As everyone should know, most movies that include computers or theinternet as a central theme tend to completely balls it up by not understanding how to use them accurately, instead making up all this pseudo-tech-head bullshit in an attempt to jazz it up a bit and make it seem somehow cool.
The Matrix is the closest I can think of that took it to an entertaining level that worked well as a movie, but that wasn’t really about the actual internet in any way, and was pretty much entirely cyberpunk science fiction.
So what I’d like to know is if it’s possible to write a contemporary movie that will involve the net or computers in a very central and major way that would work, and is entertaining enough to sustain the average moviegoer’s attention and be a success. When I say contemporary I mean modern day 2005, no fantasy, science fiction, or James Bond level extremes. I will accept, at the most, Bourne Identity level extremes.
The problem is that reality isn’t all that exciting. If it were we wouldn’t have any need for movies. Making a movie about the the net as used in everyday life would put any non-techie into a coma, and a few techies too.
The movie plot would have to use the net, but the events have to be in real life, unless you want to get into fiction, and that isn’t the premise here.
We’re sitting on one of the possibilities here: Our protagonist is a member of a message board that’s very popular, and we begin with a discussion about meeting with other board members at a party. When all the characters are introsuced, it becomes apparent that someone who was supposed to appear has disappeared- and the group decides to track them down. The net use could be summed up in conversations, or a “search” could be shown from a multiple screen perspective where the message board is used to try to find the lost person.
It seems that the Internet use would be boring as hell if shown like reality: people hunched over keyboards, chuckling to themselves occasionally. Any information would either require a closeup of a computer screen or exposition by a character.
Suppose a bunch of people answer this thread, and GuanoLad uses one person’s idea or combines the ideas of several people to write his script. Who would get the story credit? If GuanoLad claimed the story credit, would those people be angry? (He would have written the script, but the idea(s) would have come from the input here.)
Suppose the script was actually made into a film, and it sold well. Would people whose ideas he used be entitled to a share of the profits? (I think this is ‘no’, since any input would be freely given without a contract.) Would The Chicago Reader have any claim?
[sub]And yes, I’m asking because I have a character idea and I may want help coming up with a story that uses him. [/sub]
Well, the obvious idea is to have a website that provides prophecies which starts coming true. For instance:
So-and-so will be murdered on this particular day.
There will be an earthquake in a certain country next month.
The stock market will crash tomorrow.
etc…
As the content of the prophecies becomes more and more important, people become increasingly desperate to track down whoever is making the website and find out their motives.
I reckon it’d be down to the Producer of said film to decide, if it became a note of contention, on who would get credit. Any writer would get ideas or help from friends and colleagues when writing a script, and most of those people do not get credits unless they actually physically write something used in the final film, and this would be no different I think.
Not that I’m fishing for actual movie ideas that would get made, this is really in reaction to the fallacious way the internet is portrayed in all films (apart from a few lines of dialogue like “I looked him up on the net” or “He runs a racist website”).
I thought of an idea myself, based on that kid who committed suicide live during an IRC chat, or whatever it was. I’m sure a fuller storyline could be fleshed out around that premise.
I wonder if people would go see a film when all the characters are realistically geeky. Probably they would if it was played as a comedy, as long as it wasn’t too broad.
This could turn real bad, real easy but:
It can be Hoitchcock style, person-mistaken-for-a-spy film. Have a lot of the expozation take place in chat room. Represent the conversation as people, wearing bizare costume sitting in a blank room, or animate it, a la’ HERE.
Tim Berners-Lee and Marc Andressen sit down to eat at the Cafeteria at CERN, and debate whether webpages implementing features specific to an individual operating system or web browser are useful or contrary to the spirit of the World-Wide web.
A cameraman circles, pans, zooms etc. on the two dinner guests while the debate grows passionate. We laugh, and cry along with our two protagonists, while the lovingly shot close-ups of potato salad and bratwurst ignite our culinary senses.
Okay, how’s THIS for a movie idea! It’s fresh, it’s new, it’s fresh! And new! Never done before! Now, imagine… if all the soft ware on a Home Personal Computer System were… people! Yeah! And this dude, a Computer Pro Grammer, gets SUCKED IN SOMEHOW! And they play games, yeah, and ride motorcycles, and get chased by primitive computer-generated things with long leg pylons!
And we can cast a guy that will go on to become the lead actor in a popular niche sci-fi TV series!
In the not-to-distant future, all the advanced hardware hooked into and making up the internet causes the system to gain sentience, and possible control over the world’s computers.
Paranoia, technophobia, etc. about this discovery lead to strife, fighting, and ultimately the downfall of technological civilization. Twist ending: It turns out that the internet-being not only didn’t have any hostile intent, but it was fairly simpleminded and was barely even aware of the presence of the rest of the world.
(…)
You might have already seen that story when it was in about nine other different movies over the last 30 years. And it wasn’t that good then, either.
There is no internet, at least not in the sense of a network of computers, all the computers connected to the internet go to a single discreet place.
Many of the sites on the internet are not what they seem to be, they don’t exist on some random persons computer on the other side of the world, they were put there by “it”.
The website you host on your computer may not appear the same to everyone else, instead it may be subtly manipulated.
Something is the puppeteer, and it’s pulling everyones strings.
What “it” is and why/how it’s doing what it’s doing determines whether this is a technothriller, horror, or science fiction story
Well… good movies (generally) are about people, so maybe something that has as a plot or thematic point, the different ways people use the internet to relate to each other, or the way they interact with the internet as a part of their surroudings.
One thing that jumps to mind is a story from ‘salmon of doubt’ about the pop machine on the web. Apparently, at some university, in the early days of the networking revolution, a bright computer guy would often leave the lab to get a favorite beverage from a particular pop machine, and started to grow frustrated at how often he’d make the trip only to find that it was out of his variety.
The guy started to think “hey… there’s a microchip in the pop machine, and there’s network cable running through the wall behind it.” Somehow, apparently, he worked out an interface to connect the pop machine to the network, so that he could log onto the machine from the lab and see if it had any of his flavor or not. Because the building’s network was online, people from all the world could log onto the pop machine the same way, and it became some sort of odd cult favorite phenomenon to log onto the pop machine… it could tell you not just how many there were of each kind of pop, but the temperature, maybe how much money was in the collection bin (I’m not sure of that part.)
There was also a more active element to the interface, that if enough money had been dropped into the coin slot, someone who had logged on through the network could make a selection and drop a bottle of pop down into the hopper. (Which I guess would mean you needed to be careful about how long it took you, after inserting your money, to pick what drink you wanted, or someone online might pick for you.) Eventually, I think people were even intentionally putting money into the machine just so that someone online could drop a bottle if they felt like it.
There’s probably enough material there for a comedic short subject film, if someone wanted to make it.
I was going to mention this one. It’s about a fella who’s into file sharing and must make some ethical decisions. The main screen has his desktop where you can see his activities on the computer, using IM’s, IRC, etc. In one of the upper corners they have a side shot of him on the computer where you can see him typing, using his phone, etc. I thought it was pretty innovative and it to me captured a modern computer based plot, including things that a computer geek, such as myself, can recognize.
Isn’t anyone going to put down any constructive criticism? GuanoLad(post 2), I could easily envision a romantic comedy show from the p.o.v. of a webcam set in someone’s living room. Don’t show their dates, just show the reaction.
Johnny L.A.(post 5), I would hope that anyone here would be ethical enough to credit the originator of an idea, despite the fact that creating something takes a lot more work than coming up with an idea. However, this does make me pause on the idea of posting my (non-internet related) movie idea in another thread.
Scott_plaid(post 8) Good idea!
Snooooopy(post 11), I could easily immagine Leslie Neilson in the role, though I dought it would be a good movie.
SPOOFE, (post 12) that sound kinda like a film I have seen in the 80s. :dubious:
Sorry, but all the others are too high concept or realistic for my tastes.
When I said it wouldn’t make a good movie, I was speaking too strongly. I don’t think Hot Shots: Pour Deux was a good film, but it did have an awful lot of laughs.
Imagine a possible beginning for Snooooopy’s film:
In most action films, the villains kill off a ton of people, and the hero takes it professionally. However, should something happen to his family, he says, “Now it’s personal.”
However, imagine Leslie Nielson as a person with a ridiculously huge dick. (cue sigh gags.) Instead of stating what facet of his personality turns him off, see claims his personal regions are too small. A few minor annoyances trouble him, then he orders a penis enhancer from snap mail. Either it doesn’t work as advertised, or it never arrives, or something of both. He declares that it’s now personal, and decides to take revenge. He goes to the same site and orders some assault weapons. Months pass, he is shown with cobwebs hanging off of him, still waiting for the order, he realizes that it won’t arrive, ignores the consumer protection agencies website, and instead goes to his local assault weapon vending machine (literally), to buy weapons, and so start the more-laughs than-duds film Kill sexual performance enhancing Pill manufacturers.
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