Producer's Commentary: Dicks Season 14
Initially I just wanted to present the dreams of the characters, with no notion of a theme. But it wasn't long before I found this less than satisfying, so I attempted to give the dreams a common thread. But even this didn't quite hit the spot. It wasn't until I struck upon the idea of pitting Paul's very logical, factual assessment of dreams against Valerie's spiritual beliefs, and introducing a character everyone would see in their dreams: the surgeon from Season 12, who also happens to appear previously as the marketing guy from Season 8 (as well as the weather announcer from Season 6). This would be my first step to explain why he keeps reappearing.
I knew going in this would require executing some of the most involved, complex and labor-intensive animation I've ever done. Fortunately I'd made an attempt to create a video for Oblivion, a long musical work I'd composed some years ago. I never completed that project, but I'd gotten far enough along to have a good library of esoteric animation effects. Additionally, most episodes feature music I created for a collection I call OST, essentially the soundtrack for a non-existent motion picture.
To set up the premise for this season, I had all of the Dicks gathered together discussing
strange dreams they'd just had. Paul is the stubborn objector, refusing to acknowledge the
very thing he knows is true. He lectures everyone on the actual purpose of dreams (which represents
a considerable amount of factual scientific evidence on the subject). But the number of people who
subscribe to hidden meanings in dreams is still quite substantial, likely the
majority of the population.
This is probably the first time I've incorporated a purely wordless exchange between characters: Paul and Valerie share eye contact and some curious looks, the idea being that Valerie has a fairly good idea what's going on, and Paul is suspicious, although he denies it.
Glen is a big believer in god. And that's okay by me, since some of my friends are as well, even
though I am not. So I treat the subject with respect. And I think meeting god face-to-face would
be something someone like Glen would dream about. Except... god isn't quite what Glen expected.
His dream actually sets the stage for what's really going on with the Dicks, that there's a
reason they're all having strange, vivid, similar dreams.
If god as he appears in Glen's dream is familiar, watch "A Night" again. Or "It's Looking Really Bad Out There," "Marketing" or "Prepare for Reentry" again. Yep, it's him.
Glen's dream is pretty much what I'd planned for him all along; changes in the season's storyline did not affect it at all. The same, however, cannot be said of the rest of the dreams.
Dot never had any children. She couldn't, as much as she wanted to. So a dream about being pregnant would
be both thrilling and frightening for her. How could she be pregnant? Even if she wasn't barren, she's
post-menopause, and presumably couldn't get pregnant.
Here I do something I often experience in my own dreams: mess with time. I'll often be any age, from teens to sixties. But I'll also have "lucid dreams" where I'm totally aware that I am dreaming. When that happens, I have a curious time dealing with the incongruity of being one age in my dream but knowing full well I'm an altogether different age in reality. So I gave Dot a lucid dream so she could have an internal dialog about it, which will help viewers make sense of things. The doctor in her dream is of course the same as the one in "A Night."
Producing this episode was a thrill. I started with a sound montage, with no preconception of the images that would accompany it. After the soundtrack was completely finished, I then went to work on the art, namely 22-year-old Dot, which was quite a lot of fun. And then finally I began assembling images, allowing the structure of the sound montage to suggest how the visuals looked and flowed. In the end, this episode became one that far exceeded my expectations. Incidentally, the music came from a collection of compositions I created for a non-existent film, OST.
Ping's dream was the toughest one to nail down. Visually it remains unchanged from my initial
concept, which was to (literally) drop Ping into the ocean and have her transform into a mermaid.
The reason for her transformation, as well as the dialog she has with our omnipresent dream interloper,
went through a number of radical changes. It wasn't until I wrapped up an earlier version and was
reviewing it repeatedly that I became dissatisfied enough to "kill my darling" and go
for something totally different. I was watching the episode half asleep on the sofa when I realized
what was wrong: her dream wasn't about a personal fear, as were all of the others' dreams. I recall
abruptly sitting up in the sofa with the startling realization that the very reason I made her
a mermaid (merely because I enjoyed the idea of the visual) that I myself was what she feared: as
a cartoon character of my own making, she was literally "my property." What if she was
a real person? She would likely resent that very much. Thus was born the final version of her dream.
Fortunately the dialog fit perfectly into the visuals, so all I had to do was replace the soundtrack. And speaking of, once again I tapped my OST collection for the music.
The visuals I created for Ping's dream came out so well that I turned the underwater scene into a "screensaver," which is accompanied by an unedited version of the score. It inspired a whole new category of extras, Music Videos.
Carl's dream is born out of his military experience. Except that, in this case, he's not only overcome
his fear of warfare, but also become totally immune to it, able to survive full-on bomb detonations.
In a way, his dream is something of wish-fulfilment: he is utterly indestructible. Since I've always
regarded Carl as the hidden comic gem of the series, I tapped into some popular culture references,
including that over-used "I love the smell of napalm in the morning" line from
Apocalypse Now.
The imposing general he faces should be familiar. Oh, and note the strange irony of the General's parting line, "You're a disgrace to that uniform." What uniform? Carl is in his usual daywear, and the General is in surgeon's scrubs. WTF? Well, I'm sure everyone has had dreams in which they're very inappropriately dressed, like wandering around a shopping mall in your bathrobe, or visiting your folks in your underwear. I was fully prepared to have Carl and the General in full, proper Marine uniforms, and had in fact begun researching them so I could get them right. Then it struck me: what if the dream was a bit more realistic from the standpoint of being odd? For one thing, it fit the dream world perfectly; and for another, it would save me a ton of art rendering.
Sam's greatest fear is manifested over and over in his dream: watching Paul die. It is without doubt
the most depressing of all the dreams. It's also exactly what I envisioned at the outset, even before
nailing down the dream theme. I actually produced this one twice: the first version was flat, lifeless,
and not very disturbing. Then I picked it apart, replaced a few scenes, and threw each shot into a
zoom/tilt to give it an off-kilter sense of urgent energy. The shot of Sam approaching the surgeon
at the Emergency Room doors is recycled from "A Night."
And, once again the music is from my OST collection.
Paul's dream is drawn from his near-death experience in Season 13.
I didn't have any idea for his dream until I solidified the dream theme common to everyone.
There is a reason his surgeon is this mysterious character that shows up everywhere, but I do
not yet explain why. All will be revealed in seasons to come.
technically Paul's dream was both simple and complex. The art was quick and easy to make; the effects, however, were another story. The blood-like matter flowing around Paul and his surgeon is a modified version of the materials drifting about the ocean in "Ping's Dream."
The music, such as it is, was once again sourced from my OST collection. It's an excerpt that features a pair of drums in a heartbeat-like rhythm.
I needed at least a bit of humor in the dream series, and Valerie provided it in her face-to-face
with the Great Spirit Brumahamma Mullalockpass Flammamaleman. The visuals for this episode were
entirely "synthetic," being made from special effects, with no source artwork.
Sony Movie Studio has a visual noise generator, capable of being finely tuned to produce
a vast array of visual effects. When combined with other image manipulation modules, one can create an
infinite library of animated elements.
The dreams were all flashbacks, and now I return to the "present" in the follow-up to the
opening episode. I don't do a whole lot more explaining, but
I do set Paul up as being somewhat aware the dreams were not mere coincidence. Valerie only helps him
understand the situation a little bit, since she's not sure herself exactly what's going on. But what
is going on? You will have to wait and see, as the mystery unfolds across coming seasons, although
I do offer a very vague, cryptic hint in the following episode, Do
Spirits Dream?
Here I depart the world of mortal souls and enter into the Dream Realm, which Rita has just discovered.
There she meets the Great Spirit, who does an exposition dump on her to provide us with a tiny glimpse
of things to come. This episode was planned from the start, but not written until every other
episode was in the can. It's carefully constructed with tiny hints as to what's going on with the
Dicks, especially Paul, who was hit with some rather troubling information about his longevity as well as
the reason he was saved.
Visually this episode was more work than all of the rest combined. Those "dream globes" were first synthesized from visual effects, animated, rendered as a video, then repeated over and over. There may be as many as 576 of them on screen at once. Rendering alone took over an hour, for less than one minute of material. The background sound, by the way, is an excerpt from a composition of mine, "Into the Sunlight" from my Green Magic collection.