one with a printed airplane…:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

As a comment to this. We have many alternative currencies in the world, and they stretch from bartering both products and services, to BitCoin, the Internet currency, and LETS (Local Exchange Trading System), which use hours as the base. In addition there’s a huge volunteer area with millions of people doing stuff for free to help someone in need and at the same time do something that is in some way fulfilling for them. Both BitCoin and LETS are actual alternative currencies in use in the world today. In the volunteer movement, the ‘currency’ is not really measurable, but could maybe be called ‘fulfillment’ for both parties. The open source movement could be said to be a part of the volunteer movement, and it operates both within software development (Ubuntu), knowledge (Wikipedia) and agriculture (Open Source Ecology), and it becomes more and more of it.

So I think there are many ways the transition can happen. The above article gives but one small example.

It seems like we go for the Creative Commons ‘Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/)’ for the script and all the related documents in the Google Docs Collection: 

Creative Commons

This means that I for all practical reasons have to be the ‘copyright holder’ since the license requires one person/legal entity to be that. I am planning to start a non-profit in Sweden that can take over this role eventually, but for now it will be me personally. This in turn will mean that all script collaborators (including me) in reality is donating their contributions to this project and are thus further accepting the above mentioned license.

I will include this in the ‘contribution rules and guidelines’ so that there will be no misunderstandings. It looks like everyone are ok with this, but here’s a last chance to state your opinion. As long as there are no major objections, I will implement this after 5 days from now. February 17. 2012 will be the last date with ‘all rights reserved’.  :)

Harald Sandø

We’ve kept Ben as the ruthless profit driven business man, dying, gets frozen, and wakes up in 2112 to a totally new world. It takes him weeks to recover among android nurses and human doctors, meeting other wake ups with diverting views on this new world, and eventually, Aweena, his stunning guide.

If you’re curious, you can follow the development in The Story  and The Script. The Story page is the story as we try to develop it. It’s not just suggestions anymore, and it has come even further than the last time. Take a look. The Script page is still a sandbox page with lot’s of suggestions to scenes.

All feedback and comments are welcome! Especially if it is some exiting story elements that can enhance this whole thing and make it even more compelling and exiting. To get a grip on the amount of comments and suggestions that has come in already, take a look at the documents in the Waking Up google docs collection.

dragonawardnewtalent.com/en-us/filmview/waking-up/

PS. New developments on the story also. Will post more about that later.

Ben is a ruthless businessman, with inherited wealth and a wife and kid that he treats rather unkindly, thinking mainly of himself and his business empire. He gets leukemia, and starts to plan his cryogenic preservation, since he really doesn’t want to leave this world and his empire so soon, barely 35 year old.

He writes everything he owns over to his 5 year old daughter and makes sure, with the help of a lot of lawyers, that he will inherit her, or one of her descendants when he wakes up again.

Ben wakes up in 2112. The new world comes as a huge shock to him, as he of course didn’t expect a world without money, trading, barter or ownership, but rather expected to enjoy his legacy. He has trouble adapting to this new world, but realizes that he has no choice.

He goes through an existential crisis in the first 20 minutes or so of the film. He comes out a somewhat ‘changed man’, and decides to find his family. Not to get his legacy of course, since he realizes that that is gone and has been replaced with this new system, but to simply try to find some of his roots, to both try to repent and find redemption and to not feel so lonely in this world. In spite that everyone he meets says they are ‘family’, the feeling is not mutual for him.

His search for his family will be his main goal in the film, while the fact that he experiences this new world, and how he experiences it will be inevitable consequences of his main goal, his personality and background.

The data about Ben’s family is somewhat lost, but he has understood that the chances for him having descendants is still big. The film will then continue as a drama where he starts his own research that takes him to several continents around the world, looking for his family, since they have left traces that leads him there. On the way he meets a lot of interesting people, and experiences a lot of this new world, both value-, design- and technology wise.

The antagonist here  is all the difficulties Ben encounters during his search for his family. The difficulties can be that it is not easy to find distant descendants a 100 years after your own death, but he can also come across one or more people who tries to stop him in his quest. Maybe they can be well meaning  people that can’t understand why he simply can’t settle with ‘the people he has’, meaning all the people that constantly offer their friendship to him.

Obviously, this is not enough for him, as he had a strong emphasis on blood line and his blood relations during his previous life, and he can’t let go of the thought that he still might have blood relatives somewhere on the planet.

Background: His only daughter and child was 5 years when he ‘died’. She is dead (or maybe alive, 105 years old…?) but she got a son herself at the age of 28, 22 years after Ben’s death. The son (now 78) got a daughter and a son when he was 35 and 38. His children are now 43 and 40, and these are Ben’s great grand children.

Ben’s quest to find his family takes him around the world. Aweena helps him as best she can, but she has obligations that demands she has to stay behind for a while. There is a romance developed before Ben leaves, however. A painful goodbye takes place and complications arise during Ben’s travel that jeopardizes his relationship to Aweena. Still, after a long journey both around the planet and in Ben’s own psyche and feelings, he comes back to Aweena and they get each other in the end after Ben has met his great grand children, made up with them and got his family back. Happy ending!

With this story as an outset, we can show ‘how this world works’ in all its aspects while Ben is travelling and meeting lots of different people, cultures and continents. Then the film will thus be a combination of a love story and a road movie, set in the highly technologically, spiritually and economically developed 2112 world.

It can be a very compelling story, combining the longing for a lost family with the strange encounters with this new society, a dreamful journey (Ben feels it’s like a strange dream…), unexpected meetings with grand children much older than himself, and maybe even a 105 year old daughter, lots of emotions emerging from these encounters, some psychological and medical complications from being frozen, and a love story with his guide, Aweena.

What do you think? Can this be a start of something? Leave a comment below.  :)

This plot is in the Google doc The Story where you can contribute directly.

Waking Up got the Official Selection in the Cinema Out Of Your Backpack film festival. In other words, it got nominated, but won no price. But hey! I still have a lot to learn as a director, and this is my first science fiction film scene, so I am happy. And if it wasn’t for the Cinema Out Of Your Backpack, I probably wouldn’t have made this scene at all.

I have always been very interested in science fiction, and had the idea for a film about a positive future for years, wondering why almost all science fiction movies (and books) are about doom and gloom. I strongly believe that we are creating our future, but we need to have a vision to go for. Something that we can believe in, and something that is working for everyone.

My film idea was pretty vague for many years, and since I wasn’t a film maker (I was a composer and music producer) I didn’t really envision that I would ever get to make that film. Still, my life has changed, and not too many years ago I started in film. Not too many years after that I heard about The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project, who’s designs and visions of a positive future aligned a great deal with my own vision. It had never occurred to me, though, that we could actually live totally without money and property, and simply share everything.

This was and idea that spoke to me like nothing else, and I couldn’t get it out of my head, and I still can’t. I searched the internet for a resource based economy, but couldn’t find much. I felt the need to discuss this new possibility with others online. The Zeitgeist Movement’s forum was well and good, but not focussed only on a resource based economy. This led me to start the website www.theresourcebasedeconomy.com to have an unbiased place to talk about this and envision this possible future.

I realized that The Venus Project had had plans to make a movie for many years. I contacted Roxanne Meadows and offered my help, also suggesting they invited people from The Zeitgeist Movement to collaborate in writing the film. The answer I got was that they wanted to hire a professional scriptwriter in writing the script for their movie, not wanting to share any ideas that they had with the community.

I had an idea that I presented for TVP, but later I got another, even better idea (I thought), which is what has led to the Waking Up forest scene. The idea was that we can show this future through the eyes of a person from this time, waking up in the future time through cryogenic preservation. That way we can ‘adjust’ that future several years back and forth and show a future quite far ahead in development. And that was exactly what I wanted. In the vision I have had for years, I see two people flying in an sleekly designed anti gravity vehicle. In this future, technology is totally integrated into our lives, and it simply works. No downloads of updates, no crashes, no pollution, everything works, for everyone.

Then the Cinema Out Of Your Backpack festival came around, inviting us to enter a 3-4 minute scene from a yet-to-be-made film. I thought that, ‘one scene, that I can do from this film of mine’. Of course, my limited resources made me ‘think out of the box’ in terms of computer animations and such. I had no one to help me, but I had equipment and knowledge enough to film actors and and edit the scene.

I started thinking about what this scene could be like, and I thought that playing it out in a forest would be practical, since we then didn’t have to show any buildings or cars in the background. And since this film was about a positive future, forests would still exist. Ok, so I had the location, then I needed some dialogue. I pictured Ben just getting out of the hospital and drawing in fresh air for almost the first time in this new world, together with his guide, Aweena, and as I closed my eyes, their dialogue came quite naturally to me, forming a script that was within the limitations that I had. I then had a script, but I needed to find actors.

I posted about this on the Swedish portal www.filmcafe.se and I got 26 replies in a matter of days! I had auditions over the phone as I was physically remote from where all the actors was. Sara and Katene came into this together as they knew each other and was at the time of the audition was in the same room. There were other good actors, but these two grasped the plot immediately, with no explanation. Great. They came to my town and we did the scene in the forest not to far from my place. We almost froze to death over two days, but made it. I edited the scene, uploaded it to the COOYB website, and voila, that’s how this scene came about.

At that point I hadn’t decided what to do next with this film. But, because of my lacking experience of making full length narrative science fiction films I decided that this film, this has got to be open source. I needed others on this team with me. After all, this film was about a positive future for humanity, and I could think of nothing better than humanity collaborating in writing it. I started this website and posted it to a few groups on Facebook, and the response has been overwhelming ever since with many people collaborating and inputting on the script, the world and the story itself.

It has given me hope that we can actually make this film. Now, I only hope that the story and the script for the film will be an awesome one with high quality dialogue and meaningful action. I am twisting and broadening my mind every day to accomplish this, studying films, scripts and screenwriting, writing down new scenes, and try to think of the plot and story in general.

How can we show this world in the best way possible?

How can we at the same time tell a compelling story?

This is our goal. This is our mission now.

When that is accomplished, the actual making of the film can begin…

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