The Narrator

I woke up trying to remember the film I’d watched the last night – only to realise that the film had been a dream – a terrible, brilliant, grotesque and fascinating dream.

Patrons are led upstairs to an abandoned top level of a bar/restaurant – of the group there is a gentleman resembling Dylan Moran somewhat in appearance and in nature. He is seated across a rectangular table, diagonally from my left. A skeletal woman, swathed in greys to my right. An overweight balding black man across the table from me, there are a couple more but they are shadows in this part of the game.

A serving woman is cutting a pie to my left. Dessert is being served. She’s making a cumbersome awkward job of it – attempting to cut the pie equally into 10 pieces, so there must have been 10 of us, sitting at a table for some unknown reason. She’s making a complete mess of this, the pie is indistinguishable now.

‘Dylan’ performs some feat of magic, in a blink he has replaced his chair by an assortment of suspended abstract shapes. His chair is gone.

The hostess has managed ‘9 pieces’, and this is when she apologetically asks me to leave. I look up and the whole scene ‘cuts’. Daylight is gone, the whole room is wrecked in a green tone. All of the patrons sit dead at the table. I feel like an onlooker now, I’m out with the scene.

The overweight gentleman is seated in his chair, his bowels are entwined in the chair legs. Faeces is visibly dripping from his groin, and piled on the floor. The rest are in much the same way – bloodshot eyes, indeterminable scars.

Death by neglect? The hostess– seeming more so young, is caught in the midst of this. Terribly frightened, is she to blame? A voice, a narrator speaks from nowhere.

He explains that the guests have no purpose now, they are the husks of their former selves. The only use they have now is for the insects – and the scene develops as human sized insects break through the windows, and inseminate the cadavars. Before flying out to join their brethren. The corpses undergo a pupating larval stage – yet all this passes by in an instant. The guests emerge from their sacs, and trudge out of the building, disguises for the insects. Masks.

Barely reaching the exterior before the matured insects burst from their hosts, implosions of blood as their wings beat hard, and lift them into the sky.

I’m looking up at the guests in the sky, each bursting in turn. It rains blood.

Cut.

I’m back at the table – everyone is there again. The hostess is gone. I see a horned gentleman smiling at me from another table.

Cut.

Everything freezes. The Dylan character is performing his feats again. Shaping light into tangible panels, 3D planes of spectral light. Conjuring form from nothing.

The horned ‘Narrator’ is speaking to him.

Cut.

The skeletal woman is sitting naked and alone in an oversized bathtub, the water is cold. She is shivering, but besides that she is not moving.

The Narrator is pacing around – walking around. Around.

Cut.

We’re suspended from a window ledge – staring into the eyes of a man through a camera lens. They have written something on the ground below. This feels like a prank. They’ve made a mistake, the writing is in the shot too soon. They have to re-set up and re-think this.

We’re in the hallway with the window, there is a notice board, which requires 2 massive screws to be undone. The notice board sits on a rack.

Once the two bolts are removed the board sulks out of place. We can’t fix it. In increasing frustration the bald man to my left hoists himself up by the top of the board and raises himself up quickly to smash his head off the ceiling. Again, and again, and again and again.

I pull at his legs and…

Cut.

We’re on a ship, surrounding in the waters by monsters. The bald man says,

‘He is here. Now I am able to do this.’ The Narrator stands on the water beyond the boat.

He removes his lower clothing, and begins to stretch out his legs into the splits. The floorboards of the ship, that his feet are placed upon melt and engulf his feet. He screams. I’m dragged back into the water.

We’re running, running under the surface. I can see one of the previous scenes to my right – playing over. The Narrator whispers in my ear.

I wake up. Not screaming, not suddenly, not with a jolt, I simply wake up. I was not afraid at all.

~

And this is only what I remember… I can’t help but feel I’m missing so  much more of this story now that I am awake.

~

“As we are bound, we are free.” This is and has been the underlying thought behind my work. A tag line if you will, and then I read this.

Jean-Paul Sartre, for instance, famously claimed that humans are "condemned to be free" — because they always have a choice.

Is it comforting to find your idea exists already out their in the spectrum of human minds. Yes, kind of. I’m trying to figure out who/what Windbag represents.

As Hatavar is to Confusion, as Windbag is to…

Chivalry? Nah. Escapism? Wanderlust?

adventure, carry, cover, cover ground, cross, cruise, drive, explore, fly, get through, go, go abroad, go camping, go into orbit, go riding, hop*, jaunt, jet*, junket*, knock around, make a journey, make one’s way, migrate, motor, move, overnight, proceed, progress, ramble, roam, rove, sail, scour, set forth, set out, sightsee, take a boat, take a plane, take a train, take a trip, tour, transmit, traverse, trek, vacation, visit, voyage, walk, wander, weekend, wend

Windbag’s dream is to reach the ‘Boundless Skies’ – a sky bordered by no horizon, no tier above, and everything below. this is quite an escapist vision huh?

His dream is curbed by Obligation, and over the years he has become a rather twisted being. But still at heart, a sky pirate.

Enjoying this rough thumb nailing technique. Establishing value to create form quickly, important part of working quickly. A lot of the detail is implied, open to interpretation, this is by no means a refined design, but it plots in the major shapes and establishes a foundation to progress. What is left is to create several more and experiment with the main principles.

~

Animatic lies broken… and forgotten – must get to that.