Screenplay
Scene 1. INT
“The original.”
Music: Starts quiet and relaxed, but as the voice over plays a more serious
tone develops.
Lighting: Starts focused with a spotlight on the book, shadowed corners.
Voice of God Narration: “The tree of life is often mentioned in the
Book of Genesis; it is distinct from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil. After Adam disobeyed God by giving into the devil and eating fruit from
the tree, he was driven out of the garden of Eden. Remaining in the garden,
however, was the tree of life.”
Text from the book will read: “In the Garden of Eden God planted a tree,
with fruit not immortal, and life not free. It was a sin to eat off the tree
and leave, but temptation was beyond Adam and Eve.
The tree of knowledge and the tree of life, God planted the tree
in loving strife. The Biblical account states, Adam and Eve, were exiled from
the garden, and asked to leave. They mustn’t reach the tree of life, to
endeavour, take from the tree, and live forever. No man shall live forever thus
feeble, never eat from Gods tree, the good or evil. -Genesis 2:17”
A grand, aging, hard back book with
an ancient design of a tree on the front cover opens slowly revealing the story
inside as the monologue begins to be read. The pages are laid out in a
storybook form and as the voice over reads, the history of the tree of life is
told through different stages of pictures, with the writing to match beside it.
As the monologue comes to the end, the pages flick forward to focus on a picture
of the tree itself, standing alone bearing all different kinds of fruit. A dove
then swoops down from the top right hand corner of the page, picks a single
apple with its beak and flies towards the right as the pages flick even further
again, eventually dropping the fruit on to a bed of soil.
Scene 2. EXT
“Beginning.”
Music: Changes to a light hearted soundtrack.
Lighting: Sunny, Bright, Low contrasting shadows.
Voice of God Narration: “Some say, the tree is the root to all
of life itself, and the branches reach up high, linking us to Heaven. Others,
say the tree of life is a process, a method of creation, a story.”
A simplistic, colourless line
drawing represents purity as the fruit falls on to the ground, dropped from the
doves mouth. As the seed embeds itself in the soil, the roots begin to grow;
while the roots grow, a baby is also formed in centre. The trees and roots grow
quickly, like a time lapse until they are both big enough to sprout. As the
Baby is pushed up to the surface of the world with the sprouting tree, colour
comes with him, and as the baby lays there on the ground a colourful butterfly
lands on his nose, causing him to laugh and squint. When it flies away the baby
is then shown to be a toddler, he gets up and starts to walk around the base of
the tree. The pages flick forwards and the boy is a couple of years older
again, with the tree growing in conjunction with him growing older.
Scene3. EXT
“Early Years.”
Music: Cheerful, lullaby like.
Lighting: Bright, low contrasting shadows.
Voice of God Narration: “Even as a
child, we realise that life is not a path of coincidence, happenstance, and
luck, but rather an unexplainable, meticulously chartered, course for one to
touch the lives of others, and make a difference in the world.”
The child, now roughly 5 years old
or so, is shown running around the base of the tree laughing, interacting and
playing with wild animals such as rabbits and frogs. Meanwhile the tree grows
silently in the background and mushrooms/flowers grow and die at the base of
the trunk. The books pages flip forward a couple as he runs and the boy is now
older and shown having fun on a swing from the now huge trees branch.
Scene 4: EXT
“The Climb”
Music: A little more of a faster
pace, with a thrilling excited feel.
Lighting: Starts bright and gets
slightly darker and more shadowy as he begins to climb higher in between the
branches.
Voice of God Narration: “But
sometimes in life you have to remember to go for it, go for your dreams, even
if they seem like a lifetime away. Life is short, stop worrying about what you
have to loose, and start thinking about what you have to gain. Risk it, risk
everything, because every decision we make leads us down a different road, and we
will never come to exactly the same crossroads. Every decision we make has
significance. The tiniest choice that we make reverberates through the entire
universe.”
As the boy is now in his early
teenage years, he begins to explore the tree even further. He slowly looks up
at the huge winding trunk, and is hesitant but eventually he begins to climb.
Coming across some bugs and birds on the way up, higher and higher he climbs up
the small branches as the seasons change around him and the years pass by
quickly, until he comes to the first big main branch. As he steps out on to the
thick branch it turns into a path, leading him to a film like reel.
Scene 5: INT
“Teen”
Music: Subtle, quieter and a slower
pace as the narration speaks and reflects on teenage years.
Lighting: Darkens down, key light
on back of boys head and shadowed onto the images in-front of him.
Voice of God Narration: “But at
this stage, we are but only teenagers, we’re still learning. We cheat, we lie
and we fight over stupid things. We fall in love, get hurt, and hurt others. We
party until dawn, we drink until we pass out. We hate people for no reason, we
call each other names. We stay up late in deep conversation, or even just to
think. But one day this will all pass. Those will be the memories. Those will
be the stories you tell your children. You can’t live your life focusing on all
the bad things, because one day you will wish that you were still a teenager.
So make the most of what you have now.”
His teenage years flash by him on a
photo reel as the narration talks (finding young love, graduating, partying,
heartbreak.) Until he returns to the tree trunk, briefly looks backwards,
shakes his head with his eyes closed and begins to climb again, until he comes
to the next branch, on the opposite side of the trunk.
Scene 6: INT
“Adulthood”
Music: Starts to get more suspense
like as he is closer to the end.
Lighting: Dramatic, striking,
shadowy.
Voice of God Narration: “And as we
grew older, childhood became so distant, we were too busy being great, being
brilliant, that we stopped seeing. But where we ever young and crazy, what were
our teenage years, but the yearn to be older, to be established, free from all
fears.”
As he steps out on to the branch he
watches in the same way on the film reel as key things happen in the middle age
part of life, he gets married, settles down has children, until yet again he
returns to the tree and begins to climb.
Scene 7: EXT
“The End”
Music: Loud, harsh, creating
dramatic tension.
Lighting: Harsh, dark with extreme
contrast between shadows and light areas.
Voice of God Narration: “And
through it all, the struggle, the fall, Life is but a stopping place, a pause
in what’s to be, a resting place along the road, to sweet eternity. We all have
different journeys, different paths along the way, we were all meant to learn
some things, but never meant to stay. Our destination is a place, far greater
than we know. For some the journeys quicker, for some the journeys slow. We are
alive, we are the youth, clothed in mistakes and time, falling for every word,
we find and unprepared, but so afraid, for all these trees, we have to climb.”
The man now struggles to climb as
he is old and frail. But the top of the tree is now in sight. He prevails and
makes it to the top, just a small jump away from the pearly white gates of
Heaven.
Alternate endings:
• He
jumps, makes it, and is welcomed in by a beckoning voice whilst doves fly
around and everything is beautiful as it is meant to be, entering the gates and
when they close, “The End” is shown and it is over.
• He
jumps, misses, and falls. Down and down he falls in front of the huge tree as
his life flashes before him. Even further he falls until eventually he has been
falling for so long that everything is peaceful, as he falls into his coffin
(which is already laid into his grave) the lid slams shut, and the roots of the
tree snake around his coffin, encasing him forever. As he initially falls, the
monologue will say “but life is not fair, and we all have to die” etc. as Adam
and Eve ruined it etc. Camera zooms out, book closes, The end.
