Beginning Conflict Problem

It runs on a Windows operating system?

Though I guess that wouldn't work, since you'd need something that can be easily fixed. Well, not "easily fixed" in the sense that it hardly takes the protag any effort, but in the "easy to understand for the audience" sense.

It depends, though. Is there a human antagonist, who may have sabotaged the thing? Are these aliens intelligent and are they consciously behind it? Or is this basically a "disaster movie" where there's no malice behind the malfunction?

Is the script finished, or are you just starting on it? If the latter, figure out the structure first. The mechanics of what exactly is wrong with the machine probably isn't a crucial question. Whatever works best for your story.

Which was the mission to venus that sailed past because a full stop was used in Fortran instead of something else and because the language isn't strongly 'typed' it was not found in testing. So it could be software, hardware, unexpected meteor shower, unexpected sunspor activity - one of a thousand things.

I think this is a great opportunity to introduce your antagonist. The machine could be in final testing stages and the Antagonist could see a potential for gain (Usually power or money) and insist that it goes into operation and then as the poor developmental scientists warned things start to go wrong with disastrous effects... Call in your hero and the story is underway!

Good Luck

Um, what about their funding is about to get cut off, so to prove a point, one of the lead, albeit crazier, scientists flips the switch before they are evacuated. So all they really have to do is g et back and reverse it, but then some aliens could destroy this facility or the foliage could sprout up, destroying parts of the building, making it unpassable, or whatever.

One of the first aliens brought to earth could have screwed around with the machine when he/she arrived in the lab. The alien planet was having overpopulation problems and they did not have the technology to expand to other planets. This machine gave them the perfect opportunity to populate other planets and they want to take over earth.

How about this: let's assume the device has been working properly for years; used mainly for mining a very rare and necessary element, so rare that now someone, the doofy president or the greedy CEO, greenlights the mining of a star or planet that has been previously deemed off limits because it was too unstable (maybe near a wormhole or about to go super nova or collapse in to a blackhole or something).

There is great resistence by the head scientist (the MC) and he and all his team are sent home or something and then the evil guy activiates the transporter. Something about the instability of the target planet then triggers The Nexus.

I would then suggest you change your plan of them 'having to get back to the transporter' to them 'having to get across country to the other transporter (maybe new and untested, maybe the very first, now disused).

Good luck!

MilesGX said:

Well I finally came up with my movie script name, The Nexus, which is about a teleportation machine gone wrong, and alien environments and lifeforms are now appearing on Earth. Now I'm trying to figure out what may cause the teleportation machine go wrong. Suggestions.

Check this link to learn more.

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=105727

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Well, to answer the question of what causes the machine to go wrong, you need to answer the question of what the them of your movie is.

I know that may sound a bit unfair, but there you have it.

Movies (or stories generally) start with a "thesis" -- a proposition -- and end with a conclusion. The thesis poses a question about the nature of being human. The conclusion attempts tom answer that question.

The thesis essentially is -- what if this? And the conclusion is -- well, then ultimately this.

And part of your initial thesis -- your proposal, I think, has to be why the machine goes wrong, since it initiates everything else.

If its cause is human greed, then you're saying something, over the course of your movie, about human greed, -- or government corruption, or about the dangers of "science going too far" -- or whatever the reason is that you choose for all of this to have happened.

But it certainly shouldn't be an afterthought. Heck, you invented the machine. You get to decide why it goes wrong. It could, of course, be anything.

But it shouldn't just be anything. It should be something that is specific to the theme of the story that you're telling.

If it is that we're opening the door to powers that we can't control -- then *that* has to be what goes wrong. They're conducting the experiment, they're trying to "keep it in control" -- they think that they can control it (they were able to for all of the smaller scale experiments -- but they can't keep it in control at the higher levels of power and it all goes haywire.

And that would be the point -- there were "unknown factors" that they didn't anticipate. And they couldn't control for the unknown factors.

If that's your theme.

Or if it's something else -- then you have to structure the opening in some other way.

NMS

MilesGX said:

Now I'm trying to figure out what may cause the teleportation machine go wrong. Suggestions.

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It goes wrong because the script writer forgets to include the details of how the machine works, as the script writer never really knew how it worked in the first place - a slight oversight while outlining.

I think I'm going to be angry with Steven all through the movie, and will want bad things happen to him as soon as he fixes the problems his bull-headed stupidity caused in the first place!

Other possibilities, just for fun's sake:

• The military doesn't want the experiments to stop (heck, that's what drove the ALIEN movies).
• Another scientist on the team has his own secret agenda, or follows secret orders to take the experiments further, unknown to the protagonist.
• During the first test, the plucky female interest gets sucked into the nexus and vanishes along with the monster! Damn what the politicians say, there's no way the hero isn't going after her!

-Derek

Transporter

What about having a solar storm where the teleporter is originally directed to? And the solar storm directs the teleporter to another dimension but all the readings on the teleporter remain unchanged.

I don't know, it's hard to have your protagonist be the original antagonist then walk away with no recourse because he's decided to fix his own screwup. I also don't see certain entities letting go of a project that has such a potential for profit, especially if it provides a lot of military technology.

What if (combining ideas here) a solar storm does kick in, it bends the beam forcing it to hit this planet, say they've been mining it's moon. And it transports and alien for a few seconds, takes it back, t hen continues on with the mining as if nothing ever happened.

Your scientist freaks out and tries to shut down the machine. They pull him away from it, and his understudy takes over who is a glory hound and has been just waiting for his day in the limelight.

Once the big mishap occurs, they enlist your scientist's help to undo their mistakes.

Or you could have it he was the original designer, once it was proved successful, he went back to being a professor, wasn't even there, and they come to him.

There are plenty of possibilities but in the one you pose, it would take a lot for him to become redeemed in my eyes. Just fixing his own mistake isn't enough. He'd have to do some pretty out there things to come back from the dark side of my good graces. Of course if you wanted to inject some humor and some heavy personality changes that would be the way to go.

MilesGX said:

What are many possible ways for a teleportation machine to work in details for the audience to understand?

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Miles, questions like this make me think you're having us on. Why don't you try the Sci-Fi/Fantasy forum?

-Derek

MilesGX said:

What are many possible ways for a teleportation machine to work in details for the audience to understand?

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Start off by making sure you don't violate the Heisenberg uncertainty principle.