What started as an idea for a rock opera has snowballed into a massive collaborative effort by several Ball State University students.
More than 15 students from different academic fields such as telecommunications, music engineering technology, art and English have been working to complete a project they started last winter.
Originally, Nick Johnson said he wanted to showcase the technology available at Sursa Hall with a performance that combined a rock band with an orchestra. After talking to friends, his idea slowly transformed into a project that combined visual and audio elements, which boasted technology while not making it the focus of the piece. The end result was "The Terri Dreams", the story of Joseph, a man who is obsessed with searching for a woman in his dreams named Terri. The story is segmented into five separate dreams, each directed by a different person. When presented, the show will be a combination of film, animation, live acting and music.
"The Terri Dreams" was written by senior creative writing major Anthony Settineri. Joel Chalwik, one of the collaborators, came up with the original story about a man who loves his dreams more than life, Settineri said. Because Settineri is an English major, Chalwick asked him to write the story, Settineri said.
The finished project is slated to debut at Sursa Hall on Jan. 12, 2007. Having to write the story in a short amount of time with the pressure to write something that pleased the other people involved in the project forced him to turn in a story he knew could be better, he said.
"I'm satisfied with it, but I knew there could be so much more to it," Settineri said.
In an effort to make the story stronger, he encouraged directors to revise the story to fit their interpretations.
Senior telecommunications major Paul Symon did just that. As the director of dream two, Symon tweaked the script to match the different feels he will have in his dream. Dream two will combine live action, animation and rotoscope, which is an animation style popularized by Richard Linklater's films "Waking Life" and "A Scanner Darkly." The desired result of rotoscope is a surreal effect.
"Rotoscoping, as Richard Linklater said, lends itself to surreality," Symon said.
The process of rotoscoping is very time-intensive, Symon said. The three minutes of film he plans to rotoscope will take an estimated 200 man-hours, which will be done by ten animators.
Adam Hicks, a senior telecommunications major and director of dream five, is also a co-producer for the whole project, along with Johnson. Both Hicks and Johnson are getting credit for "The Terri Dreams" as an independent study. Funding has come from the Center for Media Design, and although there is not an itemized budget, the CMD will reimburse the collaborators for expenses.
The pressure to meet the deadline has affected the schoolwork of some collaborators on the project. Symon, Hicks and Johnson have all admitted their schoolwork has been adversely affected because of "The Terri Dreams."
"It's consumed my life," Johnson said.
Despite the downsides of working on "The Terri Dreams," such as the amount of work involved and the fast-approaching deadline, there are numerous positives. The possibility of using this as a portfolio piece, the overall cohesiveness and the chance to work on such a unique project were the best reasons for being involved, the collaborators said.
The incorporation of different disciplines into one project is brilliant, Symon said. "The most important thing about "The Terri Dreams" is that it's turning this campus into a virtual studio," Symon said. "This is how more schools should be."
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