Planning
Brainstorm Ideas
Our chosen Genre
Our initial idea...
We decided the genre of our film is Gothic horror but with elements of sub genres including psychological and supernatural horror. Our idea revolves around the story of a demonic figure called Lilith that takes women's souls. The plot develops as he meets his target which is a vulnerable high school girl called Malia who as a child was abused and tortured. Throughout the film Malia experiences hallucinations and nightmares of Lilith and is finally lured into his hell of lost souls with the help of the Salem witches. It is said that Lilith's mother was very overprotective of him so he never got to experience what loving a woman means so he killed himself in order to fulfill his desires by sacrificing vulnerable young women's souls.
We decided the genre of our film is Gothic horror but with elements of sub genres including psychological and supernatural horror. Our idea revolves around the story of a demonic figure called Lilith that takes women's souls. The plot develops as he meets his target which is a vulnerable high school girl called Malia who as a child was abused and tortured. Throughout the film Malia experiences hallucinations and nightmares of Lilith and is finally lured into his hell of lost souls with the help of the Salem witches. It is said that Lilith's mother was very overprotective of him so he never got to experience what loving a woman means so he killed himself in order to fulfill his desires by sacrificing vulnerable young women's souls.
Pitch
Genre: Psychological horror with elements of different sub-genres of horror such as gothic/supernatural/thriller.
Plot: Revolves around the story of Lilith (demonic figure) that takes women's souls. The plot develops as his next target is Malia who throughout the film experiences hallucinations and nightmares of Lilith and is finally lured into his hell of lost souls with the help of the salem keepers.
Characters:
Plot: Revolves around the story of Lilith (demonic figure) that takes women's souls. The plot develops as his next target is Malia who throughout the film experiences hallucinations and nightmares of Lilith and is finally lured into his hell of lost souls with the help of the salem keepers.
Characters:
- Lilith- Demon who is believed to steal women's souls who are vulnerable and weak. Their vulnerability strengthens his power. His background is explain as such that his mother was overprotective of him as a child and so he never got to experience what it was like to love a woman. He kills himself and now fulfils his desires by sacrificing women.
- Malia- High school girl who experienced child abuse and Lilith takes advantage of her vulnerability and weakness by taking over and appearing in her dreams.
- Salem keepers- Two previous nuns who scarified themselves to the devil and now worth with Lilith a the keper of the women's souls he takes. One dressed in black and the other white.
Rough Storyboard
Location scouting/Inspiration
House
Our initial idea was to include a creepy looking house that connotes an idea of a harrowing atmosphere, a such houses are usually placed in the most isolate settings, away from the world's eyes, which gives off a daunting vibe. The inspiration was taken from the houses in movies like The Amityville Horror (1979), The woman in Black and Insidious (chapter 1 and2). Such houses in horror films are used as a setting to represent the horrors that await to haunt the family moving in. The grim and gloomy look add to the substance of horror, circulating an atmosphere that's frightening for the characters as well as the audience. The exterior for the houses in horror films are either modern and furbished to create the illusion of warmth and safety much like in insidious, or on the other hand some houses will look gaunt and uninviting to foreshadow the situation the character;s would be put under, much like in The Woman in Black. Similar is the interior, where the house will surround itself with the deception of a homely environment whereas the case is the complete opposite.
Forest
Forests have the ability to stir a wide range of emotions in humans and it has not gone unnoticed by story-tellers. From an early age, children are familiarised with the narrative device of the "deep, dark woods''. From the Brothers Grimm's 19th-century fairytales, such as Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood, trough to modern-day children's classics The gruffly and Harry Potter, forests are places were hidden dangers and horrifying creatures lurk in the darkness. Horror films, in particular, have exploited forests for dramatic impact. In the Blair Witch Project, for example, the forest is used to excellent effect. It's a landscape of increasing disorientation where modern gadgets such as mobile phones fail to work. It's also a place that forces you to experience the full darkness of the night. In Sam Raimi's 1981 cult classic The Evil Dead, a demon spirit possesses the trees in a forest and uses a branch to rape one of the female characters holidaying in a (now a horror cliche) isolated log cabin.
Attic/Basement
Attics or basements can sometimes give you a horrible feeling that you're being watched, because you just can't see if there's something there. Children everywhere feel nervous about the closer or the space under the bed, but while those little bits of darkness are unnerving, there is a place yet creepier. A room where the darkness is the colour of pitch, with no little lights anywhere, where even standing still and waiting for your eyes to adjust doesn't help. That rooms the attic or the basement.
Perhaps it's the fact that most basements are dank, sparsely furnished that seem horrible reminiscer of some kind of tomb or prison and those spiders that like to hang out in the cracks and corners spinning their sticky transparent webs probably don't help much. This infamous trope of horror films can be seen in sinister where Baguul, the demon is first revealed to the audience in the attic or in The Conjuring where everything leads to the basement.
Perhaps it's the fact that most basements are dank, sparsely furnished that seem horrible reminiscer of some kind of tomb or prison and those spiders that like to hang out in the cracks and corners spinning their sticky transparent webs probably don't help much. This infamous trope of horror films can be seen in sinister where Baguul, the demon is first revealed to the audience in the attic or in The Conjuring where everything leads to the basement.
Cemetery
Graveyards have always been a longstanding tradition in horror movies. Not only do they generally bring back terrible, sad, and lonely feelings from their visitors, but they are often covered in fields of gray tombstones adorned with various types of religious imagery. So, not only do you have gravestones and internal feelings creating a creepy atmosphere that is almost universal, but you still have hundreds of dead bodies buried ceremoniously below the surface. It’s not hard to see why horror films so often put a focus on cemeteries; it’s a location that everyone automatically associates with dread and terror. In Night of the Living Dead (1968) the cemetery really isn't anything spectacular in the terms of the actual headstones or structures, but the scenery around it is very subtle. A serene, hilly setting makes for the perfect dichotomy of peaceful, resting dead and shambling, restless undead. However, not all cinematic graveyards are created equal. Most are pretty standard, bland offerings of granite tombstones and boring backgrounds. But every so often, you get a truly spectacular collection of mausoleums, an ossuary or two, and wonderful headstones, or maybe it just happens to be placed in a great setting. Such as in the Cemetery Man (1994), the cemetery in this flick is pretty much the quintessential horror movie resting place: gothic statues of angels and death, ornate mausoleums, strange people tending to it, and creepy souls lurking around.