storyboards

New plot

||||Plot outline|||| My film is going to be set in a forest, the idea being that a guy has had to join a group of his friends on a hunting trip late, but when he gets there to joint them, he can’t quite find them, then he starts to realise something has going horribly wrong . He suddenly gets the idea that he is lost. He pulls out his compass and we see the needle just spinning round and round, every which way he turns nothing looks different. It’s starting to get dark he smells a fire and thinks he must have found his friends, but when he gets there, there are some of his friends things, and some parts of his friends body’s too. So he knows now that he is in trouble. His compass is still spinning. He starts to realise that there is no way out. I envisage lots of slow scenes in the movie, his slowly realising he is lost, slowly looking at the fire scene and piecing together the bad news. The whirring of the needle in his compass. The tall trees spinning around him as he looks frantically for somewhere to hide, somewhere to run, a clue. If I can somehow get an overhead shot of the forest at the end, so that the audience leaves him there at the end of the film, not knowing whether he can ever escape, but doubting it.

soundtrack

||||Soundtrack |||| I looked at a few music tracks for horror or scary movies, to see what I thought would work best on my film. I think I want to use classical music, I don’t want anything where people are listening to say lyrics or working out what ”band” it is. I think classical music is more atmospheric but I have to think about which kind of music will work best. My first thought was the soundtrack from Nosferatu the classic vampire movie. this is so scary to listen to, but I think perhaps it is a bit too religious which doesn’t so much tie in with my movie, I might come back to it… Then I looked at the sound track to Candyman. I think this works well, very atmospheric, I can imagine it in the forest scenes I am planning on using, and I like how it is almost cheerful, but with the impression that things are going to go wrong. I think to be really scary the music needs to be something familiar, but with a twist like a heightened tempo, or an irregular rhythm to make the audience feel like things aren’t quite right…but they aren’t quite sure why not… And I also like this soundtrack that is in Kill Bill2 when Bill talks to his brother in the desert, chilling, and really “lost “music. I think something like this at the end of my film as the camera pans out from the forest where all ahs been lost…. Might work really well. plenty to think about, I will be able to fine tune this after I have finished the filming but I know the type of thing I am after now, I don’t want any vocals, that’s for sure.

fireplace gone out concept art for NO WAY OUT!

Poster concept art for my film NO WAY OUT!

Concept art for NO WAY OUT

LOCATION IN FOREST

After looking at various location ideas I think the location that would work best for me on an atmospheric and practical level is a wood or forest setting. Being shot in black and white this gives lots of options for shadows and moving shadows as the main character runs through the woods in a spiral of confusion. I like how a forest can be at once magical and that this can quickly change to spooky as night falls, and black and white will accentuate this effect. This image below of a Japanese forest really sums up how I would like the shadows to play out, some of the shapes you see you are not sure what they are at first Of course scary films in a forest is not a new thing, so i have to think how to make my film MINE. It is not Blair Witch, or Friday 13th or the Evil dead! But I do want to take the good bits of this location and use them.

Black and white

I want the film to look different, I thought of doing the film in black and white to give it a vintage feel. I think this would work well, adding more atmosphere. My only worry is that it doesn’t look like a spoof movie. I did some looking around at old clips of black and white films. The ones that impressed me most were a new film in black and white called Dendrologium. I saw the trailer for this, I loved the atmosphere, and the black and white really added to that.another famously scary film in black and white is of course 1960 film Psycho by Hitchcock. He really wanted to do that film in black and white to create atmosphere and as a homage to the French horror film Les Diaboliques (1955) this film is about the dead coming back too,really scary for its time, involving murder and then spooky goings on after the body disappears…the black and white in this film is used to really good effect with shadows and contrasts, especially doors opening and the shadows on the walls and banisters. These films have really inspired me on this project, so many ideas and moods to think about.|||| ||||Les Diaboliques (1955)|||| ||||Psycho by Hitchcock(1960)||||

Zombie storyboards Amateur and Professional for inspiration

The videos above are of storyboards the bottom 2 are amateur and top one is from a game called call of duty. I have been having trouble thinking of a plot for my zombie film but after watching these i have had a sudden spurt of inspiration.

Zombie facts to improve my film

I looked at a website to see if it could help me as i need to know what zombies are scared of and what attracts them to you so i can make a more believable zombie video. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How People Turn| They are bitten by an infected person. In general the turning takes place quickly - within 30 seconds to 2 minutes; the exception is that turning may take much longer or even prevented by unknown causes. Transmission is still unclear however based on given clues, infection appears to be through fluid exchange via spit or blood contact into the blood stream. A Tower residents journal revealed that fluid to undamaged skin contact had no affect. Early in the story Riley says that she and Pegs witnessed people being attacked and may come in contact with infected blood and turned. According to Tanya, some victims are Slow Turners, in that an infected victim can take days or weeks to turn into a zombie. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How the Zombies Can Tell Where People Are| .Certain zombies have an acute sense of hearing, however some are deaf but have a good sense of smell. .Attracted to the smell of pheromones and human blood. .Their sense of smell can be thrown off by chemicals with a strong scent, ie perfume, alcohol. .Alcohol seems to repell zombies. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Notable Facts| Zombies rest and/or sleep. The zombies are cannibals. Animals cannot turn. Zombies can build a tolerance to homemade chloroform within minutes. Some zombies take more than one bullet to bring down. The zombies in L.A. carry their dead and deceased victims back the the Arena where they are either eaten or burned or both. Not all zombies retrieve their dead as the L.A. zombies do. This fact is stated by Victor, near the Colony. Not all zombies use the the Arena as a home base. Some prefer to live on an island, etc. In general Zombies (especially regulars) hunt or roam in packs; but smaller numbers or single Zombies are encountered as well in almost any region. Although some Zombies or groups of Zombies are encountered during the daytime, only a few days after the outbreak the higher threat from Zombies is during the night. Clear distinction between zombies that lead and zombies that follow. Burt mentioned that he believes that the smarter you were in life, the smarter you are as a zombie. Based on the descriptions from the main characters journals, the "zombies" are all described as having some sort of deformity or super human strength or ability. Uncertain whether zombies are actually dead. Necessity of food and sleep points otherwise. According to Tanya Zombies need food and air as normal living beings.------------------I got all the facts above from this forum --http://www.zombiepodcast.com/forum/showwiki.php?title=Facts+About+All+Zombies--

My interests and my skills

Interests/skills .Drawing :I love to draw and have done my whole life and i believe i am quite good at creating my own ideas and not copying. .Beatboxing(making sounds with my mouth):I can make weird and unusual sounds with just my mouth. which could be used for sounds in games/animations. .Creating concept art: I like to design concept art using photoshop or by hand but i also enjoy using new types of media as well. .Designing characters from scratch : I like to design characters using pen and pencil then finishing them on photoshop to give them a professional look. .Filming: I really enjoy filming and editing on final cut pro but i do need to improve on my editing skills. .Creating scenery for games/animations: I design scenery from scratch using any media i can get my hands on i prefer to use photoshop with the pen tablet or just by hand using paint,pen and pencil or anything i can get my hands on including random objects to make shapes etc..

Short Animations and their meanings

I was browsing the web when i came across loads of short animations i liked the look of and looked into to how they shared a message. Below are the 4 animations i found the most interesting out of the many i saw.

Set extension

The video here is all about how what you see on the big screen is not all what it seems. This video is a showreel of some of the best set extensions out there from holes in the ground to vast landscapes that completely change the shot. We have been asked in this module to add our own set extensions and this video has motivated me to create something spectacular,I will not be able to create something this good in the time we have but i thought it was a good idea to look at what could be achieved if i got really good at set extensions.

Evil Makeup tutorials

The videos above are tutorials on how to create a realistic zombie and a vampire. For this project we have been given a task to create a 1 min video on a topic of our choice from a few given to us by our tutor i have chosen to do evil vs good. I have decided that in my vid i will have zombies in it or vampires the videos above show cheap and good ways to do this. The one about zombies is especially good as all the things you need to create for this look are easy to get cheap but still give off a great look if you want to look like you are a flesh eating zombie.

My idea for my film

|||| My zombie film|||| My initial idea when i saw the brief was to do some kind of creepy horror movie, with the feel of a video game. I wanted to scare my audience. The idea of good and evil was what attracted me most. I thought back to when I used to watch blade and other horror movies as an adolescent, and I wanted to recreate for the audience the highly charged feelings you get watching those kind of films at that kind of age. I wanted to produce a one minute trailer for my movie initially. I thought about what might work and how I could incorporate good and evil and I came up with the idea of a zombie movie with a difference. My central character is a zombie that resents having been made a zombie, fighting with the evil he has become. This inner turmoil makes him want revenge on the evil of the zombies by exterminating them – I can’t say killing them as of course they are dead already! I thought of doing a similar thing with vampires but really I think that has already been done with the vampire tv shows and the film interview with a vampire. I have to work out how my zombie character is not pure zombie and I think the idea is that he was born half zombie as his mother was pregnant when she was bitten and he was born with many zombie characteristics. He smells like a zombie, he looks like a zombie. The zombies in this film are not stupid and mindless, but they are evil, but my character can pass himself off as one of them easily so he can get close to them.

Good

Good vs Evil Visual effects At a professional level

I looked at some visual effects done by professionals to give me some ideas on what i could do for my 1 minute film,the videos below are 3 of the videos i liked the best.The first video is a video that shows you all the visual effects from the TV series the walking dead,this video was the first that came to mind as it linked in well with the good vs evil theme. The walking dead is about zombies,In my film i will try to use some of these visual effects for example shooting the head of a zombie with a pistol or the sniper if i make my film about zombies. I looked at the effects in the Wizard of Oz, this film was made such a long time ago before they really had special effects like we do today, so this was motivating for me, i have so many more tools at my disposal, and yet they were able to make something that was really scary in its day, so there is hope for me! also i like how this film made monkeys seem evil, i nver thgouth of them as anything but cute before i watched this film. I liked the clip about pirates of the caribbean as this film has such good special effects, also the them e of good and evil is in it too, though in this case what you might think of as evil turn out to be not so bad after all and the trusted establishment turns out to be "evil" i like this twist.