Notes on Adaptation: How High We Go in the Dark

Here are some ideas of how I would go about adapting How High We Go in the Dark, by Sequoia Nagamatsu, as a television series. The novel is made up of interconnected short stories, so I would handle this by ordering one episode for each story. The ideas and concepts here cover the first two stories, "30,000 Years Beneath a Eulogy" and "City of Laughter".

I was really captivated by the mysterious origin of Annie, and I wish that I had gotten to learn more about her, because her society’s mathematical advancement and the fact part of her was “only superficially human” piqued my interest. I would make sure that the music developers created a musical motif for Annie and the ancient society that is discovered, and then have those musicians create another leitmotif for the disease itself, somewhat similar to Annie’s given their connection. The first theme would be used in the first episode, and gradually being merging into the second theme, which would be used in the second episode. We did not read the third story, "In the Garden of Memory," in class, but the first page is in the handout for the second story, and it can be seen that the disease has evolved to also sicken adults. Therefore, I would also have the theme evolve slightly from the second episode to the third, but less so than from the first episode to the second. To emphasize the substantial leap in the global setting from the first story to the second, I would ask that pieces in the first episode incorporating the leitmotif use instruments such as flutes, drums, and vocalizations, and absolutely no synthesized music, but that pieces in the second episode incorporate as much synth and modern instrumental theories. This would serve to make the jump between the two episodes more jarring. Pieces I would send them as a reference/to allow them to get ahold of feel for what I would want in Annie's leitmotif are Alien DNA from the Agents of SHIELD TV show, Neanderthal Bone Flute Music performed by Ljuben Dimkaroski, and The One Ring Theme from the film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. For  

The short video on the Batagaika crater we saw in class captivated me, and as a result, when filming “30,000 Years Beneath a Eulogy” I would want to get actual drone footage of the crater. It is a stunningly beautiful and disturbing location. I would use shots depicting the leaflike indentation formed by the crater and the permafrost itself when Cliff first arrives, and later on pan downwards from the top of the crater down it's sheer slopes, and the inside of the crater in detail, to hammer home the scale and reality of human destruction that is causing this unearthly collapse of the landscape. I would see if it would be possible to drop a camera off the sides of the slopes without damaging it, and if this were the case, I would try to stabilize the camera as it falls, so that it remains facing up and towards the rapidly-rising cliff face as it descends. I would use this footage for when Cliff throws the dogū over the cliff at the end of the first episode.

In terms of costuming, I would make Cliff and his wife Miki wear rather dark and muted tones, to represent their grief. The arctic researchers would wear casual clothes, and Cliff and Clara would both wear red, while Miki and Ty would wear green. The researcher's choice of clothing indicates their laid back nature (a double-bladed sword, given their lack of safety precautions) and that the research facility is somewhat of a home away from home, while they find their relationships with the outside world "tough" to maintain. This would highlight Cliff and Clara’s similar passion for their work, at the expense of their families. Clara should wear a brighter shade of red than Cliff does, to indicate her youth and drive, and this means that when she falls, the camera can take a view from near the top of the crater of where she has collapsed, with her red clothing blurring together with blood on the snow, permafrost, and dirt spattered-ground, the camera slowly panning in on her as it circles down like a carrion bird. Miki and Ty would wear green, a more peaceful color, to contrast Cliff and Clara, and to indicate their contrasting devotion to remaining with their family. The shared color would also tie to their shared interest in art. Over the course of the story, Cliff would go from wearing a dull red, to a slightly brighter red and less formal clothing, perhaps with something lended from one of the researchers' wardrobes, indicating his increasing assimilation with the them. It would also show how he is becoming like Clara in his actions, telling Yumi and Miki he will be home “soon,” in “maybe a month or two,” leaving them behind and falling—metaphorically —into the same icy trap as his daughter.

I would cast an actual comedian as Skip in “The City of Laughter” because they would have had the experience of being a young comedian just starting out to draw from, and they would be skilled at being humorous. I think that given the sheer darkness of this story’s tone, it would be good to have a comedian who can add a splash of understated humor back into the story in specific moments, not to detract from the darkness itself, or to create tonal whiplash, but to balance the otherwise dark tone of the story. This will help create enough tonal variation to both prevent viewers from becoming put-off by the story’s bleakness, and it will allow a more dynamic emotional curve to the story, thus making all the emotional blows it inflicts hit even harder. 

For “City of Laughter” I would try to use more hard lighting in the City of Laughter during work hours, and softer lighting for the rest of the episode. This would work to confer the sense of a level of stress and pressure during work hours, as well as highlighting the hard, fake-seeming plastic of the environment, and in some cases the heat Skip experiences. It should convey the sensation of reality being too big, too bright, and yet it, and the inevitable end, nevertheless glaring down on the audience and the occupants, pinning them under its gaze. Softer lighting, by contrast, would work better for the more contemplative, albeit still serious, scenes with Dorrie. This would allow Dorrie’s home with her son to feel comforting, something she, Fitch and Skip all could benefit from.

“City of Laughter” is also largely set in a theme park. I would use practical effects to create a small model theme park which I would then green-screen into the background. I would also have models made of Skip and Dorrie’s housing. I would make a stylistic choice to a) make the models of the mobile homes and RVs look particularly fake and plastic looking, in comparison to everything else, in order to emphasize their shoddy nature (Skip is assigned a “rusted-out Winnebago”). I would also try to use a lot less detail and somewhat less realism in the models for the theme park attractions other than the Chariot of Osiris, to make Osiris seem more real and impressive in contrast, and to emphasize that despite the fact that this is a real theme park designed to make kids happy, it still has some undercurrent of deception, in that the children are all going to be euthanized, and therefore the other attractions should have some element of “fakeness”.