Monday, February 26, 2001

CTAN 436; Writing for Animation; Fall, 2001

Sufi Synesthesia


Technical Direction
The camera will track-out from a close-up of a hand to somewhere in the ozone -
similar to  the long camera move in Powers of Ten (1977) by the Eames Office for IBM


Cloned Miniature Titanosaur


It will be repeated 4 times, beginning at separate scenes, and settling to identical point of view of Earth.   In editing, the shots will be shuffled, unfolding the chapters of each story simultaneously to emphasize a feeling of synchronicity.

The actors and their immediate environment will be live-action, shot with a DV camera.  The medium ground will be a 3-dimensional computer generate environment.  And the distant landscapes will be matte paintings.  All three layers will be digitally rendered with a cell shader.

A Ma Zone, cover art, 1999, Zap Mama, for label Luaka Bop

This image by Rashin Kheirieh for the Roshan Initiative
in Persian Digital Humanities has an  Ethno-Techno  feel.

Cat wearing Google Glasses



Scene I
An olive colored hand dips a pen into inkwell. A CALLIGRAPHER's arm is revealed as the camera pulls out. With each stroke of the pen, a FEMALE VOICE CHANTS the words. As the ink soaks into the parchment paper, we notice a fiber-optic line attached to the opposite end of the quill. And as the ink dries, the Arabic letters lift off the page, swirling around the poet.  She is kneeling on an intricately woven Persian rug made of silk, which rests in an idyllic oasis, in the desert.  As the camera continues to pull away from the desert, the whirling words take the form of a large BIRD and fly away into the sunrise.

Scene 2
A porcelain colored hand turns wooden knobs.  As the camera pulls out, it reveals a tattooed arm tuning a Chinese lute.  As the MUSICIAN starts to PLUCK THE STRINGS, we notice they are made of lasers.  The vibration of these virtual strings forms Chinese characters.  As we continue to pull out, we see a swirl of characters enveloping the musician, who is sitting in a small wooden boat.  As we pull far enough away from the craft, floating in a calm sea, the Chinese characters  take the form of a SHARK. The shark swiftly swims away towards the setting sun.

Scene3

A cocoa colored hand brushes across the surface of a tight skin, THUMPING it once.  The camera pulls away showing the toned, branded arms of a DRUMMER warming-up  on what appears to be a primitive drum.  As`a rhythm starts to develop, we notice the instrument's base is made of ferrofluid, a liquid metal that quiver and spikes with every beat.  From the bottom African script pours out and twists around the percussionist.  He is perched on the branch of a large tree alongside his pet, a cloned Saber'-tooth Tiger.  As we pull far enough away from the jungle, we notice the letters slowly taking the form of a LION. It ROARS before pouncing into a cloud.

 
Ferrofluid Video by Tabea Rothfuchs, Music by Christian Jost-Musik

Scene 4
A MAN rubs his pink hands together in an effort to stay warm. He breathes into his hands, just before slipping into some gloves. We see his breath in the cold air. He starts to warm his voice by HUMMING some notes, while putting on his helmet. We see his sound represented, like a stereo's equalizer, on his face shield.  As he transitions from humming to SINGING, the Latin letters float from the back of his helmet. He steps into his binding and pushes down the mountain.   We see a stream of letters following him as he gracefully carves fresh tracks in virgin powder.  The letters take the form of a large SNAKE and slither up into the clear blue sky.

Final Scene

The four shots all settle in the same part of the sky, well above the Earth. We see  the creatures moving towards each other. But instead of colliding, the letters weave themselves into one spherical mass, as the SOUNDS MERGE. As this harmonious scene continues, the image quality becomes rasterized. We notice the hard edge of the image,  and realize this scene is being projected onto a canyon wall. The camera continues to pan back, revealing a large group of ethnically diverse people dancing at a late-night rave. They are on a stone plateau, surrounded by steep sculpted canyon walls in Moab, Utah. There is a small satellite dish aimed at the sky, where there are many colorful particle clouds. As the song ends, the dish rotates and points another part of the sky, as the next song starts.