Introduction

My name is Richard deCosta and I am a composer. Although I write a lot of different styles of music, what I write most of is opera.

This project is called "K'ai, Death of Dreams", and it is a space opera. Let me tell you, very briefly, about Space Opera. According to the all-powerful Wikipedia, "Space opera is a sub-genre of speculative fiction or science fiction that emphasizes romantic, often melodramatic adventure, set mainly or entirely in space, generally involving conflict between opponents possessing powerful (and sometimes quite fanciful) technologies and abilities. Perhaps the most significant trait of space opera is that settings, characters, battles, powers, and themes tend to be very large-scale."

Space Opera

Now my space opera is similar, in that it is melodramatic, adventurous, romantic and is set in space (well, on a planet that is in space ...(kind of like Earth, actually, but it's not earth))...
anyway, there are several very important things that make MY space opera VERY different; from opera, space opera, movies, TV or anything you've ever seen or heard in your entire life:
First, and most important, this is a real SPACE OPERA, and what that means is aliens singing opera.

The Production

Musically it's pretty straightforward: You've got your full orchestra, classically trained operatic singers, computers that sing, vocoders, theremins, wooden rattles run through a series of baffles that ultimately end up coming out of a mouth shaped orifice made of silicone rubber with a steel armature controlled by a microprocessor and muscle wires-- you know, your typical 19th century opera fare.

Visually is a bit more complicated. While the quality of the on-screen visuals will match that of a blockbuster sci-fi Hollywood movie, it will fortunately be dirt cheap to produce.

What makes this possible? One word: Machinima. Machinima is, quite simply, the use of real-time three-dimensional graphics engines, very often from video games, to create computer-generated imagery for animated films.

To put this into perspective, take a film like Shrek (which I personally can't stand, but it made the millions and millions at the box office, so it must be good). This movie had a budget of $60 MILLION dollars. You'd think with money like that they could get lip-syncing that doesn't look like it was done by a first-year animation student- but I digress. A very large portion of that $60 MILLION was spent on racks upon racks of computer equipment used to render the movie's over 130,000 frames; a process that probably took many, many months.

With Machinima, which uses REAL-TIME 3d graphics, that same movie, once built and animated, could today be rendered on any off-the-shelf consumer-grade computer in REAL time; in other words, press play and the movie is generated as-you-watch-it. My opera, K'ai will use this technique. We will NOT be spending $60M- although we would very much like to MAKE $60M from it! The game engines we are considering are Doom 3, Unreal 3, CryEngine 2.Blade3D, Source engine and and screen captures taken from an old Commodore 64 which I found at a yard sale in Ogunquit, Maine. It all comes down to which engine best meets the artistic and technical needs of the production, and of course, which company would like the honor of having their engine powering the world's first real-time triple feature length 3d space opera.

The Team

We have already assembled a very talented team of artists, musicians, 3d modelers, riggers and animators who have already created some amazing proof-of-concept drawing, renderings and animations, which you'll see in a minute. They are simply waiting for the go-ahead to bring the world of K'ai to life. All we need now is some money. Remember that $60M I mentioned earlier? Well, we won't be needing nearly that much, even though the opera will be nearly six hours long (neatly sliced into approximately 35 scenes which are between 5 and 15 minutes in length), all we need is a paltry $250,000 and forward-thinking benefactors to complete the production from beginning to end. The production time will be roughly 18-20 months.

The Story

My opera's libretto (script) is based, in true Wagnerian fashion, on myth, which I will explain later, as the story is quite detailed, not to mention exceptionally interesting, and more importantly, relevant to life on this planet.

In the story, K'ai is a young Uadaman (alien), and though sick and frail physically, has a mind, sharp and clear, has mastery over his dreams, and is in contact with an alien presence through them. He is, however, not special. He is not chosen. He is not 'the one', or 'the chosen one'. K'ai is quite simply the first to discover the truth about the origins of his race, the fact that they were created many thousands of years ago, for the purpose of slavery, and he is the first to put together the thousands of years old puzzle of how to escape their current spiritual bondage. And as happens with people who make such a connection (like nearly everone in every Loveraft story ever written) the reality of it drives K'ai stark raving mad.

Now, as slaves, K'ai's ancestors were treated crueley by their masters, the Garx, who were viewed as gods. Although initially the Uadaman slaves made the lives of the Garx easier and richer, the slaves eventually became unruly and ultimately revolted. The Garx was decided that they were more trouble than help, and they were abandoned on the harsh, unforgiving planet on which they were created. Prutoztur, a guardian "god", and brother to their creator, Zroetur, was charged with keeping them from physical and spiritual escape, from the truth of their heritage, and more importantly, from discovering the only way they actually could escape.

K'ai, and after his discovery many thousands of years later, becomes completely possessed with the idea of freeing his race from their spiritual bondage, and in exacting revenge on their creators and captors. K'ai is joined by several like-minded scientists, philosophers, theosophists, mercenaries and quite frankly terrorists who roam the planet in a hijacked ship, leaving a wake of suspicion, fear, malcontent and confusion in their search for the answer to the ultimate question. In his quest for freedom, K'ai learns through his contact with one of the Garx through his dreams that the only way his race can be truly free is to prevent reincarnation and birth altogether, and thus ends up becoming the catalyst for the creation of a cult of mass murderers seeking to ultimately kill every living creature on the planet, thus ensuring that no soul will ever again be captured. And they all died happily ever after.

Conclusion

K'ai will represent a giant leap forward in the production of opera, reviving a dying art form which is now nothing more than a museum exhibit, and introduce this exciting new genre of entertainment to a whole new generation (of geeks and gamers) and hopefully, open some minds as well. For more information about the story, and how it relates to YOUR life, visit your local library and look for the books on Sumerian and Mesopotamian mythology; specifically those related to the bothers Enki and Enlil.