Timeless Halls and the Void

Yes, I agree that the material of construction (stone?) should help steer the mind away from whatever organic inspirations we have. That is one of the issues with the floating bubble opera in Star Wars 3 - it looks way too clearly like an egg being fertilized by sperm.

For a non-living example of a heart valve type thing, consider an iris valve:

 
That looks really neat, if a bit sterile. I think you are kind of on the right track, though, maybe we could use a lot of technological mimics of organic bits to get the general feel for how things ought to be moving and then stick closer to more macro-scopic, inorganic natural materials for our textures.

We could maybe throw together a design document or put up some descriptions in the outline as we encounter new areas describing the aesthetic we're after.

Worth mentioning that the Hosts said "we won't see Ungoliant's Lair till Season 2": I'm kind of in love with the scene we wrote, and technically her lair gets wrecked so she'll have a new one when we see her again, so is everyone okay with basically ignoring that direction and asking for forgiveness after the fact?
 
Oh! Right - I think that the scene as originally described was outdoors, in a forest or something. So, there was no lair in it. But I don't think there was any harm in writing it that way, and if they don't like it, they'll tell us to nix it and we can re-write it to be a labyrinthine canyon system or something. Not worried.


I think Javier Senosiain (http://organicarchitecture.weebly.com/ ) and Gaudi (http://www.sagradafamilia.org/en/ ) are the architects to look to for inspiration here, but to put their work in motion rather than keeping it static. The room where Nienna sings alone and where all the Ainur sing the Music should be the 'same' room, but noticeably bigger in the later scene.

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nautilis4.jpg


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la_sagrada_familia_13.jpg


I think 'colorful kaleidoscope sandcastle' is the aesthetic I am leaning towards.
 
I like the Sagrada Familia!

The first two pictures are great but a bit too wild for me but the rest are both beautiful and works as inspiration in this case.
 
Oh! Right - I think that the scene as originally described was outdoors, in a forest or something. So, there was no lair in it. But I don't think there was any harm in writing it that way, and if they don't like it, they'll tell us to nix it and we can re-write it to be a labyrinthine canyon system or something. Not worried.


I think Javier Senosiain (http://organicarchitecture.weebly.com/ ) and Gaudi (http://www.sagradafamilia.org/en/ ) are the architects to look to for inspiration here, but to put their work in motion rather than keeping it static. The room where Nienna sings alone and where all the Ainur sing the Music should be the 'same' room, but noticeably bigger in the later scene.

cb86c56447525dca09fc18554ce7e872.jpg


nautilis4.jpg


8643444_orig.jpg


15999167001_598b586a95_b.jpg


la_sagrada_familia_13.jpg


I think 'colorful kaleidoscope sandcastle' is the aesthetic I am leaning towards.

I remembered pretty distinctly that we had gone into a mountain and then Tulkas smite the mountain side via thunderbolt and tore the top off it thinking it would be a piece of cake and then was confounded when the shadows remained in roughly mountain-shape, sort of pointing to his brawn but lack of real good planning skills.
 
I remembered pretty distinctly that we had gone into a mountain and then Tulkas smite the mountain side via thunderbolt and tore the top off it thinking it would be a piece of cake and then was confounded when the shadows remained in roughly mountain-shape, sort of pointing to his brawn but lack of real good planning skills.


I think MithLuin is referring to the original discussion by Prof. Olsen, not the conversation we had after that.
 
Why would it be important to wait with the showing of Ungoliant's lair?
Mostly so that the Big 3 could skip talking about it in the most recent episode, as far as I can tell.

As a guy who would quit his job and do this mess full time if he could, their penchant for kicking the can is beginning to feel like a real kick in the balls every time they do it. I guess I'm just worried about it for the purposes of knowing which way to go on the outlines, I don't wanna pick something and then have to nurse a bruised ego when they come back like "well, this is clearly wrong, try again".

JUST TELL ME WHAT TO WRITE, TRISH, DAVE, AND COREY, MY EGO CRAVES THE APPROVAL OF MINOR INTERNET CELEBRITIES AND THIS AMBIGUITY IS AGONIZING.
 
Okay, so in the podcast where these things were discussed, it was decided that the Timeless Void should be bright, blurry, non-random, and that there should be color. As a professional news photographer, as soon as I heard these descriptions my mind immediately went to something that I have to deal with every day at work- overexposure. Here are a few examples from The Google.

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In addition to blowing out almost everything with white, opening up the lens also reduces the range of focus of the lens (this is the science-y part of photography for those who don't have degrees in this stuff...) Reducing the range of focus causes the background to blur (or foreground depending on what you're focusing on) effectively killing two birds with one stone- very bright, out of focused backgrounds. It also allows for actual design and noticeable (as in "Hey, something's there!") features as opposed to an all white or artistically surreal interpretation of the Timeless Halls.

From a design and narrative point of view, this allows for structure. We have some place that the audience can conceive as 'beyond' yet is clearly identifiable as an actual location even if that location is not in the material universe. The extreme brightness will also contrast nicely with the empty blackness of the void. Narratively, even if we do play the Ainu as blind or unseeing, having the semblance of actual architecture and nature hovering in the background of these scenes lends to the idea of the Valar as sub-creators. What they are 'creating' in Arda is not of their own doing; the things they create are ultimately reflections from Iluvatar's mind.

From a production point of view (you know, that production phase that we aren't actually going to do...) this would allows us to shoot on locations instead of shooting everything on green screens and trying to create something mystical in a computer. It would also allows us some freedom in designs. We wouldn't really have the problem of creating a "God-Style" of designs and architecture because most of the details will be lost. With low-lit video you can boost the light artificially, brightening the image to see what is there in the shadows (which is totally what our fans would do when the show would hit DVD/Blu-ray.) If you boost a dark image it will be all grainy, but a lot of the details and color would still be able to be recognized. Counter-intuitively, when an image is overexposed by too much light, all of that information is lost- it never made it onto film/digitized into pixels. If you darken an overexposed part of a picture, it will just get greyer. All of the color and detail was gone the moment the light entered through the camera's len. [Rabbit trail: This is why, if you ever see a bad photo by a "professional", it's almost always underexposed. If it's completely overexposed, it's probably intentional for artistic reasons like in the images above.]

To take the design a step further, we could always mess with the sky and ground to make it more other-worldly. Or design the architecture and nature in unnatural ways/colors- keep it somewhat recognizable but experientially unfamiliar. Non-earthly designs would also help separate it from the typical depiction of Heaven (which seems to be portrayed artistically as surprisingly earth-like. I blame the Renaissance.) The only thing I'm not sure on is how the pre-Creation-of-Arda characters would interact in this environment.
 
So after all of that hullabaloo... Aren't we basically not depicting the timeless halls as anything substantial now? Did I misunderstand that in the most recent session?
 
So after all of that hullabaloo... Aren't we basically not depicting the timeless halls as anything substantial now? Did I misunderstand that in the most recent session?
I guess...yes. More or less.

But it was a good discussion! :)
 
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