FADE IN:

TITLE CARD — white on black:

spring 2020.

INT. PARENTS' HOUSE — BRYNN'S BEDROOM — DAY

A laptop on the bed. A graduation ceremony playing to no one.

A cap and gown still in its plastic on the closet door. A wall calendar with every event crossed out, one after another, in the same pen.

BRYNN on the floor, back against the bed frame. Sleeves pulled down over her hands.

The room is grey. There is no color anywhere in the frame.

She reaches off-frame and pulls the knit sweater into her lap.

The first color we've seen.

She closes the laptop.

CUT TO BLACK.

EXT. GREAT FALLS — TRAILHEAD — EARLY MORNING

Fog low in the trees. The trail runs fifteen feet before the forest takes it.

BRYNN at the mouth of it, wearing the sweater. Still the only color in frame — bark, fog, dirt all read nearly black and white.

She looks at how much of the trail she can't see.

Sleeves still over her hands.

She steps in.

EXT. FOREST PATH — CONTINUOUS

Handheld, close behind her. The fog eats the distance, so the forest only exists twenty feet at a time and keeps rebuilding in front of her.

Shoot it tight. Trunks, wet ground, branches crowding the lens. She never gets to see more than she's standing in.

A fork. Two paths. Neither marked.

She stops. Hold on her longer than is comfortable.

She picks one.

It goes uphill.

EXT. THE ROCK — CONTINUOUS

The trail runs out at the base of a tall rock face.

She looks up it. Then down at the path behind her. Then up again.

She pushes her sleeves past her elbows and puts her hands on the stone.

The climb. Palms on rock, a foot testing and finding nothing, resetting, finding something. Breath. No music.

She's not graceful. She gets there.

EXT. THE OVERLOOK — CONTINUOUS

She pulls herself onto the top and stands.

REVERSE — the park below her.

All of it. The entire valley in full autumn — rust, amber, gold, deep red running to the horizon, the river cutting through the middle of it.

The same forest she just walked through. Seen whole, it was never grey.

Full color for the first time in the film. The sweater is no longer the only living thing in the frame.

WIDE. She's small at the top of the rock and the landscape is enormous behind her.

She doesn't raise her arms or reach for her phone. She stands there and lets it be bigger than her.

CLOSE — hair wrecked by the wind, cuffs stretched, knees dusted with rock. The sweater looks like it went somewhere.

She's laughing at something off-camera. We never find out what.

WIDE — golden hour. The valley still burning with color.

She's already out of frame. She left before we did.

Hold on the empty rock a few seconds too long.

TITLE CARD: into the unknown ON/1025

FADE OUT.