Saturday, 2 July 2016

Rough Development of Plot Idea

I have been going over each of our initial ideas thoroughly and have now finally decided on trying to develop and take Idea 3 further. I chose this idea because, realistically, it is something that I can produce quite easily on limited resources and a smaller budget. It is something that I feel quite passionately about doing as well and thought it was the best bet in creating something truly representative of what an A Level piece of work should include, if done correctly. The idea itself also allows me to take an interesting route and explore something different within the horror genre, that i've personally never done before. This means it will serve as a way of furthering my knowledge in terms of camera techniques, lighting, etc.

Over the course of the past week, I have also been going more in depth into this idea and have come up with a few further developments based around what I originally came up with. I now have a rough overview of what I generally want the plot to include and follow, a few characters concepts, some editing, camera and sound thoughts and more.

These are the main ideas that I have for now:
  • A group of 3-5 teenagers go to some sort of abandoned and run down location, during the late evening (around 9-10pm).
  • There will maybe be a shot from within the house with an unknown figure looking out the window towards the group of friends approaching.
  • The friends walk into the old, abandoned house. In these types of horror films, teenagers are conventionally shown to be almost arrogant, stupid and immoral and so we were going to have the majority of the group being loud and disrespectful. However, another convention we wanted to follow was to have a stereotypical dumb blonde and/or more hesitant character. This would serve as a way to potentially have one character conveying and representing both types. The overall personalities and traits of the other characters are undecided for now.
  • Then there would be a shot of the person that was standing in the window, now standing close to the doorway of the abandoned place. We would give across the impression of the audience being able to see them, but the teenagers can't. To do this we were thinking of just having one of the teenagers entering being focused on in a way that the person from before won't be shown, unlike how they would have been shown and seen by the audience a few seconds earlier.
  • We'd now focus on the teenagers for a little bit where the one(s) being loud would suggest playing the Ouija Board they'd brought however, the hesitant one wouldn't be so sure and then reveal to the audience that where they are is actually the death place of their former friend and it either is or is close to the 1-2 year anniversary of their death. 
  • The teenagers begin to play the Ouija Board. The first time they do, it moves, but will really be one of the teenagers who's moved it which is a typical cliche for a Ouija Board scene however, we were thinking of doing that so they we can use a conventional sound effect where there is a dramatic pitch change to shock the audience and then we reveal it wasn't really anything and they calm down and laugh it off, to only to be shocked again later.
  • The teenagers would then start again, this time it would be for real and we had an idea to put the camera in the middle where the board would be placed and have it spin in a 360 degree circle to not only show all the reactions of the teenagers in one continuous loop but also so that on the first 360 spin there will be no one in the background but on the second one the person from before will emerge from the shadows and we feel that making it all one take would cause it end up being even more effective and impactful.
  • We haven't fully decided yet if we'd cut away from the 360 degree at this point or have the camera stop moving but the person would then reach down brushing very closely past one of the teenagers to put their hand on the Ouija Board and continue to move it, the teenager wouldn't even flinch as they reach down because they can't actually see or feel them.
  • There would then be a fast pace sequence made up of the Ouija Board piece moving and reaction shots from the teenagers, some with the person in view and some without. 
  • If the one rule everyone knows about a Ouija Board is that you take your fingers off, so of course we're going to have the hesitant/dumb character take their fingers off the board.
  • That character would then stand up refusing to continue, slowly backing away from the board, she then trips and hits her head causing her to be knocked out due to this she then enters an 'inbetween/limbo' where she's able to see this unidentified person who will be revealed in that scene by the character that it is actually the friend that died there.
  • An idea that we have thought of but not 100% sure will happen is that the dead friend will then carve some kind of relevant symbol into the character's cheek which then appears on the character's face in the real world where her friends begin to panic as a result and with help from their friends the character would wake up and reveal the news to the rest of the teenagers.
  • The next chunk is a part that we haven't developed as much as the other parts however, the idea we have is for the dead friend to almost attack the teenagers and possibly kill them in ways that relate to ways that they might have been horrible to them or even had a part in killing them, if we were to kill off the characters we decided we would have their deaths relate to something they'd done to the dead friend and to show this to the audience there would be very quick flashback scenes to what they did between it all as they are actually being killed or after they have.
  • We've also decided that we would have it so that the hesitant/dumb character would be left alive, although injured, and she would leave the house in a panic while the dead friend stands in the doorway with blood all over their face, with almost an menacing smile.
  • Then possibly in a few years time or another year someone would be walking up to that same house, in daylight this time and they would go to place down flowers, next to the already dead flowers from previous visits. Then, as they look up they're met face-to-face with the dead friend and it would also show the scar on the characters cheek letting the audience know it is the one that was left alive, unchanged from when the audience last saw them and the screen would either cut straight to black after that shot or the camera pans round to an over-shoulder shot (shoulder of the hesitant character) revealing more of the dead friend but then also showing the rest of the characters from the previous scenes, also very dead looking, standing behind the first one and then it cuts to black.






No comments:

Post a Comment