What if the secret to living forever was found in the digital world?

After someone died, you could visit them in virtual reality. And within that reality was the key to learning the secret of your own murder.

The idea seems pulled from the depths of a science fiction nightmare. But for a pair of local writers, it’s making ripples across the filmmaking world.

Dustin Brenton, a Franklin resident, and his brother JD are seeing the fruits of their imagination gaining national attention. The screenplay for their film, “The Annexation of Life,” was named best screenplay at the What Will They Think of Next Film Festival in late November.

The sci-fi thriller screenplay also won honorable mention at the Big Apple Film Festival in 2023.

“My brother and I are both creative types and I think when you create something you always hope to illicit some sort of reaction or response,” JD Brenton said. “I’m excited to see that our screenplay is entertaining enough to be selected in multiple festivals. I have to say, it’s pretty cool.”

Both Brentons hope the momentum their work is gaining leads to it eventually landing on the big screen.

“It’s validation that we do know what we’re doing. We’ve made something that somebody out there likes,” Dustin Brenton said. “At some point, our main goal is to make a film on our own. We see people we know and our friends do it, and we want to do this too.

“What (these awards) do is validates what we’re doing.”

“The Annexation of Life” is set in a future where, when people pass away, they can be plugged into LifeAnnex, a virtual reality program. The program allows them to live inside an alternate reality where others can visit them using VR headsets. The story revolves around a senator with presidential aspirations, who believes the program is immoral and sets out on a mission to shut down the technology.

According to the film’s official synopsis, “When a beloved teacher is killed, the key to solving her death is having her regain that memory before the system is shut down for good — and her killer walks free.”

“I’ve had this idea for a while — five, 10 years ago,” Dustin Brenton said. “The original idea was, what if people could live on after they die in virtual reality. But I kept trying to figure it out.”

The Brenton brothers are no strangers to accomplishments in different creative fields. Dustin Brenton is an illustrator and artist who founded Brenton Creative, a Franklin-based marketing and design firm. He writes music through an endeavor known as Creative Culture, and hosts a podcast, “Create. Talk. Repeat.” that spotlights other creative types in the area.

JD Brenton is a videographer, cinematographer and editor who has worked on a number of films, including “H.P. Lovecraft’s Witch House,” an Indianapolis-shot horror film that was distributed around the world.

With their experience, the two brothers spoke often about writing a movie together. They had shot rough productions when they were kids, and thought it would be fun to tackle now that they’re adults.

After seeing a film made by their friend, filmmaker Tom Devlin, in 2022, they decided to give it a try.

“We know people who do this — why don’t we do this?” Dustin Brenton said.

Dustin Brenton agreed to write the script for their project, while JD Brenton could take care of the more technical aspects. About a week after they made the leap, Dustin Brenton emailed him a script.

They worked together on tweaking the characters, their motivations, and how they fit and act in this near future world, JD Brenton said. The initial idea evolved and became more nuanced, until both were happy with the result.

“We’ve spent so much time together over the years that I’m sure our family thinks we share a brain, but being eight years apart gives us a little bit of a different life view,” JD Brenton said. “I think that helps when storytelling, though I’m sure I drove him crazy every time I wanted to add something else to the script.”

Content with their final draft, Dustin and JD Brenton pondered what to do next. They spoke to friends in the filmmaking business, and people suggested they enter it into some screenplay competitions just to gauge interest.

They submitted “The Annexation of Life” to several different competitions, and waited. First they heard from the Big Apple Film Festival, a New York-based competition, where their screenplay was in the top 50% of vote-getters.

Then they were chosen as an official selection for the What Will They Think of Next Film Festival. The festival promotes creative and original ideas and celebrates the passion of filmmaking and storytelling, according to its website.

“A few weeks later, they announced the official winners, and we won best screenplay at the festival, so that was pretty cool,” Dustin Brenton said.

The successes on the film festival circuit set up the Brentons to focus on their next goal — finding investors who can help turn their idea into an actual production.

“I would love to see us find a way to get it from script to screen,” JD Brenton said. “We have had a video camera in our hands forever and have talked about making movies for almost our entire lives. It’s about time we actually did something more than just talk. Hopefully this is our time.”

That journey is part of a larger goal of further supporting filmmaking in Indiana, particularly in Johnson County.

“We want to try to make things locally. Even when I was writing the film, I had the idea of locations in Franklin,” Dustin Brenton said. “I love Franklin, and I want to continue to do things to promote it as well.”

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