Overview
Note of clarification to members of Rochester Movie Makers: The 7/1/08 completion goal that I established would be for a short excerpt, scene 2, titled Stay With The Group, primarily featuring the tour guide character, tourists, and only brief shots of any factory workers (if any). It would clock in at just under three minutes. The process of working out how to shoot and composite it, however, will establish the look for most of the rest of the feature, so it is important to try to “get it right”.
Rock opera = commercial suicide.
Dystopian fiction = commercial suicide.
Animated feature not targeted at children = commercial suicide.
All three at once = my dream project.
Your so-called “art”…
When I first told my friends about my rock opera idea in the summer of 1987, I mentioned that it would probably take years to complete. I’m not sure what I based this prediction on, but it turned out to be both false and true. I declared it to be “finished” within a year, but it wasn’t really. Besides, what did I mean by “complete” anyway? Complete a manuscript? A demo? An album? A stage show? A film? And how many years? It’s this kind of vague goal-setting that has shaped — or, rather, kept so nebulous — the entire course of my so-called “adult” life.
Given the glacial evolution of the sound recording — initial demo completed 1988, more “complete” demo completed 1993, “real” version completed by the end of 1995, hacked-up (but improved in some ways) CD version released in 1998, then a couple years later the reels are dusted off for a quick “week or two” remix, which takes on a life of its own and becomes a re-make that drags out over half a decade — would it even be possible for me to say, okay, I’m going to make a film version, and it will be done in a year or two?
Why not? Everything else was “done” in a year or two. It depends how you define “done”, doesn’t it?
Whether or not I can complete the final final final final version of the film in the time I have left on this planet doesn’t matter. One “final” is enough. If my survivors are up for it, they can fix it in the postmortem. So enough speculating on how much time I have vs. how much work there is to do — both are equally a mystery to me — best to just lay out the synopsis and go from there.
Is that what it looks like on the outside?
What is Through Forbidden Black Doors about in ten words or less? How would I describe it to someone between floors on an elevator? Wikipedia has a great entry for Dystopia. This leaves me with a nine word credit, and I can enjoy the rest of the elevator ride in peace and quiet. 
The film, as I envision it now, is alternately narrative and symbolic. If you don’t like “symbolic”, substitute “fantasy” or “dream sequence”. To keep them varied, these parts can be derived by obscure puns or “easter eggs”, but not in a way that the viewer will feel like he has to decipher every detail — they should simply be surprising enough to hold interest, and easy to understand on at least a simple emotional level. The symbolic sequences may often, but not always, recognizeably feature the main characters in a distorted setting or parallel universe, and be somewhat akin to music videos (or what music videos would be in an ideal world). The narrative sequences, on the other hand, should be more consistent, a kind of “home base”, so that the viewer understands that this is where the official story takes place. From a visual standpoint, there simply wouldn’t be enough physical action to stretch the narrative over an hour and a half without some form of visual escape.
The main look I have in mind for the characters is that they are animated, or appear to be. What I think will work, without being too laborious, is for them to basically be puppets with some posterizing (color-flattening) effect on them, and only computer-animate the mouths and eyes. The “puppets” could be humans wearing cartoon-like exaggerated costumes, or could be small hand-built models, depending on what works best for each character. To make the action more interesting we could play with slowing things down or speeding them up. Since the characters will be composited in layers, we can simultaneously work on a multitude of scales, both size-wise and time-wise. The backgrounds can be actual photographs, but might look more intriguing if digital effects are used to make them look painted.
Here is an initial test I made of using a rotoscoping technique to animate a simple face on a live body. As it is now, it’s not the ultimate effect I’m going for, but it’s a step in that direction:
I think to make it more “visually agreeable” the live action itself will have to be more cartoon or puppet-like. In particular, using ostrich feathers for hair (like certain muppets), and using actors (thanks, Liz, for suggesting to use dancers instead) who are good with unusually expressive movements. This doesn’t rule out using smaller puppets (as opposed to human bodies) for some characters.
(Interesting side-note: at the 11/20/07 Rochester Movie Makers meeting, I mentioned that I could still use some extra brains on the project, and someone jokingly asked, “what about bodies?” — and yes, I obviously need bodies too, but it’s kind of funny how removed the bodies would be from the brains in this production. I wonder if that’s symbolic of some mind-body disconnect in myself. Anyway, enough self-diagnosis.)
Step right up…
The first thing we would see is a clock radio… actually a clock television, which, when the alarm sounds, the screen comes on, and shows a short clip of propoganda about how everybody should be happy. Just as a hand hits the snooze button, we hear the first downbeat of Workers’ Theme as we cut to a longish shot of all the ceiling lights simultaneously powering up in a dreary factory environment. Through the first (quieter) half of this instrumental, we focus on a large number of blank-faced drone-like workers, wearing visibly numbered gray-green hoodies, filing in, punching cards, and taking their places alongside a twisty conveyor belt. Interspersed with this are grainy, black and white bits of live action scenes as “fantasy” (because the “reality” is cartoon-like): depressing images of people preparing to go to work, pouring their coffee, standing around, etc. At the downbeat of the second half, the belt starts moving and we follow the progression of the unrecognizeable objects being assembled, while being somewhat dazzled at the array of machinery. Every visual cliche you can think of should figure in here — blinky lights, gears, smoke, mechanical arms, etc. — but, all these cliches should have some parallel to something you would see at a carnival, because that’s how it will all look to the tourists in the next bit.
Audio example: “Workers’ Theme”
The first lead character we meet is the tour guide. His body movement will be the most exaggerated and least realistic, sort of like a mad genie but with Las Vegas glitz. He serves somewhat functionally as a narrator, but from an unsympathetic perspective. He doesn’t develop as a character, he is barely human to us, and in fact we never actually see his eyes through his mirror shades. I imagine him as having white gloves, a bright sport coat and necktie, white hair, huge teeth, and some kind of “bling”. He pops frantically into and out of the frame from and to all directions, mugs the camera, flails his arms a lot, produces props out of thin air, and is generally always in “presenting” mode. Initially he is singing to us; we are the tourists, and he informs us that we are observing utopia through one-way glass, and that the “happy” workers have never been exposed to any other environment. As the song progresses, actual tourists become visible in the shot, and most appear to be passively lapping up the tour guide’s shallow presentation. (In my initial stage show idea, the entire audience would be led on a tour of the factory, and key characters would be planted among them.)
Audio example: “Stay With the Group”
The tour guide’s opening number ends with a somewhat abrupt transition back into the workers’ eye view of factory life, with a short reprise of the opening theme, followed by a short altercation between worker #881 and an exacting supervisor, who refuses to discuss what the actual product being made is. (The tour guide will later tell us it’s “parts for other factories”.) When the supervisor leaves the room, 881’s mind drifts towards his internal image of what the “outside” might be like, only to be abruptly snapped back to reality by the supervisor’s sudden return.
In a question and answer session, the tour guide ignores several people who are excitedly raising their hands, and picks a few with easy or unchallenging questions that seem to have been pre-selected, to give them short, stock answers with little substance. A tourist named Nicole pushes through the line and gets a hold of the microphone being passed around, to suggest that if 881 is so unhappy, he should just be released. The tour guide chalks it up to a bad day, and quickly changes the subject by announcing that it’s time to move on — first to the nursery where the children are conditioned, then to a religious service where the adults are similarly conditioned (in both cases to reinforce their allegiance to the factory itself). At the religious service, 881 has another “speaking out” episode, this time in front of the whole congregation, and is given a harsh warning.
That night, 881 talks a reluctant bunkmate into sneaking “through forbidden black doors” into a room where all the secrets of the outside world are hidden — essentially a sort of library with a liquor cabinet. In their drunken excitement they make a mess of the place, and when the alarm is tripped, the bunkmate is arrested but 881 manages to hide successfully. It just so happens that this is the next stop in the tour, and in a rare moment the tour guide is caught a little off guard and has to do “damage control” and lead the tourists away quickly. Nicole disobeys the previous orders to stay with the group, and stays behind to coax 881 out of hiding and talk to him privately. She explains to him some of the images he’s been looking at in the library, specifically a painting of a sunset, and he rapidly starts to fall for her. Although up to this point he has always been dissatisfied with his life, he has only ever had a vague idea what it was he did want, but now he immediately decides it’s her. However, because he’s been a slave his whole life, the only kind of relationship he can conceive of is being her “slab of clay”, subordinating what little self-worth he has and just being/doing whatever she wants. Regardless of how unappealing this might be to an emotionally healthy woman, Nicole points out that she’s wearing an engagement ring. He chases her around the library trying to get her to change her mind. Eventually the factory guards realize there’s another worker loose in the library and rush in to arrest him, and a gentleman named Jack arrives to try to comfort his confused fiancee.
Audio example: “The Sunset”
While in solitary confinement, 881 starts to doubt the existence of the outside world. (Note: this is a section where the lyrics could still be re-worked, so there could be more to what he’s thinking and/or doing while stuck here.) Meanwhile, Jack is confronted by the authorities about his fiancee’s flagrant disregard of the tour rules, and is easily talked into breaking off his engagement to save his professional credibility. In the midst of this negotiation, however, Nicole has managed to slip away again and is now in the sleeping quarters of several workers who had never considered or even thought about an outside world. She struggles to remind them of it, not as individual memories they would have, but rather a “collective memory” of the human race. After rattling off an impassioned laundry list of hopeful memory-joggers, they actually snap out of their brainwashing and agree to come with her to help release 881 from solitary confinement and all escape the factory together.
When they reach 881, he appears to be un-moved by their enthusiasm (although this could be part of his “plan”, see italicized note in previous paragraph). At the brink of the exit, where daylight is visible, the escapees are ambushed by the factory guards. 881’s supervisor appears, now more smugly sadistic than merely irritable, and orchestrates the transformation of this environment into a hospital room so 881 can be given a lobotomy. (But does he get one??) Regaining consciousness from a blow to the head, Nicole leads the workers in an upheaval that both kills (I think) the supervisor and destroys all of the machinery in the factory. Maybe kills the tour guide too?
For the last song, Nicole sings directly to the audience. In the midst of this we see a wash of bright, dramatic light, and hear 881’s voice ambiguously telling her (and/or us) “I’ll be waiting for you on the outside”. Then, after Nicole’s last lyric, against the final dramatic reprise of three of the rock opera’s most prominent themes (worked together so seamlessly you don’t hear them as separate themes), the factory workers file in according to their usual schedule and take their places on the assembly line among the smoldering equipment, going through the motions of their jobs, the only thing they know how to do.
Are there any questions now in the tour?
Yeah, obviously, there are questions now. Like, well, does he get a lobotomy or not? And if he’s managed to trick us into thinking he got a lobotomy, how’d he do it? Does it matter if “waiting for you on the outside” means physically or just spiritually? If the whole thing is symbolic anyway, then does it even make any difference?
Here’s where I’m torn: if his plan is too cunning, too crafty, i.e. he’s so freakin’ clever and resourceful that even while in solitary confinement he can somehow find enough materials to build a dummy of himself, for the sole purpose of tricking the supervisor for five minutes into lobotomizing a robot instead of him, then we’re talking vomit-inducing implausibility, even by rock opera standards. On the other hand, if 881 has simply turned into a passive doormat, ready to take his bad medicine and go hopefullly have a better time in the afterlife, then I don’t like him or relate to him anymore. So we have to find some kind of middle ground there.
Maybe it’s less of a plot question and more of a universal “what’s passable in a rock opera?” question. Do clever protagonists and rock music just plain not mix? Seriously, telling a story entirely through music is different than using spoken dialogue. The same things don’t work for both and don’t translate well between the two. What’s good for a plot isn’t necessarily good for an opera.
Scattered in various notebooks and computer files, I have tons of meditations on the whys, whats, and hows of visually interpreting this piece. Once I go through it all, some of it will be redundant to what I have here, some will be better worded, and some will be totally different and well worth adding in. So I’ll occasionally update this page. I’m not promising anything, but I may flesh it out with sketches and audio samples too.
When every single example of a particular genre is critically flawed (no one’s ever really nailed it), you’re just as “on your own” as the last guy treading those waters. The upside is that you might be the first one to pull it off right.
