BioSpirits Movie Story Arc

The 45-min bioSpirits movie draft has a story that spans Harland Robert Brown’s life. We hear the story start with the elder Harland Brown looking back at some major events that changed his life. We first see Harland as a youth hearing from his grandfather that someone clever will clean up the tailings ponds.

We also see Harland as a youth tasting beer for the first time. He finds it horrible, but memorable.


We don’t actually see this, but it is part of the backstory—Harland as a young man goes to college and gets a degree in synthetic biology. We then see Harland as a young man heading up a lab, using tailings pond water he has purified to water trees he has bioengineered to ferment their own sap to make beer. His grandfather inspired him to this career.


In the movie we see some competition with a former friend both to win a beer contract and also to win the affection of a coworker, Mackenzie. This forms the major part of the movie experience.

At the end of the movie we see the elder Harland toasting the spirit of his grandfather who inspired his career.

BioSpirits Ethics Component

During the competition of creating beer through bioengineering, the young man Harland’s competitor Ryan causes Harland’s trees to be contaminated and be creating slight amounts of methanol. It is not much, but Harland refuses to let the team’s product be consumed because that little bit of methanol would be unhealthful to a consumer.

BioSpirits Examples of How Synthetic Biology Is Being Incorporated by Society

In Harland’s lab, we see a television commercial where a bioFilm is being pitched to the viewing audience. You spray the liquid on your lawn and it creates a surface where one can iceskate all year long.

When Harland is driving to his beer tree plantation, he hears a story by local radio personalities Vince n’ Rosie about a farmer who gets bioengineered yellow corn with the name of Svetlana in red kernels. Svetlana is his mail order bride from Russia.