LSGL BRAINSTORM
W 03.12.08

Premise:  Explore Act II as dream sequence.  Focus on using the Òquestion streamingÓ method.  Try to brainstorm a wide variety of images.

1.  Dream sequence POV?
Whose perspective is the dream sequence from?

If itÕs the explorers, then I might use the device of doing stylized 2D versions of the elders that start off looking more like ÒmenÓ and progressively become more alien in appearance.

If itÕs the perspective of the elder things, then I might emphasize the sense of regret at leaving behind oneÕs people, stepping into the beacon, and going to a foreign planet.

2.  Single tableaux vs. montage
What if I used a single tableaux for the dream sequence?  What if I edited together a bunch of jump cuts that intentionally donÕt have continuity between them -- which are just my favorite images?

3.  Does the dream sequence communicate vital info for understanding the story?

4.  Is the dream sequence true to the LovecraftÕs universe?

5.  Passage of time
Feeling stuck.  OK, go into stream-of-consciousness writing and ask anything.  DonÕt get stuck on breaking ideas into numbered sections.  Close your eyes even.  Ask a question...  Any question.

Does the dream sequence communicate the story?  LetÕs recall what things I want to convey to the audience...  I want to foreshadow the shoggoths.  ThatÕs goal #1.

I want to convey that the elders are infinitely old.  That may not be possible...  Because the only two strategies IÕve come up with so far are to either show plate tectonics sped up or to show evolution sped up.  But Michael Hall suggested that maybe I could go surreal...  I could have a kitchen with a window that looks out upon a mountain...  A mountain that erupts from nowhere, becomes a volcano, is weathered down by time...  Showing time scale could be accomplished by doing a time lapse of anything changing -- so long as itÕs a thing that is normally thought to be unchanging.  Mountains, species, continents...  What else?  Well, a city is often thought to be long lasting...  ThereÕs that shot in George PalÕs ÒThe Time MachineÓ where I think we see cites rise and cities fall...  Maybe IÕm confusing this thought with the Òtime passesÓ shot from Futurama.  The solar system itself could be used as a sort of clock, if we sped up the planetsÕ rotation around the sun until they were cycling once per second or something...  Creative use of blurring could be effective...

6.  What makes a dream dream-like?
WhatÕs the difference between Òdream sequenceÓ and ÒsurrealÓ?  Is there one?  The surrealists (at least at first) claimed to be using actual dream imagery in their paintings, if I recall correctly.  So surrealism is in some ways the art of dreams...  But perhaps there are ways of portraying dreams that are not ÒsurrealÓ in the way that we associate ÒsurrealÓ with Òweird.Ó  What are the qualities of a dream?  What are the laws of causality like inside a dream?  How is a dream different from waking life?

Well, in a dream your environment can suddenly change when you turn your head -- youÕre somewhere that you werenÕt just a moment ago.  In a dream, people can say things to you that seem very profound, but which donÕt make sense rationally.  In dreams you can potentially fly, or sing, or do such things which arenÕt actually possible in reality.

I seem to be listing generalities about how things work in dreams...  But how do my personal dreams work?  My gut response is that my dreams are rather boring...  Or are nightmares -- thatÕs what ÒSven dreamÓ used to mean.  I tend to be wandering in dreams; I seldom spend time with another person very long.  There are dreams which are re-hashings of movies or TV shows that IÕve seen.  Sometimes theyÕre Òlost episodesÓ or IÕm seeing the story being produced in a way that doesnÕt match up with how the actual story went.  I dream about Burning Man and about working at Bent Image Lab.  There arenÕt monsters, usually.  Sometimes I meet myself in my dreams.  Occasionally thereÕs an encounter with God or a holy place.  Sometimes there are Virgil/Beatrice characters who exist to take care of me during some period of grief.  The imagery in my dreams isnÕt mythological, and I seldom fly.  Occasionally I sing or perform on piano.  Occasionally I skateboard with amazing skill.  There doesnÕt seem to be a lot of ego at work in my dreams.  (None of this seems very useful.)

Joss Whedon has said that when he was conceiving Buffy the Vampire Slayer, he was looking for a story that would have archetypal qualities.  What could I do with the dream sequence that would make it feel like IÕm tapping into very primal imagery?

7.  Implying things with lines
What if I implied a city and technology merely with lines...  A city could be implied by jagged horizontal lines.  Technology could be implied by vertical lines that zig-zag with right-angles and semi-circles, sort of implying giant computer banks.  These single, vertical white lines, floating in mid air could be arranged like curtains to create some depth.  Traveling through them to reach an elder in the middle of the dream space would feel like parting the curtains.  In addition to lines that imply theatrical flats, I could have lines in space that look like arcs and arches, circles and segments and rays...  These lines could possibly be moving...  Which might mean that they are creating themselves and fading back into nothingness...  Or it might imply the moving parts of machines...  Or it might imply some sort of holographic technology...  Or more just abstractly implying that the head space of the elders is very mathematical in nature.

8.  Dream space as psyche turned into architecture
Maybe the dream sequence has the feeling of walking around in someoneÕs physical head...  As if by walking to the right, you wind up in the realm of sound, and by going to the right you wind up in the realm of visual imagery.  As if someoneÕs psyche had been translated into a giant museum, and by wandering around you could look at the various exhibits.  ...No, I donÕt really like this idea...  But it does remind me of the Greek mnemonic device of imagining things that you want to remember as objects placed in different rooms of your house.  In general, this concept is a little too goofy and literal -- reminiscent of that terrible old show, ÒHermanÕs Head.Ó

9.  A conversation between a human and an elder
Suppose the shoggoth in the dream sequence is presented as above the elders -- like a low-hanging sun...  Like a thing you can reach up and touch.  Imagine a crowd of elders milling just below this thing with its eyeballs and pseudopods, unaware of its existence.  A human voice says:  look up!  The elders donÕt seem to heed.  Suppose we actually have the outline of a human explorer in this dream sequence [thatÕs novel!].  Maybe I could film an actor...  Just one, since itÕs only Carl whoÕs actually touched the amplifier...  Maybe I could film an actor using a different process than the ÒlavamanÓ effect IÕve used previously.  Maybe I solarize, or just use a high contrast image of the actor...

What if the elders could have a conversation with the human?  What would they say?  Supposing that the elder was essentially nonplussed by the humanÕs presence?  What would the human say to them?  ...ÓExcuse me, have you looked up?  What is that thing above you?Ó  ÒThat is our guilt.  That is our doom.  That is death.  That is the shoggoth.  That is the slave.  That is our blood.  It is coming for us.  That is the ocean of our blood.Ó

Imagine a shoggoth and a human standing in front of an enormous graveyard.  Imagine rows of elders walking between gravestones.  The grave stones are star shaped.  Imagine rows of elders filing past the gravestones, as if walking through the rows of a corn field.  Imagine the elders climbing down into holes in the ground...  As if they are walking into their own graves.

Imagine a bloody carnage of elder bodies -- not an inch of ground visible, because the bodies are piled so deep.  Imagine the shoggoth rising slowly up out of this heap, a great boiling god.

Imagine the human asking the elder:  Where did you come from?  Look down at the pair from outer space, look up past them from a position at their feet to see a starry background behind their silhouettes.  Imagine the sky seeming to spin...  The stars coalesce into a shoggoth...  Or maybe the stars grow and grow, and then each opens, revealing that itÕs actually an eye in the sky.

Imagine a giant clock.  The human asks Òwhat time is it?Ó  Elder answers Òa billion years ago...  this is when we arrived on Earth...Ó

10.  The eldersÕ emotional relationship to their own blood
What do the elders actually do with their time when theyÕre alive?  What are they preoccupied with?  They like to eat, they like to hunt...  I have that great image of the elders standing still and feeding on droplets of blood that fall from the sky.  (Very hard to translate if IÕm not using the color red.)  Imagine that the sky is full of vivisection.  Imagine an elder vivisectioning itself.  Its arms use scalpels to open up its chest, pin the skin off to the sides, it works at cutting through viscera and removing organs...

Maybe the elder opens itself up and finds a shoggoth hiding inside where its organs should be.  If the shoggoths were created from the blood of the elders, then the elders might have a sort of horror of their own blood, imagining that their veins course with shoggoths...  Maybe we see the silhouettes of elders break open, and shoggoths come pouring out.  If this dream sequence is being told from the point of view of the elders who have thrown 4/5ths of their consciousness into the distant future, then there could be a good sense of revulsion...  Seeing oneÕs peers exploding into shoggoths -- the elder backs away toward the beacon, and is transported upward to a planet that waits above.

11.  Popping balloons to create splashes
What if I filled balloons with water and popped them?  Or with corn syrup?  Or some sort of corn syrup/water mix with black tempera paint?  Could I get an interesting explosion that could then be composited into various shots?  Are there other sorts of bladders I could use to create liquid explosions?  Old condoms maybe?  Could I create white puffs in front of a black background?  Like flour in front of black foam core perhaps?  Is there any way I could make small explosions using fire, which then get solarized?

12.  Shoggoths exploding from within the elders
Imagine the elders not as 3D beings or as Òanasazi frogs,Ó but just as silhouette outlines.  Imagine those lines morphing into other objects...  For instance, exploding into shoggoths.

13.  Humans standing in for elders in the dream sequence
Imagine an elder wearing civil war paraphernalia, or a Greek toga...  Conveying Òold timeyÓ by using human reference points.

What if instead of having elders in the dream space, all the elders appear as human beings...  And only at the very end do they morph into the aliens that they actually are...  The human explorers sense that these creatures are ÒmenÓ -- they have intelligent minds...  And so the explorers interpret the ideas that theyÕre receiving in terms of human actors.  How would you have a group of human actors act out the history of the elders?  Imagine rows of humans in a Roman coliseum structure...  But radio waves are emanating from their heads.  Imagine that the center of the coliseum is filled with water.  Or blood.  Imagine the story of the elders retold using humans and water.

14.  Shoggoths as amalgamations of human body parts
Imagine the silhouette of a human being holding a wine glass, and the wine in it rises up out of the glass...  Maybe as one long arm...  Maybe as a bunch of tentacles growing from the wine glass.  What if the shoggoth were portrayed as severed body parts that twitch on their own.  For instance, a severed arm that bends and unbends on the ground...  Symbolizing how the elders have taken bits of their own bodies, and the pieces have evolved into other beings.  Imagine a shoggoth portrayed as a monstrous collage of human body parts...  A tank thatÕs constructed of human heads and arms and legs.  Maybe the shoggoth is a complete human being from the feet to the waist...  But then from the waist up, itÕs arms and legs and two torsos, and a bunch of eyes in the belly.  IÕm sort of imagining a visual style like the iPod advertisements that involve a black human silhouette against a colored background -- in this case, green would be the obvious choice.  IÕm also thinking about the Hans Bellmer dolls that have legs both at the top and bottom of the torso.  This could lead to interesting depictions of pseudopods as arms that can stretch preternaturally long.

Having the shoggoths built out of human body parts would highlight the FrankensteinÕs Monster aspect of the elder-shoggoth story.  I donÕt feel like IÕm getting enough story out of the dream sequence, though.  It feels like what IÕm conveying is that the elders made the shoggoths, the shoggoths got too big, and then they attacked.  As of yet, thereÕs nothing about the shoggoths as servants.  ThereÕs not really anything about the colonization of earth, the cities that were built here.  Maybe I need to make the earth a pie that the elders are slicing up into pieces.

15.  More ways to present plate tectonics
IÕve been intent on showing the passage of time with the continents changing as a single Earth that morphs.  But what if I showed a sequence of images of earth that are still shots?  I had sort of thought about a sequence of earths that appear as a stack, where you move past one earth and discover another beneath it..  What if I had a row of earths in a horizontal row?  IÕm thinking of the four big clocks (as Laurie Anderson put it in United States Live) which represent the four time zones of the United States.  So present earth would simply be sitting next to earth 10 million year ago, and then thereÕd be an even older earth next to that one.  Maybe the earths would be 3D -- or maybe theyÕd just be line art contained within circles.

Perhaps, to make the concept more dimensional, I could put these earths all in a circle, with the camera at the hub of the wheel, and then spin the wheel...  Maybe this wheel of earths could itself rotate on another axis, to make things even more complicated.  If I have a single elder standing in a spotlight at the center of the screen, maybe these past earths could be orbiting around their nucleus.  IÕm sort of thinking about the machine in AugraÕs observatory in ÒThe Dark CrystalÓ -- except one would be standing in the center of it...  So itÕs more like staging a one-man play on a stage thatÕs beneath a planetariumÕs hemispherical ceiling.  [ItÕs a fascinating staging...  But it also doesnÕt feel organic enough for my filmÕs aesthetic.]

16.  Having the elder surrounded by a sphere of shoggoth
Imagine an elder standing alone in a black box theatre.  They raise their hand, and we see floating just above it the earth with the moon orbiting it.

Imagine the elder standing alone in a darkened room, in a spotlight, a blob of shoggoth floating in the air beside them, feeding on drips of blood...  Suddenly the back drop is illuminated, and itÕs a hemisphere of shoggoth...  Giant eyes, half as big as the elder itself.  This conveys the sense that the elder thought it had the shoggoth under control -- only to discover that the shoggoths have the upper hand.

Imagine the shoggoth floating beside the elder...  And then inside it a massive eyeball opens up -- suggesting that it has woken to consciousness.

What if instead of having a single elder and shoggoth, we have a ring of twelve elders around a shoggoth floating in mid air...  And instead of feeding it with blood, theyÕre busy keeping it contained using their mental radio waves...  And then the backdrop suddenly illuminates to show that theyÕre surrounded.

17.  The shoggoth as an engulfing iceberg
Imagine an elder that is standing inside a shoggoth, encapsulated by its blob.  Maybe itÕs hammering its fists on the cell wall of the amoeba, trying to get out of its shell.

What if instead of having the shoggoth move incredibly fast in the dream sequence, we have it move very slow?  What if thereÕs a whole army of elder thing statues (a bit like the initial sequence in Julie TaymorÕs ÒTitusÓ) -- and a mile-wide shoggoth is very slowly spreading over them, the gelatinous wall claiming more and more of the elder things...  Which remain visible behind the translucent membrane wall.

18.  Colonization of the earth portrayed abstractly.
Imagine the earth as a sphere floating in space, the moon orbiting it.  Abstract zig-zag lines come from the peripheries of the screen and connect with our sphere.  Cities erupt from sides of mountains...  Portrayed only as lines...  We see the earth and moon again, and with X-ray vision we see an eye open up on the center of the planet.  Maybe after we see lines descend from space, all we need to see is red dots on the surface of the globe appear, and dotted lines connecting them -- suggesting that Earth has been colonized and civilized.

18.  Reviewing plot points, what I like so far & whatÕs missing
I keep hitting the same points...  The elders came from space.  It was a billion years ago.  They built cities.  They gave their own blood to create the shoggoths.  The shoggoths became sentient.  The shoggoths became an ocean that overwhelmed thousands of elders.  A few elders used the beacon to escape to another world.  But now, disturbed by something in their mental net, the elders are falling back to earth.

...I keep hitting these same points, but something feels like itÕs missing.  ThereÕs no atmosphere.  ThereÕs no spectacle.  ThereÕs no character to identify with.  ThereÕs no emotion.

I like the image of one elder and one shoggoth in a tableaux, and keep on clinging onto that.  It feels like it gives the viewer something simple to cling onto.  It almost gives the audience a protagonist character to latch onto.  If I focus on bits of the elderÕs body -- an eye, a hand dripping blood -- the close-ups allow us to imagine our way into the elderÕs body, identifying with it.  (At least a little.)

IÕm also intrigued by the shots where we see whole armies of elders arrayed.  It feels like doing that gives us some sense of the scale of devastation created by the genocide.

19.  The shoggoth stares back
The images that involve eyes opening -- either one or dozens -- feel borderline cliche.  IÕm also not sure if I could get the eye to fit the look of the film...  It could be pretty exciting if itÕs a bit contrasty -- IÕm thinking of the TV set that Michael Granberry used in his version of ÒFrom BeyondÓ -- but it also might just not work.  What if I had an eye in the shoggoth looking back at the elder?  What if it was a stare-down of sorts?  ThatÕs inherently a bit better.  Having characters hanging in space but not even acknowledging each otherÕs presence is very low energy.

Imagine that thereÕs not a floor underneath the elder and the shoggoth, but instead the elderÕs legs dangle in space...  Maybe twitching and curling in and out a little.  Maybe instead of hanging in a void, the elder floats essentially inside a lava lamp...  A waxy, molten curtain behind it, globules of goo rising up in stalagmites, which then separate off into spheres.

20.  A violently active shoggoth
Maybe part of whatÕs bothering me about how I imagine this sequence is that itÕs so stagnant.  Maybe the elders want to stand still -- since they are eternal, and have endless patience and dignity...  But the shoggoth is a young upstart.  Maybe it moves like an angry, agitated tadpole, zipping about.  Or maybe I use a hair dryer to blow black droplets of liquid around, and then composite them together so that it looks like the line is zigging and zagging, scribbling around into a little ball of wire.  Or maybe the shoggoth shouldnÕt leave tracers when it moves -- maybe I can blow liquid around on a dry erase board, or some other non-stick surface, so we just see ball of liquid moving around agitatedly.  Maybe I should take a lot of different practical liquid effects and composite them all together, so the motion and the layering is unpredictable.  The main point here is to have the shoggoth contrast the elders by being in non-stop motion.

21.  Another way to show the shoggoth building the city
Maybe I could resurrect some of the elements from the Òletting the genie out of the lampÓ/Óthree wishesÓ allegory version of the story.  Maybe I could have the tableaux elder apply brain waves to the shoggoth...  It suddenly gets bigger...  But the outlines of a city skyline appear cyclorama style around the single elder.  We wouldnÕt have the buildings evolving out of straight lines rising from the shoggoth...  At least not in a way that requires the camera to pan upward in a Òwide-flatÓ visual space.

22.  Avoid linear narrative
IÕm thinking that one of the things I need to avoid in the dream sequence is a linear narrative.  In a dream, it seems like there ought to be non-linear time -- holographic time, perhaps I should say.  Because it doesnÕt make sense that the explorers would peek into the eldersÕ minds and get an easy storybook telling of what happened in the past.  It seems like everything should be a bit disjointed, and occasionally occur in backwards order.  Taken as a totality, you should be able to make sense of it -- but I want to give the impression that the explorers are comprehending what they see either all at once, in a flash of understanding -- or that they have seen fragments which they then assemble into sense on their own.

23.  The shoggoth without elders in the shot
What if we just focus on the shoggoth for a while, no elders in shot?  The little angry teardrop that zigs back and forth...  This could make sense, in that people seldom see themselves in dreams...  And people in general apply their interest to other people -- not to themselves.  If weÕre seeing the elders, either the elders themselves have a sense of disembodiment, where theyÕre looking at themselves as from afar -- or theyÕre thinking about other elders, who are not themselves.

Focus on the shoggoth again.  One angry tear drop...  Which becomes a blob with bulges...  Which becomes an expanding spill...  Which becomes a splash of fluid thrown through the air...  Which becomes explosions of liquid...  The elders are maybe superimposed upon this background...  WeÕre seeing two stories simultaneously...  One which is purely textural -- the growth of the shoggoths -- one which is more literal, telling the story of the eldersÕ attempts to control the shoggoths.

24.  Rebellious fluid
Imagine an elder standing with one arm outstretched.  It begins its mental radio waves, and its own artery ruptures.  Blood spits out, and becomes the angry tadpole.

Imagine that while the shoggoths are becoming large enough to build cities, we see some blobs of fluid escape...  Maybe the camera follows them away from the construction.

The elders controlling the shoggoths:  They use their mental radio waves...  Maybe they place the infant shoggoth into a clear glass globe or similar vessel.  Later there are groups of elders all using their psionics in concert to control a single, large shoggoth.  Then perhaps we see the elders simply trying to fight the shoggoth back, using their ring guns.

25.  Act II as TWO tableauxs
Maybe we start with the elders in battle with the shoggoth, using ring guns to fight it back...  But then we intersperse the fight with the single elder using its own blood to create the shoggoth.  So, essentially we have a *two tableaux* approach.  This isnÕt bad...  Maybe we donÕt have it be a battle with the ring guns, but instead tidal waves of shoggoth falling on huge populations of elders.  In essence, what is being conveyed is:  we made them -- and they destroyed us.  Cut out all the middle parts, the hows and whys of getting from point A to point B.  Just show A and B.

26.  Cliches:  Earth from space, reusing the beacon
There are a couple of elements that feel cheap whenever I imagine them.  The planet Earth.  Whenever I imagine it, it feels like a visual cliche...  Like thereÕs nothing that IÕm doing with it thatÕs so special that it deserves to be on screen.  Showing the amplifier also has this feeling.  ItÕs like IÕve already shown the thing -- so to Òmake the connectionÓ for the audience in the dream sequence is pandering to them...  ItÕs like IÕm blatantly recycling elements that I have on hand, because itÕs easy.  I donÕt want to be do that.  SO:  I think I want to prohibit any further brainstorming that involves images of the Earth or the amplifier.  ...There are clever alternatives...

If I wanted to show the amplifier, without actually using an image of it, I could simply have the elders turn into lightning.  If I really had to have earth, maybe I could show an image which is just of the oceans or something...  But probably not.  Just showing a sphere  feels wrong.  If it were a crescent -- because light only falls on one side, and the other side blends completely into the night...  That would be preferable.  [This is sort of like my ongoing gripe about how the moon is only ever shown in movies as a full moon.]

27.  How to depict the genocidal tidal wave?
So, letÕs explore the Òtwo tableauxÓ concept a bit farther.  Suppose instead of ending with the tidal wave, we ended in reverse with the shoggoth coming out of the elder as a single tear of blood?  How should I portray hundreds of elders dying?  I could have a flat, hieroglypic-style space.  I could have the Òleaping out at youÓ 3D glasses space, were the tidal wave is leaping out along the Z axis toward the audience.  (IÕm sort of already using that for the climax in act III, though.)  I could have an elderÕs-eye-view...  Which again seems to be the 1933 King Kong breaks through the village gates tableaux.  I could shoot from above and at an angle.  ...A lot of this depends on how I try to film the elders, though.  Are they silhouettes?  Anasazi frogs?  Statues?  Full running CG models?

28.  Ways to convey masses of elders dying
Imagine the elders sinking into the ground...  Or sort of melting into shapeless blobs.  Imagine making cast versions of the elders out of wax, then melting the models using time-lapse...  Sort of like how the melting Nazis were done in ÒRaiders of the Lost Ark.Ó  Imagine all these sinking elders standing on a sphere, and we can see about a tenth of the sphereÕs surface -- but itÕs rotating, so weÕre seeing all the elders going into the earth.

An army of elder statues, stretching off into the distance, standing still.  An army of 2D cardboard stand-ups, maybe pulsing in between X-ray version and normal mode...  An army all trying to use their mental powers to control the shoggoth.  A single elder exploding in blood; cut with the explosion in order to preserve the shock -- leaving an after-image on the audienceÕs retinas.

Have just the wiggling tadpole shoggoth growing -- then have the flash image of the single elder exploding, Òsplat.Ó

29.  Using a toilet to create a whirlpool effect
What if I poured black paint into the toilet, then filmed it as I flushed?  Could I use that for some visual effects compositing?

30.  Telepathic death
What if the way that the elders visualize death is less about being physically crushed than winking out of existence...  If theyÕre a telepathic species to some extent, then the would experience the death of another as a sudden terrible absence.  What if I start with an army of elders, and then instead of showing the shoggoth, have the camera fly over them, and they just keep popping out of existence?

31.  What would the coolest thing I could show on screen be?

32.  How do I make sure that act II doesnÕt look just the same as act III, if IÕm going to somehow communicate that there was a genocide?

33.  What if I had the mental waves of the elders not on top of their head, superimposed -- but instead had the radio wave layer placed underneath their bodies, radiating in all directions?

34.  In act III we see that the elders blood something like green gas.  Should this fact show up in act II?

35.  What if the sound for act II was largely just reverb?

36.  Feeling like my ideas are becoming muddy
I feel like IÕm running dry on ideas.  In previous stages of working on story development, I had material that I was responding to.  ItÕs easier asking questions when youÕre just trying to make the parts in front of you fit together.  Now I feel like IÕm trying to actually generate new ideas...  Or IÕm just taking the same parts and moving them around in front of me, mushing them into different configurations.  ItÕs like a canvas thatÕs overworked, where the paints have become muddy.  ItÕs hard after having worked on the story this long to be bold, or to feel like IÕve found THE solution.

The single tableaux is nice in part because it has a very limited number of elements for me to fabricate.  I like the idea of the shoggoth not being static, but being fairly violent and fluid for contrast.  I like the idea of a flood...  But it feels difficult to accomplish.

37.  What would be fun?
What would be fun?  What would be functional?  If I had the freedom to be playful, what kinds of clever jokes might I play on the audience?  What if the shoggoth snuck off around the elderÕs back?

38.  Approaching elders as a matter of character animation
Do I want the elder to still seem dead in act II?  If it was character animation, what would the character be communicating?  If I had Marcel Marceau pretending to be an elder, what would he do?  The core of what I want to tell for the film as a whole is Òthey were men, too.Ó  If I shifted focus from foreshadowing the shoggoths to telling the audience Òwhat kind of men the elders are,Ó what would come of that?

39.  Remember act II is a bridge between I and III
A while back I had the insight that act II needs to be viewed not in isolation, but as a bridge between act I and act III.  With that idea in mind, one thing that comes to mind is that the tidal wave should be seen as itÕs about to hit -- but I canÕt have it hit and not detract from act III.  If I could get a whirlpool effect, that would be pretty awesome...  The building storm.

40.  What kind of men are the elders?
If I want to communicate to the audience that the elders Òwere men too,Ó then I have to look at them as if they are people.  I have to figure out what their character is.  I started this work when I was asking Òwhat do the elders want?Ó  The first time I was able to figure out a partial answer to that was during the 3 wishes scenario...  What I came up with was that the elders want to eat...  they want a city...  they want slaves.  They want things apparently; they want to be served; theyÕre ambitious and want greatness.  TheyÕre lazy....  They still feel extremely inscrutable to me!

One of the big challenges here is that the elders are damn near impossible to animate.  This brings me back to the concept of having the elders start out in a quasi-humanoid form, and wind up as fully alien.

41.  What if we started with an actual human silhouette, then in shots that follow, change the form to that of an elder?

42.  Act II as Walt Disney would have done it
OK, it feels hokey -- but letÕs go there for the moment...  Part of the difficulty with portraying the emotional life of an elder, and thereby humanizing it, is that the emotional story takes place over a billion years...  ItÕs too spread out to make sense.  So letÕs imagine that the shoggothÕs entire history is condensed down into one minute of film time -- and the elder responds to the shoggoth emotionally in a moment-to-moment way.

How does it feel to create the shoggoth?  ThereÕs a moment of pain in splitting open a vein and releasing blood.  Now look at this thing youÕve created!  ItÕs tiny.  Is there a moment of feeling that itÕs cute?  But then the shoggoth needs to grow...  So you feed it droplets of your own blood [a la ÒLittle Shop of HorrorsÓ].  And you feel proud.  You puff out your chest.  Now you get a little provocative.  You challenge the shoggoth to create other species from its own flesh.  You point and have a determined look on your face.  DonÕt give me any guff; I wonÕt hear any excuses!  So the shoggoth hangs its head in shame for having questioned the command.  It shudders and manages to lay an egg, which evolves into the rest of animal kind.  It looks to the elder for approval -- the elder nods, pleased...  But attention is focused on the egg and the creatures that itÕs evolving into.

A laser beam goes through the animal, and it is suddenly dead.  Droplets of blood drip down from above, and the elder hungrily, lustfully catches them in its mouth, rubs its stomach.  The elder looks at the shoggoth again.  The shoggoth looks up, hoping that it will get more approval -- but no, the elder is feeling greedy, and shakes itÕs head:  ÒNo, youÕre not done -- donÕt think that!Ó  The elder points decisively to the horizons, then points back at the shoggoth, issuing a few very stern commands.  The shoggoth puppy hangs its head for a moment, then takes a deep breath, and turns to its new work.  It strains, focusing, beads of sweat break out on its head, and then it suddenly puffs out to twice its original size.  It takes a moment to breath, then strains even harder...

Pseudopods shoot out of its sides, and become lines that grow upward...  The lines of a complex, gothic cityscape grow around the cyclorama horizon line, like frost across a window.  The elder looks all around, its arms thrown back, lost in amazement and delight.  In the rooms of those buildings, we see little elders fade into being, so that the city is populated.  The elder thumps a fist against its chest in patriotic pride, looking at the scene around it (but not at the shoggoth).  Cut to the shoggoth -- panting in exhaustion.  The elder looks down at it; the shoggoth looks up, exhausted still, but bashfully hopeful.  None of that!  The elder immediately points at the shoggoth and then up to the buildings, complaining that the elders there have no servants, and this will never do.

But the shoggoth is too exhausted to lift another pseudopod.  ItÕs a pile of exhausted, panting goo.  The elder finally pays attention to this.  Goes silent.  Then looks up at the sky exasperated.  Heaves a sigh, as if itÕs being put upon...  Then summons up its focus.  Putting fingers to temples, the elder sends out mental waves.  The shoggoth shudders, wracked by pain.  Again, in a cataclysmic growth spurt, it doubles in size.  And whatÕs more, at the end of the spurt, it shudders a moment more -- and then a huge eye opens in its middle.

The elder points to the city line and issues a definitive command.  The shoggoth, now dwarfing its master, looks to the sky line, and then does as itÕs told.  Thin pseudopods shoot out from it, like a million tree roots, and we see them appear in the rooms of the city.  The camera pans across the ant-farmish rooms, and we see the tentacles, with more eyes attached to them, carrying plates with food on them, sweeping floors, putting books away on bookshelves.

We turn back to the elder, whoÕs got his chest puffed out, and arms across chest, eyes closed, looking like heÕs immensely proud, and owns the world.  ...But then we see the rooms of the city again, and all is not going quite so well.  The tentacles are growing up the walls, puddles are spreading out.  Things are getting out of control.  We look at the shoggoths main eye, and itÕs looking a little strained and crazed.  ItÕs staring into space, having itÕs own thought (slowly overcoming the mental control of the elder.

The elder begins shouting and waving its arms -- but the shoggoth doesnÕt respond or look down at itÕs dwarfed master.  The elder shouts to the other elders in the cities, and in anger tells them to start punishing the shoggoths.  So the elders in the city attack the shoggoth spills on their walls with ring guns.  The pseudopods instinctively pull back.  Some are burned and destroyed.  It looks like the elders are winning, purging the messy shoggoth extremities from their midst.

But now the shoggoth comes out of its crazed stupor; its anger is focused, and it stares down at its former master with a murderous rage.  In the city, we see the tentacles spring back to life, twice as strong, and they start knocking down elders.  The master elder looks up at the shoggoth with fear for the first time.  It takes a few hesitant steps backward.  The shoggoth retracts all of its forces, like a riptide, and it begins to amass itself into a giant tidal wave.  The master drops all pretenses, turns, and runs for its life.

The master is joined by crowds of other elders running for their life.  Behind them, the shoggoth tidal wave is rising up unimaginably high...  And then it falls.  We see one face after another terrified, being struck down instantly dead as the torrent breaks across the escaping crowd.

Most of the crowd is wiped out by the strike...  But a small group, running faster than the rest manage to get ahead of the tide, outpacing it as it chases them.  The beacon/amplifier whirls into view.  The group run into itÕs magic mirror, a lightning bolt flares up, and we tilt upward following its beam to see another planet floating above us, which we must presume the elders have been transported.  At the ÒdoorÓ to the beacon, the master pauses and looks back.  There are still a few elders left, which the shoggoth is plowing through -- quickly coming toward the exit device.  With a moment of regret and horror, the elder turns away, and steps into his escape pod.

And cut.

Yep, thatÕs how I think the story would be told if it were done by Walt Disney.  I almost imagine Mickey Mouse in his sorcererÕs apprentice garb...  And the shoggoth is sort of like a puppy -- Pluto?  [Actually IÕm imagining Gerald from Justin RaschÕs work in progress, ÒGeraldÕs Last DayÓ -- but thatÕs hardly relevant.]

The SorcererÕs Apprentice is a very interesting reference, actually...  It wouldnÕt be too far from the fact to look at the elders as a species of wizards.  I could see in the dream sequence throwing in some oblique references to a sorcerer summoning up a demon and keeping it trapped in a magic circle...  Incantations and magic signs drawn in the air with alchemical gestures...  And the shoggoth is very much like the flood waters created by the servant broom, which crash everywhere around, and nearly drown the apprentice.

The exercise is a digression from anything that I actually intend to show onscreen -- but if I want to figure out how to humanize the emotionless elders, then going over the top with schmaltz might not be such a bad strategy.  Having gone too far, now I can pull back and tone it down.  Right?

43.  What would your fantasy director do?
I wonder what other directors I might have do a treatment of my film?  E.g., Act II as if it were done by George Lucas or Spielberg...  Act II as if it were done by Joss Whedon...  Tarantino...  Frustratingly, I donÕt know that many directors.  But Òwhat would your fantasy director do?Ó is an interesting question.

For Act I, I was imagining Ron Moore of Battlestar Galactica doing the editing...  His strategy seems to be to cut straight to the mythologically important scenes, leaving out most of the tension-building filler...  And to persistently think of what the worst possible thing is that he can do to his characters.  For act I, I tried to cut past all my filler to what had to happen.  Could this work for Act II also?

44.  Act II as if told by Ron Moore
Suppose the actors in LSGL were Apollo and Starbuck.  What would they see in the dream sequence?

As the characters make their way through the hive, Starbuck would be making wisecracks...  And Apollo would be looking earnestly scared, genuinely unsure that heÕs equipped to deal with the situation.  Then they see the amplifier, with the magic mirror and its aurora borealis effect.  ThereÕs a ringing in their ears..  We hear whispers around them...  Their faces go slack, and the audience thinks ÒOh shit!  ItÕs got them!Ó

TheyÕre pulled forward as if in a trance.  Apollo starts forward, his hand outstretched.  Starbuck (who gets smacked down dead later on) gets a look of horror on her face, discernable even through the slack trance face...  As if her subconscious mind knows that this is bad -- or her conscious mind is wriggling and struggling somewhere below the surface in a body that is out of her control.

ApolloÕs had touches the strange machine.  We cut from reality to his mental reality, a picture of him screaming in agony, mouth wide open and eyes squeezed tightly shut, but his hand stuck on the screen -- cut back to reality, where heÕs slack faced.  We slowly zoom in on his face.  Intercut with a slow zoom in on his hand...  All the aurora energy seems to be draining from the screen through his hand, into his body.  Then it seems to burst back out of his hand across the screen -- as if the energy is rejecting him as a suitable vessel.

Pull back to just behind Apollo, where it looks like the electricity is fracturing the mirror -- you think it might shatter.

Pull back farther, to where we can see the whole scene.  The screen goes suddenly dead.  Pause a beat.  Lightning shoots forth from the beacon.  Cut to black.

We see a giant black wave cresting, which fills the entire screen.

We see an elder thing off a ways, standing in a large dark room, walls beyond sight, in the shadows...  A spotlight on the elder, so that itÕs almost blinding in the reflected glow.

We see ApolloÕs face; heÕs also engulfed in the darkness of this room.  HeÕs no longer frozen in a trance...  HeÕs looking around, trying to figure out where he is and whatÕs going on.

Cut back to the elder.  Now weÕre closer.  We see that  thereÕs a mass of protoplasm floating in front of it, and the elderÕs arm is held outward.  The elder is turned away from us a little, so that thereÕs a sense that weÕre sort of looking over its shoulder...  Like the real action is being slightly concealed from us.

Close-up on the elderÕs outstretched hand now, and we see that it is bleeding.  One droplet at a time falls away -- but falls sideways through space to the floating blob.

We get a medium shot that shows the droplets are hitting the blob and rippling across its surface.  The shot is framed so we see most of the lower half of the blob -- re-emphasizing that itÕs floating in mid-air.

A shot that shows the elder more or less from the waist up, with the shoggoth floating behind it.  Two of the eyes seem to turn toward Apollo to speak:  ÒFrom blood comes life. Life will serve.Ó

We pull back for a shot that has ApolloÕs full-body back in frame.  A city rises up around the living beings.  ItÕs like an inverted Tower of Babel, where weÕre standing in the center of a cylinder with ramps that lead up to ramparts that have small square buildings and domes on top.  The citadel emerging out of nothing at about a humanÕs shoulder-height, emerging in a progressive spiral.  Maybe we get an amber sky and clouds above it all, with tiny pterodactyls flying around.

Maybe we look down at Apollo standing there distracted -- and we look at him through a ghostly screaming head of a pteranodon as it flies by.  HeÕs at a loss for words, but also a little appalled.

We go back to the shot that has a full-body backlit silhouette of Apollo...  This time the shoggoth is far more massive...  And maybe it has blinking eyes all over it now.

The camera focuses on the side of ApolloÕs face, and moves around him catching the light in interesting ways.  Apollo, in concern:  ÒThe wave will break!Ó

We get the over-the-shoulder shot of the elder, from when it spoke...  One of the other eyestalks swings around and barks in a different, lower voice:  ÒWho goes there?!Ó

Cut to elders falling from out of a mist-filled void directly at the camera.  Their bodies are limp and spinning.  (Could this be accomplished using the bits of LightWave that simulate cloth?)  Naturally one of the eldersÕ heads comes directly at the camera.

Cut to the cave.  Apollo is forcefully leading the way out.  Starbuck is complaining loudly, wanting to know what that was all about back at the machine.  ÒNow you want to leave?!Ó

Maybe Apollo says ÒSomething is coming.Ó  Or maybe he explains, Ò[There was a great tragedy...]  It was genocide.  Their slaves rose up and wiped them out.  These poor fools are all thatÕs left.Ó

Maybe thereÕs a little conflict...  Starbuck:  ÒGood!Ó  Apollo:  ÒNo, not good!  They were scientists, and artists...  Starbuck:  ÒAnd they kept slaves!Ó

Cut to the outside, where we see the beacon is shooting a beam into the sky.  Maybe we get a POV shot from inside another cave.  Then something is racing toward the mountain.

Apollo:  ÒAll this happened millions of years ago.  They created life on Earth!Ó  Starbuck:  ÒOh, get out.Ó

Then something in front of them is waking up.

45.  Analyzing the Ron Moore version
IÕm not sure if IÕve actually done a Ron Moore telling, or if IÕve done that universally reviled end scene from ÒMission to Mars.Ó

Part of me kept thinking that I should have the shot of the tidal wave rearing up again.

I like the notion of one of the eye stalks turning and talking in a different voice -- thatÕs the part of the elderÕs brain thatÕs actually still on earth playing guardian.

The idea that the elder mistakes Apollo for another elder until Apollo actually speaks isnÕt terrible.

The reverse-Babylon structure is intriguing...  It reminds me of the building that the explorers in ATMOM wind up in just before descending toward the subterranean city.  The small city buildings on top are an embellishment.

Having the elder speak is not out of the question -- I did have versions of this previously where the elders told the story in their own voice.

Showing the explorer on screen is a radical departure.

It seems like IÕve set this telling up to be in photo-realism, rather than in a computery green.  Not sure how I feel about that.

ThereÕs a color conflict, where the elder seems to be dripping red blood -- but later on when they get smacked, we see pine green blood explode out.