FMP: Dream Psychology Research

Research in my sketch book

Authors own

Moving away from the idea of dream analysis, I looked at the harder facts about dreaming e.g. the brain activity involved, dream frequency and duration and other avenues associated with dreaming (lucidity, astral planing and sleep paralysis). Astral planing and sleep paralysis were really effective concepts to play with in regards to what I want to communicate. The animation that I wish to produce is all about the very real, human desire to escape, but also exploring it as an art (training yourself to lucid dream). The Astral Plane world is a very obvious escape from reality, it is almost seen as a more intense, however, enlightened realm. Whereas, on the other end of the spectrum, sleep paralysis is the ultimate state of restriction that one can only wish to escape from. Playing with this juxtaposition could creative something strongly communicative.

An informative video I watched that explains the process of lucid dreaming: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYSX51xBkos 

FMP: Dream Psychology Research

Dream psychology research in my sketch book

Authors own

Of course, I had to research Freudian theory as it influenced so much art and is the most outrageous, common knowledge theory for dream analysis. Carl Gustav Jung's dramatic structure theory proved to be very helpful to my particular media of choice (animation), as it provided a rough outline of the structure of dreams and which section of the dream is most important. This could be something for me to consider when generating storyboards. Another thing that caught my attention was a quote by Sigmund Freud:

"Dreams are the Royal Road to the Unconscious."  

This quote generated strong imagery for me and it could be a potential component to my final storyboard. The "Royal Road" could be an effective symbolic device that insinuates an entrance or exit of the unconscious.