Chapter 14

Scripting

Thursday : March 6th 2025

By the time Ruby, McClaire, and crew made it back to their rented island resort houses it was well after 4am. Ruby had no issues at all falling asleep after everything that happened. She was exhausted, as was everyone else. Passed out on the same couch she had struggled to fall asleep on the night before, Ruby slept soundly deep into the morning and little past noon, even as day two of early practice started over at the race track. Waking up to the low distant roar of vintage race cars was actually quite pleasant. 

“Uugh.. Aaah...” Ruby moaned with a nice long stretch as the sun peered through the standing windows that overlooked the deck and beach. However, as she came to her senses, she realized something about the oceanside cabin was different. She couldn't put her finger on it at first, until a small silver wedged shaped train came racing across the floor in front of her. With probably fifteenth coaches in tow, Ruby watched the little train as it raced along the track, whipping around the corner of the couch and then zig zagging into the kitchen. 

Revz hadn't slept a wink, instead spending all night crawling around quietly, setting up a loop of model train track around the entire beachfront cabin. It even went outside onto the deck, proven as the train now passed by again, going the other direction on the other side of the glass. Revz had indeed done considerable damage to McClaire's bank account. By the time the girls had arrived, the hobby shop’s staff was helping Revz load his SUV full of his new possessions, and he would have gone back for more had McClaire not intervened. 

A shipping pallet, as Star had said sarcastically last night, was probably pretty accurate to describe the amount of trains and track he had bought. As another train passed infront of the couch, this one an articulating Australian Beyer-Garratt locomotive and maybe fourth freight cars behind it of all shapes and sizes, Ruby couldn't help but giggle a little. As the slow freight drag passed by at a leisurely pace, Ruby stood up carefully and tiptoed into the other room. 

Revz had turned the kitchen into a control center. From a laptop he could control every train on the track and every siding and turnoff with a click. He had set up cameras around the house too to keep track of his trains, and they all showed up on the screen as dots on a track diagram. The Chucky American looked more like the Fat Controller from Thomas the Train, and about the same as David had looked last night after his adventure in the Lamborghini. He almost didn't even notice Ruby as she walked in, but once he did, he smiled!

“Ruby, you're awake finally!” Clearly sleep deprived, he looked like a raccoon with the deep black circles around his eyes. However he was as happy as could be as he pressed a button, and suddenly all the trains started making sounds. A chorus of “chugga chugga, chugga chugga…” and the random shrill cry of a whistle filled the room. 

“Uh Revzy, are you okay? You seem a bit… trainmad?” Ruby laughed sarcastically.

“Look, everyone has their hobbies, I just get to indulge in mine a little more than normal!” He laughed as that silver passenger train suddenly came back into view from its trip through the great outdoors. With a few clicks, it wiggled its way into the rather elaborate station and came to a stop. 

“Hehehe… this is all I wanted to do when I was a kid!” Ruby smiled, enjoying Revz’ child-like bliss. She would have kinda liked to hang out, but sadly she had to go. Another odd job awaited later today and she needed to get back into Melbourne. Walking out to her UTE, now safely parked outside of the boundaries of the race track, she grabbed the Auskarts uniform she would have to wear, and went back inside to take a shower and change. When she emerged again, she was now wearing a black polo, khaki shorts, and sneakers. Bringing back all her other clothes back to the UTE, she packed them up for the evening, and headed north. 

AusKarts was an indoor go-kart track, located a short distance away from the Grand Prix circuit. With the Grand Prix coming to town, it was now active seven days a week, with entire track rentals available in the evenings for corporate events. That's where Ruby came in, hired as a temp extra for working these evening events were minors and students couldn't. Like everything else, it was extra paycheck, but it came with a few bonuses too. When working at a go kart track, one often finds themselves getting to drive the go karts. Either testing some repairs undertaken during the public running, or simply warming another set of go karts up ready for the guests. After all the excitement with the Murcielago yesterday, Ruby was looking forward to getting to drive something a little bit more her pace and skill level. 

Speaking of, being back in the warm embrace of her beloved Holden made her feel warm and gooey inside. Although she missed the extra 200 horsepower of the Lamborghini, everything else about the supercar driving experience, the low nose, jerking transmission, everyone and their mother staring at you, she didn't miss at all. Once again, speed bumps, potholes, and traffic lights were all menial inconveniences. While on the road, Ruby's phone rang. 

“Hello…” Ruby chirped. 

“Hey, I didn't realize you were leaving as soon as you woke up…” As McClaire's voice came through the phone, distorted by the sound of passing race cars, a sort of weird feeling came over Ruby. She hadn't felt the need to say goodbye or even announce her departure because she sort of expected to be allowed to come back. She didn't know why she felt that way and upon realizing it, she found herself feeling quite embarrassed. She was still very much a guest of McClaire and her team, and not a part of it. What she had just done by leaving for Melbourne without a word was quite rude. Gritting her teeth, she needed to come up with a believable excuse.

“Uh, yeah, sorry about that. I realized in all the commotion last night, I…” Ruby paused, thinking desperately on what to say next. She really, really didn't want to come off as rude and ungrateful, especially after yesterday. Looking around the cockpit of her Holden for some sort of Divine intervention, she found it. Looking up, she realized the script for her role in Steel Princess was still up in the sunshades over her head. 

“Forgot part of my script for a role I'm playing in a short film at Vicky’s house! Our first rehearsals are Monday, so I have to get it and get to studying. Plus I've got another evening job working at this go-kart track in town.” Ruby explained, somewhat truthfully. 

“Ugh, I didn't get the chance to give you those tickets for her and her kid before you left...” McClaire sighed. 

“Ah… yeah, forgot about that. Sorry McClaire.” Ruby muttered, remembering McClaire had mentioned something about that before leaving Vicky's house last night. 

“Look, I know you're probably spending a fortune going back and forth like this, especially driving my SV yesterday, but would you care to come back one more time so I can give you those tickets, and you can drop them off? Tomorrow qualifying starts for us, so there's no way Me, Star, or Revz will be able to get away from the track.” 

“Of course McClaire!” Ruby said enthusiastically, breathing a sigh of relief. 

“Just as long as you don't mind me crashing with you guys again?”

“Feel free. As long as Revz hasn't turned that entire room into a train set by the time you get back…” McClaire laughed, before some voices in the background started yelling for her.

“Got to go, take care Ruby.” Hanging up, Ruby realized she had once again dodged a bullet. She also now had McClaire's direct cell phone number. Sweet! Soon enough, Ruby found herself at AusKarts. It was a little after 3pm, and there were still a couple hours to go before regular business hours ended. So Ruby took the opportunity to try and cram as much of the script for Steel Princess as possible.

The good news, Steel Princess being an animated film, meant there was some level of flexibility in every level of the performance. Unlike a play where every line and motion must be delivered with exacting precision and timing, working as a motion capture actress, the most important thing was fluidity and exaggeration. Allowing one scene or action to blend into another seamlessly and allowing cuts to be edited together if need be. Although there would be a soundtrack the action would be set too, tweaks could be made manually by the animators to knock out any imperfection in timing done by the actor, as long as his or her actions were smooth and deliberate.

The bad news was, this conflicted with the character she was playing. Ruby needed to imprint herself this persona of a reckless yet brave princess. A conservative member of a royal family. The person these knights would bow before and die on their behalf. Yet one willing to dawn the uniform of a knight and ride alongside them into combat against their and her family’s wishes. Ruby knew from her experience, motion capture rigs can barely pick up things like subtle movements a character like this might make, without some hyper specialized rigs that focus solely on one actor, and solely on one part of their body. 

For example, special helmets can be worn, fixed with cameras and scanners to track eyes and facial expressions. Special gloves can capture finger movements and wrist motions one might need in a swordfight. Special pants can be worn to pick up a swaying dance or the quick movements of someone sprinting. But doing all of these things at once was practically impossible without many, many takes wearing each piece of equipment. Then they would have to be stitched together manually by an animator and painstakingly tracked to a sort of master cut. It was complicated, it was expensive, it was time consuming, and it absolutely wasn't happening on a student film. 

That's where the AI company Nebula comes in. Their whole selling point was making AI work for artists and not the other way around. This software supposedly could do a lot of this technical work for them. Each take, for each scene, with each piece of equipment could be loaded into this software. It would be analyzed by the AI, and then the editor which specific movements from the pool of motion capture takes that he wanted to emphasize. Then it would generate and spit out an Artificial Master Cut of the animation which seamlessly blended the aspects selected together. What you effectively ended up with, was three takes being turned into one in a matter of minutes vs days and hours. 

It wasn't perfect of course. In the explanation of how the software works included in the script, it described…

If you took a take of a person walking and a take of a person running, you would end up with a monstrous four legged abomination. But if you took two takes of a person walking or running, even at different speeds, the AI would be able to cut and blend them together naturally. As long as the overall motions are 80% similar, we should be able to use them and pick out things like gestures manually.

Ruby was impressed reading all this, and it made sense for how the script itself was written. Instead of lines of dialogue, interspersed with boring and dry, to the point, actions expected of them as actors. It was written more like the briefing for a comic book, overflowing with emotion that would normally be left for the director on set to explain.

The princess walks into the ruined building, a victim of the artillery barrage that had preceded their attack. Walking in, she finds an enemy knight, mortally wounded, shrapnel sticking through his armor and out of his stomach. Still, seeing what he believes to be a knight, he struggles to stand back against the wall to steady himself as he pulls up his sword.

“Don't do this…” the princess begs of him. 

“Pass in peace, for this war should have never happened.” The knight refuses, stumbling forward. The Princess steps back, desperately pleading with the dying man to stop. Finally with her back against a collapsing wall, she removes her helmet, revealing her identity to the knight.

“You… Royalty… why?” 

“Because I want to see an end to this bloodshed. Because good men like you don't deserve to die over something as trivial as a mountain.”

“You're… a fool…” are the knight’s final words as he collapses at the princess’ feet. She puts her helmet back on to hide her tears, and she steps over the corpse. 

End of scene.

The more Ruby read, the most she understood the character. A flawed and sheltered girl, going against her family's wishes to expose a lie told not only to her, but to their entire nation. Her father's blind bloodlust desired to wipe out the “Savages” as they protected the last vessel of what they believed to be holy land. Told thought the lips of the dying warriors willing to give their life for that cause. All the while, knights on her side one by one discover the Princess’ true identity, and give their lives trying to protect her. Surrounded by death when her only true goal is to make the conflict stop, and through experiencing the horrors of war up close, she realized the only way to end this is with her father. She returns home and ends his reign.