A Steampunk Tempest for Christmas

So I just finished my fifth semester a few days back. Before leaving for home, I had one last final, a presentation for my Scene Design class. We each had to present our full color model or two color renderings for our production of The Tempest. I of course did a full color model, enjoying crafting much more drawing. In the presentations we also had to go over our concept for each design. Me, being slightly out there compared to the rest of the class, chose to create a Steampunk version of The Tempest. Please understand thatthe pictures of myproject in this post are of a model. Nothing to fancy here, so please don't judge too harshly.

Now for those who may not know what Steampunk is.... well... its something you can't describe too easily. It's better to glean the aesthetic from pictures and such. Below is an... okay video describing Steampunk.

So... Yeah. I want to reiterate that this is not exactly the best source. Honestly, I would just do a search of Steampunk and see what pictures come up. Or this is another pretty good source, surprisingly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steampunk

Basically the idea of Steampunk is to take the Victorian age, turn

of the century, and put a

twist on it. Take what appeals to your eye and incorporate it in with today's technology and such. What if steam power brought about th

e information age? How could you make a steam powered motorcycle? Airship? You get the point.

Usually there is a bit of the occult or what have you thrown in for good measure. But the core of Steampunk is the gears and steam and pulleys within the machines, not the shiny exterior.

Anyhoo... I love love love the aesthetic. So while reading The Tempest for research on my set,

I started thinking of abstract ways of doing the island or magic and what not. For those not familiar with The Tempest, this is a passable excuse for a substitute. Please read it. It's truly not that difficult to understand what's going on. And it's short. But if you really don't want to read a piece of good literature...

Anyhoo.... Take two.... I found myself imagining, as I read the play, this great machine floating in the middle of the Mediterranean. This machine was state of the art at one point, but, for some undisclosed reason, it was utterly and suddenly abandoned. It lay in a dormant state for years, until the usurped duke of Milan, Prospero, was marooned there. Prospero's wizardry in my interpretation of the show becomes his ability to control the machine of the island. During the many years of solitude, the island-machine was overtaken by nature. Nature and the machine have become twisted and entwined within each other. Thatwas akey idea I wanted to focus on, this underlying tension, war waging between machine and nature. What is truly natural on the island? Machines were built without the presence of nature, yet nature was always their before the machines were ever build. Who actually has claim to the island? This is epitomized in the structure that Prospero lives in, shown to the left. I wanted to try to portray the pipes and tubes of the machine fighting against nature, growing out of the ground haphazardly. This structure would emit bursts and puffs of steam every so often. Moss is growing on most surfaces on the island, flat areas of the machine are being buried underneath a fine layer of dirt. Both nature and machine are not dormant on the island.

Around the heart of the stage I thought it would be cool to have wires and cables emanating radially like veins into the island. These would glow blue as Prospero casts his entrapping circle. I also wanted to have cutouts in the stage for the audience to see the gears beneath

everything. Plexiglass would lay over the holes as to not cause any accidents. The gears would twist every time magic occurred. I would also love for there to be lights beneath the gears that would shine during the magic as well.

At the very beginning of the show, I envision Prospero coming out to center stage, silent with a single spot light on the heart of the stage. As Prospero nears the heart he looks out into the audience and then back at the heart, inserting his staff into the stage's heart as if a key to wind a clock. And he does such an action. Winding the Stage-gear, the gears underneath are slowly illuminated and creak to life. The veins glows a eerie blue. He takes his key-staff out and while

the lights dim, the audience continues to hear the gears turning and the "clock" ticking. The scene swiftly flows into the shipwreck scene. At the very very end there is an epilogue in which Prospero puts down his staff and renounces his magical ways. I envision Prospero undoing his original magic by unwinding the Stage-gear and putting down his key-staff, retiring his mechanical ways. This coupled with the beginning scene set up the convention that: 1 Prospero while somewhat omnipotent, is limited by the machine (being created by man is inherently flawed and has limits), 2 Prospero purposefully set this entire set of events into

motion by winding the Stage-gear.

Of course the costumes would be out of this world! I haven't thought too much about them, since this was for a scene design class more than a costume design class. None the less, there would be plenty of goggles believe you me.

So that's basically the entirety of the project. Below are more photos that I couldn't find a place for in our conversation. Hope you enjoy them. I'm always open to questions, so drop me a line if you have a query.

This piece, which I called Main-gear, took almost three hours to make.

Main-gear turned out quite nice after a bit of antiquing paint.

The beginning of the stage.

Construction of Stage-gear. Lots and lots of floral foam.

Things glued down with a bit of moss for texture.

Proscenium up with Curtain-gears attached.

Everything painted.

One of the best angles I was able to get of it.

The man, as in the earlier picture, does not represent costuming or what-have-you, but merely gives a sense of scale and size. As you can see Main-gear is quite a sizable object.

Poems Conceived in the Library About the Library (One More For the Road)

a matrix of words

collected in the rows and columns

of pages

paragraphs

sentences

a three dimensional array

of ideas

turned physical

ideas given weight and thickness and font

arrays strung into clusters

clusters into programs

programs into systems

systems into collections

collections into a single unifying building of storage

a matrix of matrices of matrices of matrices

of words

Poems Conceived in the Library About the Library

knowledge stacked in neat tidy rows

balconies of studies, poems, dreams

written down for posterity's sake

written down to be read

analyzed

understood

argued

confirmed

bound volumes of research

placed on metal beds

to be lost and forgot

for a time

students searching

scouring

studying

surveying the stacks

for the source of inspiration

that strains their theories

stretches their ideas

strengthening and solidifying

the soul of the thesis

written four centuries before

anyone in this building was born

waits the long lost volume

of an unknown author

for over half of eighty years

the book lies waiting for a purpose

to be used in a dissertation

to be needed

acquisitions brought him into his world

cataloging gave him a name

an i.d.

at first circulation put him in browsing

and after his two months were up

he was placed on a shelf

three floors up

in the back

in the corner

in the dark

lost

daylight

an abandoned cathedral of understanding

ghosts of students walk the silent halls

whispering

passing notes

getting that last sentence printed before class

there is barely a buzz of life here

save for the ever busy organs of the building

blood cells staffing each system of operation

ants working for the good of the colony

and for the overall necessity of their queen

knowledge

duskfall

a quiet metropolis of bodies

each working independently

not listening, understanding, or caring about the others

they abide by the code of conduct

two levels of dull roar

three of silence

night is when the flying buttresses come to life

with spirits praying for grace from their masters

worshiping the holy grounds of

physics

literature

history

government

the congregation worships in ignorance

to the others around them

they all pray to the same deity

although they think differently

they all pray to the god of

partial credit

Lady Autumn

Hot beverages grow cold

waiting to be drunk

by the lips of a woman

whose scent lingers in the air

She is the one who comes in the night

breathing softly on the windows

as you sleep

leaving frosty panes for when you wake

She is soft breeze you feel rustle through

the boughs as she sighs and bats her lashes

Her hair is the autumn leaves found in each splash

of color on the mountainside

She is your lover

and

your past lover

and

every one who has ever

loved you

cuddling up to you in the chill of the season

She is in your heart and in the earth

in the sky and in the water

She is the feeling that all beauty will leave you

yet inner poetry remains as the world dies

slowly

She is your autumn mistress

whom you will love for a season

Cast her aside to die

Fall for her again in a year.

Lord Winter welcomes Lady Autumn

with open arms and a cold hard smile

Lady Autumn lingers in the air

Scott Pilgrim vs. A Killer Metaphor

So if you've been reading this invisible blog, you may have read my review of Inception. In it I said something to the effect that Inception was one of the best movies, if not the best movie, I have ever seen. Well... Scott Pilgrim vs. The World fits exactly into that same description.

I actually needed to see this movie twice before writing anything about it. There is so much in the film that it honestly feels like genuine comic book (or graphic novel for those who feel that comic book is degrading to the genre); every time you read it (or watch it), aspects of it feel new and undiscovered. It warrants a second viewing.

Scott Pilgrim is a seemingly average kid living in Toronto, Canada with his gay roommate Wallace and plays with his band, The Sex Bob-Omb (a play on words, bob-omb being a reference to items in The Super Mario Brothers games which resembles little black bombs with eyes and feet). The movie begins with Scott, age: 22, rating: awesome, dating a high school girl, Knives Chau. But not too long after the wonderful 8-bit Universal opening (which you can hear, but unfortunately not see, at the bottom of this post), Scott notices another girl, Ramona Flowers. After a quick break up with Knives, Scott attempts to woo Ramona. But Scott's in for a bit of a surprise. He must, in order to date Ramona, defeat her seven deadly exs. Comedy, action, and video game references ensue.

This film feels like the perfect trans-genetic mutation between an 8 or 16 bit video game and

a wicked awesome comic book. From the cartoons added in to animate Ramona's past boyfriends, to the retro (I loath using that word) video game tracks, to the "batman-style" sound text (you know, Bam!, Kapow!, Shazam!), this movie is dripping with pure fan-boy amazement. The visual is really the closest you could get to a comic without separating each shot into individual frames of a comic strip.

The visual, though, is only half of the picture. The dialog is so fresh and witty I was absolutely engaged the entire movie. And it all felt very natural. Nothing was too contrived or forced. If there was an awkward line the movie did a wonderful job at explaining the thought process behind it. Example: After Scott dumps Knives, she dyes her hair similar to Ramona's hair and

starts seeing Scott's friend, Young Neil, in an attempt to make Scott notice her. After they play at the club, Ramona sees knives across the bar and and asks who she is. Scott, panicking, tries to decided whether to say "I have to go pee" or "Who, her?" In Scott's mind we see a roulette wheel spinning landing right on the line between the two options. So what comes out is "I need to pee on her." The best thing is that he doesn't even realize what he said was out of the normal, but the audience can understand what's going on in his head. There are actually quite a few of these moments which make the movie very relatable since we've all had moments where we tried to say something but something else comes out.

The characters are another strong point of the film. Each person is fully committed to their character and they are all so fully developed. While I

have not yet read the books (though I plan on doing so very soon!), I have a clue that we can thank them for such wonderful and developed characters. Two particularly standout characters in the movie were Knives Chau and Ramona Flowers. Both of these were wonderfully portrayed by their respective actresses, Ellen Wong and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. But the character that stole quite a few scenes, I feel was Alison Pill, who portrayed Kim, the drummer of Sex B0b-Omb and an old girlfriend of Scott. I really have no idea how to describe her role. You really just have to see the movie.

Michael Cera is also pretty freaking good in this movie. One of the best roles I think I've ever seen him in. Why do I think that? I think it's because of the role. I feel that he's been stuck in the same role for five years now. This one allows him to be a bit more free with his character.... a bit more animated and emotional. I know a lot of people are getting tired of him, but this movie really is a nice change of pace for him.

The music compliments the visual so perfectly that I was actually compelled to buy some of the songs after seeing it a second time. So catchy are the tracks, I find myself humming them all the time. The final aspect of this film that brings everything together are the battle scenes. Yes, they are over the top. Yes, they are more than slightly unrealistic. But, it brings together everything this movie has.

The whole movie is one big metaphor.... well kinda. The whole fighting the seven evil exs are something every guy, and girl (though I enjoy that the movie focuses on the guy point of view) has to metaphorically deal with when dating someone new and special. You always feel the need to be the best person they've dated to date (pun). This movie really does a superb job at jumping into the mind of a twenty something guy entering a new relationship. Bravo. I cannot wait to read the books.

This is the 8-bit Universal opening at the beginning of the film. Unfortunately there is no version just yet that features the visual component to the clip. Sorry folks.