In spending the semester exploring the nature of dreams, easily the most obvious characteristic is that they allow us to delve into the subconscious. Similarly, hallucinogens are designed to allow us to delve into the subconscious, though in significantly different ways.

This aspect of the dream world first interested me when working on the first project, a model of the opium dream, "Kubla Khan," written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. After spending twenty hours editing the film, it was a success in the eyes of the audience, which encouraged me to explore this idea even further.

I therefore began researching the effects of hallucinogens, beginning with Carlos Castaneda's The Teaching's of Don Juan, an exploration of Native American philosophy through the use of peyote, a hallucinogenic root that grows naturally in Mexico.

I followed up this preliminary research with two interviews that turned out to give me the most poignant and useful information I obtained on the subject. The first of these interviews was with Ron Courtney, a co-worker of mine, whose life story is enough to blow anyone away. Excerpts from this interview made it into the final product in what I called the "Ron montage," a 90 second sequence that attempted to make him look cool, but at the same time mike you a little bit uneasy as to the implications of "following in his footsteps," as Laura puts it.

The second interview was with a source who wishes to remain anonymous, and it targeted LSD specifically, with regard to this individual's personal experiences and some of the scientific aspects of the drug, including the wave-like nature of the experience.

Woven through all of this were countless films on drugs, including but not limited to Naked Lunch (David Cronenberg, 1991), The Big Lebowski (Joel Coen, 1998), The Cell (Tarsem Singh, 2000), and Un Chien Andalou (Luis Buñuel, 1929), which had the greatest influence on the resulting product.