LSGL BRAINSTORM
Fr 03.07.08

Premise:  Explore Act II as a dream sequence.

1.  Distortion
Visually, imagine if I make the elders in the dream sequence distorted...  For instance, I could stretch them out so that theyÕre long/tall, like a Giacometti sculpture.

2.  Transform human silhouettes to elders
Maybe I could have the elders start with a nearly human form, which then over the course of several shots resolves into their more squid-like form.  IÕve done several appealing sketches in the Òanasazi frogÓ style where the elders have just two arms and two legs, and could be misinterpreted as stylized humans.  Meaning-wise, this might be explained as the humansÕ attempt to understand the beings that they are mentally viewing.  The minds seem to be humanly intelligible -- so the human minds interpret the forms as fellow human beings.

3.  Are we seeing the contents of human minds?
This idea raises questions about the nature of the dreaming space.  One sort of thinks of a dream as a mirage...  A vision that floats in front of you.  But perhaps the dreaming is more a matrix of ideas, which exist in a communal space, yet must be interpreted by individual minds.  Ideas have no form -- it is the individual which translates them into something visual.

In which case, what we are seeing is not a verbatim telling of the eldersÕ minds -- itÕs actually the humansÕ mental space that weÕre witnessing...  What theyÕre able to make of their contact with an alien system.

4.  Water poetry
So, one way to generate dream imagery is to find poetic metaphors and similes, and explore the permutations of these themes.  I keep coming back to the shoggoths as blood, water, a flood.  So, letÕs finally do a serious brainstorm about water imagery.

I can see a ball of water floating in a sphere, like when water is let loose in the space shuttle in outer space, or in an airplane thatÕs in free fall.  The sphere jiggles somewhat, becomes ovoid, becomes shaped like a jellybean.

When you do high speed photography of water falling (on Earth), thereÕs that characteristic splash when droplets hit the ground...  Sort of like a cup with crenulated.  Sort of like a miniature version of the first stages of an atomic blast, before the mushroom cloud rises up.

Droplets of water hitting the ground reminds me of rain.  When itÕs a downpour, itÕs like there are thousands of little explosions on the street -- my mind rushes to try to keep up with them, seeing those instants frozen in time.

WaterÕs dynamics become more fascinating when you can slow time down, almost bring it to a halt.  To bad I donÕt have the capabilities for doing high speed photography -- and fast motion will suffer most when youÕre using the interlaced DV format.  If interlacing werenÕt an issue, I could imagine having the images of water pop forward with each frame...  Still, having water thrown into the air spreading out in slow motion would be even better.

I wonder if thereÕs anything that can simulate that imagery digitally?  I know there are some means in LightWave for simulating a flag rolling in the wind.  IÕm rather averse to digging into such effects...  Would rather use practicals...  But it might be worth my time to explore depictions of shoggoths as ribbons in the wind.

For the past day or so IÕve been imagining this image of an elder standing on the ground, dwarfed, while a nigh-spherical shoggoth thatÕs 10x as big floats in the air in front of it.  I think this image may be influenced by the movie ÒLifeforceÓ or John CarpenterÕs ÒPrince of Darkness,Ó but IÕm not sure.  For the moment, the important thing is to focus on that volume of liquid.

Rain has a sound.  Water droplets falling into a standing body of water has a sound.  Water coming out of a faucet has a sound.  IÕd like to hear the sound of a flood breaking through a dam -- but I see no way to capture that.  A waterfall has a sound.  A boat plowing through water has a sound.  Most of the shoggoths sounds that I would want to hear arenÕt so constant as a waterfall, though -- itÕs the sound of water hitting something that IÕm interested in.

If I poured out a bucket of water on something, it would have a recognizable sound...  Which could perhaps be slowed down and distorted to good effect...  The primary resonating sound element, though, would be whatever the water hit.  For instance, water hitting a plank of wood would be one sound...  Or paper, or cardboard, or a stone soundwalk...  Imagine water being poured onto a bass drum!

Water and water-like substances are found in many places.  Tea in a tea cup.  Water in a bath tub (good sloshing sounds?).  Water in a lake.  The ocean.  A river.  Rain.  ThereÕs the whole water cycle, involving evaporation, precipitation, rain water hitting the ground and collecting into streams and rivers and finally winding up in the ocean.  Water has its own ecological system.  This is water in a natural environment -- but thereÕs also water kept under human control.  Water in a glass or a bottle or a jug, in a sink or in a tub, pouring out of sewer pipes [that could be useful -- seeing shoggoths moving through a pipe system!]...  And on the grandest scale, water being kept behind a dam.

5.  Shoggoth pipe system
Perhaps in the city of the elders, there are pipes and aqueducts that are intended for the shoggothsÕ use.  Perhaps this is part of how my Che Guevara shoggoth initially finds his way to the ocean -- thereÕs a broken pipe, which has cracked due to contact with an underground river.  Maybe thereÕs a network of sewer-like tunnels throughout the city that keep the shoggoths out-of-sight yet maintaining the vital systems of society.

What are the vital systems of society?  The elders have turned their backs on most machines.  Yet, they are scientists.  This suggests to me that they are accomplished herbalists, with a profound interest in how various drugs effect the body.  This syncs with their interest in vivisection and how the body works.  The elders primarily eat meat -- but perhaps they need to cultivate fields in order to get the various necessary herbs that they use for drugs?  No, that doesnÕt seem right -- most drugs would be produced in fairly small amounts, being derived from plants that could be grown in a small arboretum.

Mostly I envision the shoggoths as being useful for construction.  They cut and carry giant stone blocks.  They have some ability to produce a natural acid which allows them to chew their way through granite.  I donÕt imagine the elders using electrical cutting tools, or simple machines like chisels and levers, or complex machines like beam weapons...  Slave labor with chemical cutting devices seems about right.

But what do the shoggoths do after the city is built?  I sort of imagine them as house hold slaves -- but itÕs very difficult to imagine what it is that theyÕre carrying around.

6.  Shoggoth history defined by their function?
I guess in addition to being (A) stone-cutters, the shoggoths are also (B) soldiers during time of war (living tanks), and (C) hunters when the elders retreat into their subterranean realms.  ItÕs possible that these three successive functions define the shoggothsÕ history.

7.  Tunnels to the ocean
The shoggoths need to eat, and need to be kept in stables of some sort...  Perhaps rather than being fed Òshoggotth feed,Ó theyÕre allowed to forage for themselves in a free-range fashion.  This would be another explanation for why theyÕre allowed in and out of the city.  Perhaps the shoggoths donÕt discover an underground river -- perhaps (since theyÕre primarily oceanic creatures to begin with) they are *given* tubes that lead them out to the ocean, where they primarily subsist upon fish.

This would change the nature of Che GuevaraÕs discovery of the Òmentally diseasedÓ survivors out in the depths.  IÕve been troubled by the notion that shoggoths are just waiting at the mouth of the underground river, hanging out so close to the coast of Antarctica.  It seems like they must be hidden away a little better...  IÕm not quite sure where...  Perhaps in an abandoned city, or in a cave in the middle of the ocean...  Just somewhere that actually makes more sense as a plausible hiding place.

8.  Water poetry 2
My first attempt at coming up with water poetry felt pretty flat.  I came up with images of water -- but that in itself doesnÕt constitute poetry.  Poetry, I think, has much more to do with references.  So, let me try again now, thinking of historical and literary references that add layers of *meaning.*

ThereÕs the Òwater of lifeÓ (IÕm not actually sure what that is).  ThereÕs the rain for 40 days and 40 nights that led to the flood that carries away NoahÕs ark.  ThereÕs Moses parting the red sea.  ThereÕs the bit in Genesis about God moving across the dark waters (an image of the void before being?).

ThereÕs Moby Dick as an oceanic incarnation of God.  ThereÕs the Titanic crossing the ocean.  The ocean can itself be used as a symbol for God (being so wide as to sometimes feel infinite and omnipotent).  ThereÕs Poseidon, Greek god of the Ocean.  ThereÕs the mythical kraken, and images of squids and whales fighting with one another.  [An image of a shoggoth and elder fighting wouldnÕt be all that dissimilar.]

ThereÕs the fact that Earth is the water planet, with 70% of the surface covered by liquid.  ThereÕs the fact that humans are 90 (or something) percent water.  ThereÕs the image of microscopic bacteria swimming around in a droplet of water.  Tears are salt water, much like the chemical composition of the ocean.

ThereÕs the story of the dutch boy sticking his finger in the dike.  ThereÕs the fact that turkeys can drown in the rain.  ThereÕs the river Lethe which leads to the underworld.  ThereÕs the river which orpheusÕ severed head floats down.  ThereÕs the saying ÒdonÕt cry over spilled milk.Ó  ThereÕs water inside a fishbowl.  ThereÕs water in an aquarium.  ThereÕs the saying, Òlike a fish out of water.Ó

Rain water feeds plants.  Without water, you have a desert.  There is no life without water.  Water can loom in storm clouds.  There are cloud bursts and thunder storms.  Moisture can turn into fog.

A tea kettle boils and whistles.  Water can boil or turn into ice.  The three states of water:  solid, liquid, gas.  When a person comes into your home, you often offer them a glass of water.  The sound of a gurgling brook is thought of as pleasant.

In a flood in contemporary times, you often see people moving through streets in boats, or sitting on the roof of their home.  In preparing for a hurricane, you put boards in front of windows.  There are giant waves that people use for surfing.  There are tsunami or tidal waves, caused by earthquakes, which roll through a town destroying everything in their path.  A hurricane has an eye of stillness.  A tornado at sea can create a towering water funnel.  A wave that crashes against the shore often brings dead fish, sea weed, drift wood, and foam with it.  After a shipwreck, a sailor is washed ashore.

There can be whirlpools in the ocean, like black funnels.  There was a story about an oceanic whirlpool (a ÒmaelstromÓ) by Edgar Allen Poe (whom Lovecraft much admired).  A toilet flushing is a small whirlpool.  ThereÕs the Coriolis effect, which determines which direction water will spiral.

The fountain of youth.  Water that gives life, water that takes life.  Drowning.  Falling down a well.  Water that seems to have a life of its own:  waves and whirlpools.  HemmingwayÕs ÒThe Old Man and the Sea.Ó  The book/movie, ÒA Perfect Storm.Ó  The scene in the film ÒThe AbyssÓ where water seems to come to life and creates a long pseudopod.  The book/movie ÒSolaris,Ó where there is an intelligent ocean.

The movie Òthe blob,Ó which has essentially an overgrown amoeba on the loose.  Living snot.  Walls that bleed, as is described in ÒGhostbusters.Ó  A wave of blood coming down a hallway, as in ÒThe Shining.Ó  The sluice-gates for blood in a slaughter house.  Blood hitting a wall when someone shoots themselves in the head.  The blood that pools around a body that has been shot and fallen on the ground.  [Perhaps I could have an elder lying bleeding, and the blood come to life, turning into a shoggoth?]

The blood from whales on whaling vessels.  Ishmael clinging to a coffin in order to avoid being sucked down into a whirlpool at the end of Moby Dick.  Bleeding from the eyes, bleeding from the mouth.  Zombies eating brains.  Mosquitoes sucking blood.  The sound of a mosquito whining.  A doctor washing blood from his hands after a surgery.  Pilate saying ÒI wash my hands of your bloodÓ in ÒJesus Christ Superstar.Ó  Jesus walking on water.

Vomiting.  Explosive diarrhea.  Blood being administered via IV during surgery.  Blood being drained from carcasses before they can be eaten.  Bad blood.  Blood in the water.  Blood is thicker than water.  Sharks being attracted to the scent of blood.  Blood relatives.  Blood brothers.

9.  How the elders eat
IÕm not committed to this, but I had an idea when I was working on the allegory version of Act II that perhaps the elders (at least in their later years) donÕt eat solid foods any more -- they just drink blood, like vampires.  I had this idea that as vivisectionists, perhaps they have a room where they keep brontosauruses alive, yet splayed open, and they slowly drip the blood out of them...  Which then falls through a sort of grate, falls far down into a dining room where the elders catch it in their mouths.  The elders catching droplets of blood thatÕs falling from above is pretty evocative.  That would make the vivisectionist sort of like the chef, and the room below his laboratory the main dining hall.

10.  Iterations of Act II
I just wanted to capture in this context that IÕve gone through approximately four iterations of Act II at this point...
	1)  eye-witness account of the end days
	2)  literal telling of the historical time line
	3)  allegory for the eldersÕ fall
	4)  dream sequence

Actually, I did an animatic that was a full history last fall, before going with the eye-witness account approach...  Then in January I came back to my hopes for a full historical telling.  The allegory concept only lasted about a week...  And now IÕm just beginning to explore the dream sequence concept.