Animated Dreamscapes: The Adaptation of Robert H. Barlow and H.P. Lovecraft s The Night Ocean

Abstract

[EN] This paper presents theoretical and practical issues concerning the adaptation of literature into animated film. María Lorenzo Hernández tells firsthand her experience in the realization of the awarded short film The Night Ocean (2015), from the homonymous story by Robert H. Barlow and H.P. Lovecraft. Initially, the article introduces the literary world of Barlow, a writer and anthropologist whose fiction has been compiled in anthologies (Eyes of the God, Hipocampus Press) and has been analyzed by several scholars (Massimo Berruti, Lawrence Hart, Vicente Quirarte), to deepen his story "The Night Ocean" (1936), considered erroneously during decades the last of H.P. Lovecraft s Weird Tales. Then, the essay delves into the conceptual process of adaptation, transforming into images the dreamspaces suggested by the original tale. The animated adaptation explores the possibilities of a story told in first person, introducing the variety of techniques that artists used in their sketchbooks since the protagonist is an imagined painter from the mid-20s of the last century. Subsequently, the paper focus on the technical development of filmmaking, showing the stages of production, their finding and values, as a fusion of painting, hand-made animation, and digital animation and editing. Finally, the article presents the reception of the film the art exhibition and festival tour , to finish reflecting on the message hidden in the Barlowian text: the inevitability of death.