LSGL BRAINSTORM T 02.26.08 Premise: Establish the storyline, like a mystery writer would -- then you can go into the story and make decisions about how to tell it... Choices about POV, which scenes to include, etc. 1. Do I show the eldersÕ wings? 2. How do I deal with cities on land vs. in the ocean? 3. What is the beacon, and why does it seem to shoot out a laser? 4. Maybe when the elders are using telepathy, we get to see them in X-ray vision. 5. Maybe we need a visual shot of the eldersÕ ÒspiritsÓ leaving their bodies when they first activate the beacon, millions of years ago. 6. Sound - quality of voice-over Instead of having a clear voice-over, IÕm now thinking that the entire voice-over might be made out of echoing, overlapping whispers. 7. Sound - primacy of visuals Whereas previously I was going to work out the script for the deep history, and then create visuals to go with it, now I think I want the visuals to be primary and the voice-over to be recorded after-the-fact. 8. Maybe the beacon stores the eldersÕ spirits? 9. The Yith Maybe the Yith play a role in the elderÕs history? What if the guru elder was kidnapped by the yith... We have the name of at least one elder thing in ÒThe Shadow Out of Time.Ó ItÕs been a problem that the elders arenÕt supposed to be a technological race -- and yet, here is this machine that IÕve created! ...But what if this isnÕt elder thing technology -- what if itÕs knowledge that was brought back from the time when the elder thing was in Yith Land? If the guru was in Yith Land, then it knows that at some point in the future the elder things wonÕt have dominance on the planet. So, it might come back and begin a secret project to save the species. It may well not know why the elders arenÕt present -- so sending the minds of the elders forward into time would perhaps be a secret endeavor. This storyline depends on the guru being able to avoid the amnesia that the Yith impose upon their victims. The main character in ÒShadow Out of TimeÓ is able to break down the wall of amnesia -- so certainly it ought to be possible for the elders... Particularly since they have 5-lobed brains... 10. 5-lobed brains This is a thought that has no bearing on the film, but might be of use if I get around to writing a novel about ÒThe Last Days of LengÓ... IÕve talked about the elders having 5-lobed brains -- how that might mean that they have a sort of multiple personality framework to their personalities... Sort of like five-faced and thirty-faced gods that I seem to recall seeing in Indian artwork (Hindu?). That concept was useful for establishing a rationale for the Ògreek chorusÓ animatic I tried out last year... But just imagine how interesting it might be to have a character in a novel that thinks in five voices? You might use an Alfred Bester-type trick, where the different text is in different fonts or different colors. Getting that to the printer intact might be difficult -- but as a gimmick itÕs intriguing. 11. Beacon function options LetÕs review for a moment a few of the options for the nature of the beacon that IÕve explored so far: * a prison capsule for the worldÕs oldest elder * a life-support capsule for the worldÕs oldest elder (due to injuries in the war with Cthulhu) * a shoggoth-made device for bringing shoggoths world-wide to consciousness * a message-in-a-bottle for elder rescuers that may come some day * a device that helps coordinate a group trance * a device that puts the elders in suspended animation -- and later wakes them up (an alarm clock) * a telephone for sending a message to the elderÕs capitol at the galactic core * a training tool for a master psychic, who is training his students * a device that helps a master psychic travel astrally through space, since the power of flight has been lost * a Yithian device, which allows elders to escape their bodies and inhabit those of creature in another time * one communication device among many, used for communication between the eldersÕ cities 12. Beacon laser options As I review my list of possible uses for the beacon, I realize that the laser on top of the beacon is essentially a different issue. Certainly thereÕs overlap with the list of functions for the beacon body -- but there might be other functions that werenÕt on the first list. So letÕs see... * a shoggoth-made device for bringing shoggoths world-wide to consciousness * an alarm clock that helps put the elders in suspended animation and wakes them up * a telephone for sending messages to the galactic core which is set on delay * a galactic telephone that was previously transmitting, and then stopped due to breakage * a galactic telephone that was transmitting on repeat, then was intentionally put on hold * a psychic travel device which is recalling the one guru from deep space, with the help of the hive * a psychic travel device which is recalling the hive from bodies theyÕve possessed in the future * a world-wide telephone between elder cities, which was intentionally shut off * a multi-purpose psychic focusing device, which is disrupted by human mind waves * a device that was built for summoning gods from beyond our universe When I review this list, I see a couple of concepts coalescing. The beacon might be a telephone. If it is a telephone, thereÕs a question of whether it accepts programmed messages -- or if perhaps it sends the dreams of those who are presently using it... No pre-recording possible. The beacon might be a travel device. Either for a single elder, who is tethered to earth by the rest of the elders who are stationed here -- or for the whole hive, who have gone to another time. The beacon might be a focusing lens / alarm clock... Something which helps the elders collectively go into suspended animation... A group dreaming... Perhaps this machine was used for hypnotising shoggoths originally -- and now itÕs being used for self-hypnosis. That option would be somewhat useful -- because it would allow me to introduce the beacon early on in the dream sequence. In some ways, the Òdevice for summoning godsÓ concept is another ÒtelephoneÓ interpretation. The Òwaking up shoggothsÓ concept is probably the furthest afield from my other ideas. So, letÕs for the time being say that there are just three main options for the beaconÕs function: (1) telephone, (2) travel device, (3) psychic focuser. 13. What I know about the beacon so far OK, so I seem to be going through what I know about the beacon, trying to deduce itÕs function. Things IÕve established so far... (1) It has a physical body which contains things. (2) It shoots off a laser-like beam at one point. (3) Somehow it allows the creatures that interact with it to see thoughts/memories/messages. (4) It is a machine in an anti-machine society. (5) Human contact with the machine disrupts it. (6) The machine is being kept in an otherwise undecorated cave. 14. What is a machine doing in an anti-machine society? Maybe the machine was built very long ago, back when the species was more mechanically-inclined. This doesnÕt quite seem right, because they flew through space by wing. If they were mechanically-inclined at the beginning of their stay on earth, then one would think theyÕd have come via spaceship. Knowing that they came to Earth by wing, itÕs possible that this machine has a non-Earth related function. It might be a device that allows them to communicate with the place they came from originally -- so itÕs a rare necessary piece of technology. (Similarly contacting creatures from beyond our universe is a function that is beyond the usual, and might justify creating a machine.) At one point, I had a notion that this machine might simply take the place of the bas relief art described in ATMOM -- a giant mechanical history book. I donÕt think I can make that work. If such a machine existed, it would probably have information pertaining to how to fly again. Further, it simply violates the no-machines rule. The machine might be Yithian technology -- so the presence of a machine is justified by saying that it doesnÕt belong to the elders in the first place -- theyÕve essentially stolen it. This has several advantages... If the machine is unusual to the point of being anathema to most elders, it would have to be hidden in away in this cave. 15. Exploring the Yithian option I like the notion that the beacon is Yithian in part because it ties back into the canon Lovecraft universe. I get to take the elder we meet in ÒShadow Out of TimeÓ and weave him into LSGL -- making this a sort of bridge between SOOT and ATMOM! The Yith are actually from another galaxy. They merely inhabit the conical beings from SOOT temporarily, before moving on to inhabit intelligent beetles in the far future, and then some other creature. The Yith seem to travel through purely telepathic means... And yet, they have a tremendous library, which encompasses knowledge gleaned from all sorts of species. Having shared minds with the Yith, it seems like the elders -- who are themselves telepathic -- might get the hang of the trick... TheyÕd just need some sort of telepathic amplifier -- which is a machine that could be discovered in the great library. The Yith steal minds away to their time, switching places temporarily. After they return home, they place a wall of amnesia in their victimsÕ minds. The eldersÕ five-lobed minds may cause some difficulty for the Yith. One of the lobes may be operating at a very deeply subconscious level... Which might allow it to remain in the elderÕs body, observing the YithÕs actions. This part of the mind might also allow the elder, when returned to its body, to reconnect with what happened while it was away. Having spent time perusing the great library, an elder -- which is long-lived, if not immortal -- would probably be shocked to see that in the far future its species no longer has dominion over the Earth. So, it would hatch a plan to help take its species into one of the far-flung areas of time where the Yith have not pre-determined a destiny, by means of their knowledge of that place/time. A mad gamble to save the species from a foretold future -- rather like Sarah Connor in Terminator II. To hear that the species is going to cease to exist would perhaps be denied by many of the other elders. Building a machine would certainly be taboo. So the project would have to be undertaken in secret. Perhaps like a NoahÕs Ark? There would be a main leader, and the hive is his set of followers. It makes things perhaps even more interesting if this elder was in a high position. His commitment to creating his Ark would maybe lead to a rift in the great council, leading to him being outcast. Given his erratic behavior during the possession by the Yith, saying heÕs crazy would make a lot of sense... However, if heÕs acting erratically, then it might be difficult for him to maintain his position on the council during that time. Hm. Perhaps the council doesnÕt meet very often -- only every ten years... Or perhaps he is so esteemed, that when he stops seeing to his duties and goes into seclusion, he is given some freedom to do so... But when the original mind comes back and makes unbelievable claims, thatÕs when the council can no longer ignore the matter. Maybe they even accuse him of being mentally unsound, and suggest euthenizing him! ThereÕs a question of timing... How long does the building of the Ark take? And when does the hive go into the future? Do they go into the future before the uprising happens? If so, then the elders wouldnÕt know about the shoggoth uprising... Unless that fifth lobe is linked into a global collective unconsciousness. Perhaps only four lobes of the eldersÕ minds have traveled into the future, leaving behind a piece of themselves in the past. This is the part of them that is dreaming, which picks up the mental trauma of the elders in the city dying. (IÕm sort of imagining a kind of transportation thatÕs like what we see in the movie ÒSomewhere in Time.Ó) So, the hive could transport itself into the future prior to the shoggoth uprising... Or it might leave in a rush, in response to the uprising. The rush might force elders to leave the hive in a poorly-constructed hypnotic state... Creating a weak hypnotic field which allows the spell to be broken when the humans interfere, and which even leaves parts of their minds behind in the bodies. Maybe the master who was first taken by the Yith is the only one who can truly travel into other times successfully -- that is, with all five lobes of his mind. Perhaps heÕs been working at training others to do what he has done, and none are quite up to the task yet. Maybe the elders have to leave at least one lobe of their mind behind, dreaming, so that they can control the creatures that they psychically switch places with when they travel. ItÕs kind of interesting to try to imagine what kinds of creatures are trapped inside of the eldersÕ bodies; each elder leaving behind a part of itself to play warden. ...Heck, maybe itÕs the introduction of human minds into the psychic web which allows the trapped aliens to make their own sort of prison-break! The notion that the elders are once again using a form of subjugation for their own survival is very much in character, I think. ...Making the same mistakes again. 16. Assembling the hive There are questions about how the elders inside the hive were assembled, and how the collective unconscious / their telepathy works. If there is a collective unconsciousness, do the elders feel it when some of their number pop out of their bodies to another time? No. If that were the case, the elder population would be able to tell when the first Yith/elder switch took place. Furthermore, the elders that wake up in ATMOM would immediately know that the city on the plateau of Leng is empty, because they donÕt sense anything. It seems that as telepaths the elders either only have very weak powers, or they are primarily senders, and not receivers. (If they were receivers, that might give them empathy for the creatures they eat and the shoggoths they control, which would break character.) IÕm still considering this idea that thereÕs a protagonist elder who was one of the original colonizing 25 elders, who has greater telepathic powers than most. It may be that he has a school of elders whom heÕs been teaching... Or it may be that he has a few disciples, who have been contacting like-minded elders, to bring them to the hive. ...Getting a hundred or so elders in one place, though -- thatÕs a significant number of missing elders. 17. Periods of eldersÕ history So, letÕs review the periods of history that IÕve explored: 1. colonization 2. spawn war / great cataclysm 3. the war of resubjugation 4. the yithian contact 5. shoggoth revolution The war with cthulhu, which leads to summoning gods from another universe, which decimates the elders at the same time... IsnÕt necessarily canon. Hm. I wonder if the dark primal gods that exist at the mountains of madness were actually summoned forth by the elders? If perhaps the gods inside the Earth and the gods from another universe are in fact one and the same... Something that perhaps whispered in the astral plane where the navigator/guru walks? IÕve gotten a sense of what colonization looks like that IÕm pretty happy with. The war with Cthulhu and calling greater gods to intervene is really interesting -- and I might be able to get away with challenging canon, since there will be historical revisionism following the cataclysm -- but I feel like I ought to do more research on whatÕs already been written about Cthulhu and those Outer Gods before weighing in... IÕve completely omitted the Migo.... Which play a role in ATMOM. Hm. If I wanted to make things easier on myself, I could have the elders fight the Migo -- if I needed to show the shoggoths being indomitable in closed spaces. ...A war between the Migo and the elders would have far fewer consequences in terms of the mythos. (And equally, be less exciting to utilize.) IÕve just outlined the yithian contact, which happens relatively late in the eldersÕ history... What seems to be missing in terms of explanation now is how the hive/Ark were convened... And a better explanation of how the elders in the hive come to know about the genocide of their peers back in the city. (Do I have room for them not to know about it? Could they have left Earth with it in mind that their peers were still living?) The shoggoth revolution, led by a protoplasmic Che Guevara has been worked out in general terms, if not in perfect detail. The war of resubjugation has been alluded to, but not explained in detail. The big problem it seems to raise at present is that the shoggoths at that point are underwater. I didnÕt think I wanted to deal with the underwater / above water divide... Instead consolidating all the scenes onto land. Do I want to question that decision? 18. The shoggothsÕ story At this point, I think I could go through all my story development documents and assemble a reasonable time-line for the history of the elders. There are still holes that I havenÕt fully worked out... But remember, this is a short film that IÕm working on -- I can probably get away with implying quite a bit. Rather than going through the whole billion year history at this point, I want to experiment with different ways of telling the story of the eldersÕ relationship with the shoggoths. Shot 1: The elders spiral down to earth on their wings. [Perhaps I eliminate this entirely?] Shot 2: The sphere of the earth is replaced with a globule sphere of eyes, which is perhaps the first shoggoth being created... Or perhaps the first shoggoth being given intelligence... Or perhaps simply a generic shoggoth going through the de rigueur hypnotic implantation that occurs for all slaves. We pull back from the blob, encapsulated in a giant glass vial, and see dozens of elder things using their telepathic radio waves. Perhaps thereÕs some lightning/electricity in the glass capsule, too, keeping the creature in place. The setting is an underground chamber with vaulted ceilings, gothic architecture that uses great stone slabs. The glass container is suspended in a pit with no visible bottom, circular... The elders stand above the shoggoth, like in an amphitheatre -- or an operating theatre. The room is built with circles in mind for the staggered floor platforms, and there are great arches above. As the elders use their telepathic powers in concert, we see their insides in X-ray, fading in and out. Shot 2: Shoggoths moving in lines, carrying great stone slabs out of a mine, elders standing above them watching. Shot 3: We pull far back and see the eldersÕ city which is being constructed. There are lights from below, shooting upward toward its spires. It looks much like the city from Fritz LangÕs Metropolis. Shot 4: We see a shoggoth that has gone insane. The hypnotic conditioning has broken down, and it quivers in a corner, like an autistic man in Bedlam rocking back and forth. [I donÕt think this shot will communicate.] Shot 5: A shoggoth whose mental conditioning has broken, and is running away. ItÕs racing across the plain beneath the Plateau of Leng, following a river. ItÕs pursued by a group of elders... Running across the plain? Flying? They encircle the shoggoth and use their collective mind-control to re-capture the run-away. [Too much like the opening shot of the shoggoth being created.] Perhaps flying elders use their ring guns to gun down the shoggoth. Perhaps they shoot at it -- but it manages to escape! Shot 6: We follow the shoggoth down the river, underground, and out to the ocean... Where we discover there are dozens if not hundreds of other runaway slaves. Shot 7: Cut to the Migo coming from outer space. Perhaps a transition from the shoggothÕs spherical eye to the spherical moon, from which the swarm of space hornets descend. Shot 8: An army of elders assembles on the plain. Shot 9: Close-up on an elder taking a pill and sprouting wings. Shot 10: The army lifts off the ground. Shot 11: In space, the migo army and the elder army collide. A few quick shots of individual migo and elders in close combat. Shot 12: A group of migo fly into the tunnels of the city -- where they come into collision with the shoggoths, and are devastated. Shot 13: The migo destroy the factory where the flying pills are produced. Maybe this means that earlier on we need to see a shot where a factory is producing the pills, and pills are carried out (on conveyor belts?) to the waiting ranks of soldiers? [This is such a dubious scenario, difficult to convey on the screen, that it makes me think the elders instead ought to have necklaces that blink which make them lighter than air -- and weÕll see a shot where the wings retract -- so we can presume that the elders in the cave have wings that are simply hidden.] Shot 14: After weÕve seen that the shoggoths saved the city, we see the elders erecting statues of themselves. If thereÕs an outdoors square thatÕs recognizable, let it have rows and rows of statues. Shot 15: The world grows colder. We see it snowing outside? See the continents shift? Maybe we donÕt have the shot of plate tectonics at work until now, midway through the film? Shot 16: We see elders moving things out of their houses on the surface, and pan down through tunnels to an underground cave where the city now seems to exist. Shot 17: A conflict between an elder and a shoggoth... The elder points, the shoggoth refuses. The elder uses a pain stick -- the shoggoth tears its head off. Shot 18: The shoggoth escapes into the lake in the center of the city where the elders live, and we follow it down through an underground river to the ocean... Where we discover that there are now hundreds of shoggoths (whereas before there were only a few?) Shot 19: In an underwater cavern, the escaped shoggoth (which now has language -- something I havenÕt shown) stands amongst a large gathering of shoggoths. When the shoggoths stand still, they arenÕt wide-flat amoebas -- theyÕre more like inverted tear drops, or rising blobs in a lava lamp. The central one... which is bigger than the rest? ...Morphs itself into something like an elder thing, with rudimentary legs, arms, and eyestalks. [This is where IÕm trying to convey that the shoggoth is making a speech to the other runaways, and by taking on the form of the elders, makes himself appear godlike (shoggoths think of their creators as godlike) -- which inspires the shoggoths to claim the cities of their now decadent masters, taking the buildings (heaven?) for themselves.] Shot 20: Another wide shot which shows the city fairly small upon a plain... A few elders are crossing toward a mountain. Shot 21: We see a group gathering around the beacon. Shot 22: The shoggoths strike the city. We see the elders in their underground city by the lake, blissfully ignorant. The camera show ant-farm-style cut-away shots of the shoggoths traveling through tunnels toward the city. The shoggoths pour out into the cave. Elders try to run, but we see several quick and similar shots of eldersÕ heads being torn off. Shot 23: The camera flies back across the plain to where the beacon is hidden. The elders surrounding it begin emanating their telepathic radio waves, going in and out of X-ray mode. Their spirits leave their bodies and converge in the beacon. The radio waves from the elders die down, and we see the beacon begin to pulse slowly with its own, larger radio waves. Shot 24: Cut to black. ...End with a sound effect: A growing human scream, which comes to maximum, then cuts off at the same time the screen goes black. A moment of pause -- then we join the explorers back in the cave. 19. A few missing shots IÕm not crazy about this telling of the story... But itÕs probably the best IÕve done so far. I have a few ideas for alternate shots, or shots that seem to be missing. Analysis. I could see starting with a shot of elders hunting a giraffe or a brontosaurus or a pterodactyl or a T-rex (which might help establish both that these events are occurring on Earth, and that they happened long ago). Later on, perhaps we see a shoggoth hunting a woolly mammoth while the elders sit back in the city. Note that picking out dinosaurs to use actually makes the elders a bit more recent than IÕd like... And having to create believable dinosaur animation would be more challenging than creating aliens... Still, having pterodactyls in the sky would be neat. Having the beacon appear fully-built at the end doesnÕt feel like it makes much sense. I donÕt see how I can actually incorporate the Yithian explanation. If IÕm going with a ÒNoahÕs ArkÓ concept, then it seems like I need some sort of conflict between two elders -- where half the elder population sees the apocalypse coming, and the other doesnÕt. Hm. ThatÕs a fairly simple revision of the ATMOM story, which can be told visually -- some saw the revolution coming, some didnÕt. The significance of the cave and how it was kept secret isnÕt established, though. Having runaway shoggoths show up early in the film -- and then repeating the image, but with there being a whole underground population now -- that repetition feels like it works, story-wise. It seems to depend on the wide-flat ant-farm style of illustration that IÕve been imagining, though. I see a close-up on the shoggoth, the camera following it down the underground river; then a really far shot, which shows the course of the river underground to the ocean; then another fairly close-up shot of the shoggoth exiting into the ocean... Fish scattering in many directions. In this version of the story, it seems that elders are land-creatures and shoggoths are primarily oceanic... And itÕs their hiding underwater that keeps them safe for thousands of years. ItÕs a distortion of the story, but it can work visually. It seems like there needs to be a transitional shot where the elders go from standing to sitting in the cave of suspended animation. If I go through with having dinosaurs, itÕs tempting to have a shot where the elders are feasting at a table, and a monkey-man is performing as a clown on the table. If I were doing this as a live-action film, I have to imagine that this would be a great place to cut from the deep history flashback to the present-day explorers. Unless I have a real breakthrough in terms of illustrative style, though, it seems unlikely that I can use the idea. (Oh, but showing the shock of the human explorer realizing that he was that monkey-man clown in the past -- that would be delicious!) The metropolis-style city doesnÕt feel like it fits or makes sense. Showing the shoggoths carrying stones (like Egyptian slaves -- I guess thatÕs where IÕm getting the image from) -- IÕm not crazy about it, but I donÕt know how else to show what the shoggoths were actually used for! 20. the hive elders as the hope of the species? WhereÕs the climax of the deep history? Is it the shoggoths pouring into the city? IÕm not sure how to convey that visually... I could work on drawings to try to find a way to show the genocide -- but doesnÕt it undermine the third act climax? Maybe not... I could just show the murders beginning -- shoggoths pouring into the living chambers... Cut on a shoggoth knocking down / grabbing an elder by the neck... Then have the camera whisk away to the hive, to show the elders there reacting by going into suspended animation. If act II is being done in green 2D, that withholds a lot of the spectacle... Cutting away from the genocide just as itÕs beginning -- leaving the sense of inevitability -- then suspends the end of the story, because hope is left with the few survivors in the cave... Which then gets resolved in act III. If the elders in the cave have merely delayed the inevitable with their escape, it really makes me want to make the humans more integral to the story... To show that the monkey men who were once clowns for the elders -- or maybe even better yet, food -- to show that theyÕre the ones who bring the ultimate downfall of the elders, that has a sort of sense of justice to it. Notice how that would essentially make the humans the protagonists again -- they become the (unwitting) judges of the elders. But... I originally wanted to keep the POV centered on the aliens. Frustrating. 21. What can the elders know about the shoggoths? How does having a shoggoth-centric story make sense, given that weÕre seeing the thoughts/dreams of the elders? We can make a leap, and suggest that the 2D images weÕre seeing are more like ideas than actual memories... These are the events as the elders have reconstructed them. Having an initial shot of the shoggoth being created/programmed/given intelligence allows me to try to put the mind of the audience into the shoggoth. ItÕs a very interesting place to start with if IÕm going with a shoggoth-centric story. I suppose itÕs the closest thing to a close-up that I have in the deep history. ItÕs a thing that the elders could actually have see with their own eyes -- so itÕs works either from the shoggoth POV or the elder POV. Having the shoggoth revolutionary form itself into the likeness of its makers, though, thatÕs not something that the elders could even really imagine, I think. Still, the elders could deduce that the oceanic shoggoth population had proliferated without them. I imagine the shot of the shoggoths in the ocean sort of like bacteria swarming in a dish. Ovoids popping around, almost bouncing off one another... Maybe some of them subdividing, like theyÕre undergoing mitosis. It might be really neat to see the shoggoths all bind together into one mass for the final assault... The divisions between individual shoggoths disappears, and a black (green?) ocean of oil swarms up through the underground river into the city of Leng. Doing that might help to explain why the shoggoth in the Act III is so much larger than the Lovecraft purists might expect. ...ItÕs a Òsuper powerÓ of the shoggoths that IÕve been wondering about. Can the shoggoths reproduce independent of the elders? Can the shoggoths bind together into a single being? 22. Close-ups and camera angles IÕm frustrated with the wide-flat storytelling space that IÕve been imagining for Act II. IÕm a very visual thinker, and crave camera angles. ThereÕs no depth in the images IÕve been imagining -- theyÕre so damned flat! What if the cave systems were portrayed as wire cages? If I did that, it would re-commit me to animating 3D elder things -- which is a massive pain. The other thing about this wide-flat space that bothers me is that there donÕt seem to be any close-ups. I thrive on the close-up shot -- it feels like the shot that puts us inside the mind of the character weÕre looking at. ItÕs hard enough that IÕm essentially doing act II in black and white, with a two-color palette (well, green and black actually)... And itÕs hard enough that IÕm working with aliens that are pretty damned inscrutable... But no close-ups either? 23. GeometryÕs role in illustrative styles How geometrical are my representations of the elders and shoggoths going to be? If I built them out of geometrical shapes, in some ways that would give me some freedom to focus in on constituent shapes. For instance, if I use perfect circle as part of the elderÕs eye structure, I could use that shape to transition from one thing to another -- it could morph into planet Earth or a nascent shoggoth. Perhaps I could visually distinguish the elders and shoggoths by line quality... The elders being described with beautiful geometrical lines -- like Grecian urns that can walk -- while the shoggoths are utterly organic... Oily, stringy, snot-like things. If IÕm using a lot of geometry to create the elders, perhaps I could use some transitions where the camera turns on the Z-axis? Maybe I could have a conceit that the entire deep history is told with a single line connecting one shape to another? Very challenging to work that out in storyboarding -- but not impossible. What if I created the forms of the elders using Adobe Illustrator? It would be challenging, because I donÕt have a strong grip on the software -- but it would certainly give me that Òmathematically perfectÓ look that IÕm describing. If I were to go that route, IÕd definitely need to get my pictures worked out in pencil first. I think with some work I could translate sketches into vector images -- but it wouldnÕt make sense to do concept drawing originally in vector shapes. Hm. If I worked out my final shapes on graph paper, itÕd actually be easy enough to just assemble them in LightWave Modeler. Maybe backgrounds would be done in Illustrator -- but for anything that needs to move, thereÕd be no point. 24. The underground city In Ò#18. The shoggothsÕ story,Ó above, thereÕs a shot I where I describe the eldersÕ city as looking like the one in Metropolis. No. That doesnÕt feel right. There are buildings that go up multiple stories -- but these arenÕt creatures that build sky scrapers. The shoggoths cut the giant stones for these buildings and bring them into the city on their backs... Then giant pterodactyls do the actual work of putting them in place. (ThereÕs another argument for having pterodactyls flying in the background in some shots.) At the beginning of the story, it seems, the city is on the surface... And situated next to a giant cliff. Perhaps one which has a waterfall? Hm. ItÕs hard to picture a city thatÕs not merely in silhouette, but is actually in X-ray ant-farm perspective. DoesnÕt seem like it would be very impressive. ThereÕs that animation done with silhouettes that I saw on Channel Frederator (ÒBendito MachineÓ?)... Note that it didnÕt use ant-farm perspective -- it was 2D, but done with silhouettes, so you couldnÕt see inside of houses. IÕm imagining when the elders moved down inside of the mountain, to the subterranean lake... IÕm having a hard time figuring out how it relates to a river on the plain below the cliffs... Or to an underground river that leads to the sea. How are my water passages connected to one another? If thereÕs a cliff and a plain below it, is the subterranean city lower than the flat plain? Or is it halfway up the cliff, but inside of it? How far is it from Leng to the ocean? In the visual space IÕve been imagining, it canÕt be more than a mile away... Which is pretty ridiculous, when you consider how Leng is supposed to be in the center of the continent. In general, how do I want to visually portray landscapes? Like if the elders are out on the plain, is it just a single flat line? Is it a block of color, suggesting that we are seeing the surface of the ground and also whatÕs underground? Is there any way to put the ground into perspective? Or to give it some sort of texture? 25. Breaking with the ant-farm look? Do I perhaps need to break with the ant-farm look? Suppose I had the landscape be 3D, using simple shapes -- but the elders and shoggoths are done in 2D. Or, suppose I created 3D CG forms for the elders... But ones that are simple and geometrical abstractions -- rather than the photorealistic, organic ones that we see in act I and act III. IÕm not sure theyÕd be all that much easier to animate than the organic models. ItÕs sort of interesting to imagine that these 3D geometrical forms are how the elders imagine themselves... But IÕm not sure that the audience wouldnÕt think I just got lazy and used my animatic stand-ins rather than going through with full animation. Also, if I go for 3D elders, wonÕt that commit me to using 3D shoggoths also? Or, suppose I tried to make the visual look imitate bas relief carvings? What would that look like...? Maybe each scene would be staged as a *tableaux*. And it would start frozen -- then break into motion. Hm. I could do that in a sort of ÒcartoonÓ style, in the sense of the visual space being entirely 2D (almost hieroglyphic in that sense)... I could also try to create a Òliving statuesÓ look. IÕm sort of thinking of how Julie Taymor used an extreme forced-perspective stage for FoolÕs Fire. I could create models in LightWave that are squished semi-flat... Sort of two-and-a-half dimensions. IÕm also thinking of some medieval (?) European art, where the perspective was distorted because the principles of drawing in perspective hadnÕt been worked out yet. I like distortion... And if these are creatures that have senses we donÕt, then doing things in a wonky perspective would be fairly appropriate. On the other hand, it seems like this would be a fairly labor-intensive approach, given that it would require a bunch of new construction in LightWave. 26. Enlivening the history I feel like I need to come back to the story once again. The deep history feels like a bland recounting of facts right now. WhereÕs the emotion? WhereÕs the message? Where are the characters? ItÕs like recounting the American Revolution without ever naming a general or talking about who he was -- just assigning dates to battles. IÕve got something like a timeline to work with... But no characters for the audience to identify with. I wonder how... Uh, the Battleship Potempkin? Drat -- I canÕt remember the name of this film... The famous Russian one where a baby carriage rolls down the steps of a building, which IÕve read about... Anyway, the way that itÕs been described, the whole proletariat is the main character. How was that accomplished? One of the virtues of using the 2D versions of the elders is that it makes them look more human. Surely I can use that to my advantage, to throw in some moments of emotion -- even if itÕs just random faces in the crowd who are reacting. And yet, my elder things donÕt even have mouths -- just eyestalks (without eyebrows) and slithering arms... Could I use those alone to convey fear, pride, hatred, grief, etc? How would I describe the emotional life of the elders? Largely theyÕve seem noble and impassive. Maybe thatÕs the key -- that I make them seem impressive for most of the deep history -- and at only at the end give close-ups of their ÒfacesÓ suggesting that theyÕre terrified...? 27. The spine of act II? If I had to put the thrust of act II into a single sentence, what would it be? ...The shoggothsÕ creators underestimated the strength of their runaways, and were decimated? I think Robert McKee had a formula for summing up your film -- IÕll need to review. I seem to recall that there was something about values and verbs... Like Òlife triumphs over death,Ó Òlove conquers in the end,Ó Òjustice wins out,Ó etc. ...If this is so, then what value do the elders represent? Dominion? Slavery? Control? Exploitation? Using people? I had this really great core idea about how the elders raised the shoggoths from bio-robots to sentience -- and in doing so, themselves became slavers. WhatÕs become of that idea? Similarly, thereÕs no voice of the shoggoths in my most recent tellings of the story... No sense that they are still committed to vengeance, tens of thousands of years after the genocide. If I go with Òanasazi frogÓ designs IÕve been sketching, then the elders look more like ÒmenÓ -- but the revelation that Òthese were men!Ó seems to have disappeared from the film. ItÕs like IÕve forgotten the reasons that made me want to make this film in the first place. 28. Ditching act II? So, now that IÕve put in something like 75 pages of writing, trying to untangle the timeline of my story, I have to ask the tough question: should I include act II at all? ThereÕs so much territory to cover if I want to tell the entire history of the elder things... It feels like IÕm trying to rush through it. ThereÕs so much material, IÕm trying to edit out everything thatÕs non-essential... And the events that I do touch on, arenÕt getting invested with color and flavor. To make film emotionally impactful, you have to linger... You have to let realization sink in, rather than rushing forward. I want the audience to feel -- but IÕm not giving them any time to absorb what theyÕre seeing or become connected to it. I love the idea of telling the deep history. Why? Because it appeals to me to tell the history of the world from the alienÕs point of view. But if I canÕt do it well, it needs to go. Last fall I had settled on the notion that instead of having a Greek Chorus of elders tell the whole history of their people, I needed to have just one elder thing tell the story of one moment in time -- the moment of going to sleep, knowing that oneÕs whole species is being wiped from the planet. Perhaps thatÕs what I need to go back to: One moment in time, one voice. I could be even more radical, and eliminate act II entirely... It could be that all we get after the beacon turns on is a lot of static and garbled voices... WeÕre hoping to understand whatÕs going on -- and are denied. IF I went that route, itÕd be kind of appalling, given that IÕve written all these pages of story development... But then, I could tell myself that it wonÕt go to waste -- transforming this background material into a book. I could absolve myself of the mysteries left unanswered in the film by answering them in a novel. So, at the highest level, IÕm looking at three options for act II: A) Tell the deep history in a linear narrative that covers a billion years B) One moment in time, one voice - going to sleep, knowing genocide has struck C) Incoherent static, which withholds everything except ÒtheyÕre coming!Ó Is there another option? If I look at act II functionally, itÕs supposed to convey certain information to the audience. Could I deal with that information non-linearly? Could I identify the facts that need to be told, and then throw them all into a mostly non-sense transmission? D) Disjointed, non-linear fragments 29. What is act II supposed to communicate? Well, I doubt this list will be complete on a first attempt -- but letÕs start trying to cull the important items. Possibilities, I should say, since some will probably turn out to be unimportant. * What is a shoggoth? * The elders created the shoggoths. * The elders came to Earth a billion years ago. * The elders lived all over Earth, on many cities. * The elders created all life on earth. * Shoggoths were slaves. [This might be conveyed simply by saying the phrase Òthe slavesÓ] * The elders of the hive voluntarily left their bodies. [A key image: elders standing around the beacon with radio waves coming out of their heads] * The elders did not come to earth just recently. * The elders came from outer space. * The elders are geniuses. * The elders lived in cities, not caves. * The shoggoths slaughtered thousands -- even hundreds of thousands -- of elders. * The shoggoths are intelligent, too. * The shoggoths were not intelligent at first -- that was given to them by the elders. * The elders have relationships with other space-faring species (?) * The elders in the hive have been asleep for 50,000+ years. * The elders in the cave were the few who saw the cataclysm coming * ...But they didnÕt know the nature of the oncoming cataclysm, only that their species would disappear (?) * The elders in the cave are disconnected from the majority of their species. * The cave is a place of secrecy and hiding. * The elders are capable of feeling: grief, pride, confusion, fear, anger, horror? 30. What the elders donÕt know In the versions of the deep history that IÕve been exploring recently, thereÕs a sort of omniscience... The elders are able to tell all aspects of their own history from beginning to end. But perhaps there is a lot that they donÕt know -- or things that they actually get wrong. What if what we hear when we get to listen in on their thoughts/dreams are mostly questions? ÒHow did they become so many? Where did they come from? How could the slaves overthrow us? Where are the other cities? Is anyone else left alive? How did they get so intelligent? How could they be organized? We are gods. How could the filth topple their gods? We were gods -- what happened? Will they find us? Are we safe? Can we make it to another star? Can we wait them out?Ó In terms of getting things actually wrong, I guess what IÕm most thinking of is that the elders might have forgotten that they actually came here from another planet. They might now actually believe themselves to be gods. ...Although, this would contradict the Yithian idea -- that the elders in the hive are actually switching places with a species from another time, on another planet. 31. The Yithian option - whoÕs being switched with IÕm not sure if the elders have actually switched places with another species, or if theyÕre still extending their minds out into the universe looking for hosts. I guess I do like the idea that they already have found victims -- because it reaffirms that they are conquerors and slavers in their heart, claiming dominion without regret. If the elders have actually switched with another species on another planet, that means that theyÕre occupied, living their lives. For them to be still searching in space and time seems like it keeps them in limbo too long. If the elders have more or less forgotten their old bodies back on earth, calling them back for judgment day is pretty neat. The long forgotten crime... Vengeance being served cold to criminals who have gone so far as to forget they were even once here. Good stuff. 32. Are the elders repentant? It sort of makes the elders unrepentant... Which makes them good villains in a way. Or at least stronger characters. IÕm not sure that regret really made sense for them. I want to make them seem human, so you can feel something at their death -- but at the same time, IÕm not sure I want the audience to forgive them for what theyÕve done. So... Am I looking to end on a message of moral ambiguity? Where the tragedy is that these brilliant creatures nonetheless failed to see the immorality of what they had done? Hm. If so, then (in the novel) I suppose I might need a Brechtian device, where I have some character pose these questions aloud... Maybe at the moment of giving the shoggoths intelligence, posing the question: if we raise them above mere animals, do they become slaves? ...Except the elders probably see all beings as their servants, creations to create or destroy at will -- so it would need to be something a little more subtle... Like ÒAre you sure? WeÕve never made one this intelligent before.Ó ... And then ÒThe creation will always recognize itÕs creator. Could it strike at the face of god?Ó The bulk of the think-work about what it means to rise from animal to slave must be thought out by the shoggoths. Arriving at the decision that oneÕs creators donÕt deserve to be gods -- thatÕs a good dramatic turning point. ItÕd be compelling to follow a shoggothÕs thoughts as it arrives at the big decision that, yes, it will strike the face of god. It will take heaven for itself. 33. A symbolic telling IÕve come up with another option for how to tell act II: through symbolism. What weÕre eavesdropping on is the eldersÕ thoughts/dreams... So thereÕs no reason why their thought patterns need to be realistic... And I donÕt mean photo-realistic -- even illustrative thoughts are realistic, though 2D. Symbolic thoughts arrange images in terms of meaning, not sequence. This is also different from the stereotypical dream sequence, where things donÕt quite make sense, and are all disjointed. Symbolic thought would use symbols (almost like mathematical symbols), and order them in a way that represents the truth, with out attempting to portray reality. A) Photo-realistic memories B) Illustrative images C) Surreal dream sequence D) Symbolic idea configurations An example. I imagine a circle of 2D Òanasazi frogsÓ in a ring around a 3D beacon, the eldersÕ minds sending out radio waves. From all around them, waves of horrifying snot-like shoggoth ocean wipe out the outer concentric rings of elders... Until thereÕs just the innermost ring -- which then shoots its spirits upward, escaping the threat. At last -- a new direction to explore, in terms of telling this story! 34. A visual look: holographs IÕm still interested in pursuing the anasazi frog look as part of a ÒsymbolicÓ telling of act II... But what would the images look like if this were all holographic? Overlapping images of the same thing, with some of the images being transparent? Like how a faceted lens can create multiple images? Or maybe having a single character portrayed at perpendicular angles to itself... Sort of like cubism... Trying to capture that Ònon-euclidianÓ texture that Lovecraft is always going on about.