LSGL BRAINSTORM
Th 03.13.08

Premise:  Explore Act II as dream sequence.  Focus on using the Òquestion streamingÓ method.  Try more Òfantasy directorÓ exercises.

1.  Contrasting Act II
There are several ways in which I might contrast Act II with the other acts.

*  Act I & III have crowds; Act II have a very sparse composition, one elder

*  Act I & III in Òneon gothicÓ color; Act II in black & green, possibly desaturated

*  Act I very still, Act III chaotic...  Act II even more frozen in time?

*  Act I & III mostly static camera; Act II more camera motion?

*  Act I & III use cuts pragmatically; Act II cut for stuttery textural quality?

2.  What not to show in Act II
Act III shows a genocide in progress...  Therefore Act II should not show the shoggoth tidal wave hitting.  The threat of violence can be revealed, so too the consequences of violence -- but actual killing must be reserved for Act III.

ItÕs OK to show the elders standing up and eyes open -- to show that theyÕre alive...  But itÕs probably best not to show the elders actually running.  ThatÕs a ÒsurpriseÓ to save for the conclusion.

I donÕt think the beacon should be shown in Act II...  Mostly because itÕs been well established, and would feel like IÕm just recycling.  ItÕll show up again in Act III briefly -- itÕs not such an important element that it belongs in all three chapters.

3.  Big reveals
In the prologue, the big reveal is discovering a hive full of elders.

In Act I, the big reveal is the beacon -- and seeing it burst to life.

In Act II, the shoggoth is foreshadowed...  And thereÕs a minor reveal with the elders standing up...  But is the big reveal actually the city of the elders?  To somehow say:  What you didnÕt expect is that they had a massive, prehistoric civilization!  [Could pteranodons be used to signify that the elders are prehistoric?]

In Act III, the big reveal is that the shoggoth is alive and still vengeful.  The tableaux based on the 1933 King Kong scene where Kong breaks through the village gates is my key shot.

Denouement...  IÕm not entirely sure how I want to end the film.  After IÕve got Act II sorted out, this is still going to require some attention.

4.  How the film ends?
The film could end abruptly, with the last human about to be crushed by an elder falling on him.

We could have a survivor -- which would have to be Carl now -- go and check on Andrew...  A survey of the devastation.  And then in the distance we hear the shoggoth scream -- a last moment of Òboo!Ó for the audience.  [I could probably cut out surveying the carnage -- instead just have a single shot of Carl leaning over Andrew, then the sound, and Carl jerks his head in surprise.]

I could end with shots outside the cave, showing that the amplifier is still running.  Although, now that IÕm no longer treating it as an automatic distress beacon, this wouldnÕt make sense.  ...I could still do something outside -- like a shot of the explorerÕs plane, and the shoggoth screaming, now recognizing the existence of humanity in the world.

I could fade from my ÒrealisticÓ color palette into my dream-sequence palette of black and green.

I could show some sort of frieze using symbolic figures that conveys a food chain...  Shoggoths at the top, elders in the middle, humans at the bottom.

I have a single shot of an elder and an explorer both lying still on the floor, in pools of blood...  Pools of blood mixing together?

If I donÕt end abruptly with Carl being crushed by an elder, then most of these endings that IÕm imagining seem to come *after* the credits?

5.  Fabrication for the ÒRon MooreÓ telling
So, imagine that I go with the ÒRon MooreÓ telling of Act II that I described yesterday.

I could see making the elder an actual statue, which doesnÕt move at all, but which has glowing eyes.  The shoggoth would be fairly static...  Undulating mildly, to show that itÕs a fluid, but primarily spherical/ovoid -- not a violent teardrop tadpole.  Both of these elements would be in 3D, and would be *relatively* easy to fabricate.

So, the bulk of my fabrication work would go into the Reverse Tower of Babel (Cylinder of Babel?  Funnel of Babel?) -- and the pteranodons.  The pteranodons would be quite a project, fabrication-wise...  But at least I wouldnÕt also be doing character design work.  The conceptual art that I see on the wikipedia entry looks wildly adequate...  And no matter how I try, my versions are bound to look different.  In fact, if I wanted to and it made sense visually, pteranodons are recognizable enough that I could probably get away with stylized versions -- e.g. rough-hewn wireframes.

6.  The Funnel of Babel
What if the Funnel of Babel was done in a photo-realistic style?  The visual philosophy that IÕve espoused has the explorers being least realistic because they are the most ephemeral elements in the story...  The contemporary environment is done in a ÒpainterlyÓ look.  The elders and shoggoth are the ultimate reality in this universe, so they are portrayed photo-realistically.  Seeing life as they once knew it might also fall into this category -- ultimate reality.

On the other hand, perhaps the Funnel of Babel is an environment, and should therefore be portrayed in a painterly fashion?

IÕm imagining creating the Funnel of Babel in LightWave so I can have the camera move around and look at it from different angles.  IÕm wondering if I ought not also use LightWaveÕs ÒSkyTracerÓ plug-in in order to create a clear sky above the whole thing.  ...It would be interesting to look up from the Òblack boxÓ theater-in-the-round staging, and see a hallucination above which includes a sky with a single sun in it.

I keep imagining the building and the sky being in rusty sepia tones.  Sort of like the way that the Martian environment is sometimes portrayed in films.  Sepia tones would perhaps suggest Òlong agoÓ better than a blue sky...  A green or black sky would be somewhat difficult to interpret visually.

7.  Symbolism of the Tower of Babel
From a symbolic standpoint, making a reference to the Tower of Babel is pretty apt -- because itÕs a story of hubris.  ThatÕs sort of how IÕve been characterizing the elders -- their fatal flaw is hubris.  They thought themselves gods...  Who not merely had the power of life (having created animal life) and death (consuming what they created) -- but a divine entitlement to obedience.  They felt that the world should bow down before them...  [A nice reference to how the origins of praying with oneÕs hands together actually are a visual reference to slaves bowing down with their hands shackled.]  But they too were subject to the law of survival of the fittest.  They made the shoggoths powerful enough to overthrow them -- and so it had to come to pass.  As if God had made a being capable of murdering God, yet expected it to instead always worship.

8.  Coloring the elder and shoggoth
If the sky is sepia, should the elder and shoggoth be computer green?  Or should they be in their normal colors of black/green and red?  Perhaps the floor would need to be done in alabaster tiles, in order to help the elder stand out?  And yet, the space would still be defined by lighting...  Having an illuminated area in the middle of an apparently infinite room, which is otherwise pitch black.

ThereÕs still this problem about blood color, if I have the elder dripping blood to create the shoggoth.

9.  Destroying Babel
Perhaps after we get a fly-by of a pteranodon, then the appearance of the Tower should be transformed -- smoke should be billowing into the skies...  Perhaps fire?  Hmmm...  Fire is an effect that can be accomplished digitally (or so IÕve read), which would add a lot of visual interest.  Granted, the city is supposed to be made of stone -- so IÕm not sure what the fuel for the fires would be...  Perhaps its the roofs of the buildings?

I could use the ÒExplodeÓ effect in AfterEffects to destroy the Tower in a more impressionistic way.

10.  Progression of spaces
One of the things I like about the Ron Moore telling is that IÕm getting a lot of spatial contrast going on.  ItÕs like an inner sanctum.

A)  Outside -- clear to horizon
B)  Tunnel -- enclosed, winding, long
C)  Hive -- huge enclosed space...  crowded but static
D)  Inner sanctum of dream sequence -- small room
E)  Stampede -- huge enclosed space transformed into no space at all, due to moving crowd

11.  Falling back to Babel / resuscitated by lightning
What if the elders who are coming back to Earth from the future via the amplifier are not in a shot that is visually separated from the tower, but instead they fall from the sky in the Babel world...  Perhaps along  a lightning bolt which looks like a vertical rift in space/time?  (Fade out either end of the lightning bolt thatÕs hovering in the air.)

Perhaps the dream sequence should end with lightning arcing outward from the center of the sanctum...  As if the amplifier were sitting in the center of the room...  Perhaps it should shoot outward into the darkness of the dream space -- for the first time illuminating that space Òbeyond the campfireÓ -- and we see that out there in the dark there are hundreds of elders standing around that we hadnÕt seen before...  And the lightning strikes them, bringing them back to life!

11.  The slow-motion god
The elder at the heart of the dream sequence could be moving in slow-motion, rather than utterly frozen as a statue.  In some ways, this builds up to the stampede more smoothly than jumping from frozen to wild and fast.  ThereÕs a way in which slow-motion is more tense than frozen, too -- big horrible things are supposed to move fast...  Seeing one move slowly, youÕre just waiting for it to become aware of your presence.

The slow-motion would be a nice way to communicate that the elders in the hive are in hibernation, too, that they are dreaming like glaciers.

Slow-motion would be helpful in terms of animating -- it wouldnÕt require me to be as precise as realistic character animation demands.  The motion is stylized, so itÕs OK for it to be oddly wrong and abstract.

Drawing upon the notion of the elders as wizards, maybe instead of blood dripping from the elder (or perhaps in addition to that), two arms should be in motion creating mystical shapes in the air...  Perhaps shapes that leave glowing tracers in the air?  (Not sure immediately how to do that, but I think some of the principles involved in having a roller coaster follow a track could help.)

12.  Transforming the dream god
Perhaps if we go with lightning coming down from space, branching outward into the darkness and bringing the sleeping crowd of elders there to life, then we should get a shot of the elder ÒgodÓ in the sanctum fading out of existence, as the dreamers wake up.

Given that the elder in the middle is a collective dream, rather than an actual dreamer, it need not precisely match the elders as we see them in the cave.  For instance, I could replace the skin color with a reflective gold...  As if the elders worship a graven idol -- which is themselves...

Perhaps after the pteranodon flies by, and we switch to tableax #2 -- where Babel is burning -- the Òdream godÓ elder should be mutilated.  IÕm imagining it still standing, but decapitated and disemboweled down to the halfway mark in the body...  And there floating in the air beside it, the shoggoth is now massive, and covered with eyes.

13.  Scenes in Act II
Presuming IÕm going with the ÒRon MooreÓ telling as the foundation for Act II, IÕm beginning to see a couple of vital shots emerging...  Which I can work at shaping and detailing now.

A)  The elder creating the shoggoth from its own blood
B)  The rise of the Babylon Tower, pteranodons flying by
C)  The fall of Babylon -- dream god decapitated and shoggoth mighty
D)  Elders returning from the future, reactivation of the dreamers

These arenÕt separate chapters -- theyÕre just different shots, so I donÕt think IÕm necessarily getting too complicated here...  At least not in terms of the story-telling.

The flavor of this reminds me a lot of the weird dream sequence at the end of 2001.

14.  Doing Babylon using stopmo
What if I made the tower as a practical?  I could see creating the spiral form with large sheets of thin cardboard from Art Media...  Which I could then coat with a layer of plaster bandages, and surface with pure plaster.

Similarly, the pteranodons could be made with puppets rather than CG.  I donÕt doubt that I could do them faster as physical puppets than CG models, which need rigging.  TheyÕre not nearly as problematic as Cthulhu, with a humanoid form, bat wings, and lots of facial tentacles.  I could conceivably do the head in resin, and the body in foam latex.  I might also be able to just do it as a build-up puppet.  Getting lighting to always match would be a considerable issue.

Drat...  I think IÕve been mixing up Babel and Babylon.  ItÕs Babel I mean.  [Research via wikipedia.]  Ah-ha...  HereÕs the issue:  ÒBabelÓ is Hebrew for Babylon.  The tower of Babel was supposedly located in the city of Babylon...  Populated by Babylonians, obviously.

OK, so on the plus side, IÕve been interested in doing Òmixed media animation,Ó and doing the tower as a practical would move in that direction.  On the down side, if the model doesnÕt look good in real life, it probably wonÕt look right on film either.

Conceivably, I could print out textures, like bricks, on the laser printer, and simply adhere them to a cardboard understructure.  The buildings on the top could be air-dried clay, or small plaster castings, or even resin castings (like some of the war-gaming websites IÕve seen describe)...  Or, if weÕre just talking about blocks and cubes, bits of wood or Dow Extruded Polystyrene.

I could see doing an amazing shot where I break the model away a little bit at a time, and then run the footage in reverse, to show the tower seeming to build itself from nothing.

15.  Camera moves prohibit most stopmo
Oh -- that would be a reason for not doing the tower itself as a practical -- I couldnÕt do virtual camera moves.  Oh well, probably better to do it in-machine anyway...  It allows me to make better use of the cutÕnÕpaste.  And the integration with the sky would work better -- since when you turn the camera, you want the sky and the tower to be as one.

The pteranodons are still an option for stopmo, tho, since they are separate elements, which could be freely composited in.  Perhaps IÕd do the filming of the dinosaurs first, then project that footage onto a transparent CG hemisphere, so any virtual camera moves would transmit motion perfectly.

16.  Contrasting the two tableaux
So, letÕs look at the ÒbeforeÓ and ÒafterÓ tableaus...  Both of which are nearly still...  Just a little bit of motion in each one to keep them alive...

[Ack.  It looks like IÕve been spelling tableau incorrectly.  Singular = tableau, plural = tableaux.  ThereÕs no such word as ÒtableausÓ ...Though Microsoft Word doesnÕt seem smart enough to realize it.]

The first tableau has the elder in control of the shoggoth, and the tower rises up like a dream.  We get a moment to admire the heights and identify the pteranodons.  Maybe the elder needs to be stimulating the shoggoth, so itÕs waving pseudopods or something.  I donÕt know how else to communicate that the shoggoths are involved in construction.  IÕm pretty sure I donÕt want to show miniature shoggoths slithering up the ramps...  It would be a scale cue -- and I donÕt want to have to animate tiny elders up there.

The elder might be controlling the shoggoth by drawing magic lines in the air.  IÕd like to communicate that thereÕs a telepathic link -- but I donÕt think the radio waves concept works in a 3D visual space...  It only works with 2D representations of the elders.  There are other things I could do, though...  Like have some sort of distortion field around the elderÕs head.  This might be too active, though, and break the Òslow-mo godÓ aesthetic.

In the second tableau, we have the tower in flames, smoke billowing up into the sky.  Maybe there are great cracks in the walls...  Maybe I change the surface texture so that everything looks more eroded.  Maybe there could be a visual effect where I film paint running down a wall -- then flip it upside-down, so we get impressions of slime crawling up the walls.

We come back from examining the city, to see the elder is dead and the shoggoth is enormous -- and covered with eyes.  The thing is awake.  IÕm drawn toward the idea of having the shoggoth sphere be done with video footage of eyes -- like in my original video concept sketch back when I started this project, five years ago.  But video eyes might not make sense -- maybe I should use CG eyes -- which would help create the connection between a vaguely spherical shoggoth, and the great tidal wave shoggoth of Act III.  Perhaps I could make up for this disappointment with another neat effect...  Having some of the eyes become stars, like the eyes of the god elder?

How we transition from tableau 1 to tableau 2 is open for discussion.  Focusing on a pteranodon seems like a good concept, because it can sweep by -- creating sort of a sweep transition...  But there are other options...  One virtue of having the transition be with the pteranodon is that itÕs high up in the sky -- itÕs the highest point of focus in the film.  Through the craning of our necks to look up there, we get a sense that that moment is also the pinnacle of elder achievement.  The screaming dinosaur -- the Òthunder lizardÓ -- is a nice stand-in for the might of the elders.

I could, I suppose have elders flying up there in the sky -- but this once again raises issues about why it is that I havenÕt given the elders in the cave wings.  I could say that theyÕre degenerate...  But IÕm just opening up the same old can of worms.  Not to mention that creating 3D models of elders that can fly would be *very difficult.*

17.  Book-ending the tableaux
So thereÕs a question about what comes before and after the Òbefore and afterÓ tableaux.

Should we see the explorerÕs silhouette in the dream environment?  It would be interesting to have the elder and the human talk, like I described in the ÒRon MooreÓ telling...  But, on the other hand, it would clutter up an already complicated composition.  ItÕs probably wiser to keep my visual elements to a minimum.  It would also require calling Carl back for filming pick-up shots...  Which wouldnÕt be that bad, since heÕs back living in Portland again now.

Having the camera move would imply the POV of the human, anyway.

The front bookend has to do with creating the shoggoth -- and perhaps controlling it?  If thereÕs darkness all around, I could have a starry sky, if I wanted...  But again, the complexity grows.

The rear bookend has to do with the elders from the future returning to earth and rejoining with their bodies.  I have a vision of a shot of them falling from outer space...  And this idea of lighting up the dark with lightning to reveal the crowds of elders who have been dreaming the dream -- this is very exciting.  There might be some sort of ÒstartleÓ transition...  To signify that the dream is interrupted, and we are leaving collective unconsciousness time to return to something like real time.

There are a lot of ways to do this transition shot.  I could have elder eyes bursting open...  But IÕm sort of already doing that shot in Act III.  Or the dream tableax could explode into pieces.  Or simply fade away.  Or freeze into ice.

One benefit to the idea of having stars in the sky as the elder is creating the first shoggoth...  Since the god elder is star-eyed, we could realize when lightning illuminates the dreamers in the dark that the stars were actually *their* eyes watching.