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July 31, 2007
lsgl: act 2?
by sven at 11:59 pm
Work has been getting increasingly miserable. The shots I've produced this past week don't look any good to me. The tentacles refuse to do what I want them to. And thinking about nothing but the film is finally turning my brain to mush.
I think there are only about six shots left to do for Act 3... Unfortunately, they're all really difficult ones.
So, rather than continuing to hit my head against this wall, I'm switching focus for a while.
I'm doing development work on Act 2: the distress beacon's message -- which explains why the Elder Things are in the cave, and preps the audience to understand what's happening when the Shoggoth arrives. I've already cut the epilogue from the film... But I don't think the story can hold together without Act 2.
My anxiety about Act 3 -- a lot of it is probably actually due to Act 2. I just don't have a firm grip on Act 2 yet... So when I've tried to imagine what I'll be working on after Act 3's done, the future's been a big horrifying unknown.
What's Act 2 look like? What's the story? Can I get it done in time?
Act 2 is the only part of the film that has a voice-over. I've been re-writing the script again, trying to get it down to bare essentials. Based on my most recent drafts (which I'm not happy with yet), it looks like Act 2 will be around 30 seconds long. Maybe 40. ...Doesn't sound like much -- but it's potentially a lifetime in animation.
There are a number of ideas that I need to communicate:
- the Elder Things come from outer space
- they had a whole civilization on Earth, with multiple cities
- they had slaves: huge gelatinous blobs called Shoggoths
- almost all of the Elders were wiped out during an uprising
- all of this happened millions of years ago
- the Elders in the cave are hiding, waiting for rescue, forever hunted by the Shoggoths
Trying to come up with a script that says all this quickly and compellingly has been sort of like writing lines of poetry.
The visual look of Act 2 is still being developed, too. My main thoughts right now are that I want everything green and distressed with static. The shot that I'm most excited about involves an army of Shoggoths climbing up the walls of an enormous city. Exactly what this city is going to look like is still up in the air -- but I've been looking at pictures from the original Astounding Stories publication for inspiration.
posted by sven | July 31, 2007 11:59 PM | categories: let sleeping gods lie