Secrets of The Other Gods
by Mike Boas
Introduction: April 1, 2005
I guess the main question would be this: why have most people never heard of Peter Rhodes before? How could the first filmmaker to adapt H.P. Lovecraft's stories be forgotten until now? The answer is simple.
Peter Rhodes never existed.
Early last year I was determined to get to work on an animated version of a Lovecraft story. I spent many weeks reading stories and trying to find the perfect one to adapt. (If you're interested in my brainstorming in this regard, see this thread at CHUD.com) One night I caught some of Lotte Reiniger's Prince Achmed on Turner Classic Movies, and the perfect idea hit me. I knew exactly how to do the animation (in silent silhouette style) and how I could create a fictional backstory to support it.
I'm not the first to try something like this. Several years ago, the folks at Renegade Cartoons invented a "classic" character named Elmo the Aardvaark. There were stories published in animation magazines about him as if he was a true forerunner of Mickey Mouse and others, but had been lost to obscurity.
A more high-profile example would be Peter Jackson's "Forgotten Silver" hoax. He and other New Zealand filmmakers produced a documentary for television about the nation's greatest filmmaker whom everyone had forgotten about. Of course, the guy was made up, and some folks who were duped were pretty upset.
I'd like to avoid that if I can. I don't want to tick people off. Looking back on the Blair Witch phenomenon, I remember visiting their website and reading all the fake history and enjoying it. I knew it was fiction, but I got a kick out of the effort that went into it. Sure, there were folks who thought the Blair Witch was real, but they just weren't paying close enough attention.
So here's where I'll be talking about the REAL behind-the-scenes of The Other Gods. The main site is ballyhoo, and here are the facts. If you'd like to help spread the word about the film, feel free to perpetuate the myth or tell the truth. Either way, the real story will be here for folks to read if they dig deep enough.
The blurring of fantasy and reality is appropriate for the subject matter, too. Try researching the Necronomicon online. You'll find plenty of sites that acknowledge it as a creation of Lovecraft, but also writings from those who either believe it to be a real text or are playing along with the fiction. One such reference is the Necronomicon Anti-FAQ, which actually had me confused for a short time many years ago.
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The Animation Process
Part of what appeals to me is the challenge of creating a silent film without using film at all. I work in Macromedia Flash, which is primarily used for web animation. The samples I'm posting here are Flash tests. What I will be doing is running my exported files through After Effects to multiply frames and add film FX.
Certain scenes will be tinted differently, as many silents were tinted for interiors and exteriors, night and day, etc.
I began the storyboards and character work last summer (2003) and have recently taken up the piece again. I've got about 40 storyboards, about one-third of which are titles. As this will be a silent movie, there will be no dialogue and sound effects. I do want to have it scored, but I don't have a musician committed to the project yet. The final piece will probably be 5 minutes or less.
Depicting Lovecraft's gods is tricky, since they're often described as "too terrible to describe." I feel a certain confidence in attempting this, though, because I'm not going for perfect representations. Rather, I'm creating artwork that reflects what an artist from the 1920's might come up with. Somehow, that's a more attainable goal.
I imagine Rhodes would have found inspiration in artwork from ancient civilizations, like Mesopotamian gargoyles and such. So I went through my occult library and drew many horrible faces based on ancient sculptures and paintings.
Follow the links for some animation tests...
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Yog-Sothoth
Yog-Sothoth was the father of the Dunwich horror, so I've given him numerous tentacles and eyeballs.
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Shub-Niggurath
The Beast with a Thousand Young is a sort of galactic goat mother. I'm not entirely happy with this yet. I think she needs larger hindquarters.
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Azathoth
The blind idiot king of the gods is too terrible to look at directly. I'll be obscuring his visage with other effects, like a black & red spiral that I didn't render for this test.
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Barzai the Prophet walk cycle
Our tragic hero is Barzai, the religious leader who climbs the mountain Hatheg-Kla to catch a glimpse of his gods.
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The work continues: June 4, 2005
Earth God Dance
There will be several minor gods dancing atop the mountain. Here's a preliminary test. I think I'll be looking up some actual tribal dances to get some more accurate dance moves.
Psychedelic Azathoth
Looking directly at Azathoth is supposed to be like trying to grasp a shadow. You can't understand what you're seeing, and the more you look, the more insane you become. So... I'm trying to get that across with some hypnotic spirals.
Read "The Other Gods" (PDF format)
For those of you who are unfamiliar with the HPL story, you can read the whole thing online. All four pages of it!
Here's a new screencap. For these promo shots (produced for the web), I take my Flash image and put it through some radial blur effects in Photoshop, and add grain as well. Hopefully I'll be able to do the same in After Effects to the entire piece.
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An unexpected turn. June 16, 2005
Last week I communicated several times via email with Jenny Heldestad of Sweden's Miskatonicon event. I expressed an interest in entering their Lovecraft film festival, and I see she's taken me at my word.
"The Other Gods" is now listed on their program page at
http://www.miskatonicon.com/eng_film.html
It's a little weird seeing it on a festival site before I've even finished it... And of course they still reserve the right to reject it.
Now I have to live up to their expectations.
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A humbling entry, November 2005
Well, the Miskatonicon came and went, and I didn't have a completed piece to send out. It's now been too many months to count since I launched the Other Gods website. Weeks go by between animation sessions. I just keep plugging away at my other job, hoping the work will take care of itself.
To me, it's much more fun to work on the backstory and promotion of the film than to work on the piece itself. When I actually do work on it, I jump into the fun and easy scenes first.
My friend Dave doesn't work that way on his pieces -- he reserves those scenes for later. He says it's partly a reward system --- actually, he pretty much starts at the beginning and works towards the end, using the production time to perfect the climax in his head. But Dave is much more disciplined than I am. He actually works constantly, pumping out one or two films a year.
But then again, he doesn't have cable TV.
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Rejuvenation! May 3, 2006
I've been back on the project in the last week, with another self-imposed deadline: a screening for the Rochester Association of Independent Video and Filmmakers.
Tonight was the meeting, which was both affirming and frustrating. We had a great conversation about my intentions with The Other Gods and what I can do to improve it. Very positive.
Unfortunately, going in, I had hoped to show everything I had so far. I set my sights pretty high: I wanted to render the entire 4 minute piece full res with film effects, even though many scenes are not fully animated yet. The problem is I've been working in Flash, where my tests are tiny AVIs. I didn't take into account the amount of work it would take to (1) render full res, (2) apply the effects and render full res again, and (3) get that AVI to MPEG to DVD.
So all afternoon I tried to get what I had in Flash out to video as good as it could possibly look. In the end, all I could show to the group was a couple aborted test renders. About a minute's worth of animation.
In retrospect, I should have rendered everything half res, played it off the edit program's timeline, and recorded it on our DVD/VCR combo at work. It wouldn't have looked as pretty as I wanted, but it would show the whole story. I know I'll be able to pull the whole thing together eventually, but that final polish is going to take a few days of work.
Oh well. Now I'm more juiced than ever to finish the last few scenes and get more feedback.
I'll be posting a web-friendly work-in-progress here soon.
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Silent animation test, May 6, 2006
Here's the animation so far. It still looks very "flashy" because it doesn't have the film effects yet. Some scenes are clunky placeholders, especially in the early dialogue shots.
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Teasing the public, May 26, 2006
I sent out some promo shots to Craig Mullins at Unfilmable.com this week. He said some kind words about the film on his website here.
I also uploaded my test animation to my AWN showcase profile. I decided to make the test public on that site because it's for animation students and professionals. I want to keep up the false front of Peter Rhodes on my official site, but it's okay to go behind the scenes elsewhere.
Here's a new selection of promo stills:
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Love or Hate, June 5, 2006
I'm receiving more and more random emails from people who want to know more about the project. Some, like Craig Mullins, understand the dual nature of reality and fiction I'm going for. I'm trying to do this in the spirit of the Necronomicon, which is a wink wink REAL book to some people. Lovecraft invented it, but fans love to debate its history and the various publications of the tome out there in bookstores. That's part of why I figured a false front would work well with an HPL adaptation.
I certainly don't want to anger anyone, but I do take that risk. I loved what Peter Jackson did with Forgotten Silver, but there were some enraged people in New Zealand following that movie's television airing.
For the most part, I tell people the truth when they ask. What I'm looking forward to is festival submissions. I'll use Peter Rhodes' name, but I'll include a "behind the curtain" envelope for festival people to open at their own risk. The true nature of the project would then be revealed -- it would be up to them to decide which story to run with.
The DVD will have a split personality. Half from my point of view as producer of a lost film, half from my position as animator. That means two commentaries, two sets of menus. Maybe some sort of alternate dimension aspect to the menu design... I want the extra info to be hidden, but not impossible to find.
So, will Lovecraft fans love me or hate me? This sort of thing could keep me awake at night.
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A change of venue: September 12, 2006
TOG will be screening at the 2006 H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival! For future posts about screenings and promotions, see Subterranea news at http://maddogmovies.com/subterranea/category/the-other-gods/
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One more secret thing: 2008
Since Product of Circadia is no longer hosting the Other Gods interview online, you can listen to all three parts here: