Special Effects Notes

Depicting the children of Strange Seed and their abilities will be a challenge, but not impossible. Advances in effects techniques over the last few decades make the story easier to realize than ever before.

Here are some notes about possible approaches to the material.

Special Effect Number One: The Way the Children See

They focus so completely on the object of interest that the background becomes almost totally subdued. The object of interest is super-defined, almost glowing, bright white/yellow. For instance, when the child is in the bedroom alone, from his POV we see that the whole room is well-defined; and then when Rachel enters the room, the background, the room, becomes subdued, almost to black; when she begins to speak to him, his focus is on her face, on her mouth and her eyes, so the rest of her body becomes subdued.

Special Effect Number Two: Their Hearing

They hear in much the same way that they see; they focus on the object of interest to the nearly total exclusion of all extraneous sounds (if they were us, and they visited a crowded restaurant, and there was a particularly juicy conversation going on across the room, they’d be able to focus on that conversation only, as if the people talking were the only people in the room). They do this by degrees. For instance, if they’re listening to a rabbit moving through the grass, and there are a number of other sounds – bumblebees, wind, birds, etc. – then those sounds are, one by one, erased from their field of hearing until they hear only the rabbit.

Special Effect Number Three: Camouflage

While standing still, they are able to blend almost totally with the background. For instance, in one scene, Rachel enters an upstairs room that the boy is in. There’s little light in the room, and this helps the boy’s camouflage abilities. Rachel crosses the room to the window and does not see the boy, though he’s huddled in a corner.

Special Effect Number Four: Mimicry

The children are able to mimic any sound. This ability is used in the screenplay quite minimally – i.e. the children mimic only the voices of Paul and Rachel. They have the ability, however, to imitate any sound – birds, rain, wind, whatever. As additional work is done on the screenplay, this ability could be used to great effect.

Where do they come from?

The children are products of the earth. They are not entirely vegetable or mineral or animal. They’re a mixture. They are a new species that the earth has produced.

When, in the novel Strange Seed, the phrase “their mother the earth” is used, it is literally true. The author assumes that all of the living things on the earth – from human beings to trees to raccoons to amoebas – were, originally, products of the earth. The children are simply a brand new product, and their motivation is to feed themselves, to find warmth, and to protect “their mother, the earth.”

They’ll eat anything that they can chew and swallow.

When they’re newly born from the earth, the children don’t have feelings, or emotions, but they can “learn” them if they’re allowed to grow and change into what look like human adults. And they “learn” feelings and emotions so they can live in harmony with human beings. It is a masquerade that works awfully well. (For instance, Rachel, the female protagonist in the screenplay and the novel, is not aware until it is nearly too late that the person she loves and trusts and lives with is not the person she thought he was – that, indeed he’s not a “person” at all.)

The general rule is that they survive until the winter’s cold kills them. But there are exceptions to every rule. The boy that the Griffins take in is only one of those exceptions.