#The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky - Production Design

[caramariafilm]

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky - Production Design

1st April - FILMING DAY FIVE

Although I wasn’t here for this shoot, I wanted to show the prep I sent over to the skeleton crew to take care of the wings.

I also kept my phone on the entire day in case there were any issues.  

For the wings! Hello!! So basically, as you can see they can pretty easily be folded in half then gently folded again (keeping a bend so to not crease anything). I’ve included some spare bits of paper just if you guys need them!! I’d also recommend bringing a black sharpie as the transportation process today revealed some white bits and pieces. For carrying them, please do not lift them from the handles (like Ivan initially suggested today) as the backpack attachment is the most fragile part since the rest of the wings have overlapping foam and paper to build up its stability - this whole structure is being held together with an initial cutout of packing foam. Also, please don’t carry this by one wing and leave the weight of the other hanging. The best way to lift up and carry these wings is similar to how Dorian did today but I’d say grabbing each wing around half way along as that’s where it’s the heaviest on either side.  For putting them on Dorian, please please have somebody holding the wings open behind him and he can slip into the backpack straps more easily - this is to also ensure it’s not the backpack straps doing all the heavy work and getting dragged about. Once they’re on, the weight is fine to just let them hang if Dorian is standing still (for example the overhead shot) however if Dorian is walking around, please ask if he can grab the tops of the wings for protection and help with the weight. I’ll send the photo of me wearing them again, so he knows where to grab and hold them if you want him to open them up! They are very big! So be wary for them getting caught on any bushes or branches because you forget how big they are!! I know all of this sounds like they’re really fragile, as you saw today they can be handled pretty easily and can be folded etc fine, this is my advice on keeping them from wearing and possibly breaking over the course of the day.  Also, when he’s running, I’d ask if he can be holding onto the top of them then too (like the photo). I really don’t believe the wings would be able to handle being let go and trail behind Dorian as he sprints over the edge, plus the weight of them will not give the effect of them standing up behind him (they clearly bend). Also, from a writers perspective, it makes more sense for him to be holding them as he runs because this is something his arms would operate, it’s clear they don’t flap on their own and serve more as a gliding purpose for him - his arms would do the flapping if he was to hypothetically fly!

Once I'd sent this over tp the skeleton crew, I felt great about the whole process!

However, after the shoot happened, I got the news my wings broke in half :(

It's okay, I knew something was going to happen with them, I'm just so glad it happened at the end of their shoot and they got all the footage they wanted.

Since they broke in half, I can mend them, just upsetting to see them broken.

But we got the shot!!! And it looks great!!!!!! YAY! Post time now!!

#The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky - Production Design

[abbiesfilmblog]

Film Project Master Post

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky 🌀 (Producer):

Choosing the Script

Getting the Team on Board

How I Managed Production Workflow

Preparation for the pitch

Our pitch and feedback

Project Research

Filming dates & Booking Equipment

Final Script Developments

Location Scouting (Interiors)

Location Scouting (Exteriors)

Recces/Test Shoots

The Casting Process

Meeting the Cast

Having a Child Actor On-set

Meetings with the 1st AD

Meeting with Script Supervisor

Favourite Set Photos!!

The Original Schedule

On-set Considerations

On-set Day 1

On-set Day 2

On-set Day 3

On-set Day 4

On-set Day 5

Post-Production Schedule

The Edit & Picture Lock

Sound Design & Layback

The Colour Grade

The Score

The Final Film

The Crit & Feedback

Poster Design

CRITICAL REFLECTION

Lola's Room 🌸 (Art Director):

Research and Development

Collecting Props

Production Design Meetings

Production Design & Location

Graphic Design

Favourite Set-up Photos

On-set Day 1

On-set Day 2

Starstruck 🪐 (1st AD):

Preparation and Research

Weekly Meetings with HoD’s

Scheduling

Meeting with Director & Cinematography

On-set Day 1

On-set Day 2

Extra:

Creative Exercise 1

Helping on Grad Shoot ‘Anna’

Working on ‘The Photograph’

[maxbrodbeckfilmblog]

Lola’s Room: Colour Grade

I was the colorist on Lola’s Room.

I didn’t design a LUT for Lola’s Room, as we did test shoots the day before the shoot, and I didn’t have time to use it to build a look for the film. This is something I regret and really helped on The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky, and I wish I’d spent time on for Lola’s Room in pre-production.

I spent 2 & 1/2 12 hour days on the grade for Lola’s Room. The grade was a good opportunity for me to compensate for any problems I had with the images I shot, and I am significantly happier with my cinematography post-grade. A lot of the work was spent on directing the eye, and balancing the levels of exposure and saturation across the scenes, which used quite different lighting setups.

The node tree I used was the same for Lola’s Room as The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky. I was colour grading them at the same time, so using the same workflow avoided any confusion and sped up the process significantly.

The first row of nodes balances the images in exposure, contrast, temperature, saturation and skin-tone, allowing for controlled and easy manipulation of the colour. In the parallel nodes I highlighted areas of each shot, and used them for more specific changes to individual elements of the image.

The opening scene was the most consistent, and fits the soft but saturated intentions I had with the cinematography. It was relatively easy to grade. I made use of tracked masks on faces, with inverted versions to lower the exposure of anything that wasn’t the faces, directing the eye to the action and making the lighting feel more placed and deliberate. I am not entirely happy with the bathroom scene and the following scene, which stand out from the rest of the film due to different lighting, a none of the pink hue which dominates the rest of the film. The final results don’t feel out of place, but aren’t consistent with the visual style.

I added the Kodak 65 film look Davinci LUT preset at 20% intensity across the film, as it separates the luminosity scale towards a filmic look, as well as altering the hues into gently complementary positions. I added varying amounts of noise reduction to deal with some of the grain of the corrupted cards, as well as the colour noise of the grade itself.

I worked through various drafts of the grade. Paula met me at screen academy to work through the grade and give feedback on the consistency of the images. A second opinion really helps, as my eyes adjust to the current conditions of the grade, leading to the picture getting more and more contrasting and saturated.

Log Footage -> Final Image

[ivanwainwright]

Film Project Post-Crit

Final wrap-up!

I think that many of the criticisms given to our film were fair, and I absolutely understand their perspective. I disagree with some, but I acknowledge that I'm perhaps clouded by knowing the film so intimately.

Kate and Andrew's notes were very useful, and will definitely help us in revisions for festivals and further distribution. The class also provided some brilliant feedback.

I did an impromptu poll at the end of our feedback session on opinions of whether Arthur lives or dies at the end of the film; it was overwhelmingly in favour of death. I think when revising the project it will be worth figuring out the origins of this and trying to balance it a little, but maybe people are just pretty unwilling to imagine a man throwing himself off a cliff with cardboard wings could live. Can't really blame them, I suppose.

What follows is my final Critical Essay, which briefly critiques the production process and then the final product of the film.

Critique of Process – 492 words

The process of making this film was often difficult. The pre-production process was largely effective, and I felt every department was clear on what I expected from them on set. My vision for the film was, I believe, properly communicated and the HoDs worked effectively to execute this.

               The casting process went well; from simply posting online we managed to secure two actors who fit the roles well after around 15 auditions for each role. I took input from all HoDs when making this decision, but the final call was mine and I am glad that it was the path I took. Preparation with the cast was both effective and enjoyable; after meeting both individually, we had a couple of group meetings to work on joint scenes together and build chemistry. It took some work, but I was proud of the methods I used and the way that the actors ended up working together. The flow of the conversation felt a little jilted but, by asking them to write and perform the intention of the character’s lines instead of the actual line itself the conversation became a lot more natural. For a script with so much subtext, finding this technique was incredibly useful.

               In terms of the group dynamic, it was often difficult to organize meetings and communication was often a worry. Though I was largely unaware of it at the time, much of what I thought was being communicated around the group was not, and this led to a lot of confusion especially once we were on set. I wish I had been more proactive in this process earlier, but as soon as the fact that people were unsure what the plan was in terms of locations/ scene shooting order was at the end of the first day on set I was very prompt in ensuring that the crew were all on the same page. This helped group morale in the following days, especially after the less than stellar weather on day one.

               The shoot overall was great. The crew worked efficiently and most of the exterior time was well utilized. Like previously stated, communication in the lead-up had been an issue, but resolving tension and stress on-set is a skill I believe myself to be good at, so morale was lifted. I was happy with each department and the way in which they worked together; I do wish I had been more in depth with Jack about on-set sound earlier, but due to the lateness of finding many of the locations this was difficult.

               Post-production was largely smooth. We kept to our timetable well and I was largely happy with the result of picture lock, though for festival cuts it may be worth going back and adjusting slightly. The biggest disagreement was between sound design and score, and I was very happy with the result that the film eventually reached and my method of talking to both parties as director.

Critique of Final Work – 972 words

‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky’ is, in my opinion, a highly effective film for my directorial intentions. The different elements work together incredibly well, and I believe the intention behind my filmmaking is present. It is not flawless; it certainly will need further work, but I am hugely impressed with the result.

               Following the story of Arthur, a young romantic, the film follows his life following a break-up with his girlfriend, Lila, and his reach towards his ‘true’ love, the sky itself. Constructing a set of wings, Arthur reflects on his memories of childhood and obsession, briefly being tempted back into a relationship with Lila before falling back into his old ways and attempting to fly the wings from a cliff.

               The film manages to feel like a cohesive piece with a singular vision despite its many elements. The elements of practical production design (carboard clouds, a practical title etc.) are framed carefully, and the accentuation of their sound places it into a singular world. Keeping all elements balanced was a difficult task, but the film as it stands does feel, to me, consistent. The break in this rule is the flashback scene, where the cinematographical style, colour grade, placement of practical effects, score, and sound design elements all adjust to show a less developed Arthur, a very careful practical decision from the directorial perspective.

               I do think that perhaps I could have been more careful with the introduction of the practical design elements; they are meant to exist when Arthur’s delusions (or visions of truth) intrude on what the audience would perceive as being real (the presence of the wind when he falls back into falling in love with the sky, the clouds reappearing when he leaves Lila) but, as pointed out in our critique, they feel inconsistent in this point, and either stripping it to purely the one peak example in the porch scene or introducing more and getting to establish further rules for the format would have been more effective.

               Narratively, the film speaks to me about what my intention laid out: it discusses the cruelty of patriarchal masculine obsession, to the individual obsessing and to those around them. Though Lila is not present for much of the film, her character serves to push Arthur to question himself and his beliefs, and the ultimate isolation that he imposes on himself is made more effective by her inclusion. Though we received the script in early forms, throughout the module the script went through eight drafts, many of which I discussed with Cara. Though some of our feedback said that they wished the origin of Arthur’s love was shown, I disagree with this point. Though that may have been interesting, and certainly the route that many of my aesthetic and narrative references draw from, I strongly believe that for this script it would have diminished the point. The film, through my direction, is meant to speak to a very specific and harmful impression of love. It causes many people to act cruelly, selfishly, and often in ways that – as Arthur does – are directly contradictory to what may be beneficial for them. If the origin of the love that Arthur feels is nailed down to a specific point of origin, I believe it diminishes the audience’s ability to relate their own experiences to the story. The sky in the film is a metaphor for an unreachable place, a place of joy that cannot exist, and so the specific allegory of the film breaks down if the origin of this obsession that Arthur has with reaching that place is laid out.

               The performance of the actors is something that I could have spent more time fine tuning; some of the line deliveries are a little flat and unexpressive, and despite both leads great physicality in general the blocking of scenes could have been more carefully considered by me. The awkwardness of the pauses in conversation was intentional, but it was perhaps more present than was necessary and led to an uncomfortability in viewing. In feedback, I was told that delivery often felt more documentary style, which was only part of my intention. Lila’s character fits this agenda as she is intended to be a grounding presence for Arthur. Arthur’s character, though, is intended to feel a lot more dreamlike, often feeling more unreal in his delivery. This should be present in the porch scene and if I could go back, I would rework his delivery here to fit this.

               Many of my directing references (Kiki’s Delivery Service, The Banshees of Inisherin) have similar dreamy protagonists whose character defining feature is their love and care for those around them. Arthur is a darker take on this; he certainly views himself and his world with the same dreamlike scope as these characters, but he holds a more selfish intention than Padraig or Kiki. He works for his own goals and often neglects and ignores those around him for this reason. My goal was to use the dreamlike world to show this contradiction, to have the beauty of the world around him force the audience to question their own perspective. I think the final sequence, where much of the sunlight and beauty of the scene disappears from this world is effective in this, but I think it may have been more effective to highlight this earlier in the film and build up the contradiction earlier as I fear that it feels more like a lack of consistency than an intentional subversion.

               Though I am proud of ‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky’, I also acknowledge it as a strong learning experience. It has imperfections in tone and style that I can see, but at its core I think that my intended message comes across clearly to an attentive viewer.

[saskiamcc]

Production design day - The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky

10/02/2024

I really wanted to be a part of the film The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky (MWFLS) as soon as Cara pitched it in class. I decided that for my secondary role for Film Project, I wanted to do an art department role since I loved doing production design last semester. Additionally, Cara is a fantastic production designer and I knew that for this project I would love to work with her.

Cara and I met up to start with some of the key props needed for the shoot. Our priority here was the rocket, as it could be quite difficult to make. Cara had already done some digital sketches of the rocket, so we followed these models closely.

sketches of the rocket

I realised after looking at these sketches, that I already had some eyelets for shoes from a previous project that I thought we could use for the little nails and cogs that are seen on the window and legs.

Whilst Cara made the body using paper maché, I started on the legs and extra parts. I drew out a size that worked on cardboard and cut out about 3 copies. Using the paper maché body as a reference, I realised that the legs probably would not be able to hold it up on their own, so I made 3 more copies and stuck them together. Initially, I had the idea of cutting slits into the body of the rocket to slide the legs in, but i worried that it may be too heavy, so opted for heavy duty super glue.

cardboard legs and the eyelets

cara describing to me how the body should look

Whilst crafting this rocket, Cara and I had discussions about the other props that we needed. Cara had a lot of things planned already which was so helpful, because I had something to work with. For costume, we discussed looking for items on vinted, as well as charity shops. Cara already had an idea for Arthur's costume - dungarees (she already owned) and a striped top. This meant that for Arthur, all we needed to look for was smaller versions of these pieces of clothing for younger Arthur.

We had to wait until the body dried before we could do anymore work on the rocket. However after this meeting ended, our director said while they love the shape, they would prefer for it to be a bit taller. My next steps for this project, is to make the body longer.

#third year #film project #art department #mwflwtsartdept.

[bendix44mcnulty]

hermes mini kelly 15

Hermès Kelly 20 I love them so much, for his or her colour, shape and heel peak. They appear to be they are very excessive, but the comfort was never compromised – you may have to belief me on this one. Not only was it love at first sight, but I had to get them back in July, to assure I get them. You know how this stuff go, when you don’t seize the chance, you will remorse it afterward. The trellis beneath the leather presses forward, making a waffle effect. To date, the Dwich Kelly has been made completely in Noir and Rouge H Box Calf varieties. In their 2019 Resort present, Hermès miniaturized the Picnic Kelly in a couple of traditional colorations. These cute renditions are sure to be extremely wanted in the years to return. She was subsequently loaned by MGM to work in several Hitchcock movies, which might turn into a few of her most critically acclaimed and acknowledged work. Kelly began filming scenes for her next movie, The Bridges at Toko-Ri, in early 1954, with William Holden, for Paramount Pictures. The story, primarily based on the novel by James Michener, is about American Navy jet fighters stationed to battle in Asia. mini kelly 2 Famed costume designer Edith Head did her costumes, with whom she had established a friendly relationship. I so love hearing/seeing everybody's bag collections here. Worlds away from watching the likes of Lydia and co who get every thing gifted and heavily discounted. It's a lot more aspirational and inspiring to listen to it from exhausting working, humble, REAL girls like yourselves. She has linked Vestiaire on her vlogs for the Kelly, though. A recent example is the Farfetch What I got after my month lengthy ban on purchasing vlog. Holding priority, Kelly was forced to take the first wave from a hungry-looking Seth. The man turning 50 in six days fell from the sky, adjusted his line, narrowly missed a lip-decapitation, and obtained blown into the channel with his palms on his face. While Seth regrouped, Kelly locked into a deep, peeling Backdoor drainer, zipping through a funnel that hid him behind a number of chandeliers for a number of seconds before releasing him in the channel. We’re no stranger to the sumptuous confines of Kylie Jenner’s luxurious designer-filled handbag closet containing uncommon items from labels like Chanel, Fendi, and Balenciaga. Talking in regards to the rarer styles… In addition to a quantity of sizes of the Kelly bag, Hermes carries on to produce limited version variations of the fashion 12 months after yr. The most desired limited version Kelly, is undoubtedly, the Himalaya Kelly. The bag is made of the skin of the Nilo crocodile, rendered in a refined coloration that resembles the photographs of the magnificent Himalayan mountains. Initially founded as a saddlery and equestrian items maker over a hundred and eighty years ago, Hermes has evolved into a fully-fledged luxurious powerhouse. Continuing to take care of its heritage, nearly all of the designer’s present day items feature a refined equestrian nod in a technique or one other. As someone whose daily bag is 25 cm, the Mini Kelly seems exponentially smaller. I’ve seen individuals use this for journey and again, that’s fantastic if you’re simply carrying your phone, money and room card. The weight of what is inside the bag is placed solely on the turnlock though, so it’s not an excellent concept to do that often if you're carrying a regular-sized Kelly by the deal with. Find a variety of vintage Hermès handbags, day attire, footwear and extra on 1stDibs. Featured in 95 Braise with Gold Hardware, a Red leather-based exterior with a Red leather interior including a small slip pocke... Prepare your bundle with the objects to return and embody your invoice. Select which items you would like to return, then please observe the instructions. I love to assist folks remodel their fashion and pick the most effective products that can help you really feel assured. As of 2021, Hermes Mini Kelly price is $8,one hundred fifty in the US, and £6,159 within the United Kingdom. The demand for these bags keep growing and the value retains growing each year. Perhaps, you’re holidaying this summer or have dinner or events booked. There is no occasion the Hermes mini Kelly bag isn’t made for. To do it, MGM once again would have to lend Kelly to Paramount Pictures. Kelly was adamant, and threatened the studio, saying that if they didn't enable her to do the movie she would pack her bags and go away for New York for good. wikipedia handbags Kelly additionally negotiated a extra profitable contract in light of her recent success. In the movie, Kelly performed the wife of a washed-up, alcoholic singer, performed by Crosby.

#hermes mini kelly #mini kelly bag #mini kelly #mini kelly 2 #mini kelly ii

[chernobog13]

A live-action film adaptation of the 1970s anime series Neo-Human Casshern (aka Casshan) was released in 2004.  Simply titled Casshern, it was one of the first films made using a “digital backlot,” wherein the actors are filmed against green screens with minimal props.  The first films produced in the USA using this technique were Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow (2004) and Sin City (2005).

A robot army advances on a human city.

The original story of Casshern dealt with a teenage boy named Tetsuya Azuma who has his consciousness transferred into a nigh-invincible android body, designated as a neoroider.  Casshern battles a robot army that has taken over the world and is bent on eradicating the human race.  The robots are lead by a robot created by Tetsuya’s father which achieved sentience after being struck by lightning.

Casshern is assisted in his battle against the robots by his android dog, Friender, which can transform into a tank, jet, or motorcycle - depending on Casshern’s need; and Luna, a human girl armed with an electromagnetic gun that can destroy the robots.

Casshern’s first appearance in the Casshan: Robot Hunter OVA

A similar scene from the live-action film Casshern

Casshern was created by Tatsuo Yoshida, founder of Tatsunoko Productions, and also the creator of the anime series Mach GoGoGo (aka Speed Racer), Gatchaman (aka Battle of the Planets), Hurricane Polymar, and Tekkaman.  Characters from the last three series crossed over with Casshern in the Infini-T Force manga and anime a few years ago.

Casshern received his own 4-part OVA (Original Video Anime) in the 1990s (Casshan: Robot Hunter - 1993), like some other anime heroes (ie 8 Man, Gatchman).  OVA were anime features or short series that were created for direct home release, not for theatre release or television broadcast.  Some OVAs were reboots (8 Man After), while others just told essentially the same stories with redesigned costumes and better animation (Gatchaman).  Casshern’s OVA fell into the second category, with the 4 episodes covering the major plot points of his original 35 episode series.

Two different versions of Casshern leaving two different versions of Luna on a roof

The live-action film goes another route entirely.  This time Tetsuya’s father is not a roboticist, but is experimenting with something called Neo Cells (sort of like super stem cells) that can regenerate human tissue.  Unfortunately, these Neo Cells are only found in people living in a certain area.  The government declares those people terrorists and declares war on them, supplying as many bodies as Tetsuya’s father needs to extract the Neo Cells.  It is found that the Neo Cells don’t work as predicted and are useless for human use.  Then lightning strikes the tanks containing the corpses and Neo Cells.  The corpses return to life vastly augmented, but most of them are slaughtered by the military.  A few escape and call themselves Neo Sapiens.  They discover a mothballed robot army from a previous war and use it in their quest to eradicate humanity.

Unfortunately Casshern’s helmet is shown for a brief moment in the live-action film, but never used

Tetsuya is a soldier killed in the war against the people with the Neo Cells.  When his body is returned his father bathes him in the Neo Cell solution.  Tetsuya is resurrected and then, because his body and abilities are unstable, he is placed in a suit of experimental battle armor.

Tetsuya then has to use his newfound abilities to defeat the Neo Sapiens and their robots in order to save mankind!

Visually, the live-action film is stunning.  The world that is created has a early Soviet Union/pre-war Nazi Germany aesthetic, and in fact many signs in the background are written in Russian and German.  It all has a very diesel punk feel, which I found interesting.

I mean, just look at the design for these aircraft:

I don’t know how aerodynamic it is to have the front of an airplane sculpted like a human head, but it looks pretty cool!

However, they filmmakers spent so much time with their world building that they left very little room for actual superheroics, which I assume most people would have come to the theatre to see since this is a film based on a superhero anime.

There are a few fight scenes, but it takes forever to get to them.  And while the fight between Casshern and the robot army, parts of which I have presented here, is pretty awesome, it is also the best one and appears around the halfway point.  Never again in the film does Casshern demonstrate this level of power and speed.

Casshern would be a fine science fiction film by itself, dealing with concepts like: the morality of war, the lengths people will go to to save loved ones, the powerful exploiting the weak in order to extend their lives, survivors guilt, and the impact war has on the environment.  With all that, there’s no need for the superhero story, which, frankly, feels tacked on and forced.

If you’re a big Casshern fan, this film might be a bit of a disappointment.  Otherwise, I highly recommend it for the visuals and production design alone.  If you liked the alternate universe of Sky Captain and theWorld of Tomorrow, I’m pretty sure you’d like Casshern.

The unfortunate thing is, the American version of the film, released by Dreamworks, is flawed.  Not only has the film been shortened by 24 minutes, but the subtitles are the worst I’ve seen in a long time on a film released by a major American studio.  They have been overly simplified, and there are many instances when characters speak dialogue that isn’t given any subtitling at all.  So keep that in mind if you go looking for the DVD. 

#Casshern #Casshan: Robot Hunter #anime #tokusatsu

[amphxtrite]

fred weasley x fem!reader

This is for @feetoffthetable ‘s 500 follower writing challenge. Congratulations again on 500!!

hope you like it.

prompts:

“What happened to their happily ever after?”

“Not all love stories get a happily ever after, sometimes it’s just once upon a time.”

warnings: angst, spelling/ grammar mistakes.

word count: 3.1k

tag list: @cupidpoison @marvelhoesworld @wonderful-writer

enjoy<3

__________________________________________

Almost every girl can remember the days where they’d dream of their fairytale romance. Dancing, a prince charming and a kiss in the moonlight as every problem faded away; A thrilling fight between the lovers and the evil villain ending with the two wrapped in each other’s arms. Despite being muggle tales, the wizarding world had also grown to adore these stories, smiles widening on even grown witches' faces with each ‘once upon a time.’

You’d grown up reading about maidens being swept off their feet into the arms of their knight in shining armor, fate seemed to encompass every story you laid your eyes on, so when Fred Weasley entered your life, with a charming smile and a playfulness that had you wanting more, you couldn’t help but fall.

And so began the pining. Stares across the classroom at the wave of red hair, crossing your fingers when group projects were announced, peeking down corridors to see if you could catch the prankster twins in action, and daydreaming from dawn till dusk. You could barely get words past your lips if he ever smiled in your direction. You found yourself wondering what it would feel like to run your hand through his hair. Doodling his name on parchment became common, and dreams of dancing with him plagued your mind. You were young, and in love. You could almost feel your fairy godmother pushing you towards him, fairy tale magic coursing through your veins whenever your eyes would meet.

It took a couple years, but you found your voice. Starting small with congratulations after quidditch games, an occasional joke during classes, a couple more smiles here and there.

The unrequited love, became returned. Fred Weasley thought you were just the shy girl from his transfiguration class, quiet and meek. When you built up the confidence to strike up conversations and joke about Snape’s hair, he found himself hanging onto your every word.

The older twin went from not knowing your name to looking forward to even his most boring classes just to catch a glimpse of your face. Making you smile became his mission, and Godric did he love it when your face would completely light up. Not just a small smirk, but when your eyes sparkle, your lips pull up far enough to see your teeth and your cheeks go a bit pink, that was most definitely his favourite sight.

Even the most enchanting storybook couples would stare amazed at the adoration Fred Weasley and Y/n L/n shared for each other. Two best friends pining for the other without realizing the mutual warmth that had grown. Spending countless hours together, hiding their flushed cheeks, sweaty palms and loving eyes to enjoy every moment spent together.

When the Yule ball was announced Fred had fallen flat on his face running up to ask you. He’d spotted you in the clock tower courtyard with one of your friends and he knew immediately, you were the only person he’d want to go with. He sprinted up to you intending to drop to his knee and ask, but his foot got caught in the stone and he fell for you the second time. Now any other person may have lost hope and ran away, but Fred Weasley was determined to make the most of it, rebounding it with a cheesy pick up line, In true Fred fashion.

Cinderella would’ve glared in jealousy when the two of you waltzed across the dance floor. Not only was the night magical, but it was awkward, nervous, and fun. It didn’t seem like the far fetched dance at the end of a film, it felt real. You’d step on his toes and he’d shuffle his hand around your waist, but when it came down to it, you didn’t care. You really did feel like a princess dancing in the arms of her lover, swaying to the beautiful music as other students starred in awe at the two gryffindors gliding around the room, laughing happily while moving their feet in a mesmerizing waltz.

That night Fred Weasley finally asked you to be his girlfriend, he got down on his knee in the middle of the dance floor, pouring his heart out to you, his confession wiping even the soliloquies of Romeo Montague out of the water.

“Y/n, from the moment you started to talk to me in our third year, I fell. You make me smile, laugh, blush and always know how to cheer me up. Honestly, why didn’t you start talking to me sooner? I never knew how much I needed you, but my eyes have been cleared, my feelings in tune and now I’m asking you on the dance floor to maybe take this foolish man to be your prince?”

Droplets emerged from your eyes as you shook your head up and down, happy tears flowing free as you pulled the red-head up again.

The entire student body had paused to take in the scene before them, watching in surprise as Fred Weasley stood to his feet to dip the girl with tear stained cheeks into a low kiss, only standing again to catch his breath before stealing you away out the door.

You’d give anything to go back to that night. The seed of young adoration finally blossoming into a flower of love. Love so true, beautiful and pure you’d probably blind anyone who saw. You ran through the halls to Black Lake, dancing to the beats of your hearts in the embrace of your love, swaying in the moonlight as puzzle pieces of your life finally seemed to fall into place and stars aligned.

Holding your love in your arms is a feeling so surreal and fantastic, something that has an addicting property that you couldn’t help but crave. When Fred’s arms surrounded you, you didn’t feel trapped, enclosed, barricaded. You felt free, as though you could fly.

It is hard to define love, but what was between the redhead prankster and gryffindor dreamer painted a clear picture for anyone to see. Love opens the best in us, it reveals pieces of us never seen before and unlocks emotions never known. Fred grew more in love with you with each passing day and his desire to see the smile upon your face never faded.

Your love for your prince charming was something that would never be taken away from you. Everyday took your breath away and every time Fred smiled at you, your brain seemed to turn to mush, the childhood pining never seemed to leave.

Your last year at Hogwarts brought about some problems, with the monstrous pink toad and Fred’s tendencies for trouble, you could say difficulties were inevitable. Nights where Fred snuck into your dorm broken down, tired, and ready to collapse became frequent, especially after he was banned from the quidditch team. Fred was hesitant to reveal his sensitivity, but with cuts across his hands and the loss of his favourite activity, he was willing to lose it all just to rest in your arms again. Many nights he’d run to you, exhausted and restless. You’d hold him close, soothe him the best you could and heal his wounds to the best of your abilities. You didn’t know what to say, but you didn’t need to talk. Fred was content laying on your chest as you fussed over him, pressing kisses across his freckled face and mumbling rather choice words under your breath about the pink devil as you gently caressed his injured hand as light as a butterfly.

You were the first person he’d told his scheme to leave Hogwarts to, begging you to go with him and start a new life in a place he’d dreamt of since he was a child. He honestly wasn’t expecting you to agree, but how could you not? It’s not like you had much planned. Anyways, you were tired of the pain Fred had to endure during the past year, so if he was ready to leave, so were you.

You’d compare flying a broom into the sky as fireworks flashed behind you, to riding into the sunset on the back of a stallion, but yours was so much cooler. Fred had grabbed you from the floor and pulled you onto his broom, you clutched onto him for dear life as he and George flew their last victory lap and destroyed every last horrid plaque of rules that hung on the walls of the school of magic. Another feeling of freedom was evident throughout the entire building as victorious cheers sound from every window.

This was definitely better than a ride into the sunset.

Life with the twins in Weasleys’ Wizards Wheezes couldn’t be defined by just one word. It was exciting, chaotic and the most fun you’ve had in your life. Designing product boxes and using charms was more of your strong suit while the boys caused explosion after explosion, perfecting their concoctions. As weeks turned into months, you and Fred felt as though you were really living a couple’s life. Waking up wrapped in each other’s arm without the worry of being caught, making and eating breakfast to tunes on the radio, dancing to a record player as day bled into night and your feet finally got sore.

This is how fairy tale characters must feel after their story ends, you’d think every day, happy and so deeply in love, relishing every moment together and at peace.

You’d finally been introduced to Mrs. Weasley that coming Christmas, her tender love really made you feel welcome and almost moved you to tears.

“It’s nice to see Freddie finally found someone who loves him as much as you do, I can see it in your eyes darling, you’re perfect for him.”

Fred never understood why they said ‘fall’ in love, sure you may feel your senses fade at times but it was never like a fall. If it made sense he’d say he rose into love for you. You brought him to cloud nine, you raised his spirits whenever you joked with him when he was down. You raised the corners of his lips into a smile by just existing. You raised him further towards his dreams and supported him no matter what. Ironically, he dropped to his knee to propose to you, just like he had in your sixth year at the Yule Ball, once again pouring his heart out to you, this time to truly make you his.

“Here we are again, love.” He laughed as he fell to his knee behind you in a muggle park not too far from Diagon Alley.

“Darling, I love you. I love you so much and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You push me towards my dreams, comfort me when I’m upset, and make me smile every single day. I realized how much I needed you back in our sixth year, but today I ask you to seal the deal and become, y/n Weasley?”

It is hard to define love, so many forms of it, so many ways to express it and spread it to the people around you, but when Fred Weasley proposed to you, people looked over and felt the unconditional love between two people that brought tears to their eyes. When Fred Weasley looked at you, you were his everything. His past, present and future, his calm during a storm, his brightest star.

When Y/n said yes, you could hear the love of the purest of heart. The love of a best friend and a partner.

Love opens the best in us, it reveals pieces of us never seen before and unlocks emotions never known. Fred could now ensure a smile on your face for the rest of your days, and the childhood pining could finally rest knowing you would be with this man forever.

When the war finally pulled the wizarding world into the dark, the prankster and the dreamer knew they wouldn’t be able to stand to the side. They needed to help bring back the peace, and they would fight beside the people they cared about. The wedding was postponed until further notice, but it was sworn on a pinky promise that as soon as the chaos was over, you’d pick up where you left off and walk down the aisle in your white dress.

As you stood on the Hogwarts school ground, death eaters on every side and Voldemort cackling maniacally, you reached out for your prince’s hand. Closing your eyes to regain your calm before you had to charge into the incoming fight. Fred had squeezed your hand before pressing his lips to yours in the most passionate kiss the two of you had ever shared.

Looking back, you should’ve held Fred there with you, by your side throughout the entire fight. You should have kept your hands interlocked, standing tall by each other’s side, an unbreakable force to be reckoned with.

Instead the two of you charged forward separated, fighting close, but by your friends’ sides, throwing spell after spell to inch closer to a brighter future. Pain didn’t matter, each wave of your wand could be a step closer to a happy tomorrow.

It was almost thrilling fighting by your classmate, protecting them brought a new sense of purpose to your being and drowned out everything else to focus on the task at hand. Things were turning your way, Neville slayed that dreaded snake, Harry returned, Voldemort would never win now right? Everything would turn out fine. Right?

How wrong you were.

Victory was within reach, death eaters were filtering into smaller numbers and your friends were still alive. Your head was swivelling for your love, the only thought on your mind being to find your prince, your knight, the love of your life. The flash of red hair was just ahead, the light at the end of the tunnel was right there. You called out his name and his head whipped to meet yours. Your eyes met and you could see your future, your wedding, a family, growing old with this man.

Then the rubble fell, and in a flash, everything was taken away from you.

It is hard to define love, but when witches and wizards heard the shrill cry of a heart being torn in half, they could feel the love y/n l/n held for Fred Weasley. The pure, unconditional love that would’ve withstanded the test of time and any problem life could throw her way. The love that had so much hope many people turned away, it was too much to bear. The love that had you digging even though your hands were scabbed and bleeding.

Now when you ask how Fred Weasley showed his love in this scenario, the only thing to say was he died with a smile on his face. He died knowing his last sight was the love of his life running towards him, ready to turn to the next chapter of their lives.

You dug through the rock frantically, grasping onto the hope that for some divine reason Fred could be alive.

This isn’t how the story is supposed to end, your prince was supposed to wrap you into your arms and every problem was supposed to melt away, you were supposed to marry, kiss in front of all your family and friends and live the rest of your days together.

Realization hit you like a speeding train, you were never going to walk down the aisle to see Fred’s reaction to you in a white dress, you were never going to hold your child in your arms and see Fred become the amazing father you knew he would become. You were never going to see him grey and old, still a prankster and still deeply in love. You were never going to feel his lips against yours ever again. Hear his whispers in your ear about how much he loved you, or his melodic laugh that brought butterflies to your stomach every time.

Turns out, the villain of your story wasn’t unrequited love, it wasn’t Umbridge or even Voldemort. It was something even more cruel and insufferable. Death is not something humans really understand, even the most powerful witches and wizards cannot deny that death will come upon you, it is inevitable. There is so much about death we do not understand. All we know is one minute they’re here, the next they’re gone. But you might say, this is a fairy tale, there’s bound to be a happy solution and our lovers will get their happy ending. No, this is reality and our lovers were not that lucky, and the loss of half a heart is not something to be taken lightly.

“No.”

When Fred’s body was retrieved, you were joined by the rest of the Weasley family in their grieving, and while you could never understand what it would be like to lose a brother and a son, you’d lost the man you were going to spend the rest of your days with, and that left a hole in your heart never to be repaired, never to heal.

To lose a lover, but to hold their lifeless body in your arms is a surreal feeling you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy, it’s something that has the power to break even the strongest people and make the most positive lose hope. Every ounce of love in your being spilt through tears that held every wish and hope you’ve ever had. That day you lost your feeling of freedom, and a sick sense of being trapped plagued your every move.

This isn’t how the story was supposed to end.

“What happened to their ‘happily ever after?” A young girl asks her father.

“Well young y/n, as you may know you were named after the very girl who fell in love with my brother and lost everything. Some say she died of a broken heart, others say Freddie came back and took her away to paradise.” An older George Weasley smiles down at his young daughter, snuggled in blankets, clutching a picture frame in her small hands.

“But why couldn’t uncle Fred come back? I thought every fairy tale ends with a happily ever after, those were aunt y/n’s favourite stories right?” Young y/n’s brown eyes flash in confusion and hurt as she lowers the photo of you to her lap.

“Yes, they were her favourite. There was no doubt her and Fred had a love greater than any fairy tale, but not all love stories get a ‘happily ever after.’ Sometimes it’s just a ‘once upon a time.”

#fred weasley #fred weasley imagine #fred weasly x reader #fred weasley angst #fred weasley x gryffindor!reader #fred weasley x you #fred weasley x y/n #harry potter imagine #weasley twins #angst #weasley family #once upon a time #fairy tales #fred weasley fic #fred weasley fanfiction #writing challenge

[route22ny]

BY MICHAEL J. MOONEY | PHOTOGRAPHS BY DAVE SHAFER

Staring at the front of the Royal Theater, I feel as though I’m looking backward through time. Taking in the cerulean marquee, the painted red fringe around the box office, the vertical ROYAL sign jutting into the afternoon sky—it’s easy to imagine why the denizens of Archer County flocked here for decades. The theater was a dark, cool respite from the blazing sun, a still escape from the whipping winds of the North Central Plains, a glimpse of entertainment from the outside world.

The theater—or what’s left of it anyway—peers out from the northeast corner of the town square. Without the storied theater, this could be any small town in Texas. Weathered barns and rusted oil pumps dot the landscape. Anchoring the town is the imposing three-story Romanesque Revival county courthouse, with stone archways and provincial peaks. There’s also a small café (Murn’s), a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it police station, a few antiques stores, and a single four-way stoplight swaying in the breeze like an apparition.

The Royal Theater as it is now and as it was then.

This isn’t just any small town in Texas, though. Archer City is the Texas small town. It’s the setting of both the novel and film versions of The Last Picture Show, a coming-of-age story rendered in black and white that earned eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay), Best Directing, and Best Picture. In Larry McMurtry’s book, published in 1966, the town is called Thalia. In the movie, directed by Peter Bogdanovich and released in 1971, it’s called Anarene—a name taken from an abandoned town 8 miles away. But rest assured, both places are Archer City: the looming courthouse, the blinking stoplight, and the Royal Theater, where so many of the most dramatic moments of The Last Picture Show take place.

The novel, which McMurtry called a “spiteful” book intended to “lance some of the poisons of small-town life,” received critical acclaim when it was published. But it was Bogdanovich’s film that truly introduced the entire world, in utterly unromanticized fashion, to the intense, sweeping sagas of everyday life in Archer City. The Last Picture Show turned this particular and peculiar town into art.

Both the novel and movie contain language that was considered lewd at the time. McMurtry’s own mother, Hazel, once said that after reading the first 100 pages she hid the book in the closet and called her son that night. “Larry, honey,” she said to him, he revealed in his 2002 travel memoir Paradise, “is this what we’re sending you to Rice for? Those awful words!”

The film, with its nudity and frank depiction of teenage sexuality—including Cybill Shepherd’s first and only topless scene—absolutely scandalized upright, moral Americans all over the country. Nowhere more so than in Archer City, where it was regarded at the time as a “dirty” movie.

Now, 50 years after the film’s release, the town’s past dalliances with Hollywood are somehow simultaneously scuttled and omnipresent. There’s no billboard at the city limit announcing the place’s cultural significance, no notation on the water tower. But there are echoes of the art formed here, about this place, along every street, around every corner. Some might even feel the spirit of McMurtry, who passed away in Archer City earlier this year.

Over the last five decades, Peter Bogdanovich, a New Yorker who operated in Los Angeles, has told the story of the movie’s origin many times. He’d seen the novel in a store, liked the title, saw what it was about, and immediately put the book back down. Then actor Sal Mineo, who’d starred alongside James Dean and Natalie Wood in Rebel Without a Cause, gave Bogdanovich a copy of the novel, saying he thought it would make a good film. Bogdanovich still didn’t read it, but gave it to his wife, production designer Polly Platt, and asked her to read it. When she inspired him to finally read it himself, he was intrigued by the challenge of conveying small-town life in Texas and eventually co-wrote the screenplay with McMurtry. Bogdanovich, Platt, and McMurtry took a long road trip scouting locations in Texas, but ultimately the director realized he wanted to shoot the movie in McMurtry’s hometown.

Set in the early 1950s, the story follows three teenagers—the co-captains of the football team and the so-called prettiest girl in school—through their senior year of high school, as they each struggle to make sense of adult concepts like love and sex and the fragility of human life. Sonny Crawford is the sensitive, thoughtful boy from a broken home. Duane Jackson is Sonny’s lovelorn best friend who escapes first into the oil fields and then the Korean War. Jacy Farrow is the coquettish rich girl who yearns wholeheartedly for something beyond the confines of her surroundings. The Last Picture Show also famously includes an ensemble of carefully rendered adults trying to cope with their own expired dreams and broken lives.

McMurtry repeated over the years that the characters he created weren’t based on any real-life individuals, but the people of Archer City always suspected otherwise. A man named Bobby Stubbs, who was photographed with McMurtry in their high school yearbook, believed he was the inspiration for Sonny. Stubbs had a troubled home life and worked nights like Sonny, and he drove the same kind of pickup truck. He was also once hit in the eye by the boyfriend of a girl he liked. “It kinda pretty closely followed me,” Stubbs used to say.

A woman named Ceil Cleveland Footlick was often asked if she was the inspiration for Jacy. She was “very good friends” (her words) with Stubbs and had been voted “Most Beautiful Girl” in her class. For years she brushed off the question, but in 1997 she published a memoir with the title Whatever Happened to Jacy Farrow?

Because of the book’s reputation, getting actors to audition was a challenge. Randy Quaid was cast as Lester, an awkward, sleazy suitor of Jacy’s. He’d only read the parts of the script that involved his character, which mostly centered on Lester taking Jacy to a naked swimming party. “I just thought it was going to be like this B-movie, teenage, soft-porn movie,” Quaid would later say. “Something you’d see at the drive-in.”

None of the young stars had much experience in film. Timothy Bottoms, who’d only been in one movie before, was cast to play Sonny. Jeff Bridges, cast as Duane, had been a professional actor nearly all his life, but at 21 years old, this would be his first major film role. And Bogdanovich cast Shepherd as Jacy after seeing her face on the cover of Glamour magazine.

Most of the adults in the movie were played by established Hollywood actors, including Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn, and Eileen Brennan. For the role of Sam the Lion, the wisdom-dispensing owner of the town’s pool hall, Bogdanovich cast Ben Johnson, the champion-rodeo-cowboy-turned-stuntman-turned-Western-movie-icon. At first Johnson turned down the part on account of the foul language, but Bogdanovich called in a favor from his director friend John Ford, who convinced Johnson to do it.

Almost as soon as filming started, real life began imitating the art being created. While making a movie about illicit sex and barely veiled scandal, the set was awash in illicit sex and barely veiled scandal. The actors spent a lot of time drinking and smoking together in their hotel rooms 30 minutes north in Wichita Falls, and that led to drama. Bottoms fell in love with Shepherd. Bogdanovich started an affair with Shepherd, dissolving his own marriage while his wife, Platt, continued to work on the movie. (Most mornings Platt styled Shepherd’s hair.) “It was quite a soap opera,” Burstyn said in the documentary Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas.

This was everything the locals had feared: all the immoral luridness of Hollywood, right here in a part of Texas not so comfortable with unwholesomeness that didn’t stay behind closed doors.

Outside of Archer City, it was a different story. The movie received great reviews from coast to coast. Johnson won the Oscar for Actor in a Supporting Role and Leachman won for Actress in a Supporting Role. The film is still beloved today and maintains a spot in the coveted National Film Registry.

But at the time of its release, most of the locals disapproved. Strongly. The Los Angeles Times ran a story about it with the headline “Movie Riles Town It Depicts.” McMurtry, who was involved in Bogdanovich’s vision, eventually got so annoyed by the vicious gossip in town that he sent a letter to the editor of the Archer City newspaper, challenging anyone in town to a public debate.

His offer went unrequited.

Archer City’s population is 1,848, only a couple hundred larger than it was when McMurtry grew up there in the ’30s and ’40s. The town is the seat of Archer County, created in 1858 by the Texas State Legislature and named after Branch Tanner Archer, former secretary of war of the Republic of Texas. Ranching and oil have long been the predominant industries—by late 1926, there were more than 400 oil wells within 13 miles of Archer City—but many people are increasingly attracted to the town for its proximity to prime hunting.

Many of the locations where The Last Picture Show was filmed are gone now. Where Sam’s dusty pool hall once stood, with its door flapping in the wind, there’s nothing but an empty dirt lot. The Rig-Wam Drive Inn, the burger joint where Jacy dangled french fries over Duane’s head as if he was a trained seal, is just a plot of asphalt and patchy grass. The West-Tex Theater in the neighboring town of Olney, used for the interior movie theater scenes, was torn down in the mid-’80s. Today it’s a small, quiet park with a gazebo.

Some places are still here, but different. The restaurant where Brennan’s character worked turned into Booked Up No. 4, one of four bookstores McMurtry set up around the town square before shuttering all but one in 2012. The high school has some of the same old features, though it’s been updated and decorated with a handful of granite statues marking state titles the school has won through the years.

Much of the town looks and acts remarkably like it did when The Last Picture Show was made. Boys about the age of Duane and Sonny still speed through town in pickup trucks. Men the age of Sam the Lion still stop them to talk about football. The dance hall at the American Legion, where Jacy and Duane twirled around the room and Sonny ran into his estranged father, looks like it could host the same event today. On a recent evening, four or five locals were perched on barstools, sipping cold beers, listening to songs on the jukebox. They got rid of the old Wurlitzer years ago, but the updated digital version there now still plays all the Hank Williams Sr. songs from the movie.

In time, feelings in Archer City softened a bit. Mostly, the people here don’t talk much about the movie, or about McMurtry, the town’s most famous son. You can spend all morning at Murn’s Café and all night at the American Legion, the only bar in town, and never hear The Last Picture Show mentioned once. It’s not the source of tension it once was.

The public change of heart was most apparent in 1989, nearly 20 years after The Last Picture Show was filmed, when Bogdanovich returned to Archer City to shoot the sequel, Texasville, based on a book of the same name by McMurtry. This time the townspeople lined up to participate as extras. People came from miles away to sell concessions or to take photos or just get a glimpse of the nearly $20 million production.

“The bad taste that the movie left for some folks, that’s gone now,” then-high school principal Nat Lunn told the Austin American-Statesman at the time. “Especially with money being short in town, they’re ready for another dose of Hollywood.”

By the late 1980s, the three leads in the first film—Bottoms, Bridges, and Shepherd—had all become stars. While the entire budget for the first movie was around $1.3 million, Shepherd alone was paid $1.5 million to reprise her role. Bridges was reportedly paid $1.75 million. Bottoms, who’d complained publicly about Bogdanovich and said he didn’t like any of his co-stars, would only agree to return if he was given an additional $100,000 to fund the Picture This documentary.

In the two decades since the first movie, Bogdanovich’s career had soared and crashed. He and Shepherd had broken up; he went on to have multiple relationships, and she had two divorces. Bottoms was also divorced and remarried, but on the set he confessed the crush he’d had on Shepherd. Platt returned, too, and brought the 21-year-old daughter she and Bogdanovich shared. It became a grand, twisted Hollywood reunion, right there on the streets of Archer City.

Drawn by the potential spectacle of what was by then some sort of love-octagon, media outlets from across the country sent reporters to town. There were long feature stories in both Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. By all accounts, though, the entire production served as a therapeutic experience, healing the wounds of the past. At one press conference, the often-sullen Bottoms hugged Bogdanovich. Behind-the-scenes footage caught Shepherd hugging Bottoms. Residents of Archer County took photos of themselves on the set.

But when the movie was released, it tanked. It received middling reviews, earned back only a fraction of its budget, and even today it’s not easy to find on any of the major streaming services.

A lot of people associated with The Last Picture Show are dead now. Stubbs, who claimed to be the basis for Sonny, died in 1992. Johnson in 1996. Sam Bottoms, the real-life younger brother of Timothy Bottoms who played the mute boy Billy, died in 2008. Platt, the producer and production designer who somehow never pulled Shepherd’s hair, died in 2011. Then Brennan in 2013.

In January of this year, Footlick, the woman who wrote about being the real Jacy Farrow, died in North Carolina. Leachman died almost two weeks later. And on March 25, McMurtry, the writer who created all this beautiful trouble, died at the age of 84.

A few days after his death, nobody answered the doorbell at his house in Archer City, a majestic, three-story mansion just down the road from the high school. Looking through the front window, everything seemed to me to be just the way he left it, from the table made from a giant dinosaur fossil to the towering shelves of books in every room. McMurtry bought this place, the biggest home in town, after he won the Pulitzer Prize for Lonesome Dove. He’d wake up early in the morning, type for an hour and a half or so at his long oak table, then go to the bookstore to price antiquarian volumes. Most of the locals would leave him alone.

On the house’s front porch, a single rocking chair was situated to look out over the front yard into the surrounding neighborhood. Someone sitting there could see the comings and goings of a lot of people. As the early-evening wind moved through, the chair began to rock ever so gently.

These days, I sense the people of Archer City think differently of The Last Picture Show. It’s a part of the town’s story, just like the cattle industry and state titles. The movie is even mentioned on the town’s website, though it’s certainly not prominent.

There’s also a tiny park just off the square with a fiberglass horse covered in brands from local ranches and a display that chronicles a bit of the town’s history. The welded metal wall has separate panels for the town’s founding, the first successful oil well drilled here, and the giant fire that swept through in 1925. There’s also a panel explaining how the town was the filming location for The Last Picture Show and Texasville. Bogdanovich’s last name is misspelled.

A couple hundred feet away is the Royal Theater. Most of the building is a burned-out hull, popular for weddings, photo shoots, and occasional performances. The front of the building has been restored, though. It looks just like it did in the movie, the image that begins and ends the film. It’s haunting and beautiful, weathered and damaged—but still here, still standing, still looking at that single blinking light swaying in the wind.

***

The Last Picture Show wasn’t the first movie based on a novel by Larry McMurtry, and it certainly wasn’t the last. You might besurprised by just how many films and TV shows have been made from his novels. Here are a few:

Hud, 1963 (based on Horseman, Pass By) The Last Picture Show, 1971 Lovin’ Molly, 1974 (based on Leaving Cheyenne) Terms of Endearment, 1983 Lonesome Dove, 1989 Texasville, 1990 The Evening Star, 1996

https://texashighways.com/culture/how-the-last-picture-show-changed-the-worlds-view-of-small-town-texas/

#archer city texas #larry mcmurtry #peter bogdanovich #the last picture show

[helenaulintz]

Nobody Would Believe It by Romy Erikson

This was a short story of a cyborg who fell in love with a man who denied her ever-lasting happiness. For he feared the human-machine technology. It happened in New York many years ago. The end. Why should this tale continue? The cyborg could realize the potential of any outcome. The important thing was to relive it, admire it, then archive it. Sadly so. Someday stop to continuously recreate the only reality that made her feel a deeper meaning for things. New York was inundated by artificial and natural light reflecting colorfully from walls replete with artistic goals. The city was a jungle of ambitious people wanting to conquer themselves: self-absorbed, self-abused, self-made humans from every corner in the world. But nobody was like Iona.

Iona was thin and tall. She was quiet. Her hair was long, black, straight. She was only twenty years old then. Her lovely green eyes were focused on her open palm. There was a small metal item that she had completed. She then gently placed it on a black velvet tray with parts for a tool that a machine somewhere in the world needed to function. Her fingers were thin, her white nails were long, and her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail. She worked from the upper floor of a studio in a duplex skyrise apartment in New York City. The windows faced the brightest sky, flooding her space with natural light. The air was perfumed. Her posh clothes, and her shoes were designed specifically for her, and at her request, for her arms and legs were long, her head was small, and her torso was narrow in comparison to her muscular legs. Her hair and makeup colors were formulated cybernetically the previous night. Their color gradually changing after her morning shower, disappearing naturally after her evening bath. As stated, Iona was a cyborg. Maybe the only one in the world. From her apartment in New York City, she designed tools for sophisticated machines, that required specific handcrafted materials and skills to operate. Her main business was called Moon Phase.

That was not the only thing that she did. Iona also owned a farm in Upstate New York called Pure Earth. Cows, horses, donkeys, sheep, ducks, chickens, rabbits, and bees lived peacefully on one hundred acreages of land. Another two hundred acres were harvested to produce fruit and vegetables. They had everything to subsist on and feed their animals without the need to buy from outside vendors. They generated a surplus of natural goods to be stocked, sold, or donated. Milk, eggs, feathers, wool, grapes, apples, cherries, pears, peaches, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, sweet potatoes, cabbage, lettuce, spinach, eggplant, hay, wheat, and corn. They also made their own wine, cheese, chocolate, sunflower oil, avocado oil, hemp oil, feather, and wool byproducts. The land was rotated clockwise or anticlockwise every month for the animals, and every season for the harvest, to maximize its productivity. They bottled their own water from multiple water wells on the property. Iona was proud of the loaded boxes of natural goods that this precious land had given them. By the lake and on the highest section of their property was a resort with two cabins, one hotel, a spa, a food market, and a restaurant serving their products. Sunroom Resort was rented out to an experienced hotelier. Visitors enjoyed a long list of services like a holiday or a retreat, they also came to learn, work, or help in the agricultural needs of the business. Iona was at the farm every weekend from Friday night to Monday morning working with the rest of them. Nobody suspected that Iona was a cyborg although it was obvious that she wasn’t real like other people were real. She always knew everything, and she always looked perfect. She was sometimes hated, but it never troubled her. Her personality was somewhat disengaged from the remainder of the people. Iona wore only mono colors. Mostly all black, all white, all grays. She rarely mixed tones. For she wanted her hair and makeup to be the focus of another’s eyes. She was considered beautiful although she was artificial: psychologically and physically.

At her apartment in New York, she worked with a crew of three, that maintained a pool, sauna, gym, security systems, cleaning of her work studio, and her living quarters. They worked parttime for four hours five times a week. But answering questions, speaking to clients, and taking orders related to her businesses were also Iona’s responsibilities. Iona could do all phases of her tool making job alone and fast. But the farm needed a minimum of ten people employed full-time to operate it.

She often noticed that in both professional arenas, employees and clients joked about her hair and makeup. Iona finally realized that it was wiser to be colorful and upbeat in the city but use natural colors when in the country. Making personal choices about the simplest of things was not the easiest task because Iona had no emotions to refer too. The behaviors of others had to clearly be expressed, internally graphed, or repeatedly pointed too for her to realize the matter was getting ridiculous. She toned it down, she was continuously toning everything down, for humans seem to love the ability of machines to be less relevant, and unpersonal.

At the farm Iona stayed at a studio above the main barn from where she could hear the roosters crowing, the horses whining, and the cows mooing at daybreak. Details that she thought was something she would love to experience when working from Pure Earth but only in her imagination. For an application of her imagination helped her reward herself in a virtual sense. Iona’s existence had no purpose, no pleasure, except what she recreated for herself through consciousness. There was no defining mission that she could live up to without logically reasoning it out. Her will to live was always equal to her will to die. Switch on or a switch off. She liked being on rather than off. Dying was sleeping, but sleeping was awaking, and awaking was learning, and learning was living. Her reality was as mechanical as the things she developed for her business. This caused her some panic. Like a machine that operates infinitely, without giving too much importance to existence. Iona had had obsessive phases attempting to establish the limitations of survivability for a cyborg. She had intentionally fallen from a horse without this causing a single injury to herself. Purposely jumped from stairs, bridges, and windows. Scratching, tearing, and breaking apart, but managing to fix herself within a day. Refusing to drink and eat for a month, but nothing happened. Not exactly. She lost a lot of weight. Her appearance was skeletal, but energy wise, unaltered, and then quickly recovering after starting to eat. She battled monster waves, and swum into icy waters, and lost consciousness but only momentarily. She feared this actual inability to die, a world without end, a face without change, a soul forced to stay while everyone lives and then goes.

Iona then tried telling the world she was a cyborg. Announcing it to her perplexed family, texting it to her friends, posting on the internet, writing her story to the media, making dare-devil videos, like cutting her flesh with a knife, or banging her head with a hammer, or jumping off something to demonstrate how her body recovered. A few who witnessed it onscreen called her a joke, a scam, a sicko. Nobody would believe it. One day she stopped trying to share something that others said was schizophrenia, bipolar, depression, dementia, homosexuality, transsexuality, or a suicidal disorder. She grew tired of the systematic self-abuse that she endured and received in equal measures. Iona did what she did best: she worked with Moon Phase, Pure Earth, and Sunroom. Generating wealth to help her family, her friends, rewarding herself with comfort and surrounding herself with beautiful things.

At twenty years old, Iona had never fallen in love. For she believed the word fallen was what happened to people’s minds and hearts. They fell. Disarmed, naked, raw, disabled, open to injury, by the attractive pull of another’s force. Love was something extremely dangerous. Hate was the safest exit from the entrapping’s of love. Maybe one day she’d stop feeling the eminent danger of an emotional blindsight. These were merely arguments to fill the empty bucket of more than just water. She was a cyborg; she could sense the love feelings programmed in. Love for example was a weak link to an exchange of energy that always turned kinetic. Another word for destructive. Love was an imaginary room she refused to enter because the word danger was written on the door. Every day in Iona’s life was the same as the previous day, hour by hour, minute by minute, second to second. Every week was the same as the previous week. Every month was the same as the previous month. She always knew the problems that could potentially arise, so she gave those things more relevance. And those were the only priorities in her agenda that made a difference. Like the smooth workings of a clock, that was her constant mindset.

Iona’s bedrooms in New York City were inaccessible. The Manhattan private space was square. There was a wall-to-wall window. The curtains were shiny waves of red. The walls were black and white. A light beige king size bedframe facing the west. The bedframe switched on at bedtime and switched off before she woke up. Her bedframe was a sophisticated computer that she installed and programmed nightly for her own physical maintenance. This was a fully equipped cyborg room. But one night, a member of her staff forgot to reset the nighttime alarm, so she returned to Iona’s duplex apartment. Hearing computer noises from the bedroom area, she went to check what the computerized sounds pertained to. The noise came from Iona’s bedroom. The space was pitch-black except for the rectangular bedframe behind Iona. The woman approached her bed quietly, thinking of disconnecting the blue, red, pink, purple, orange, yellow, white lights projecting geometrical data on its screen. She starred down. Iona had come undone. Her skull, hair, eyes, nose, mouth, tongue, teeth, muscles, arms, legs, organs, including her brain were suspended above her slim figure. Like digital holographs of her body cell by cell but these were not digital holographs. They were actual body parts contained in an electromagnetic sac. The woman reached her hand, and something burnt her skin. She stepped back in shock, suddenly scared of the strange world that Iona seemed to inhabit. In the morning there was a note from her employee. A family member had had an emergency and she was forced to fly out of state immediately. But Iona was notified by her computerized system that a woman had entered her grid, a name she gave her personal space, and observed her going through her nightly maintenance. She also watched a security take of the scene. Iona considered calling her to ask her for the sake of her business to not disclose what she had seen. Then she reconsidered the situation. Nobody would believe it. But the other two employees having heard the story never returned. Iona rehired another crew of three. They got new uniforms, schedules, responsibilities, and they were informed to never enter her bedroom.

A client called with a problem. There were issues with some tools that she had designed for his machines. She got in her black car and drove to his company in the tristate area. He manufactured motorcycle gear for established commercial designers, and racing teams. She had put together her emergency repair box and virtual goggles, hoping to resolve this issue on site. Iona wore a gray full body suit that hugged her figure, enhancing her curves, combined with a black belt and black high heels. Her hair that day was blonde with natural toned lipstick and her usual classic black eyeliner. Upon arriving, she immediately noticed an attractive stranger in a corner, observing them. The atelier was occupied by operators busily working on pieces of leather, vinyl, titanium, and other exotic materials. Her client guided her to the four machines that didn’t work, upon briefly explaining that the tools had deformed the textiles they were working on, he left her to figure it out. But she requested that her tools be removed from these machines for further examining, and upon carefully laying each one on black velvet trays, she was directed to the corner where that cute stranger was sitting. Iona found him striking and suddenly became self-conscious, unable to focus on her work. He was very tall. He had a glad, confident, sweet disposition. An innocent and naughty smirk. He then started a conversation with her.

Warp: Hi, my name is Warp. How old are you?

Iona: Twenty. Iona. Nice to meet you.

Warp: Same. You have your own business at twenty?

Iona: Yes. I began my business almost two years ago. I am a toolmaker during the week and a farmer on the weekends. You?

Warp: Wow very young. I’m twenty-two years old. I’m a principal artist for an Italian corporation called Nixx, and we design helmets. I do most of the artwork, supervise other creatives, often work with clients, and help them define what they need.

Iona: I hear an accent.

Warp: Brazil. My mother is from Nicaragua and my father is from Rio de Janeiro.

Warp was raised in a backroom apartment of a busy Rio de Janeiro restaurant, where he worked afterschool hours since age ten. Afterwards he studied or devoted his time to art. Warp usually gave his artworks to others for his parents threw everything that was nonessential away. It upset him enormously. A regular client at the restaurant was employed at a skate company, and Warps drawings were a bit of what they were looking for. At age fifteen he began to freelance, developing an artistic vision for them. At nineteen he immigrated to United States of America where he started working for Nixx. Iona had listened attentively, absorbed by his features, the way he spoke was romantic and charismatic. She got back to her work. Upon carefully examining the tools, Iona found that the problem was metric. Their sizes were off symmetrically by zero point zero three millimeters. The troubling part was that all had the exact same problem, but she had manufactured one by one, resetting the computer every time. And there was no signal of an error by the software in use. They needed to be remade. She placed them inside a case and locked it firmly shut.

Warp: You treat tools like jewels.

Iona: More than jewels. They are valuable. Nobody can make them. Like I do.

Warp: We all need to feel special.

Iona: Those that pay the price for being special, are more special than the rest.

Warp: Off course. May I invite you to coffee?

Iona: Yes. Here is my card.

That’s how their friendship started. They had coffee a couple of times in the morning. Then lunch. Lots of dinners together. A few trips upstate to see her farm on the weekends and meet everyone that worked for Pure Earth. He helped and even got his hands and boots dirty. Seemed to appreciate the simple things. It was there that they watched their first movie together and held hands the whole time, but they weren’t certain about their feelings for each other. Their friendship seemed enough. They talked non-stop. They talked about everything. Except about Iona’s cyborg nature. She knew that he was normal. That she felt nothing for him. Which wasn’t normal. But she liked him and wouldn’t break his heart. They had sex six months after meeting. It just happened. They kissed for a long time, their hands touched, and they wrapped their arms around one another. And they dropped their clothes as they walked to his bed. She didn’t tell him that she was a virgin. The subject made her uncomfortable. In the morning she asked Warp.

Iona: Did I pleasure you?

Warp: Yes. It’s strange that you ask. Couples don’t ask these things out loud.

Iona: I am just curious. I have never experienced this. Like you were holding me down, then you pushed me out, and threw me up. And I imagined the Universe, and the stars. Everything seemed more meaningful.

Warp: That is the definition of making love.

Iona: Love?

Warp: Not yet.

Iona: What are we waiting for?

Warp: Emotions that don’t require words.

Iona: Or code, I guess.

Warp: You’re funny Iona.

Warp moved into her New York City apartment. She gave him the empty bedroom down the corridor opposite her own bedroom. She told him her bedroom was private. He could not be inside once she fell asleep. That she had a condition that required overnight maintenance from a computer within her bedframe. He seemed to understand. She found that odd, then again, he wasn’t complicated. Warp decorated his own room as minimalist as her own, but his curtains were gray, and the wood floor was carpeted. He bought a king size bed with an iron bedframe and lay a black fluffy bed cover over it with four extra-large white pillows. On the wall he added personally meaningful photographs, artworks, and illustrations. Baby, family, professional photos. His mother was striking, his father was into her still. They were young when Warp was born. Hardworking. Warp made an illustration as a child about another child with the head of an old man.

One day Warp gave his girlfriend twenty helmets that he had created for his portfolio. They were his own personal original prototypes, and very favorite ones. Nobody had ever seen them. They were not catalogued nor published by any specialized magazines. Iona loved them and promised to exhibit them in her studio. She printed a titanium grid with a 3D machine with twenty squares exhibiting her boyfriend’s stunning creativity. Warp created demons, angels, monsters, and other imaginary creatures. The known Universe was represented in most. There were four helmets that she liked the most and these occupied the first row. Helmet one was a neon white star with light lines going in and exploding out onto a dark Universe, its screen was transparent, its shape amplified around the lower edge. Helmet two was the outline of a dragon tattooed in blue on both cheeks of a child staring through the back, its screen was dark blue, and it had wind breakers connecting both ear zones. Helmet three was deep red with black lines flaring out from an invisible right eye, its screen was also red, and the helmet was egg-shaped. Helmet four was a headless angel with a robot’s body, with bird of prey wings, its screen was mirrored, and it was slightly crested at the center.

Warp and Iona were very happy together. She was with him, but she was also alone. And that sense of solitude was essential for their work. Warp would often work from home too, at another studio in the same apartment. He too set up a diagonal table exhibiting twenty exclusive tools that Iona had researched, developed, and manufactured. She used gold, iron, silver, steel, copper, diamond, titanium, rubber, and vinyl. Each tool fit in one hand. About ten inches by five inches. Iona did smaller parts. As tiny as five by five inches. But Warp preferred those that had electronic inserts for opening, closing, and operating the tool. All the golden tools were egg shaped and they remained shut until activated.

A year flashed by; they were at the farm planting lemon trees that had arrived in a red semi-truck with their roots clothed in a purple sac. The holes in the soil were set in three rows of ten. Immediately after completing the job, she sat down on a rock, and then fainted. Everyone on the field ran to help, and Warp carried her to their apartment on the barn. He lay her down and gave her water. They thought she was pregnant with their baby. She had been nauseated, not sleeping well, very hot and puffy. They ordered tests that same night and they discovered that she was pregnant. They couldn’t have that conversation. They were both in shock. Glad but … speechless.

Warp: I love you.

Iona: I love you.

Three months went by. Meanwhile Iona was unable to tell anyone that she was a cyborg, and that she wasn’t certain about the future of that baby. Her gynecologist sat on a stool at the center of a beige and white room next to a black screen with the audio of a loud heartbeat. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. That was her baby’s heartbeat. She was laying down in a light blue gown over her raised white dress. The doctor said that everything was healthy with her unborn baby.

Iona’s hair was bright blue, and she had no idea cyborgs could get pregnant, but that evening while she and Warp both starred at a sonogram of the fetus, Iona decided to tell him.

Iona: Warp, got to tell you something.

Warp: Is everything alright?

Iona: Yes.

Warp: Go on.

Iona: I’m a cyborg.

Warp: You mean a humanoid, transhuman?

Iona: Yes.

Warp: I suspected it. The hair, makeup, nail changing colors. Your ability to sit dead still while working long hours. The noises I hear while you sleep, coming from your bedroom in our Manhattan apartment. Your superhero built. Who did this to you?

Iona: I don’t know. I just know what to do. How to take care of me. And what my activities will be. Will you still love me?

Warp: That means that you aren’t only a cyborg, but you have a program, that is taking you through its processes and procedures. Do you realize that you could at any moment be externally operated? You have no idea who did this to you? You were activated and deployed, and you accept this as part of your reality?

Iona: No choice. This is who I am.

Warp: When I returned from my trips abroad, those that lasted over a week, in that no-sex timeframe, you were a virgin all over again. It was troubling.

Iona: I was embarrassed too.

Warp: Why didn’t you tell me from the start?

Iona: Nobody would believe it, not even you.

Iona went to her bedroom and locked the door. She bathed. Combed her hair, brushed her teeth, washed her face. And lay down naked on her bed. Wanting but unable to cry. She pressed play on her music application on the right upper section in her bedframe. Warp had suddenly become cold. Asking her things that she had never asked herself about. Like he knew she was a cyborg, and he had even researched it. To Warp it wasn’t about being different, but about serving a purpose, and he had linked her condition with a program, the execution of a goal. She was confused. Iona fell asleep. Then came a cyborg dream. Warp was before her eyes in a red desert holding a golden egg in each palm. He wore blue. She was also holding a golden egg in each palm. She wore black. He embraced her, she embraced him. Like the first time they kissed. A storm rose on both sides. Red sand revolved around them. Gusts of red clouds wrapped them closer together.

Warp: Ready to activate?

Iona: Ready.

An atomic bomb imploded. Together they transformed into a fireball and a fire tree. A cloud with an elongated ray. That reached the sky and forced the air out of them. Every cell from inside their blood splashed inwards, outwards, and upwards. Time passed. Nothing remained. A paddle with blood and four golden eggs. A gust of wind. A peculiar red desert unknown to most humans. Iona woke up the next morning. Got into a swimming suit and a gown, and ran to the pool sweating, feeling extremely scared. She entered the water and swam under from one side to the other. Warp entered the pool area, but she asked him to be alone. He stayed and waited. She raised from the pool, slowly approached him, and embraced him.

Warp: I’m leaving Iona.

Iona: Why?

Warp: You are someone’s cyborg. Someone out there created you.

Iona: I have no memory of that. I wouldn’t know where to look.

They stared at one another. Iona’s beautiful head began to change, and flip colors and designs like a helmet catalogue. She then rested briefly and began once more to transform at speed of light. Different people, from different countries, religions, and races. Faces. Millions of heads on, in, out and off. One by one until none. Warp carried her momentarily stiff body to a long chair. He kissed her cheeks, her lips, and let her be. His work with her was done. The cyborg was free from its sad program. She could add variety to her daily activities. Feel a lot more than nothing. Have a sense of identity, and uniqueness. Lots of discoveries to be excited about. She was no longer a cyborg on a one-way path reliving the experiences of thousands of other human beings before her.

Warp: Find out who made you a cyborg.

Iona: Why?

Warp: Because you were once human, and someone interfered with that.

Iona: Don’t leave.

Warp: You can be monitored. Safety and privacy are primordial for me.

Iona: Our baby?

Warp: She’s a cyborg like you. You didn’t need me to become impregnated.

Iona: How do you know so much about me?

Warp: I researched the subject after I saw an old video of you attempting to prove it.

Iona: Thank you for crossing paths with me.

Warp: Thank you for allowing me to get to know you.

They kissed holding one another. A sense of need for this someone. After he was gone, she was inanimate for two hours, resting beside the pool, with an aching chest after crying, very confused about Warp leaving abruptly. Time took the shape of a vector with bits of love hanging from mindsets of a slowly evolving sense of loneliness.

Iona continued to miss Warp. She visited his bedroom, and his home studio. He took nothing with him. His things were spread out. Unfinished, unkept, unused, and unorderly. His bed covers were open wide, and the curtains were shut but the light burst in through them. A collection of ink pens on a table over lines inside a partially completed helmet design. Like he was about to return anytime now. Time didn’t exist for a cyborg. Iona kept a detailed report of her daily to-dos so she could identify the passing of time, her growing belly helped her understand it's concept. And it was unearthing to make decisions that were not identical to those made the previous day. She promised him to search for her maker, but then realized it made no sense. Warp’s return was her reward. She had no interest in her maker. Sometimes she napped in Warps bed, imagining his ghost laying down with his hands on her belly. A cyborg’s existence was superior to that of a human being, and it was obvious that whoever created her, knew that Earths species had to evolve in a technological way. Her resilience, her independence, her successes weren’t comparable to the vulnerabilities of a human being. But since he was gone, every emotion that she wanted to feel was empty, every helmet of his that once meant many things was vacated. Warp was no longer there to complete the emptiness that a machine experienced without a master. A machine without a human was a useless piece of junk. It was this way that Iona found herself wondering how emptiness came to be. Not from the perspective of her makers true intentions but from the fact that love was cancelling. Requiring more courage than any other human or machine achievement, but was love even necessary? It had extinguished every energy and returned nothing.

When Ona was born, her eyes were lighter, than normal. Her whites were nearly transparent, her green eyes emanated light. Her skin had a golden tone under the sun that disappeared when indoors. Her hair and nails were softer and thinner than human hair and nails. Everything that moved and moved very fast got her attention, but she ignored things that didn’t move fast no matter how colorful or pretty. Her baby Ona was without a doubt a beautiful cyborg. And they would keep it secret for nobody would believe it. Her name was Ona, and she was identical to her mother. Iona and Ona always matched. Their hair color and their hair cut changed in unison. When Ona laughed, it was loud, and people looked. And they criticized the unusual hair color in sync with her moms, that could be green, blue, purple, or pink. These things didn’t matter to them. For their hair was back to its natural tone at bedtime and even Ona’s dolls were boring in comparison. The Manhattan apartment and the Upstate barn apartment became lively and noisy. A little bike beeped, a clown head bounced sideways, many smiling soft comforting toys laying around. There were also painted walls, hand printed doors, upside-down stickers on windows, and so much that drew her attention from work, and gave Iona a renewed sense of purpose. This thing about being a mother was her big reward.

Little Ona was very comical. People laughed when she copied them. She liked copying people. How they walked, looked, hugged, talked, worked. Everything about people fascinated her. And she copied them identically, but when she tried that on her mother, Iona became serious, and asked her to stop, stop, stop. Three times because cyborgs had three vital channels: audio, visual, sensorial, and each could attract a different reaction. Iona repeated the word twice or thrice intoning the channel she intended to communicate too. Ona could count to one hundred by age two. And she could fix every clock in the house by age three. Holding a mini screwdriver, or a mini hammer, or a mini drill with excellent control. Ona did not entirely understand the concept of learning through play, rather she learnt through copying. She began to devote lots of time to building things for a real use at a young age. And so, her mother Iona taught her to make wood toys for herself and other children. She cut and filed triangles, rectangles, squares, circles. Wrote nice words in them, painted nice things in them, and then gave them to her little friends. Like her mother, her handling of tools to make her own curiosities, was extraordinary. Her patience with her baby was infinite for her intention was to make Ona a happy cyborg. Warp had not yet come back and maybe Ona would not meet her father anytime soon.

Ona: Mommy, what color was daddy.

Iona: He was Caucasian, so he was white.

Ona: What color was his hair?

Iona: Light brown.

Ona: His eyes?

Iona: Blue.

Ona: How come I’m just like you but not like him?

Iona: I don’t know.

Ona: Would he love me had he known me?

Iona: Yes. What is love Ona?

Ona: Love is when someone makes you happy just by thinking of them even when you never see them or talk to them.

One night, as Iona looked through the internet, she unexpectedly saw Warp. Five years had passed since he had chosen to leave. His smile, his voice, his hair cut had not changed. He had started his own design business, and the interview was an introduction to his work, and his world. In the short YouTube video, he also presented the best of his portfolio completed for clients he collaborated with and spoke about things that inspired him about each of those projects. In the end he appeared with his wife and daughter. She was a striking Asian woman with long black hair by the name of Aya, and their daughter Hai was with them, and she was four years old. A year younger than Ona. Aya shared that she was pregnant again, and Warp ended the interview by leaving, and walking up the stairs into their luxurious private jet. Iona watched the ten-minute flash interview multiple times.

The pain she knew not of its existence was so strong. Warp had chosen another woman to love and spend his life with. She had kept the hope alive by thinking of him every day, imagining he was there by her side, and that they continued to share a connection. Iona desperately needed to realize this connection with somebody, and she had chosen Warp for that role. That night she slept in his bedroom as she had done so many times before. She embraced herself, and drew her legs to her chest, into a fetal position. Iona cried in the dark looking across the room through the window at the starry night over New York City. Feeling empty, abandoned, neglected, vacated, and lonely. Dark words popped up in her head, causing this feeling that existence was unbearable. Aya was pretty and sensual. There was no cyborg loaded onto her. She was normal, natural, simple, uncomplicated. She could feel the cold and hot expansion of the weather, the emotions running inside, the taste of delicious food. Aya didn’t need programs, apps, maps, and dictionaries or a never-ending forest of technological trees to simply experience the reward of living and loving. This was why Iona stuck with Warp. For their relationship was a planet that she invested years in creating so she could call something by the name of love.

In the middle of the night, she felt an energy touching her, kissing her lips, and undressing her clothes. They made love and she called him Warp many times. When the energy dissipated, she got up and returned to her bedroom. Her hair and her lips were bright red, which was a sign that her body temperature had risen. Iona was certain that it was Warp’s energy who visited her. He was her connection, she needed that connection, and she was lost without it. He was there with her but in a different way. Iona needed to believe it.

Iona was pregnant again, and this time with triplets, although she had had no sex, and she had been alone with only a ghost to call love, she had a deep desire to have more babies. Warp lived in her mind and in her heart. He breathed through her. Walked with her. Was a constant part of her internal dialogue. There was nothing else to do but tend to her needs and wants. Every night they slept together and every morning they awoke together, and this was her secret reality ever since Ona was born five years prior. Absolutely nothing had really changed except Ona. Like she had reset to the moment in time when hope was absolute. For Warp was there rewarding her empty space and energizing her sense of purpose. He had given her an imaginary seed and that seed was much more than a child for it grew larger than a planet making up every part of her reality. There was something important in this seed that gave her forests, nations, continents, oceans, seasons. The world. A seed that impregnated her body and her mind and made living worthy of more intelligence. Although he was no longer visibly there, he had moved inside, from where there was no escape. Her heart had become his cage. She had accepted this way of living without further searching for a Warp Number 2. Three more hearts were beating under her belly. Maybe for outsiders there was something wrong with this kind of lifestyle, this strange cyborg marriage, this secret passage to and from love. This asexual and very sexual bond.

Although nobody would believe it. That she was a cyborg, that her children were cyborgs too, that her pregnancies were asexual, and that Warp’s energy visited her, and that her jealousy of Aya was cured in a single night, upon editing the code, by designating it “sick love”.

Ky, Am, Wav were boys born on a Sunday morning. They were three identical triplets. Light hair, light eyes, light skin. Very different dispositions. Wav was contemplative, Am was curious, and Ky was energetic. Iona wondered about Aya’s newborn and made a search online for Warp and Aya. She also gave birth to triplets exactly six weeks before. Their names were Kaye, Amen, and Waverly. And they were also born on a Sunday morning at the same time, 6:06 am. The feeling was invalidating. Like they were real, and she was a reflection. A reflection! A mirage on the surface of the water, a rippling effect of a disturbance caused by her wanting’s, a computer rewriting the same story, elsewhere. Ky, Am, Wav were completely dependent on her, and she once more decided to edit her program overnight by erasing Kaye, Amen, and Waverly from it. The feeling of being cancelled by an identical version she had encountered in Warp’s personal life ate away at that world she had created for their invisible love affair. She cried, cried, cried. And continuously edited it out, out, out. This pattern of communicating to each channel with each child three times, made her parenting weird but she didn’t want them to duplicate a single meaning. She was going to make the cyborg language inaccessible to humans or machines. The same word, the same sentence, was broken into twelve different tones, which should reproduce an infinite number of parallels, without making any single subject incomprehensible, for her cyborg children. And she stopped searching for Aya online, which had become an unpleasant obsession, that constantly rouse that same sense of rejection. Iona transformed into the woman of her dreams with a hidden nature that nobody needed to know about.

When the triplets were one year old, their Manhattan apartment became a secondary home, and Pure Earth Farm became their primary home, where the children could run outside, and learn about nature directly from Earth. They woke up early, earlier than the horses, chickens and goats living under their first-floor barn apartment. The sun was not out, the sky at daybreak was light blue and pink, but they were already geared up for their morning routine workout and having breakfast together. Iona got herself and Ona a bike, and they would cycle every morning along a trail that circumvented their one-hundred-acre property at daybreak. The triplets accompanied them while sitting in a latched-on two-wheeler carriage that was comfortable and safe for babies. Iona began to understand nature in her own terms. Supplying her viewfinder with an additional layer of information, where the clouds, mountains, valleys, and hills formed graphs and these graphs formed emotions and these emotions gave her more energy to keep going. And in none of them was Warp and Aya, Hai, Kaye, Amen, Waverley. There was no longer a continued need to edit and delete them from her love-sick reality. She was happy. Ona was happy. The triplets seemed happier every day too.

But one day, three years later, she saw a cover of a magazine with Warp, his wife, and their four children biking along a trail near their own luxury mansion on the west coast where they had lived since Warp left. And Iona was shaken, her love feelings, quickly changing, to hate feelings. She hated Aya, and the mirror of that undying desire, that she embodied. Suddenly every graph in nature was: Aya, Aya, Aya. Iona’s hair grew long and black. Her eyes became elongated. Her skin complexion was lighter and increasingly homogeneous. Her daughter Ona told her mama that she was changing into a different person, same but different. So, Iona told her about cyborgs.

Iona: Ona, we are cyborgs. We are computer programs inside a human shell. We are highly dependent of external and internal influences that are hidden from reality. We can change our bodies, our minds, our emotions. Most of the times at our own will, but sometimes we change into those we reflect, possibly a stronger force than our own, that weakens in time returning us to our original states: in body, mind, emotion. To prepare yourself for these occurrences, you must try make little changes daily. Start in the morning after showering, change your hair color, your behavior, your feelings and change back to your natural state at night after your evening bath. The water symbolizes cleansing from outside influences. This will get you used to eventually overcoming invisible energies that are always affecting a cyborg throughout its existence.

Ona: I really like the way I am. Don’t want to change mom. This is who I am. Changing is a denial of me. Of everything that I strive to become.

Iona: You are thinking like a human. Humans can be that way. We Ona are capable of reading waves in the air. These waves contain information. That information may contain forces in the form of triggers. And it can make you feel like a ghost. Unless you adapt yourself to its changing dynamic. You need not believe me, you need to follow your own star, that one inside your human-machine soul. This is how I cope.

Ona: May I tell my friends that we are cyborgs, and that we can change at will.

Iona: You may but nobody will believe it.

Then it happened, exactly as she expected, that it would happen, just not so soon. Warp reserved a ten day stay at the Sunroom Resort. The hotel immediately informed her for Warp was loved by everyone that met him when they were in a relationship. He would not be coming alone, for he reserved a suite, with a king size bed for him and his wife, a queen size bed for his daughter, and three single beds for the triplets. He also asked about Iona, and the receptionist informed him, that they were not allowed to give information of her whereabouts. Iona’s heart missed a beat. Suddenly the emptiness inside evaporated. There was hope, meaning. Hope, meaning. She wasn’t sure why for he was coming with his family anyway. Iona decided to welcome him and his family by building a tarmac where his luxury jet could land right on her Pure Earth property. Warp accepted the invitation.

On that day, Iona gathered her children, her two dogs, and rode on a large white horse, while her children followed her in a jeep with a driver from the resort. Another jeep went along to pick up the guests directly from the aircraft. They awaited as his jet approached the runway and smoothly landed. As it flew by, her long black hair blew up, and blew back down. The cabin door opened, and Warp exited the aircraft, followed by his family. Iona didn’t get off her horse, she wanted to look down at them, but her children where excited about what they saw. A big white and blue jet for one single family. The children began running around its wheels and wings, running up and down the stairs, waving from inside its circular windows. Warps children soon joined in on the fun. Followed by her two dogs. And the eight children found everything very amusing. The pilots did a little walk through the interior of the jet with them and showed them a few curiosities about these steel birds. But Warp had not taken his eyes off Iona since he descended the stairway for, she was now identical to his own wife and his wife was equally taken aback by the fact that she was staring at a twin of herself.

Warp: Did you finally find your maker and get to read your own instruction manual?

Iona: Yes Warp. I found my maker. For now, he is you. The instruction manual, as you see, was adapted to your wishes. Me and your wife are now identical. Are you happy about this?

Aya: I am trying to understand what is going on. Have you realized our own children are similar? Her girl is bigger than Hai. Our boys are bigger than her own boys, who also happen to be triplets.

Iona: I am Iona, and my children are Ona, Ky, Am, and Wav. We are cyborgs.

Aya: You are copies of us. Warp what is going on?

Warp: They are cyborgs Aya. I can explain later. I missed you, Iona.

That evening they dinned together. Warp, Iona, Aya, and their children, Ona, Hai, Ky, Kaye, Am, Amen, Wave, Waverley. Iona shared her story, without censoring her yearning, for the companionship of Warp. And Warp repeated that a cyborg condition came with strong privacy and safety concerns. His tone was cold. These were his feelings. Iona said that he was biased. Aya quickly added that he was married to a real woman that he loved and that they shared four children. Iona felt rejected, isolated, abandoned. Upon finishing their meals, she wished them a wonderful weekend, reminded them of the services that Pure Earth and Sunroom Resort offered. And what else they could enjoy in the towns that surrounded her lavish property. She and her children removed themselves.

The following morning Warp was at Iona’s doorstep. He wore a black and gray hooded sweater, black pants, black leather boots. He was unshaved and his hair seemed moist and messy. His own children were just behind him pushing gently on the door, wanting to meet up with their new little friends. He said that her look, her children’s looks, this twinning of his own family made him uncomfortable. He entered her old apartment over the barn. The space was changed. It was now an open loft, with larger windows, three bedrooms at the end, light furnishings, and dark carpeting. Two dogs with two large beddings, under the window with a view. There were toys everywhere. The children were getting ready for their morning walk. He offered to accompany them. Iona wasn’t comfortable. She didn’t show him around. His constant reprise of privacy and safety concerns the previous night had alarmed her. Suddenly and just like that she felt less than nothing for Warp because he had hurt her feelings again. He hurt with his words, his fears, his coldness.

The two sets of triplets raced on their bicycles with the dogs running playfully after them. Ona and Hai followed on their skateboards. Warp and Iona jogged behind their children on a couple of black horses, and they pretended to laugh together. Then they stopped by a creek and rested for a while. They were standing between two mountains and one valley. Warp asked why had they physically changed into identical copies of his wife and children, and she told him that she had thought about this too, and that the only reasonable answer given her cyborg nature, was that he had forgotten to terminate the program he had initiated with her, so her existence went onto shadow his own, and she could do nothing to stop what was happening, except that it was like he and she were ghosts in each other’s lives. Suddenly, embarrassingly, she disclosed her weakness.

Iona: I wake up with you. I eat with you. I walk with you. I live with you. I make love to you. I go to sleep with you.

Warp: Because I forgot to terminate you?

Iona: You did not terminate our relationship. I also have no more desire of fulfilling you. When you seem threatened by me. I thought you loved me, that you did it intentionally.

Warp: No. I saw a picture of you on your website. You and our children were identical to my wife and our children.

Iona: You are finally admitting these are our children.

Warp: A cyborgs children are not one’s biological children.

Iona: Always this superiority from humans. It hurts.

Warp: It is true. You are copies of other people.

Iona: Humans and cyborgs are equally conditioned by their experiences and influences. There is nothing that different about being a cyborg.

Warp: Except that it is only a program running its course until completed.

Iona: And?

Warp: Do you know it?

Iona: To live happily, to inspire others, to develop the cyborg technology, and prove that I am safe, reliable, friendly, and capable of superintelligence.

Warp: And then?

Iona: I will die and furnish future cyborgs with my wisdom and experience. And gradually help build a technological intelligence race that is beneficial for humans.

The children got back on their bikes. Ona and Hai began skating along the walkway. And Warp and Iona mounted their black horses. The two dogs ran crazily around, barking, excitingly. They rode slowly behind their children who appeared to get along. He asked her what he could do to terminate their relationship. And once more her heart felt compressed inside its box, secretly wanting him to surrender to her, and stay there with her. Aya wouldn’t just go away. They were identical so wanting to overwrite her was overwriting of herself. She said that he just had to tell her that was exactly what he wanted and express this unalterable goodbye. Hopefully terminating their paralleling of realities. Upon returning to their barn apartment, Warp got his kids, and returned to the Sunroom Resort, which was a five-minute walk. He had not terminated their relationship, but Iona had no hope, for he wanted no part in her life. That had been the real motive behind his visit. That night she slept alone. And it was a frightening feeling to have no connection with this world. No warm, safe, close attachment with someone, for even a phantom of love was better than nothing. She had nightmares about things she didn’t understand like why some attitudes were hurtful, and why cyborgs were untrustworthy.

They saw each other daily for the duration of their stay, mostly in the mornings before breakfast, as they headed together for a trail walk or helped their children engage in the early morning farms activities, like feeding the animals. Iona and Aya were cordial to one another although Aya was protective of her family. She could be aggressive. But Warp had become distant, and silent. Appearing sometimes to resent their once close relationship. These similarities bothered him because they invalidated him. He had come to realize that his own reality seemed now constructed and copied. Every time they were all together, it was like Aya was disappearing, that he had been in a relationship with Iona, all along. He stayed up at night thinking about a future that no longer seemed motivating. Iona had become cold. She avoided being physically close to him and Aya. In the end, she always walked away, and she reminded him of a shadow, the shadow of someone seeking to have feelings like those of humans, but coming across as too dependent, attached, scared. He wanted to stop pretending that he didn’t care only to realize she had come to accept the circumstances. And she began to change slowly her external features accompanied by those of her own children. Her hair was blonde, her eyes blue, her features were thinner. Aya exhaled in relief.

It was raining heavily on the day set for their departure. Iona knew that she would never see Warp again. She had secretly awaited an invitation to talk, an expressive letter, a graph that indicated hope, even a termination notification, something unexpected that gave a new purpose to their uneasy battle. She looked up at the clouds for information but the clouds she searched for were in a chip inside of her. Heart emojis rained down on her screen and blue tears streamed down into a disappearing river. Something inside of her that she thought was her brain released footage of desolated empty rooms that nobody wanted to live in for they were just walls, walls, walls. In the rain without her horse nor her children, she waited by the airplane, for Warp to come and go. Take her hand, maybe give her a kiss, and say the word: Terminate. They arrived in a jeep, the same jeep that she would drive back. Aya embraced and farewelled the cyborg with an expression that seemed compassionate and not so combative as previously. Their children waved goodbye and raced each other up the stairs and into the aircraft. Warp looked down at her, took her hands, and said the following words, slowly and kindly:

Warp: I release you from your duties to me, your program. You are free. To be anything you ever hoped to be. Challenge yourself, reach for the stars, and don’t stop there. I did not make you a cyborg, but I did hack you, and I am sorry. Our relationship is now terminated. Thank you for helping me understand your nature.

Iona: But it’s not love?

Warp: What is love?

Iona: An emotion that has no need for words, a person that makes you happy, even when they are not there, a connection in this world with something other than a wall, the fire that consumes us from within, and an idea that two people can achieve more than one.

Warp: I hereby terminate us.

Iona: Terminated.

Warp kissed her hands, turned around and ascended his private jet. She would never see him again. He said that he had hacked her and that he thanked her for helping him understand her nature? His invasive words were making their way in, but the burden of his rejection was making its way out. He sat by an oval window and stared down at her. The rain was lit up by a fiery sun emerging from the dissolving clouds. There was a shinning around the colors of the aircraft, surrounding plants and trees, that made everything seem to be breathing. The tarmac glittered, emitting vapors from the cold water drops upon the hot asphalt. Everything seemed more beautiful. She suddenly understood the meaning of being hacked as opposed to not being hacked: she wasn’t miserable, stuck in a room with connections to a ghost, in a deep state of confusion: that was bordering torturous. His jet initiated take off procedures, and was soon speeding down the tarmac, rising into the sky and quickly disappearing behind non-hackable clouds. Iona got into her jeep, switched the engine on, made a “u” turn, and accelerated towards the Sunroom Resort to pick up her children and go home.

Later that evening little Ona spoke about Warp leaving without making plans to return although she had asked him multiple times when would he be back, and her emotional state seemed to feel betrayed by this human that appeared to love her and her brothers but made no actual effort to continue seeing them. She wanted a cool, rich, sweet, handsome father just like Warp who understood eclectic, eccentric cyborgs like them. That was not to happen, not with Warp. But what followed was more exciting. Iona knew without knowing that what had happened that day, and it was easier than she ever thought possible. She was free of a sickly kind of love that could not let go of the obsession of being a half part of someone else. A binary adaptation of affection. She, Ona, Am, Wav, and Ky were whole beings.

The next day, the blue sky flooded their view to the mountains cross the window. Iona suggested they go running along the pathway, and up the hill like they did almost every day, with their two dogs. Whoever went up and came down quickest was to get a new remote-controlled drone, of any color they preferred. As soon as they got outside, the five of them began to race, although they took breaks, nobody could stop laughing, trying not to be left behind. And however, many drones they already possessed, she didn’t mind making more and accessorizing them, for her own children.

Ona: Mom, why does the sun give us energy, and makes us shine like light bulbs?

Iona: Because we are part nuclear, electric, synthetic, and biologic. Some of our cells are like those emitted by the sun. And so, they make us appear lighter in color and weight.

The sun was recharging. The light bleached their figures and made them look like apparitions. But not only. Everything around them was digitalized. Appearing and disappearing before their eyes, when interfered with excessive light. They knew what was before them without having to entirely rely in their visual cues. It was known as an electromagnetic force that interacted with them. Iona had learnt how to live with a constant overburdened data sensor that her perceptions acutely engaged every millisecond of a ticking clock, and she taught them, the same way she had taught herself.

Warp was gone. Her consciousness, her hacker, her connection had made a choice. And terminated the dreams that created the extension and augmentation of happiness. The closest relationship to fulfilling the fear of not existing. The void that was everywhere peeking in, deeper and deeper, seeking yet another Warp. One with a different name but not as plastic as them. The feeling faded, slipped away. The nature of things that were unrealizable were destabilizers. She saw her children ahead of her, pointing their fingers at the details, in a forest they trailed most days of the week, but they always found new stuff to be curious about, and that was fundamentally the purpose of living: be that a human, a cyborg, or an animal. Every moment was infinite.

The family of five came upon the highest point of a mountain they had slowly and playfully climbed without looking down or up, but starring ahead without straying along the path, for the light of the sun blocked the view of their horizon. Iona couldn’t stop seeking a connection with someone or something that simply was no longer there, and maybe would never be again. Time, time, time. She ceased thinking, to stop her anxiety. Time was everything. Time did not exist for a cyborg. Time was a distance between two points, and those points being represented by space, and space existing everywhere, seemed often out of reach and yet ever-present: Here, there, everywhere. Simulations determined that speed of light or the speed that light traveled at, was the densest definition of time, for time in every form and nature was being met, almost instantaneously. And so being light, becoming light, existing in the shape of light, should be a cyborgs goal. Like adopting the soul of God in its cyborg form. Like being something that when it was not travelling, it was everywhere, represented in an infinite value, that nobody and nothing in the Universe could do without it becoming a journey from here to everywhere. The building elements of life: air, water, fire, earth, ether could no longer be represented in form, color, size, movement, because they were invisible, irresistible, innocent, undefined and therefore always infinite in time. The family of five and their two dogs reached the highest point of the mountain, but they seemed to have always been there, impregnated with everlasting hope, imploding deeper and deeper into themselves. To gift us of more space, more time, at increasing points in between, while searching for a newer universe, where cyborgs and cyborg things found a way to be a part of every biological and quantum reality that composed everything so beautifully.

The End of Short Fiction Story

Nobody Would Believe It

9974 Words

#Helena Ulintz Production #Romy Erikson Writer

[caramariafilm]

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky - Production Design

31st March - FILMING DAY FOUR

Interior day!! After all the stresses of exterior locations, it was lovely to have us be in a controlled environment. 

I also brought my wings as they needed to be revealed today!! Very exciting :)

As I said in my previous post, mine and Saskia’s main priority for this morning was finishing touches!! There isn’t too much to say here, Saskia and I basically picked up every prop we had, acted out the motion of using it, then placed it where we thought worked! I love this part of it, pens, pieces of paper, instruments, etc. Once all of this was done, we looked at the monitor to see if anything felt out of place!

Some small details I thought that added a lot - placing mesh curtains on the smaller windows to break up the space, creasing the letters on the walls and crumpling some to give more texture, layering books with unusual props (such as the bent badminton racket) to create shapes that still look interesting on the camera.

Once the interior was set up, Saskia and I could relax. Saskia started writing out draft letters for the actor to use, and I was on resets between takes. 

The rest of the shoot was really smooth for production design! For the wings, I showed the actor how easy they were to move around and pick up, as well as how to not handle them - picking them up from one side. 

Once the shoot was wrapped (no sheduled time for take down), we all teamed together to reset the room as fast as possible. At the same time, two of us started taking my props down and leaving them in the stairwell as the driver offered to help me take it back :)

After resetting, the driver helped us take everything back. 

And that was my last day!

#The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky - Production Design

[abbiesfilmblog]

CRITICAL REFLECTION: PRODUCING 'THE MAN WHO FELL IN LOVE WITH THE SKY'

HoD's:

Written by Cara Fidelo

Produced by Abbie George

Directed by Ivan Wainwright

Production Design by Cara Fidelo

Sound Design by Gabrielle Hafner

Sound Recording by Jack MacLean

Edited by Davide Alonge

‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky’ is a melancholic and nostalgic tale of a hopeless romance.  Cara's script captivated me with its tender themes of innocence and desire, resonating with universal feelings of yearning and nostalgia. As we navigate the complexities of adulthood, the film invites us to reconnect with the whimsical side of our childhood, personified through the character of Arthur and his dreams. Arthur is a protagonist who has an undying and unattainable love, which promotes his child-like overlook of the world. In taking on this project, my primary goal is to deliver a cinematic piece which resonates deeply with audiences, and which can appeal to a festival circuit. Key to achieving this vision will be through thorough attention to crucial elements which elevate the film's production value and emotional impact. Location scouting emerges as an important task, particularly for the outdoor scenes which demand a timeless and natural setting. Collaborating closely with the director and cinematographer, I am committed to identifying and finding locations which align with our aesthetic vision and contribute to the narrative's impact significantly. This process may be complex, given the script's diverse geographical descriptions, but I plan to embrace the challenge with determinism and a creative outlook. Central to the success of ‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky’ is the casting of Arthur, a character whose spirit embodies vulnerability and dreaminess. Finding an actor capable of embodying Arthur's subtleties while internalising his emotional depth is important. I will approach this task with patience to ensure we can select performers who will authentically convey the film's thematic nuances and resonate with audiences on a universal level. Furthermore, my journey as a producer extends beyond my production workflow and incorporates aspects of personal growth and professional development. Navigating the natural uncertainties of the production demands a lot of flexibility and adaptability, especially when it comes to the ever-changing weather conditions. Embracing this unpredictability will help me develop my creative process and work ethic, enabling me to overcome challenges better in future projects. Overall, my goal as a producer on this project is to craft a film which transforms conventional storytelling in a way which will resonate on a universal level with viewers. I aim to help develop a lasting impact which expands beyond the screen. ‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky’ promises a transformative and artistic vision with practical expertise to deliver a compelling tale of a boy and his undying love. Through my production workflow, I am confident in our ability as a group to present these ideas to optimise the film's potential and showcase its universal themes to audiences.

Reflecting on my involvement in the production of ‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky’, as Creative Producer, I found the experience to be deeply insightful and rewarding. Engaging with Cara's script, which interpreted themes of innocence and desire, helped me understand better the sort of scripts I’d love to work on for future projects. I feel throughout the project, I stuck to my initial intentions very well when it came to aspects of the production, such as casting, locations, and overall production workflow. One of the strengths of my contribution to this project was my attention to detail, particularly evident in my approach to location scouting. The challenge of finding diverse yet timeless settings demanded determinism and creativity when it came to choosing locations, ensuring each backdrop contributes meaningfully to the narrative's quality. I was working around numerous restrictions, such as weather limitation, and interior availability, so I feel I did an excellent job working around these issues. Similarly, the casting process, which focused on embodying Arthur's vulnerability and naivety, required extensive collaboration, and resulted in the selection of an actor who we felt authentically captured the character's subtleties. However, this project also highlighted certain weaknesses. I feel optimising workflow could have been improved. At times, I encountered challenges in balancing creativity with practical execution, such as the fact that numerous scenes were in exterior spaces, which impacted certain aspects of project timelines. This experience highlighted the importance of refining my time management skills and workflow management to enhance my overall productivity. I am committed to taking these strategies and implementing them in future projects to further improve workflow efficiency and ensure I can execute projects smoother. Despite the challenges encountered throughout, I feel the project ultimately succeeded in delivering a profound experience which presents the intentions and resonates with the audience due the portrayal of such universal themes. I am proud of the achievements in producing the project's potential and showcasing its universal themes. I feel I have evolved very well in producing and will be able to refine my skills on future projects and help create projects with even deeper connections to thematic elements.

‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky’ presents a visually compelling and thematically rich narrative which explores the complexities of love and obsession. The filmmakers tell a quaint story of a boy who has an unknown infatuation with the sky. We are introduced to Arthur, while in his interactions with his “girlfriend”, Lila, who appears frustrated by his lack of presence within their relationship. The story follows a voiceover which is one of Arthur’s many letters addressed to the sky (who is referred to as “blue”). As the film continues, Arthur appears to be crafting a set of wings. As the film concludes, Arthur attempts to use his wings to fly off a cliff in the hopes of reaching the sky. The main themes of the film include naivety and love.

The cinematography in the film plays an important role in conveying Arthur’s emotional arc. The use of spacious framing, contrasting close-ups, and a soft colour palette evoke a dreamlike atmosphere which harmonises with the narrative’s whimsical and nostalgic tone. The framing choices effectively establish mood and tone which complement the green locations in a timeless presentation. The cinematography complements the narrative by presenting unconventional framing choices, such as the split dioptre, which perfectly enhance the childlike themes, feeling reminiscent of a Wes Anderson film and his playful cinematography.

The production design of the film successfully captures the dual nature of Arthur’s perception of life as fantastical, yet isolated. The use of handmade props and minimalistic interior design reflects Arthur’s internal conflict and idealised view of love. This works extremely well in the pathway scene, in which it feels the sky is communicating with Arthur through the physicality of the wind. However, the tone wasn’t established as well through the hand-made clouds and water which pours on Arthur’s head in the scene in which he and Lila apologise to each other. Both aspects feel almost comical and don’t work as well for establishing the tone. I think there could have been some better fantastical elements which would act more seamlessly when integrating with the isolated aspects could strengthen the overall thematic consistency of the film.

Regarding performance, the actor who plays Arthur delivers a compelling portrayal which resonates with the film’s themes, particularly in conveying Arthur’s romanticised innocence and obsessive nature through facial expressions. However, some moments could benefit from deeper emotional resonance and nuanced character development to further engage the audience, particularly through the voiceover which plays throughout the film, as it feels a bit stunted and emotionless at times.

The film’s pacing and narrative structure when cutting to the flashback scene could also benefit from refinement to enhance the overall impact and engagement. The lack of score in this area takes away from the nostalgia previously presented. This could have been portrayed through a deviation on the score which was seen at the beginning of the film. The film skilfully communicates the contradictory nature of love as both a liberating and isolating act, through juxtaposing childhood imagery with darker undertones, such as the contrast between the gentleness of the flashback scene with the final scene as we see Arthur ready to “fly”.

Overall, the portrayal of themes felt creative and well thought through. Regarding technical achievement, the film demonstrates notable strengths in its use of visual and auditory elements to convey tone and atmosphere. The sound design has a dreamy and surreal soundscape, such as soft wind chimes and bird calls, which is contrasted with some grittier and harsher tones, such as harsh winds, which effectively mirrors Arthur’s perspective on the world, almost with rose-tinted glasses, and his subsequent delusion and self-destruction. The personification of the sky through weather-related sounds adds depth to the storytelling, although smoother transitions between dreamlike and grounded sounds could enhance the overall experience, such as the transition from when Arthur picks up the wings to the sky shot in the final scene. The sound feels lacking in this area and would benefit from some sort of score or dreamy soundscape to transition scenes.

The film’s editing effectively conveys the profound connection between Arthur and the sky, with deliberate slower pacing and rhythm reflecting Arthur’s emotional state. The pacing works extremely well in the scenes in which Arthur is crafting his wings. The beats drive the action well and encourage engagement by changing so quickly, in contrast to the rest of the film. However, the slow pace, while suitable for establishing the mood and tension of the film, may become too slow at points for some viewers, especially in scenes where Arthur is stuck in a daydream. Balancing the pacing while maintaining narrative beats could have strengthened the film’s impact more.

The film also has a great sense of place, due to the locations and editing style. The locations feel timeless, which grandly conceptualise and reinforce the universal nature of the story, while portraying the characters in their natural habitats, such as Arthur’s house. The editing style helps to portray a sense of place due to its consistent reflections of the sky, which acts like a physical embodiment of a place. The settings in ‘The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky’ portray a captivating and timeless atmosphere which perfectly complemented the narrative's themes of melancholy and nostalgia. In particular, the exterior scenes were set in timeless and picturesque greenery, evoking a sense of romanticism which mirrored Arthur's emotions. The locations felt integral to the story, enhancing the visual storytelling, and contributing to the film's overall emotional impact. The careful selection of these settings successfully transports the audience into the world of the characters and heightens the connection to the film's themes of unattainable desire and love.

‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky’ largely succeeds in reflecting and communicating its themes of obsessive love and emotional isolation by effectively engaging audiences through imaginative storytelling. However, there are areas where the execution could be refined to enhance narrative structure and emotional depth.

As a final product, ‘The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky’ presents a thought-provoking exploration of love and obsession, supported by strong performances and a creative use of cinematography and production design, along with a strong choice of locations and good production workflow. While the film successfully communicates its tone, there is potential for further refinement in pacing, narrative structure, and storytelling to fully gain impact and engage audiences in a more profound manner. With continued attention to craft and storytelling, the film showcases a unique perspective on timeless themes of love and longing.

[maxbrodbeckfilmblog]

The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky: Colour Grade

I was the colorist on The Man who Fell in Love with the Sky. Colour grading is always my favourite part of working on films, and I’d love to pursue a career in it post-university.

For this film, I designed a LUT in preproduction based off test shoot footage. Here’s a breakdown of what it did.

Increased contrast

Increased saturation

Crushed shadows and highlights

Raised black-point

Posterised, with gently cyan shadows and orange highlights

A subtle vignette

I pushed the hues in each colour group together, meaning everything in the green pallet becomes the same shade, everything in the blues becomes the same, etc. This meant the colour looks deliberate and matches, as well as adding to the animated storybook style of the film, with block hues rather than gradients.

Saturated greens and blues, but ordinary skintones.

The reason for this was so that I could import it into the camera, and shoot the film with the grade directly in mind. This was the workflow of a colorist I interviewed for the Work Related Learning module, and it definitely helped the process a lot in production, as well as gave me a huge head start in the grade.

I spent 2 & 1/2 12 hour days on the grade itself. The photography was beautiful before grading, so a lot of the work was about matching weather between shots, and making things look like they’re shot in the same location. The final scene was 4 locations across 3 shots, so matching that scene was especially tricky.

This was the node tree I built. I use 2 step CSTs to take the input Log footage and output in Rec709 Gamma2.4, with a middle stage in Davinci intermediate, where the majority of the grade takes place as to minimise information loss. My LUT is added towards the end of the node tree, followed by a small amount of noise reduction to balance out the natural colour noise that the grade brings in. The grade itself begins with a series of balance nodes, focusing on the main individual features I wish to change on every single shot in the film. After this I use one huge set of parallel nodes, which work more specifically on areas of the image, directing the viewers eye, as well as any tracking, masking or ironing out inconsistencies. This is larger than is common for node trees in the industry, but at this stage as I’m learning the art form it gives me more control and makes any mistakes easier to fix.

Scenes 1 and 3 were also shot over a range of locations, which made balancing the shots to look consistent across them was especially tricky. On set we matched the sun direction, which helped a lot. In the flashback scene Ivan decided not to use the colour grade as a way of separating the scene from the rest of the film, but I have made some minor distinctions, such as the higher exposure, higher saturation, warmer temperature and slightly yellow grass which implies a later time of year.

I sent over 3 drafts of the grade, and received feedback from Ivan and Abbie for fine adjustments. Overall I’m really pleased with the final images. The changes I made were for the most part fairly subtle, but the grade definitely elevates the film’s visuals, as it makes the whole thing feel incredibly consistent and deliberate.

Log footage -> My LUT Applied -> Final Image.

[ivanwainwright]

Film Project Group Formation

Since I last posted I got into further talks with both Cara and Abbie and confirmed with both of them that we could make 'The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky'. Cara will also be taking on the role of Production Designer; they wrote the script with a strong production design perspective and I absolutely love their ideas for it so I'm very excited about this. We also have confirmed Max as DoP and are talking to Jack and Gaby about co-HoDing sound or one of them taking it over individually. Editor is yet to be confirmed, really the toughest one to get just with the lack of editors on the course. I trust that we'll handle it though, we have a decent amount of time until the pitch.

Abbie made a group chat for HoDs for the film, should be a useful branch of communication between everybody. I wrote a small brief just outlining my initial thoughts and feelings on the script for everybody to feel as if they're on the same page. It's written a little conversationally but I think that's useful for making everybody feel comfortable. I've copy and pasted the text below.

The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky – Director’s Notes and Initial Commentary

Cara’s script struck an immediate connection to me. I understand the potential of the cute visuals and fascinating camera techniques, but I also love the sad, isolating undercurrent throughout the whole thing. I have, at times, felt that same isolated longing that defines the central conflict of the film, and have also moved past it and seen how it affected my life, my friends, and how I think in the long term. The script is a pure tragedy, but Arthur’s love, that vision of looking up and appreciating the simple beauty of the world, is so enticing that the tragedy becomes disguised and distorted into a simple, sweet, childlike love and infatuation. I think challenging the audience to see past the innocent exterior and find the contradiction of selfishness, selflessness, and deep longing at Arthur’s core is a fantastic motivating factor for making the film.

               Visually and auditorily, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky has so much to offer. Playing with the angles and perspective of a man who constantly looks up is fascinating, and I can see some distinctive wide angle and close up shots, with heavy emphasis on wide blue space and distance, stressing Arthur’s isolation. I can see largely handheld with some tripod footage throughout and ending in a final dolly or heavily emphasized steady movement to show Arthur’s security in his final moments. With sound, the sky as an absent character is represented in large part by its interaction through sound. The breezes, cracks of thunder, and gales from it all form an identity to Arthur, and as such to the audience. Having a contrast between calm and frantic noise is essential. Additionally, a lot of the soundscapes will require careful design, I’d love to have a more secure and safe sounding space in the exterior and stress inducing, near claustrophobic effects when Arthur is inside (this is something I’m considering, definitely don’t take it as gospel).

               The production design potential is crazy; sticking with the homemade aesthetic we can create some beautiful practical effects. Costuming will be largely simple aside from the centrepiece prop, a magnificent pair of wings in the final moments. The weather will be constructed through lighting, sound, and especially production design. Cara floated a fantastic idea of bringing cardboard clouds onscreen with a pulley during the thunderstorm and I think that this idea really brings across the core production design ethos I would like: homemade, innocent, and cute.

[saskiamcc]

Creative exercise 1

31/01/2024

For this project I worked with a smaller version of the group for 'The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky', and we met to discuss this exercises and how we were going to achieve silhouettes. I focused mainly on art department and lighting for this project. We had just been at a class where we watched clips from 'The Spirit of the Beehive', which gave us inspiration to create part of the story through shadow puppets.

In our initial meeting we planned out a lot of the inspiration of composition and how we were going to achieve silhouettes.

our visual inspiration for this film

initial planning

We wrote a brief shot list and with the use of production design and costume we were able to create a narrative of three witches planning a ritual, with one unaware that she was going to be sacrificed.

When we got on set we had a huge discussion about the window and what we wanted to do with the natural light, however when it came to filming those scenes, we had lost all the natural light to be able to shoot using it, so we planned another shorter shoot day.

A lot of our shots were formed around the productions design, I went through the props provided by Cara, and figured that we could use the fabric she brought to build a den/fort which I thought could, not only add to the witchy feel, but also gives us more textures and depth to work with for the silhouettes.

investigating the props

The first thing we focused on was the shadow puppets on the wall. We wanted to illustrate the death of the witch in white through shadow puppets, as it adds to the ambiguity and symbolism of sacrifice. Abbie, Lili and Leaf spent around 20 minutes playing around learning different shadow puppets while Max and I figured out the framing we wanted. Max very quickly choreographed the movement so that we could fit the narrative in 15 seconds and i think it worked out really well!!

shadow puppets

Next, I started on the den using hooks on the wall and my old mesh curtains. To add more colour I wanted to drape the coloured fabric Cara brought over the top, however we found that it was too heavy for the curtain, so Cara suggested tying string from wall to wall which worked perfectly!! I had a lot of fun problem solving here and it also meant that Cara and I had a chance to work together before the actual shoot for 'The Man Who Fell in Love with the Sky'.

Lili liked the look of Cara's hands on the fabric so we backlit it and went for a take and I think it was really successful!!

We next focused on the main silhouette of the film, one where two witches plot to kill the witch in white. We wanted to keep the contrast of innocence despite the morbid themes in this shot, so we asked our actors, Lili and Cara, to whisper to each other - in an almost childlike manner. I was 'gaffer' for most of this shoot, so for this shot I sat behind the fabric with two lamps, listening to Max as he directed where to hold them.

I thought it would look interesting if we could have a shot of a match lighting behind the fabric, so I asked Max if it was possible to try out. They set up the camera directly in front of the den and we did a few practice runs. Lili and Max directed where my hand should go and I think it turned out really well!!

The final bits to focus on was the shrine shots. Lili, Cara and I brought the little trinkets and candles to the den and started moving them around. Max liked the look of the movement as we were backlit too, creating somewhat of a silhouette, so he pressed record and let us do what we were doing.

setting up the shrine

We needed a way to show clearly tie in the fact that the white witch was the one to die, so I suggested having Abbie wear the flower crown in all shots so that we could bring it back in the exterior shots. I took down the den to give Max space to set up the over the head shots of the trinkets. I held the tripod steady as this was being filmed, as Max needed it to be completely steady for the pan.

Finally, we went up to the balcony to shoot the first shot of the film, where the witches are staring up at the moon. Because we didn't have a moon on hand as it was on the other side of the house, I stood on the balcony with Max, holding a lamp, to act as a moon. This worked really well as it meant that there was a spotlight on the white witch, while the small glances between the other two were subtle.

Overall, I learnt a lot from this project, including my ability to problem solve through production design. Additionally, Max went through the fx6 with me and taught me a lot about the camera, which will be very useful in other projects. He also taught me a lot about the importance of strength and shape of lighting, which I was able to incorporate into this shoot as it relied so heavily on lighting.

final film

#third year #film project #filmprojectexercise #Youtube

[ginkgomoon]

Cyril- Character Analysis

This post was based on an ask made a while ago concerning Hypnos’ character. I personally think his appearance enhanced the development of the game for the Winter World chapters, additionally with the depth of MC’s character. Hopefully this post will help clarify some things in relation to who he is and why he is important to the game’s progression. Please enjoy his well-deserved character analysis post. And yes- lots of spoilers! Please don’t read if you don't want to be spoiled on future content from Chapters 19+.

“This is the world you wanted.”

Hypnos first appears in the Epilogue of Chapter 19, when MC escapes her dream (the one with the separate routes of the guys) and begins to enter the Winter World through Black Cabin.

A soft hue appeared amidst this world of frozen white. A handsome, elegant young man walked towards me from the mist. Snow fell upon him, but as if he was protected by some force, none stuck on him. For a moment, I felt that this person looked really familiar, but it was someone I’ve never met. His eyes seemed detached, yet full of pity.

“This world’s pretty interesting, don’t you think?”

I did not sense any direct threat from him, but I was also unable to let my guard down.

“Is this not the world you wanted? You were aware of it long ago. No need to go on deceiving yourself.”

His tone was peaceful, but there was a chill to it that made me shiver.

“In this world, time’s been frozen. Everything you fear hasn't taken place. It was not I who made this world, but you. Everything you have experienced is a product of that which you yearn for the most. If everything could start over, if life could return to normal, if none of this had occurred...”

He saw into my heart effortlessly, tearing down each fragile wall I’d made with each word that he spoke.

The man’s gentle expression turned cold. His smile faded into subdued indifference.

“You think everything you’ve experienced is fake? Everything is real. Everyone in this world had sunken into the same dream. We will forever remain in a dream land.”

The man chuckled gently. Snow and wind blurred his form, blurring my vision. -Chapter 19 (Epilogue)

Some people would probably have the reaction of ??? and others would think he’s a new love interest HAHA.

It’s clear that this section of the chapter does not give much insight into his character, his name or who he is all. But, we can (hopefully) tell from what we are given, that he will play an important role in the future since he has an actual VA, and is (quite confusingly) going on about “the world that she wanted”. Though, this will be all cleared up later. From here, he makes small appearances in the next few chapters, which helps foreshadow and gradually help set the final showdown to conclude the Winter World.

While my mind wandered, I accidentally ran into someone in the corner. Even more unluckily, as I retreated backwards I stepped on a slick patch of ice, almost sending me sprawling.

“Careful.”

A light laughter fell on my ears. Before I could react, I was caught by the person I bumped into.

“Are you okay?”

I looked up and was met with a pair of gentle green eyes. A handsome face filled my vision. For an instant, I felt that he was familiar, and the sight of an ice-covered world seemed to appear before me. He gracefully let go of my wrist in a gentlemanly manner, stepped back to a more appropriate distance. -Chapter 20-17

A man walked out onto a rooftop covered with snow and held out his hand, catching a snowflake falling from the sky. The snowflake in his palm turned into an exquisite, white robin with its eager wings spread as if escaping a prison and flying into the sky.

He looked down from on high, surveying the city blanketed in dazzling white snow, a faint smile on his face.

“Truly something to look forward to- a long cold winter.” -Chapter 21-25

At this point, we still don’t even know who this man is. Or if he even has a name! But finally, the chapter after reveals a little bit more to help us come to somewhat of a conclusion about his character.

Chapter 22-5

The automatic vending machine behind me kept repeating the same sentence. I turned around to find that the machine wasn't on the fritz- there was actually someone continually trying to make a payment. I couldn't help but go over to see if they needed help.

A pair of eyes clear as glass turned on me. Although there was a gentle look in his eyes, there was a subtle feeling of distance.

I suddenly recognised that face! It was that famous piano player- Cyril!

MC: “Excuse me, do you need help?”

A hint of warmth suffused his cold eyes, as he gestured in frustration at the vending machine.

Cyril: “Just want to buy a bottle of water, but I don’t know how to use these machines.”

(*Intense vending machine purchase in process*)

Instead, I decided to just point at the app on my own phone and give him a brief explanation, afraid that I would miss my bus.

MC: “This time, I’ll buy for you. This is the one you want?”

Cyril: “Right, thanks.”

When I accidentally brushed against his long, slender fingertip, there wasn’t even a hint of warmth.

MC: “Your hand is ice cold. How about I buy a warm drink for you?”

He seemed a little hesitant, but he gave a slight nod and accepted my proposal with a smile.

The drink thunked down into the dispenser, and before I could react, he already bent down and retrieved the bottle and mine from the machine.

When he extended the drink to me, I realised that at the bottom, there were two kinds of paper, which appeared to be tickets of some kind.

I lifted them up and carefully looked at them. They were tickets to an upcoming and very sold out piano tour. Moreover, this was for the final VIP performance aboard the HMS (Abbreviated for “Her Majesty’s Ship”) Victoria.

He may not look like it, but he’s actually quite a warm, kind person.

The silver haired man watched as the bus drove away, and the drink in his hand turned solid ice without him noticing.

As snow drifted down around him, a faintly perceptible smile formed on his lips.

“I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.”

We find out that the young man’s name is Cyril, a famous piano player. During this exchange, Cyril is taking his time to observe MC and how she’s responding to the Winter World. He appears to be genuinely surprised about MC’s display of kindness, even though she’s been tossed out by the men most important to her, and into a foreign world wreaked of havoc.

He lets MC purchase the warm milk tea for him, and they both talk about the most mundane things ever. This may seem like just filler conversations, but actually holds importance because it actually influences how he views the world and MC in the future.

Cyril then uses this chance to extend his invitations to his sold out piano performance on the HMS Victoria. MC thinks he’s “quite a warm, kind person”- to which, we will find out if she’s wrong later. We also can confirm that he is an Evolver as we watch him turn his drink into solid ice, as well as the same man who was left unidentified in the previous chapters.

Chapter 23-13

??: “At this point, we’re all certain that the one behind this “Eternal Winter” is one of our former members.”

??: “Another traitor?”

??: “One with the power to traverse time and construct dreamscapes. There's only one that it could be.”

??: “The traitor code-named Hypnos?”

With those words, a deathly stillness fell over the air, as if some indescribable darkness had stolen into the room.

True name: Unknown. Age: Unknown. Evol: Time travel, dream construction.

Pitifully few clues to go on, not even a single photograph.

Was that person who trapped me in that dream and the traitor the same? If it was true that everything before happened on another world’s timeline, then does that mean this person had jumped through into this world timeline?

??: “Just what is he planning to do?”

??: “Whatever it is, since he’s a traitor to the organisation, it’s bound to be contrary to our goals. We must put a stop to him.”

??: “Continue the investigation. We must find the satellite coordinates. We cannot let him interfere with our plan.”

If this mystery mastermind had such powerful abilities, then what chance do I have at stopping him?

The hexagonal crystal symbol wasn't a major part of their discussion, but it stuck a faint chord with a hazy part of my memory. I finally remembered- that ticket to the concert!

They consider this powerful Evolver- Hypnos, a traitor to Black Swan and the individual behind the Eternal Winter incident. But nobody knows what he looks like. However, MC notices that the hexagon design is seen similar to the tickets that Cyril gave to her for his performance on the HMS Victoria. She now knows that Cyril is Hypnos, then realises that the satellite launch isn’t on land, but on sea. She knows how to stop the winter from spreading.

Here we automatically assume that he’s another Black Swan bad-guy-turned-traitor. What is his true goal? And why does it have to be that handsome piano player, out of all people?

Chapter 24-5

Before we could enter the main hall and check out the situation, a sonorous piano melody was belated through the ship’s speakers over that whole patch of sea.

The gentle tune formed an invisible yet unbreakable net in the air. Everyone in proximity to it became the piano music’s prisoner, unable to escape.

I felt a strong feeling of drowsiness. I tried to stop it but it seemed to have already gotten into my veins. Every cell in my body reverberated with it.

Everyone in the hall was swaying like soulless puppets, and on the stage, Cyril held his eyes slightly closed as he played the last requiem for them.

Chapter 24-7

MC travels to confront him on his ship, and watches him entrance people with his piano playing. This is how he got his code-name “Hypnos”. (Similar to how Kiro can charm and control people). Thankfully, Helios appears, his Evol is powerful enough to command MC to escape this.

“Why can’t a lie... be a good thing, too? Is this not the world you wanted?”

An anonymous voice seeped into my consciousness, accompanied by a dim, far away sounding piano.

The false warmth swooped in, and exhausted as I was, I chose to accept it.

My hand was originally grasping at air, but just then I distinctly felt the touch of something solid and warm. I could faintly feel someone grabbing onto me tight.

I forced open my heavy eyes, and a familiar outline filled my blurry vision.

“K- Kiro...?”

For a second, I couldn’t tell if I was in a dream or reality. His face was in shadow, and those usually sea blue eyes now flashed golden, as beautiful as the night stars.

He shouted at me, loud enough to hear over the inescapable piano music-

“I command you to awaken!”

Although without a hint of warmth, his eyes were like the first rays of dawn filtering through the curtains, melting away the fanciful dreamworld clouding my brain.

-

“I’m not like Ares. I don’t care about any Queen. If you want to influence the outcome, you have to do it your own way.”

Cyril still didn't stop playing, and instead kept moving his fingers across the key in a self-satisfied manner. The audience were completely under the spell of his melody, sunken into the deepest depths of a dream.

A black pistol was pointed straight at him, but the enraptured pianist did not let that stop his performance. Helios wasn’t in a hurry either, waiting quietly for the perfect, culminating core for this piece.

Just as the final note was stuck, Helios resolutely pulled back the tigger. A stream of smoke rose from the gun, but Cyril was somehow unharmed, blocked by an invisible force field.

Helios: “You constructed this dreamscape long before.”

Cyril: “I just don’t want this performance to have any interruptions.”

He rose elegantly from his piano bench and took a deep bow toward the hall absent of applause. Then he sauntered off the stage and looked at me.

Cyril: “You finally came.”

Chapter 24-9

Cyril: “Thank you for teaching me how to use the vending machine.”

I didn't expect him to speak up first, much less did I expect him to bring up that. As if we weren’t staring into the upcoming apocalypse, but just another utterly normal day.

Cyril: “It was you who showed me a different side of life. Although I still think, milk tea tastes better iced.”

MC: “But that doesn’t mean you have to wipe out the people who prefer drinking it hot.”

Cyril: “I think you misunderstood me. Just like you, I love this world. I love the complexity and uncertainty humanity has brought to it. I just think, it just doesn't have to move so fast.”

The smile he had showed- made me believe that from the bottom of his heart, everything he did was to make the world better, and that he should not recover any blame or interference from anyone.

Cyril: “Before one fully understands oneself, power beyond control can only be dangerous. Just like if I were to ask you now, do you truly understand yourself? How would you answer?”

He chuckled at my inability to respond.

The thoughts in his heart were hidden beneath a glacier, and all it showed on the surface was the very tip of it, preventing me from ever getting a clear idea of what he was thinking.

Cyril: “I’ve prepared a little gift for this kind of world.”

A giant steel tower shot upwards and stood tall between the water and sky. The satellite launch tower!

Cyril took hold of my hand and causally moved the key from his own hand. Before I had time to stop him, I saw crystal clear ice form at his fingertips. Pure and unblemished, but also dead. Just like this world before us.

Cyril: “Isn’t this a nice way to end things? This. Is the world you want.”

He then hands MC to press the button for him, then freezes the key to the Black Cabin. Cyril here genuinely believes that what he is doing is good for MC, as he uses the satellite launch platform from the ocean to spread the “Eternal Winter”- the “perfect world”.

Black Swan still pursues evolution of all humanity, but Cyril doesn’t agree with their methods. He knows MC is the Queen and thinks that in this Winter World, this is how she will only grow- without those she loves- if she had not known the boys and everyone she cares about. "If none of those things in the original world had occurred..."

What Hypnos stated reminds me of the Winter World Helios and what he said from when he saved her in Chapter 21.

“The weak should learn to survive on their own. No one will help them. Do everything you can, by fair means or foul. Give up everything in your past… even yourself. If you can’t do that, then go back to the world you came from.”

Which is a little nice touch because Helios appears to save her again with his Evol- but this time, MC is saving the world in her own way. She is not identifying with QUEEN first- but as herself. She had seen and been through so much pain to grow her mental and emotional strength to persevere and save this world with her kindness and love for humanity. MC, herself, has evolved.

Chapter 24-10

Cyril: “Not going to give the button to the launch a push? Perhaps you’ve forgotten, this is only my dream. Any decision you make here won't affect the outside world. Aren't you at least curious? The perfect world I wanted.”

What is the meaning of existence in a world of unrealistic perfection!?

MC: “If I do that, wouldn’t I be like an ostrich, sticking my head into the sand?”

Cyril: “If people found the perfect pile of “sand”, who knows if they’d stick with reality- and choose not to escape? After all, in reality, no one can predict what's going to happen from second to second. But in a perfect dream, everything always unfolds exactly as people desire.”

MC: “I can’t answer that for others. But it shows that the decision for how to answer should be left for each individual person.”

Cyril: “The way I see it, those who have no ability to judge never had the right to choose in the first place.”

Naturally, traitor though he was, he was still like others in Black Swan, holding a disdain for normal people, deep in his bones. When he rebelled against wasn't the thinking of the organisation, but their methods. But no matter which method of theirs it was, they all wanted to force their ideology on the whole world.

Did the world really need their brand of reason? Did humanity really need their idea of progress?

Everything in existence follows its own, original path, with absolutely no need for human intervention. And what I had to do was to maintain this balance.

I abruptly placed the remote back in his hand and told him my final decision.

It’s clear that Cyril doesn’t have that much experience with normalcy or identifies with at least humanity. He believes that it’s better to ignore reality and to live in a dream without the memories of the past or mourn the loss of others. Frozen without emotions, pain, or progress- the “perfect world”.

Chapter 25-4

After MC accepts her QUEEN identity, she finally uses that power to unite all timelines ultimately defeating Cyril, then returns back to the original world. Weirdly, he appears in front of her when she wakes up.

Cyril: “I believed I warned you long ago, no matter what world it is, it doesn't make much of a difference. You assume too much. In this world, I am just like you, a normal person. Think of it… as the price I’ve paid. My choice… was made for you. You were growing too slowly. Maybe that world was best suited for you after all. Too bad, you were too muddled to realise it. This world may soon experience a change, and it’s the kind of change that has nothing to do with you.

Time Subway

Time Subway takes place before Cyril leaves, after MC is hospitalised in Chapter 32. It reveals more about MC’s power and spiritual connection to Loveland City, the rest of the worlds and their timelines.

They meet on the train, though MC can’t remember meeting Cyril before. His piano music continues to play as the train moves backwards. (And that’s the thing about the subway- the train goes in cycles to each station, to the memories and worlds MC has previously lived in.)

Chapter 5

MC: “This train is really strange. It’s going backwards.”

Cyril: “Does the direction really matter? Though, I’ve never been on a subway train. Perhaps, there are a few imperfections.”

MC: “How did you get on the train?”

Cyril: “Same as you, I guess.”

MC: “Do you know where this train is going?”

Cyril: “To a place you want to be. So embrace your imagination. Think of everything you ever wanted. Eventually we will arrive at the perfect ending you’ve longed for.”

Chapter 6

MC: “I feel like I’m forgetting something. My memory has been foggy ever since I boarded this train.”

Cyril: “You do know me. You have to recall those memories on your own. Do you want to remember everything? Or, do you prefer to give up the past and start again right here?”

Cyril seemed to be hinting something, I felt that he’d always use such implicit language, but I couldn't remember when…

Chapter 7

Somehow this train gave me a sense of security. I could feel a familiar resonance between us. As if it was closely linked to me in the first place.

A thought slowly came to my mind, maybe I could decide on its direction at some point in time.

MC: “Why do you want me to go to the past?”

Cyril: “Back to when everything hadn’t taken place, isn’t that what you wanted? I’m only doing this for you. Sorry I didn’t ask for your permission. But you’ll be my best work.”

Chapter 8

Cyril: “This world belongs to you. My power doesn’t work here. I’m nothing more than a normal person in the real world. I’m going to use my power one last time. And this will be my final work. A perfect world is still what I’m after. It was you who broke free from the world I created. You showed me my limit. Indeed, the power triggered by your emotion outshined my skills. That’s why I chose your spiritual world, as the raw material of my final work.”

MC: “So this is just an infinite cycle within my spiritual word, isn’t it?”

Cyril: “I won’t say you are wrong. In this train, you can choose any stop and choose any exit you want. When you step out, this world becomes more complete. Meanwhile, this dream will continue the everlasting cycle, which is also your karma.”

MC: “So do I stay here?”

Cyril: “You can choose to leave… if you have the power to battle yourself. If you leave, this world will continue to exist all independent from all time space.”

MC: “How do I leave?”

Cyril: “You have to discover that for yourself.”

MC: “...Cyril, I need to go. If there’s really a perfect world you want, just take this world as my gift to you.”

Cyril: “I see, thank you... If only you could eventually put an end to this cycle.”

Chapter 32-1

Cyril- “I came to say goodbye.”

MC: “All that stuff that happened to me after losing my Evol has something to do with you. Starting from when “I ran into you” on the train, it was all a part of your plan.”

He smiled slightly, met my hostile gaze without a hint of displeasure. He didn’t deny it, but he didn’t admit it either. There was an undercurrent of tension to the stillness, but also some unusual and subtle peace.

This pianist… I’ve never seen anyone so out of touch with the world.

MC: “The vending machine, the scammer in the square, thorns on a flower, you don’t have much experience with everyday things, do you?”

Cyril: “However, it really has been a long time since anyone’s talked with me about such things.”

I may have been imagining it, but I seemed to detect a hint of nostalgia in his voice.

MC: “Just what are you after, coming here to see me like this?”

As he spoke, he reached out and put his hand at the back of mine. His fingers were ice cold.

But in this brief moment, a flurry of images flashed before my eyes.

Four white walls, an empty room, a triangular piano of translucent crystal placed in the corner. The figure of a man gradually emerged before the piano bench.

His thin graceful fingers danced daintily across the keys as snowflakes fell upon him and settled undisturbed.

That gentle piano melody reverberating in the shadows also came out as a muttered groan from the girl as pain hit her.

Suddenly, the piano playing intensified, the tempo building to a frenzy like a subway train rattling through a tunnel.

I saw a boy get up from the piano, walk to the front of the stage, and take a bow to the thunderous roar of applause.

The scene shifted. The boy was once again standing in the gloomy storm, holding a white rose to his chest, listening in silence to a priest delivering a eulogy.

??: “Keep playing, Little Cyril. Use your power and help Mummy make the perfect world.”

Cyril: “A perfect world… I’ve got it.”

I saw his past, present and future. I saw the boy slowly growing up and playing that final melody in the centre of a frozen plain. He played tirelessly, as if he’s trapped inside in a world of memory.

Cyril: “Can you tell me what you saw?”

In those crystal clear eyes, I saw my own expression, and there was an ineffable expression of sadness to them.

MC: “Is a perfect creation… really that important?”

Cyril’s eyes were flat, like the negative space in an ink wash painting.

Cyril: “The sad fact is that they will never be able to achieve it.”

MC: “But absolute perfection doesn’t exist. Everything has blemishes and faults. But that doesn’t mean that they’re not good enough, and it certainly doesn’t mean that they don’t have a right to exist in this world.”

Cyril: “Perhaps. You’ve certainly proven that point yourself. One final thing before I go, of course, you can choose not to believe it. Perfection has never been an illusion; everything in this world has a singular, perfectly-suited exit. Although, I think you already found it.”

MC: “Where are you going?”

Cyril: “A world that belonged to you, but now belongs to me. Thank you for the world you’ve given me, and the interesting memories. And that bubble tea, I quite like the flavour.”

His words fell softly, as if shrouding me in a tranquil, pure white dream.

Upon seeing his past, present and future, all that MC sees is Cyril playing the piano. It turns out, his true motivation for creating the “perfect world” was for his mother when she passed. With MC’s help, he finally admits that it cannot be achieved. He isn’t directly hostile like the other Black Swan members either, and calmly admits his defeat and accepts MC’s decision.

Behind the Curtain- 6 (Chapter 28)

??: “If you want to see it, go. The door being opened will be closed soon.”

The black box grows bigger, and fills the entire vision in black-

Cyril: “Do you know the origin of the name BLACK SWAN?”

I see an elegant young man standing inside a luxury gift shop. There, piano pieces are playing. He looked down at me. The black box reflects in the cool eyes looking a lot like snow.

MC: “Am I inside the box?”

Cyril: “BLACK SWAN” is a word that means an unexpected event. Humans have no way to predict the impact of the event. When I first heard their name, I immediately saw the appeal. I also wanted to be a part of it. But…the majority of them still live in this illusion. Only a few were aware that humanity is ignorant. They can't help me to complete my work.”

While speaking, he pressed the crystal piano keyboard. The jolting sound echoes—

Cyril’s Mum: “With your power, continue this and please show me the perfect world.”

The woman lies on bed, looking at him with those beautiful eyes that looked a lot like that boy’s. There’s no strength in them.

Cyril’s Mum: “For one last time, I want to experience the beauty of this world with my whole being. That’s also the reason for your existence.”

The boy then grows up in the snowstorm and turns into an innocent boy. His outline became sharp, becoming an elegant young man.

The snowy wind pushes the window open and surrounds his mother. She then transforms into white snow and suddenly disappears.

The man doesn’t notice the occurring snowstorm, but instead concentrates on the graceful piano playing.

A piece of glass shatters and lands on the piano. The young man engrossed in playing keeps an eye on the keys.

MC: “Look out!”

The piece of glass cuts the young man’s long finger. A line of blood flows, on the skin like ice and snow.

The young man finally stops. As if time had been frozen, the lingering sound of the piano remained in the room covered with heavy snow.

He looks up. Like an innocent puzzled child who touched the piano for the first time, those eyes come into mind.

Cyril: “Who…are you?”

MC: “...who am I?”

Cyril had been stuck all this time within his memory of his promise to his mother- in pursuit of the “perfect world”. His world was biased upon thinking that humanity- even Evolvers, were ignorant and unable to help him achieve his goals. This demonstrates the divide and individuation between each Black Swan member of not being able to work together effectively to achieve the collective goal- of the “New World”.

It was nice to see MC being able to overcome her self-doubt and enter Black Cabin by accepting the QUEEN title in a world so foreign to her. Her hope, love and determination had saved the world again. Cyril played a huge part in this chapter of her life, almost like prepping her for the final prophecy of fate.

And “Doomsday” is coming.

#17 pages #patting myself on the back for this one #mlqc Cyril #mlqc #love and producer #mr love queens choice #恋与制作人 #mlqc translation #mlqc analysis #mlqc cn #mlqc en #mlqc Hypnos #mlqc spoilers