The CN Tower Belongs to the Dead

[keva]

Hi all,

For my senior year of high school I'm making a music video for The CN Tower and I was wondering if anyone has any ideas they'd like to contribute? It's a stop-motion animation type thing, hopefully it will look like the bastard child of Terry Gilliam and David Shrigley. The plot line kind of suggests itself I guess but if you know of any awesome animations I should check out or any storyline ideas I'd love to bounce my thoughts off of some people who are actually familiar with the song (unlike most people at my school...). Suggestions anyone?

Thanks!

PS Hello Owen, I shot you an email about this previously... I'm guessing you're a very busy man but your input would be invaluable if you ever have a spare moment...

PPS And while I'm here attempting to catch your attention, you should come to Australia! I don't know if that sentiment has been expressed before but in any case it's worth repetition

[cheshire]

I had a storyboard based on the song once, but it ply wouldn't be very easy to actually film- it involved ghosts from the 1800's and other impossible things to make cheaply. The storyline was that a young man had been hired to play music in between broadcasts, but the tower is ransacked by ghost problems just as the transmission begins. Every worker races out of the tower frightened but the musician isn't. He eventually leads them away from the tower because they follow the sound of his violin, and takes them to the graveyard where the rest of their family is buried.

The beginning scene though was a graveyard and then in stop-motion showed the gradual building of the tower over it, and then after showed the dead in outdated clothing wandering sad and confused around it. That would work, if you don't already have an opening scene in mind.

[keva]

That's so cool, like the pied piper! My opening scene is kind of similar - my idea is to start off with a beating heart and then gradually 'build' a person out of random images of machinery like clocks and armor and wires. Then they climb out of the ground, and you see that it's a graveyard and that there are a whole bunch of these robot things around... then I'm thinking the main character, a sort of 'everyman' if you will, gets transformed by a wizard (bolt of lightening?) into a human, and he then leads them to the city, which is centred around this big surveillance tower (It's meant to be a panopticon, which is a kind of jail pioneered by the philosopher Bentham and taken up later by Foucault... it's a little 1984). Not too sure what happens in the city yet, but somehow this everyman gets disillusioned with his life and climbs to the top of the tower, goes a bit crazy, and then this giant hand comes out of the sky and pushes the sun like a button and the city collapses. As the sun rises again, the music ends and you can see a new city being constructed, and new zombie-robots walking towards the city. Bleak, huh... haha... but I really like the outdated clothing idea, I love anachronistic shit like that!

Ok, if anyone can be bothered to read that massive amount of verbal diarrhea, please keep the thoughts coming

[jules]

I always see this in my mind as the CN Tower appearing in another context such as in the middle of a settler town so it is so out of place and the people seeing visions of the future reflected on it (Not really having a good idea of the CN Tower I put lots of reflective surfaces on it) It like you look in mirror and see yourself in another place

It's more along the lines of a timeslip with both old and modern seeing each other as spirits not being able to connect with the future people being the unhappier.

Okay its all wrong and would never work but there you go.

[keva]

No, it's so great getting other people's perceptions! I get that same sort of sense - especially because the music itself is a combination of really ordinary tasks and the magical or super dramatic. It lends itself to weird juxtapositions of old and new. The whole future mirror thing could be tricky with my lack of animation skill, but I like the idea of this giant futuristic tower... I'm thinking this band of mutant people is on some big journey to the city, which looks like a theme park with ferris wheels everywhere and yes, a big tower, and then when the main guy climbs to the top of the tower he sees it as this dilapidated old jail like your settler town. Like in The Phantom Tollbooth, has anyone read that?

[sarpedon]

I never really had a personal vision for the song... I just read what owen meant in the lyrics in an interview way too far early on; but its no bust, and its still vague enough to let you give your own interpretation, and its pretty spot on, its nothing like that shitty feeling you get when you re-read lord of the rings with your imaginary character conceptions forcefully erased by peter jackson's...
but anyway, I remember him saying (don't quote me, I read it a lonnng time ago) that it was a modern day situation where a few of the dead buried under the cn tower come alive and climb to the top and survey the area below with mixed feelings on their former lives and, more importantly, the current state of the city.

[keva]

Clearly some repressed anger about lord of the rings there haha, but if you can remember where you read the interview I'd love to have a read of it. The fact that there was a storyline but that it was still open to interpretation is why I chose the song really, because the CN Tower isn't a cultural landmark for me in Australia... I felt that its symbolism resonated beyond Toronto. Actually, it's not the tallest tower in the world anymore, there's one in Dubai that surpassed it a couple of months ago.

Anyway, yeah I like the idea of climbing to the top of the tower to get a new perspective. In my video, it allows the character to be removed from the situation and to see his city for what it is - an illusion.

Also, Cheshire, if you still have your storyboard I'd love to see a part of it if that's in any way possible. I'm supposed to look at examples of story boards and it would be good for me to see how you worked with the timing of the song.

[jules]

sarpedon said:

I remember him saying (don't quote me, I read it a lonnng time ago) that it was a modern day situation where a few of the dead buried under the cn tower come alive and climb to the top and survey the area below with mixed feelings on their former lives and, more importantly, the current state of the city.

That's my understanding, but you're allowed to imagineer your own meaning to anything, you don't have to force a particular interpretation into your own reality.

[sarpedon]

someoneelse said:

sarpedon said:

I remember him saying (don't quote me, I read it a lonnng time ago) that it was a modern day situation where a few of the dead buried under the cn tower come alive and climb to the top and survey the area below with mixed feelings on their former lives and, more importantly, the current state of the city.

That's my understanding, but you're allowed to imagineer your own meaning to anything, you don't have to force a particular interpretation into your own reality.

exactly, thats why his non-concept lyrics (i.e. he poos clouds and heartland) don't have a singular meaning.

[keva]

haha imagineer, sounds like something that happens in a Disney studio...

(Hmm, that probably sounded like an insult, but it's not intended that way)

My ideas as they stand now - the plot is vague and ever-changing - is a sort of pied piper figure rising up from the ground, and as he travels towards the city 'zombies' rise up and follow him. I'm not sure how to show this, but somehow I want the audience to know that everything viewed through the eyes of the pied piper and his followers is beautiful and happy - the city in the distance is an arcade, they walk through magical countryside with crazy plants blooming everywhere etc - but that the 'reality' is that everything is falling apart around them. He leads them to the top of the tower and his spell breaks, and his band of followers see the city as it really stands. That's when the hand comes from the sky and destroys the city...

Any ideas of how to show the reality vs. pied piper-vision? Colour v black and white? Collage v Shrigley-esque drawn animation? Because I want to present both views to the audience and short of split-screen techniques I can't really see how to explicitly show it

[sarpedon]

keva said:

haha imagineer, sounds like something that happens in a Disney studio...

(Hmm, that probably sounded like an insult, but it's not intended that way)

My ideas as they stand now - the plot is vague and ever-changing - is a sort of pied piper figure rising up from the ground, and as he travels towards the city 'zombies' rise up and follow him. I'm not sure how to show this, but somehow I want the audience to know that everything viewed through the eyes of the pied piper and his followers is beautiful and happy - the city in the distance is an arcade, they walk through magical countryside with crazy plants blooming everywhere etc - but that the 'reality' is that everything is falling apart around them. He leads them to the top of the tower and his spell breaks, and his band of followers see the city as it really stands. That's when the hand comes from the sky and destroys the city...

Any ideas of how to show the reality vs. pied piper-vision? Colour v black and white? Collage v Shrigley-esque drawn animation? Because I want to present both views to the audience and short of split-screen techniques I can't really see how to explicitly show it

I don't know how much this helps, but I always imagined it looking like the light of early evening, kind of a dark orange filter (yet low opacity) over everything, while the sky is very blue and clear (with a few high, white clouds). I guess that would be reality, I really don't know though; its just the mental image I always got.

[jufro]

you could show it by putting all the fantastical wonderful stuff in front of him and then as he passes it it becomes all ruined/black and white/nasty

[Deleted]

anyone remember in Links awakening? the little ghost? I would have a bunch of them in the video. and a sad little ghost boy sitting on the Cn tower leaning back on the antenna, looking out at lake ontario.

"i could fill up the lake, with all the things i didnt say, had a good run anyway, had a good run anyway"

then the violins kick in and the little ghosts swirl about the top of the antenna. heh.

[suburbanmyth]

so this is gonna get put this on youtube after, right? i'm so curious to see what you come up with!

[keva]

Liking the magical scene in front v. black and white dilapidated scene behind, jufro and mhmm, um, you're talking about Zelda right? I don't really know computer games but I could ask my brother, I think he has it on Gameboy? Either way I think there's going to have to be a fair share of ghost children in there somewhere, maybe filling the city at the end - spirits of the piper's previous victims or something along those lines...

and suburbanmyth, if it's any good you can expect to see it on Youtube, but if it's awful then I will have to destroy it. haha actually you've reminded me, part of my project is that I need to get feedback etc as I near the end so if it's ok with everyone I'd be grateful if you'll lend your eyes and ears to my creation and let me know what you think.

But I'm getting ahead of myself - the task is to be handed in late August sometime so I won't have anything to show for several months.

I've decided to literally base the plot on the pied piper tale, which apparently is based on a real event in some 13th century German town when 160 children got mysteriously abducted! I'm going to try and put in multiple endings, like a choose-your-own-adventure. People will choose between the 'negative view' and the children are killed by the piper or something terrible and the tower is literally built upon their bones, or the happy 'magical' path and they all found a thriving city arcade land place etc...

can't figure out where to put the split endings though so that the lyrics make sense...