Lying on the big bed in the hotel room, Jude began to seriously consider how to turn the crazy ideas in his mind into reality.

It sounds incredible to shoot a science fiction film of $20,000, but in fact someone made a very good movie for $20,000. And the movie was filmed more than ten years later, and the purchasing power of $20,000 was not as good as that of now.

Of course, low cost does not mean shoddy. The most fundamental reason is that the structure of this movie called "This Man from Earth" is very simple. Several university professors gathered in a cottage and completed a movie that was less than 90 minutes long.

This kind of movie that is promoted in the form of pure dialogue is almost impossible to talk about, but the film successfully breaks out of the traditional Hollywood science fiction routine of "laser plus metal" and truly conquers the audience with the script.

In Jude's impression, there is no movie that costs less to produce than "This Man from Earth", but there is absolutely no second movie that is easier to shoot than it.

A cabin with a fireplace is the entire set of the film. The main activity of several starring actors in the whole movie is to sit on the sofa and chat. The performance is almost no difficulty, and it is most suitable for Jude's directorial career.

After clarifying his thoughts, Jude sat up and began to write the video materials in his mind into a script.

After so many years of development, the Hollywood film industry has formed a relatively fixed model, including script creation, with specific format requirements. Among them, Hollywood screenwriters most often use three-paragraph structure narrative.

A standard three-part script structure will have two plot points that divide the entire story into three parts. The plot point is an event, which "hook" the plot and turns it in another direction, which pushes the story forward.

After replaying "This Man from Earth" in his mind, Jude successfully found two plot points of the movie.

The first plot point is that the male protagonist confessed to his friends that he was a caveman who had lived for 14,000 years. The second plot point is that the male protagonist tells everyone that he is the historical prototype of Jesus.

In this way, the whole movie is divided into three sections.

In the first paragraph, the male protagonist, as a history professor at Harvard University, suddenly resigned for no reason after ten years of work. Several friends and colleagues gathered in the male protagonist's cottage to see him off. Everyone curiously asked why the male protagonist left;

In the second paragraph, several friends start from their respective disciplines and try to prove that the male protagonist is lying, but in the end they are convinced by the male protagonist;

In the third paragraph, the religious views raised by the male protagonist aroused a fierce reaction from everyone. A colleague who believed in Christ devoutly said that he could not accept the male protagonist's views. Another colleague who studied psychology began to question the male protagonist's mental problems. In the end, due to helplessness, the male protagonist had to admit that all this was a lie he made up, which made everyone feel at ease.

For screenwriters who create normal creation, the establishment of the three-part structure is just the beginning of script creation, but for Jude, there is actually not much technicality left to do. It is nothing more than comparing the plot of the movie in his mind to fill it into the script framework one by one.

After completing the script by following these steps, Jude checked the memory in his mind again and confirmed that no one was missing, but after doing all this, he was still not very satisfied.

"This Man From Earth" is undoubtedly a classic soft science fiction movie. The film covers elements such as astronomy, geography, history, biology, literature, art, religion, etc. It is completely an oral history of human development. But unfortunately, there is no intersection with ancient China in the hero's experience.

In the past, Jude could only regret a little after watching the movie, but now he has the opportunity to change the movie with his own hands.

Of course, Jude is not an arrogant person. Although he has the advantage of a "time traveler", he is very clear that every little change will have a lot of unknown impact on the whole movie, so he is very cautious on this issue.

"Tony, our plan has changed a bit... No, it's not the script, but the actors. Among the three male actors I asked you to help you find, it's best to have one of them Chinese. I know it's hard to find such people, but there is a character in the film that must be Chinese, which is very important for the whole film."

After putting down the phone, Jude began to pace back and forth in the room with his hands in his arms.

There are eight starring actors in the original film who participated in the "Night Talk in the Fire", seven are professors and a female student, one of whom is black, and the rest are all white.

Jude now replaces one of the professors with Chinese, on the one hand, to better introduce discussions on ancient China, and on the other hand, to make this big discussion on the origin and development of human beings more convincing.

Having all three major races in the world participate in the discussion will undoubtedly increase the logic of the entire story.

Of course Jude also needs to find a suitable topic.

This topic cannot be disconnected from the various discussions in the original film, but must also be closely linked to the theme - used to prove that the protagonist has indeed lived on Earth for more than 14,000 years, and he also knows many unknown historical truths.

This is the real brain-ridden thing, because after the movie was made, it mainly faced with Western audiences, so this topic related to ancient China must be people or things that are very familiar to Western society.

Finally Jude thought of Marco Polo and his famous travelogue.

The first time Westerners have a more comprehensive understanding of China was from "The Travels of Marco Polo", which describes the Eastern world as a paradise full of gold, which aroused Europeans' passionate yearning for the East, and even had a huge impact on the development of new routes in the future.

To this day, this novel and Marco Polo himself still have a great reputation in Western society, and this is exactly what Jude needs.

The reason why "This Man from Earth" is successful is that in addition to the extremely rich content it covers, more importantly, it has brought up several interesting contrasting topics.

For example, the protagonist claims to be the prototype of Jesus and once went to India to study Buddhism with Shakyamuni. This view sounds a bit like nonsense, but in fact, there has always been a view among Western scholars who study the origin of Christianity. They believe that Christianity originated from Buddhism in India, or that some of the doctrines of Christianity have been greatly influenced by Buddhism.

The various incredible views put forward in the film actually have theoretical basis in reality.

The story of Marco Polo just meets this condition.

As more and more historical research in modern times shows that "The Travels of Marco Polo" is likely to be fabricated out of thin air by Marco Polo, and he has never been to China at all.

This view was first proposed by Italian scholars because they studied Marco Polo's life and found that he had not left Europe for a long time, and of course he could not have time to go to China to do so many things like in his travelogues.

Similarly, no one like Marco Polo can be found in all Chinese documentary records about the history of the Yuan Dynasty. He is not like Matteo Ricci of the Ming Dynasty, who is a person clearly recorded in various historical books.

Combining the historical research on both sides, it can basically be proved that Marco Polo has never been to China.

However, in "The Travels of Marco Polo", there is indeed a very detailed and accurate description of some situations in China at that time, especially some business situations. Therefore, some scholars put forward such assumptions that Marco Polo himself had never really been to China, but he learned about the situations about China from some businessmen who had been to China. After making up this basis, the birth of "The Travels of Marco Polo" was born.

At present, this view has not been widely proposed. In the consciousness of most Westerners, "The Travels of Marco Polo" is true, so when the protagonist in the film tells everyone that Marco Polo is actually a liar, this contrast in view will inevitably make the audience feel refreshed.

Of course, it is not enough to just tell everyone that Mark Polo is a liar. Jude also has to provide enough evidence to support this view. This is just like the hero in the film quoted Christian fundamentalist views in order to prove that he is the historical archetype of Jesus, claiming that the subsequent versions of the New Testament were actually not from his mouth, but were redeveloped by later believers according to their needs.

In Jude's setting, the male protagonist is the one who has truly been to China. After returning to Europe, he was implicated in a war and was thrown into prison. He happened to be locked in the same cell as Marco Polo. When he was bored, he told Marco Polo what he saw and heard in China. After he was released from prison, Marco Polo wrote the story he heard from the male protagonist into "The Travels of Marco Polo".

This discussion was put into the second part of the script, and together with Columbus's voyage and Van Gogh's oil paintings became evidence that the protagonist had survived on Earth for more than 14,000 years.

In this way, the entire script has fully met Jude's expectations in terms of content, but he is still a little confused about the ending design of the film.

When the male protagonist bid farewell to all his friends, he accidentally revealed a name he had used before. The last one left was the least willing to believe the male protagonist's previous words. He was shocked to find that the male protagonist was his father who disappeared fifty years ago. He died of a heart attack due to excessive excitement.

Such an ending is equivalent to telling everyone clearly that everything the hero said is true.

However, for the plot that has been giving people constant surprises and surprises in the past, the open ending is obviously more attractive to the audience than giving the answer directly. The film does not give the real answer at the end, leaving the space of imagination to the audience, so that such a movie is more worthy of reminiscence.

For this reason, Jude finally changed the scene of the film's ending of father and son. The two did not recognize each other directly, but just left some linguistic clues to point to the real answer.
Chapter completed!