Timeless Halls and the Void

Haakon, it is my understanding that the 'Ea!' moment will be the end of Episode 1, and entering Arda will be the beginning of Episode 2, so we may not see it actually happen. The exceptions will be Melkor, who enters Arda from the Void at the end of Episode 3 (and possibly saw the other Ainur go earlier), and then when Tulkas arrives, we show him....showing up....on Arda (not leaving the Void, though). So, if that transition - leaving the Halls to go to Arda - is too much, we can perhaps skip that.


ouzaru, what we are suggesting is visual metaphor as well. Of course there aren't any actual Halls, any more than Yggdrasil is actually a tree. You have to show something, though, and it has to represent the concept in question. You seem to think it very important to emphasize the endlessness of the Halls, and I am at a loss as to why that matters more than other concepts and how to accomplish it. I think that is where the breakdown has occurred. Because....I'd have to fall back to 'blank white space stretching forever' to achieve that, and you are suggesting a complete landscape with a shore with water and....I'm just confused. I think we do need the Void to be a Void, and we need to see Arda formed in it, and....what can that be other than blank darkness? Would it help if the substance of the nebula were pouring off in a cascade in like a waterfall on the boundary with the Void?

We are all in agreement that we do not want the Timeless Halls to look ridiculous or hokey. The question is what causes that.
 
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Here are some representations of Asgard, if that helps:

asgard.jpg


thor-concept-art-asgard-4.jpg


thor-asgard_space_cs_v02_bifrost.jpg

xlarge_asgard_space_cs_v04c_bifrost.jpg
 
Nicholas Palazzo said:
I do understand that you are creating a visual metaphor, but my difficulty is that it may not come across as such. It might suggest to the viewers that rather than being able to reach the Timeless Halls with a rocket, you could do so with a simple sailing vessel. By setting the Timeless halls in an actual Void, we convey that our characters can't just _go_ there.
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If the "waters" of the Void are in anyway confused with actual water, the effects department hasn't done their job properly. I would think the initial scenes of Melkor going into the void could throw in some additional effects to make it abundantly clear that this is not "water" any more than the glowing heaven-fractals are trees.
 
I'm not sure what I think or how to express how I feel about this... On the one hand, I think we should have halls, but on the other, I want them to be in constant flux or at least changing in ways that make them seem made not of matter but of, well, thought. It's not chaos I'm after, but something similar to association. In and around the halls, I want a kind of un-earthly life. The Void should be anything but that. A sea is life, so even if it is a metaphor it sends the wrong signals in my mind. If anything, the stuff around the Halls should send waves, stretching into the Void.
 
Haakon said:
I'm not sure what I think or how to express how I feel about this... On the one hand, I think we should have halls, but on the other, I want them to be in constant flux or at least changing in ways that make them seem made not of matter but of, well, thought. It's not chaos I'm after, but something similar to association. In and around the halls, I want a kind of un-earthly life. The Void should be anything but that. A sea is life, so even if it is a metaphor it sends the wrong signals in my mind. If anything, the stuff around the Halls should send waves, stretching into the Void.
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I hesitate to assert categorically that the "sea is life". Sea water is poison to anything that can't breathe it, and highly corrosive. Life on this planet comes from the sea, but the Void is as much the "cradle" for life as the oceans of Earth were. Certainly the goal with the Void is to make it look mysterious if not somewhat ominous, not the least reason being that Melkor is obsessed with it, and even if it's not completely black, it's going to be a pretty obvious contrast (and our only contrast at this stage) to the only other locale we have, the unequivocally perfect Timeless Halls. There's some angles to explore there with the sea maybe not being "life" but "potential", which is precisely what the Void is from Illuvatar's perspective, whereas the Halls have been fully realized as a perfect vision, but I'm not inclined to share your opinion that "the sea is life (and that's the only way to think about it)". I like your angle on the relative activity and malleability of the Halls, though, especially as a contrast to the Void.
 
MithLuin said:
Here are some representations of Asgard, if that helps:

asgard.jpg


thor-concept-art-asgard-4.jpg


thor-asgard_space_cs_v02_bifrost.jpg

xlarge_asgard_space_cs_v04c_bifrost.jpg
Click to expand...

Marvel's Thor is definitely not the direction I want to be coming at our depiction of the Timeless Halls from. I think it would be a mistake to making any sort of visual references to Jack Kirby's depictions of cosmic deities, and what most of what you're showing me is very much rooted in the New Gods and Marvel's Asgard that Jack Kirby basically invented out of whole cloth in the late 60s and early and late 70s, if somewhat updated. As much as I like those depictions, I think they are of a wildly inappropriate flavor for Tolkien's mythos. They combine the real and physical with the cosmically interstellar in a way that is visually striking and quite beautiful, but feels totally anachronistic compared to the flavor of Tolkien's world. Even if you cut out all the stars and nebulae and have this city floating on a black backdrop, I think you're just going to invite comparisons to Kirby's work that to me feel like they're pointing in totally the wrong direction.
 
I'm not saying that water is life, but sea is associated with life. I don't agree that the Void necessarily is potential. Eru is potential, and he can expand his creation. The Void is nothing and has no potential at all.
 
Haakon said:
I'm not saying that water is life, but sea is associated with life. I don't agree that the Void necessarily is potential. Eru is potential, and he can expand his creation. The Void is nothing and has no potential at all.
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The Void is a blank canvas. You wanna talk metaphors, that's as elementary as it gets. It is the ultimate blank canvas. It is literally a space that Eru has set aside to do something with. Again, you're thinking in terms of "the Void is everywhere that the Halls are not". I'm saying the Void itself does not exist until Eru creates it.
 
ouzaru said:
The Void is a blank canvas. You wanna talk metaphors, that's as elementary as it gets. It is the ultimate blank canvas. It is literally a space that Eru has set aside to do something with. Again, you're thinking in terms of "the Void is everywhere that the Halls are not". I'm saying the Void itself does not exist until Eru creates it.
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That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying the Void does not exist. It is nothing.
 
Exactly, it is empty space: like a canvas. The metaphor is not exact, because the canvas itself lends texture to the painting, but that it is "filled" with nothing is not the same thing as that it is nothing.

So to circle back to the ocean metaphor, the emptiness as a space for the universe to fill works okay for me as a metaphor. Seawater itself does not become life; the sea itself is not alive, it provides a medium in which life may thrive; just like the Void.

Edit:　Do you think the Sets discussion that's supposed to happen on Friday would stand some discussion on this subject in particular? I would love to hear in greater detail what the Big 3 want for the visuals on the Timeless Halls, if only so I can pass the buck on killing my babies and we can do some better work on describing some of the earlier scenes before we roll over into March.
 
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Well, the Void obviously contains nothing. That means that it is nothing, from the Halls and until there are some borders/limits. And I don't think that there are any limits, so the Nothing goes on, meaning the expression "filled with nothing" or "containing nothing" isn't exactly right, since there isn't a container filled by the Nothing. So, it is just nothing.
Discussing this - what nothing is - is, as I think Wittgenstein would have agreed, something we should avoid. It leads to paradoxes.
 
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Haakon said:
Well, the Void obviously contains nothing. That means that it is nothing, from the Halls and until there are some borders/limits. And I don't think that there are any limits, so the Nothing goes on, meaning the expression "filled with nothing" or "containing nothing" isn't exactly right, since there isn't a container filled by the Nothing. So, it is just nothing.
Discussing this - what nothing is - is, as I think Wittgenstein would have agreed, something we should avoid. It leads to paradoxes.
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As I said, you can either have an empty space with nothing in it, a vacuum, or it can not exist. One does not necessarily follow from the other. These are the only two options for representing a thing visually.

And if the Void is a place that Melkor can go, then it is a big empty space.
 
The Void is outer space. We can go to outer space. Outer space is a vacuum. There are objects (planets, asteroids, galaxies, etc) in outer space; the Void is completely empty.

I see no reason to think of the Void any differently than outer space.
 
Well, if we retrace our steps, I was making the statement that it should not be depicted as a sea. I think that makes it too much of something. It's more like outer space.
 
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