scriptwriting and creationism

I found this frightening graph showing the percentages of people who believe/disbelieve evolution. I can only assume there’s either widespread ignorance or people are willfully fooling themselves because you don’t have to go to the Galapagos islands to see evolution in action – you just need to open your eyes.

scriptwriting

Today I’m scriptwriting – my background is as a writer (I’ve written for magazines, newspapers, theatre, radio and TV comedy sketches), but writing documentaries is an unusual discipline.

For a start, I’m writing the first script without having done all the interviews. The idea is to help me get an overview of the project so I know what I’m asking, what shots I need and what 3d animations I’m going to need to do. This means I’m working in the dark because I don’t know what exactly needs to be said or how much of the script will end up in the finished piece.

What I can do is more or less script the main introductions to parts of the story, and the storytelling scripts which will describe the CG action. Later I’ll re-write to give me a tighter script once I start editing.

I’m also not sure of all the facts and figures yet, so I’m leaving a lot of blank spaces. I usually write the general sentiment but leave out the facts replacing them with a series of question marks. That way I can fill them in easily when I come to do the final script, but don’t need to keep stopping the flow of writing to check my facts.

I write on the basis that a narrator will probably speak about 120-130 words per minute.

Here’s a brief section:
The beauty of the ships which carried the first humans across the oceans was their simplicity. The elegance of their design meant that these craft were cheap to build, easy to maintain on long journeys and carried no fuel. Could interstellar craft ever be designed on these principles?

A spaceship leaves Earth orbit. It will travel at .???12????% of the speed of light and yet it has no engines. It’s destination is deep in space, and yet it’s initial heading is straight into the heart of our solar system. In fact this ship is about to make the most dangerous maneuver of its journey: it makes its way directly towards the burning sun.


As the ship heads closer to the sun, its shielding begins to burn off. It’s vital that the craft gets as close as possible to the sun, but the closer it gets, the hotter it gets and the more chance there is that the radiation will destroy its systems and kill any living thing on board.

When the ship is within ????????? of the sun itself and its external temperature has exceeded ??????????? an internal mechanism is triggered to unfurl its solar sail – a sheet of unimaginably thin foil hundreds of meters across.


Instantly, the ship begins to decelerate, the solar wind – the pressure exerted by the light pushing on the craft’s sails is enough to propel it away from the sun and into space.


As the craft moves further from the sun, the solar winds become less strong, but in space, there is no friction. The ship’s acceleration becomes less and less, but by that time it has reached ?????????????????????.



Solar sails are not science fiction. The solar winds are a real phenomonen – in fact current craft have already used them to make minor corrections to their course. Purpose built sails are already being tested. And the technology is mature enough to allow scientists to create real designs for spacecraft.