I should start out by saying “Terra Incognita” is a passion project. Ironically, it’s not your typical, “I-have-a-personal-drama-story-I-have-to-tell” passion project. It was my guilty pleasure of loving old time action-adventure high-concept fantasy films.
Anyone who knows me would classify me as a history nut. For a time I thought I was going to make historical documentaries and even spent a good 5 years studying archaeology in pursuit of it. But the narrative bug wouldn’t leave me alone, so I returned to the world of stories clearly influenced by my old field of study.
Terra Incognita was originally going to be my Thesis script from USC’s graduate program. We wrote the synopsis, but something didn’t click. We chose instead to develop something smaller scale, something new graduates could tackle in the Indie Market and raise funds for (A Touch of Magic). But high concept (and big budget) movies are in my blood, so I wrote it anyways.
Adventurous, Awesome and God’s Gift to Women = Men like Aragorn
It is inspired by the memory of Men. You know the type. They burly, danger-seeking, tough as nails salty men who just don’t seem to exist any more. It’s also inspired by the actual events of the discovery of Easter Island. In fact, the original title was Rapa Nui: Land’s End – but man does that title suck. I vaguely mentioned to Zack Luna, a Sales Rep from Kathy Morgan, Int’l that I was consider changing it to Terra Incognita – he said “now that, I can sell”. I knew he was on to something. A Good Title = a possible read. All any aspiring writer could hope for, right?
Terra Incognita, for the uninitiated, is the mythical southern land mass the Old World believed existed in the unexplored areas of the world. It was supposed to balance out the globe and be home to all the legendary creatures of mythology (hey, they have to live somewhere, right?). Old nautical maps have it scribbled in the corners. Or as wikipedia calls it:
An urban legend claims that cartographers labelled such regions with “Here be dragons“. Although cartographers did claim that fantastic beasts (including large serpents) existed in remote corners of the world and depicted such as decoration on their maps, only one known surviving map, the Lenox Globe, in the collection of the New York Public Library,[1] actually says “Here be dragons” (using the Latin form “HIC SVNT DRACONES”).[2] However, ancient Roman and Medieval cartographers did use the phrase HIC SVNT LEONES (Here are lions) when denoting unknown territories on maps.
Alternatively, ‘terra incognita’ may also refer to the hypothesized continent Terra Australis Incognita (“The unknown land of the South”), as seen in the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum map by Abraham Ortelius (1570).
Dating from ca. 1510, is the second or third oldest known terrestrial globe. It is housed by the Rare Book Division of the New York Public Library.
The old school adventurers truly believed in its existence. They scoured the globe looking for it.
What if they found something?
That is what inspired “Terra Incognita”. The “what if”. And the ability to say something about the ecological ruin of Easter Island. It really is a lesson for our entire planet about resource conservation.
Tongariki Moai Heads – the largest carvings of the ancient world made with stone tools.
The script has done better in competitions than I could EVER have expected. We just heard back today that we are FINALISTS in the 
WriteMovies.com 25th International Writing Competition</a>. We are travelling to Austin in October to meet with panelists at the Austin FF Conference.
I’ll be blogging about that experience soon! Thanks for reading.