The feature draft
Twenty-nine scenes in four acts, following the 1871 novel from the mine to the forewarning. Each scene shows what happens, how it should look, and who is in it. Nothing here has been filmed.
Act I
The mine, the chasm, the lamp road, and the household that takes in the stranger.
Scene 1 · INT. MINE — NIGHT
The American narrator joins an engineer exploring a deep mine; the engineer recounts the chasm, unnatural light, and distant voices below.
With: · 10 planned shots
Scene 2 · INT. CHASM LEDGE — UNNATURAL DAY
Second descent on ropes; the ledge gives way; the engineer falls dead at the narrator's feet; a colossal Krek emerges from a fissure.
With: Krek · 11 planned shots
Scene 3 · EXT. SUBTERRANEAN ROAD
The narrator walks the lamplit way alone: cultivated fields of leaden and golden-red growth, naphtha-like pools, fern-trees, distant habitations.
With: · 10 planned shots
Scene 4 · EXT. ROCK-BUILT HALL
The great Egyptian-like façade hollowed from living rock; a winged humanoid approaches—sphinx-calm face, jewelled tiara, staff of bright metal.
With: · 11 planned shots
Scene 5 · INT. IMMENSE HALL — VRIL-YA
Automaton glides at a staff's touch; Taee as child with staff; platform lift; Zee's chamber, birdsong, healing breath, trance-language instruction begins.
With: Zee, Aph-Lin, Taee · 12 planned shots
Scene 6 · INT. RECOVERY ROOM
Zee speaks the narrator's language; metallic lesson sheets; dictionary built from sketches; vril first named as unified natural force.
With: Zee, Aph-Lin · 11 planned shots
Scene 7 · INT. ZEE'S CHAMBER / CONVERSATION
Aph-Lin and Zee question the upper world; American democracy satirised; pledge to conceal the surface; vril and weather control hinted.
With: Zee, Aph-Lin · 10 planned shots
Scene 8 · INT. SAME — TAEE
Taee visits with rope sketch; Zee forbids his questions; law of the house: no interrogation of the guest's origin.
With: Zee, Taee · 9 planned shots
Act II
History, law, language, faith, the city, and the staff: how the Vril-ya live.
Scene 9 · INT. GALLERY / LECTURE MODE
Legend of the Ana: upper flood, refuge in caverns, loss of sun; early meat-eating shame; discovery of vril ends war and force-based rule.
With: Zee · 14 planned shots
Scene 10 · INT. DOMESTIC / PHILOLOGY
Ana and Gy-ei words; female physical and vril superiority; courtship reversed; marriage terms; comic sociology of the sexes below.
With: Zee, Bra, Lo · 12 planned shots
Scene 11 · INT. COLLEGE / RELIGION
Faith in All-Good; short public worship; speculative theology abandoned to preserve peace; rewards/punishments vague because crime is absent.
With: Zee, College of Sages · 11 planned shots
Scene 12 · INT. ARCHIVES — PHILOLOGY
Long comparative lecture on Vril-ya language roots, isolating/inflectional strata, sample declensions, Koom-Posh and Glek-Nas as political vocabulary.
Vault The look notes and shot breakdown for this scene are for supporters.
With: Zee · 11 planned shots
Scene 13 · INT. PRIVATE CONVERSATION
Theodicy via universal life-lines; compassion for insects; Agassiz echo; ethics of destruction only when necessary.
With: Zee · 10 planned shots
Scene 14 · EXT. CITY / COUNTRY
Narrator in Vril dress; city of pyramids and fountains of roseate flame; shops staffed by courteous children; indolent adult philosophers.
With: Aph-Lin · 12 planned shots
Scene 15 · INT. MUSEUM — VRIL
Vril staff described; tubes that strike hundreds of miles; obsolete gunpowder war toys; Zee animates machinery at a distance with her rod.
Vault The look notes and shot breakdown for this scene are for supporters.
With: Zee · 13 planned shots
Scene 16 · INT. TIMEKEEPING / LONGEVITY
Twenty-hour day divisions; longevity and health; arts decline because passion is gone; music choral and hydraulic.
With: · 12 planned shots
Act III
The hunt, flight, a love that is a danger, and the festival.
Scene 17 · EXT. LAKE / FIELDS
Taee leads narrator as Krek bait; mesmerised obedience on the crag; vril flash annihilates the beast; mercy to stranded fish.
With: Taee, Krek · 14 planned shots
Scene 18 · EXT. TRANSIT HUB
Land and air vehicles powered by vril; emigration system; child labour paid into independence; description of shells-as-currency.
With: Taee · 11 planned shots
Scene 19 · EXT. FLIGHT SCHOOL
Wings as mechanical mantles with inflated bladders; narrator's failed flight; Zee catches him; Taee's teasing about marriage wings.
With: Zee, Taee · 12 planned shots
Scene 20 · INT. NARRATOR'S QUARTERS
Narrator realises Zee's love is peril; Aph-Lin's warning—yield and become a cinder; advice to claim Zee is ugly; spiritual union offer.
With: Zee · 11 planned shots
Scene 21 · INT. FESTIVAL HALL
Great gathering; Zee jealous of Tur's daughter; automata; narrator mediates young lovers Lo and son; Tur arrives.
With: Zee, Bra, Lo · 11 planned shots
Scene 22 · INT. CORRIDOR / AIR-BOAT
Narrator asks to travel; dissecting-knife debate; Zee avoided; escape desire; Aph-Lin's country seat invitation as diversion.
With: Zee, Aph-Lin · 11 planned shots
Scene 23 · EXT. COUNTRY ESTATE
Living walls of flowering trees and glassy metal infill; naphtha fountain bower; philosophy of wealth as burden; herds and granaries.
Vault The look notes and shot breakdown for this scene are for supporters.
With: Aph-Lin · 10 planned shots
Scene 24 · INT. TOWN HOUSE — FUNERAL
Kinsman's recall to All-Good; Birth Song; dissolution machine reduces body to honoured dust in a patera.
With: · 10 planned shots
Act IV
Custom, death, the princess, the order, and the climb home.
Scene 25 · INT. DRAWING ROOM
Debate on burial customs: surface corruption vs dust and token; custom as law; narrator's homesickness sharpens.
With: Aph-Lin · 11 planned shots
Scene 26 · INT. BANQUET / LITERATURE
Feast for kinsman's festival; literature is dead because peace killed the passions that fed poetry; science for use alone.
With: Zee, Aph-Lin · 12 planned shots
Scene 27 · EXT. STREET — PRINCESS
Taee's sister flirts within Gy law; narrator's vanity castles; Zee abducts him to sleep; warning about Tur if princess loves him.
With: Zee · 13 planned shots
Scene 28 · EXT. ROAD TO THE CHASM — NIGHT
Taee leads the narrator toward the sealed breach; the Tur has ordered a painless death; Taee confesses the chasm was closed with vril after the first descent.
Vault The look notes and shot breakdown for this scene are for supporters.
With: Taee · 14 planned shots
Scene 29 · INT. NARRATOR QUARTERS / CHASM ASCENT
Zee wakes the narrator in Silent Hours; cleaves a new path with vril; carries him on her wings through darkness to the mine; farewell; he reaches the upper world alone.
Vault The look notes and shot breakdown for this scene are for supporters.
With: Zee · 15 planned shots