Mandelbulb

Logline

A physicist descends into madness after the death of his wife and daughter whilst desperately struggling to prove the existence of an unseen Dimension, and its connection to his family’s death. 

Synopsis

This 10-minute short film follows Dr. Stellar Benoit, a formerly respected physicist. He has lost everything since the passing of his research partner and wife, Dr. Halo Lewis-Benoit and their stillborn daughter. He now obsesses over proving Halo and his shared hypotheses on the existence of the metaphysical Fourth (Fractal) Dimension. 

Moodboard

This is a miniature mood board to get a visual understanding of the project before reading it.

Plot

Overview

Dr. Stellar Benoit, a Physicist turned Conspiracy theorist obsesses over the death of his research partner, muse and wife, Dr Halo Lewis-Benoit who died under inexplicable circumstances. Stellar has theories regarding the death of his wife and daughter (Infinity Benoit), which are also connected to his theories on the Fractal Dimension. Stellar descends into madness over this metaphysical dimension, as it is the only thing he has left of his wife, ultimately ending in him confronting the dimension and becoming trapped inside it.

Stylistically, the film is in black and white, with rays of colour being exposed onto the frame whenever the cosmic entity is present. 

Filmed through standard video logs, zoomed-in claustrophobic shots and fish-eye high angles intercut to provide more context, keep up the pacing and involve the audience to uncover the mystery.

The video logs will not have any additional effects and will provide a representation of the world as it is; something the audience can trust is the actual version of reality. The insert shots will have many creative twists on them to present a distorted version of reality; the audience will perceive this as Stellar’s disturbed mental state and his perspective.

Opening

There is a brief nostalgic montage of footage featuring Stellar and Halo together: celebrating each others’ success in their careers, having fun with their peers, receiving rewards for their partnered research, Stellar buying Halo an ant farm, the couple’s marriage, the moment where they discover Halo is pregnant, Halo during maternal death, and finally Stellar standing over his wife’s grave (where questions of, ‘who could be observing him standing over the grave alone?’ arise).

Act One

Stellar films his first vlog and rants about the theories and research behind the fourth dimension and its fractal creatures (See background research). This day is also Halo & Infinity’s shared death anniversary which affects Stellar immensely. The vlog is briefly intercut between Stellar’s conspiracy theories and handwritten notes. These would include post-it notes, newspaper clippings, research articles, fractal renderings, photographs of physicists and mathematicians, newspaper clippings covering Halo & Infinity’s death, and the decline of Stellar’s career. All this is in an effort to determine the cause of his family’s mysterious death. 

Stellar explains that he experienced something otherworldly when looking into his wife’s eyes for the last time. Before her maternal death, Halo’s eyes contained the colour and vastness of the cosmos; she told Stellar that she could see the creatures of the unseen dimension that they were researching. Halo actually experienced the cosmos. 

Stellar recalls a sweet memory of his first date with his then-girlfriend, Halo, which was also when they made their first scientific breakthrough. Stellar cries, as he misses his family greatly and is slightly resentful. Halo originally started their fractal research, due to her religion and her scientific search for God. Stellar was initially sceptical but was slowly warming up to the ideas Halo was presenting. However, since the passing of his family, Halo’s research is all Stellar has to live for. He has now made it his life's goal to discover the fractal dimension, which he believes to be the prime suspect for his wife’s passing.

Act Two

In this second vlog, Stellar scrolls through popular scientific articles and forums where the public and even his former peers mock him and his research and desperately struggle to refute their comments. Here, the audience could hear sounds of the comments, whispering in Stellar’s ear, the screen scrolling manically. He is hearing the true sounds of the cosmos and he cannot fathom it; expanding on the existential horror of Lovecraft. (Narrative and Audio Reference: The Lighthouse - Into the light)

Stellar suddenly experiences excruciating pain from the sounds of the dimension in one of his ears that he believes to be coming from the dimension. Whilst he is describing his experience to the vlog, he rummages through his disorganised belongings and grabs a straight razor (the razor will be seen first during the first vlog). He sprints to the bathroom, as he does not turn the vlog recording off, we hear the unsettling sounds of him mutilating his body. He returns without his ear and its haemorrhaging stump blindly bandaged with an unused rag, which is subtly revealed to be a personalised blanket for his daughter, Infinity. 

In his franticness he draws mathematical symbols & equations, trying to write them with a pen, but as that is not working, he uses the blood which is dripping from the side of his head.

During this, the bandage falls off his ear, Stellar realises that it is his daughter’s blanket. Distraught by this, Stellar adopts the foetal position on the floor and mumbles his family’s names, Halo & Infinity, almost as a mantra while clutching Halo’s ant farm close to his chest (which was her prized possession). Visually, moving caustics will be used in the non-vlog shots to provide a sense of the cosmic entities interacting with him (See reference board). 

Act Three

This is the third and final vlog; in this whole section, only the vlog camera is used, not intercutting with other viewpoints. This is to establish that everything we see in this section is reality.

Stellar explains he saw the Fractal dimension’s flashing lights and its creatures, as clear as day. We can see that there is some colour underneath his eyes - like he saw in his wife’s eyes before her passing. Everything has been filmed in black & white and this splash of colour in his eyes stands out, (Reference: Colour Out of Space, 2019) representing that Stellar has seen some of the cosmos and wants to see it all. 

Stellar explains that the dimension ruptured his hearing, through tinnitus (cooking noises), which forced him to cut his ear off because of the Dimension’s extraterrestrial radiation (the power of the sun). 

He grabs his video camera and Halo’s ant jar and brings them to the foot of a nearby church. He stares up at the dimension’s cosmic entity, with his camera now being exposed to streaks of colour (Reference: The effect of radiation on celluloid film). 

Stellar becomes absorbed by the dimension. The camera falls to the ground before also being brought into their dimension.

The first time we see the whole frame in colour, it is the fractal dimension (Reference:Fractal Universe (Mandelbulb 3D fractals)) Stellar theorised, proving his theories correct, but seeing that he had only scratched the surface of what this realm truly is. After seeing the dimension for a short time, the camera gets ‘rejected’, as the beings have absolutely no use for it, and it lands back on earth. 

The camera is laying on the ground outside the church, and we see an ant crawling past the frame. A metaphor of the cosmic creature seeing humans with the same lens as humans see ants.

Additional Information

The Entities of the Fourth Dimension are cosmic beings to which earth and humans are minor beings and do not have an impact on their existence. The very core of cosmic horror (and a majority of H.P. Lovecraft’s horror) is the existential dread from the knowledge that we are inconsequential in the grand cosmos. Their interactions with Benoit are them merely playing around, like a child playing around with an ant.

The cosmic horror themes of this project are inspired by the writings of H. P. Lovecraft, who also wrote the 1926 short story, “The Call of Cthulhu” about fictionalised cosmic creatures.

The methods by which these creatures interact with humans are through natural conditions humans can develop, ie. tinnitus and cataracts. This grounds the short in reality, making the audience question whether he is actually going crazy or the creatures are real. For this production, multicoloured (rainbow) contact lenses were considered researching in order to depict the cosmic entrancement in their vision. 

Stellar first encounters the dimension when staring out of his window as he sees the church, the entities appear on top of the church. He can see the entities appear due to the damage to his intraocular lens; later on, they damage his eyes to a greater extent, which causes a clearer vision of the cosmic beings.

The scientific definition of the Fractal Dimension refers to the measurement of space inside geometric shapes. However, this project’s interpretation reimagines the Dimension as a literal Dimension, inhabiting personified interpretations of existing elements from Fractal culture, e.g., Fractal cosmology, Fractal geometry and Fractal lights, as well as physical cosmic entities and other presences. 

These beings live and breathe in a 4-dimensional space, and there are examples represented in the link below. If someone was living in the 2D world, and a 3D object moves through it, then all that person would see is a 2D cross-section of that 3D object. It can look like it’s defying gravity however, it is just grounded in the higher dimension that that person cannot see.4D Toys: a box of four-dimensional toys, and how objects bounce and roll in 4D