-
Day 3 Assignments
Reply to post your assignments.
-
9 Replies
-
Ted Tronsen’s Unforgettable Fire Characters for Horror
What I learned doing this assignment is that it’s important to include a wide range of characters in order to appeal to the largest audience. Each character has their own arc and storyline. Also, each character has their own journey, meets their own fate and will die a unique death.
1. Tell us your Concept and the Group you have chosen.
The concept for the Unforgettable Fire is based on a series of suicides/murders at a Therapeutic Community Residence in a remote area of Oregon. The group I have chosen are all people recovering from trauma, failed suicide attempts and/or addiction, and the facility they are in is like a Rehab that treats people without the use of psychiatric medication. They could be considered “outsiders” who do not fit into the norms of society.
2. Tell us the Dying Pattern of this movie.
At first it appears as if the characters are committing suicide, however, it becomes apparent after the 3rd or 4th fatality that the seekers (clients) are being murdered. There’s a total of 8 seekers and 7 of them are murdered by the end.
3. Give us an Identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group.
Vincent – The new seeker who is a frustrated artist recovering from a suicide attempt. He is the moral one and rescuer who is most concerned about doing what is right in order to protect his fellow seekers.
Svetlana – The oldest seeker who becomes the sacrificial lamb and is the first to die. After a manic episode she is found dead in her room of an apparent suicide (her wrists are cut with stained glass).
Brock – He is the leader of the group and tries to keep everything in order as everyone else seems to come undone. As more seekers die, he tries to keep the group together and keep them alive.
Hideki – He is the introvert/loner who sticks to himself. He is autistic and has trouble communicating with others. He is able to see auras and energy fields and is extremely sensitive.
Dji Dji – She is the love interest as she is very beautiful and exotic looking. She is very provocative and is always flirting and teasing her fellow seekers and the guides (counselors).
Christian – He is the rebel/rule breaker and also the complainer. He can also be out of control and obnoxious. Contrary to his name he is more like an anti-Christ.
Elise – She is the innocent one who is also highly intelligent and well educated. She comes from a wealthy family and is married to a multi-millionaire.
Emily – She is the monster bait who is a party girl. She is an extrovert who attracts the most attention and is the most vulnerable of the group.
-
What I learned from this assignment; is an orderly systematic way of fleshing out the story I want to tell. Very useful.
CHARACTERS AND CONCEPT
THE LONG DARK
written by Anna Harper
CONCEPT
An isolated community in the Yukon bush is terrorized by a series of Totem animals appearing in dreams, then reality, and blood and gore attacks. A key totem animal is the Sasquatch, a shape shifter. Evil persons in the community are the target.
TERRORIZE THE CHARACTERS
A pattern is established which creates anxiety in the whole community. Sasquatch appears to a random person, it’s usually a warning.
Evil doers are visited in dreams by terrifying totem animal encounters. after they have committed some atrocity. Finally, they are punished by an encounter in real life with the animal.
ISOLATION
The story is set in a community that is always isolated in the center of a 300k area of dense bush and lakes. In the Yukon winter (the long dark) it is only accessible by small planes. Ski doos can barely go that far on a tank of gas, providing they don’t run into trouble, freezing, breakdowns, injuries, and monsters.
DEATH
There are four groups of death victims,
evil people, a random (not evil) person, a totem animal, and victims of crime in the community.
MONSTERS/VILLANS
There are multiple villains (people in the community.) And there are multiple totem animals/ who can appear monstrous. The lead monster is the Sasquatch.
At this point, I am selecting the following totem animals as I have some experience with them. I lived in the Yukon. Wolf, Bear, Cougar, Coyote, and Frog.
HIGH TENSION
Tension starts in the first scene with the appearance of Sasquatch to a naive art instructor who has come to work with the native women, She has just landed,, it’s the edge of fall/winter. Her job is to help the native women develop their crafts into an income stream. At least in the beginning, until she learns their stories then things change.
The fear escalates through the community as appearances of Totem animals become more frequent, followed by some horrific event in the community. Everyone is wondering if they will be next, even the innocents.
DEPARTURE FROM REALITY
The departure from reality for the viewer is the unique difficult environment.
and the experience of the horrific attacks firstly in reported terrifying dreams, where the victims wake up with real blood on their bodies. And secondly, their minds are blown when the dreamers are attacked in real life.
MORAL STATEMENT
The spiritual constructs of this community make all vulnerable to the reality of spirit animals coming to life, giving warnings, and lessons.
They appear when they are needed. In the end, some have the epiphany that the monster is within, and they must take responsibility for their own behavior to avoid terrifying encounters with animal teachers.
The monsters and totem animals are saviors as they prevent the implosion and self-destruction of the isolated dysfunctional community.
For the evil doers, escape from certain and terrible death is unavoidable.
Groups needed for the story world
Team of Professionals
Local RCMP or Tribal Police
Nurses attached to the Nursing Station
Pilots medivac
AND
Social Group
Residents of the small remote community
AND
Outsiders
Ph.D. students
Government employee Community Workers Addictions counselor
AND
Sinners
Half a dozen of the small band territory has gone off the rails, the usual crimes drunkenness, illegal drugs, and domestic abuse.
An unidentified group has committed a horrible crime. We don’t know who they are.
Dying patterns
B. The characters experience the terror and survive together, but one or two die.
Who is going to experience this horror?
Rescuer/Sacrificial lamb Sets up the horror as a curse, not a random event. An Indigenous Tribal Policeman CODY LIGHTFOOT Bull in a china shop personality. The first to experience the horror which he keeps quiet, and then he gets eaten.
Out of control obnoxious A local man, Caucasian runs various small businesses in town. He is sleazy. Likes to portray himself as a pillar of the community. He is a racist.
Rebel The new art instructor. She has come to work with the women., and help them sell their handicrafts. The work takes on new directions in helping women tell their stories.
The Carrier One of the local men has returned to the community, he has spent time in custody before his crimes of violence have been overturned by a judge.
-
This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by anna harper.
-
This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by
-
4. Answer the question “What I learned doing this assignment is…?”
I lean to develop my characters even more.
1. Tell us your Concept and the Group you have chosen.
High schoolers/thrill seekers storm Area 51 to free aliens if aliens are present on the base.
2. Tell us the Dying Pattern of this movie.
The high schoolers get ripped apart by the aliens that are invading the base
3. Give us an Identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group. Example: Leader: Without much consideration, Mike sets a direction, then inspires or pushes the group to go there. Hopefully, he guesses the right direction.
-Paige: After working up the courage and told she is humanity’s last hope, she leads a group of survivors towards the alien invaders
-Elle: Paige’s love interest. Elle is the reason Paige agreed to storm Area 51
-Nation Security Advisor to The President: facilitate the attack on the aliens. Encourages Paige to take arm against the aliens.
-Susan: the base’s weapon specialist. She provides Paige the necessary weapons to defend that base and ultimately saves humanity from the preys.
-Dr. Pickering: Director of the base. Prepares the base for the alien attack.
<div>
</div> -
Assignment #3 Survivors & Victims
Marcus Weems Characters for Horror
What I learned from this assignment is:
I never realized that there are certain “stock” characters and groupings that populate the Horror genre.
CONCEPT & GROUP
Social Event
Dia de Muertos / All Hallows Eve cruisers
DYING PATTERN
Six or so die one by one.
CHARACTERS
Leader / Carrier
Psychic who inadvertently calls and releases the evil spirits.
Rescuer
Incognito nun on sabbatical who holds the knowledge necessary to combat the monsters.
Innocent
Novice nun whose inept naivete compounds the situation. Traveling with the nun.
Out of Control / Obnoxious
Entitled Cali girl whose comeuppance will be celebrated by the audience.
Complainer
Nothing is good enough or fast enough for this curmudgeon.
Introvert
Skittish, Don Knotts type, who took the cruise for his nerves.
Moral One
Scatman Crothers type is the steward who gets the big picture while trying to make things run smoothly.
Rebel / Rule Breaker
Goth girl (if there still is such a thing) who has done it all, seen it all, and experienced it all with a hidden knowledge that might just help save the day.
-
John Stimson’s Characters for Horror
4. I learned that this was a good way to incapsulate your story for yourself and see where your ideas are heading.
1. My movie is called “Tales From The Devil’s Highway.” At first glance, it is a slasher-exploitation film of the horror genre. But the concept and the context of the story is, the protagonist and antagonist are Michael and Lucifer engaged in a “Book of Revelation” duel here on earth. The group of victims in the story are a collection of innocents and the corrupt in an area of the Southwest U.S.A., just north of the border from Mexico, along Route 666.
2. The first death is Truck Driver from Mexico smuggling migrant, Lucifer kills him to take his body and vehicle (an 18-wheeler). The Truck Driver/Lucifer subsequently slaughters the truckload of migrants and leaves their bodies in their desert in a ritualistic formation that law enforcement later finds.
The truck driver kills another innocent.
An innocent, this time a bounty hunter, is killed by one of the corrupt in the story, which leads to a cop becoming corrupted by temptation and going down the short path to damnation.
The next to die, at the hand of the truck driver, although not seen, is a classroom of children. The truck driver’s kills represent “evil.”
Outlaw bikers are slaughtered.
But when Michael begins pursuit of the truck driver after the killing of the school children, the truck driver’s fury is directed more at Michael and their fight, so casualties are fewer for a time and are collateral losses until the third act.
3. Michael—Actually a man never referred to by name, unrelentingly pursuing the truck driver and at times being pursed by the killer himself.
The truck driver—a sadistic mass killer, prefers to use blades and instruments that impale his victims.
Angelita—she is a temptress and seemingly a survivor but that’s red herring because she is the femme fatale.
Deputy Lopez—tempted by finding money and heroin that did not belong to him, in the sub-plot.
Radio Preacher—role of the narrator, cad, and explainer of the Book of Revelation.
The Mescaleros—motorcycle gang who meet gory demises.
Buck—The tow truck driver who fancies himself as lady’s man.
-
Jamie Stegner
Horror Class 3 Victims & Survivors
Concept: Ezmyralda Jenkins, a shape-shifting sweet old lady must feed her 9 cats. They want Beating Hearts. You have one – come by for tea and cookies any time.
Victims are random innocents, unsuspecting, who come to Ezmyralda’s house for a variety of reasons. They have to be alone, and not connected to her. Anyone with a Beating Heart is vulnerable, as long as she can avoid suspicion.
So, there is no group of victims who know each other and witness the demise of their colleagues. Each one is independent and unknowing about the danger they face. The audience knows.
First victim we see is a policeman asking if she knows anything about a missing person. She shape-shifts to her stronger self and throws him off the back deck into the ravine. His rib cage cracks open, exposing his beating heart. The cats race to the crash site.
Second is pizza delivery man who volunteers that this is his last stop before going on a 2-week vacation. Ezmyralda opens him up for the cats.
Dark rainy night, a young woman has car trouble and Ezmyralda’s house is the only light on. She ventures up the long stairway to her demise.
A burglar breaks into Ezmyralda’s house.
Halloween, some kids think they can scare Ezmyralda. They run off in panic. Next day they realize one of them didn’t get home.
Vinyl siding salesman – delicious.
Tree cutters. But then she has to move the truck away from her street.
Buy something from Amazon. Move the van.
Send herself a FedEx letter. Move the truck.
Survivors: police send a decoy solo police officer. She returns OK with no evidence. The cats had already eaten that day.
Church people always come in pairs. There must be a way to keep the heart beating to use one at a time
I’ll have to get into the story of each victim before they go to Ezmyralda’s house so that we care about them. They are unsuspecting. Why does the reader / audience care about the victims? Who cares about Ezmyralda? Who cares about the 9 cats?
———————————-
-
What I learned: First, it’s hard to keep up with the assignments over the weekend with little kids and other work to do! Second, Tying the concept to the group(s) naturally makes the story richer and opens up plot points with symbolic layers of meaning.
Concept
A small college town in central Michigan is being taken over by aggressive werewolf-like rage monsters that are slowly transforming before everyone’s eyes until a lone wolf unleashes an outburst of mass violence during a festival held at the local high school, turning this idyllic—and very white monoculture—town into a bloody nightmare overnight.
Groups
a) Outsiders: A blended family of mixed-race newcomers who move to town a week before the festival
b) Social Event: Members of the town attending the Harvest Moon Festival, including the family of outsiders
Dying Pattern
a) Outsiders: The four family members experience the terror together, but two of them die
b) Social Event: A trickle of townspeople die before the festival, during which people are killed in large numbers that escalate as more and more rage monsters go on the hunt
Character Identities
a) Outsiders – Family of Four
Rebel: Unemployed white guy (early forties) originally from Canada, he quit his bullshit job in Austin to follow his wife’s new career opportunity; he’s an organic farming fanatic, despises social media and is a hands-on father/stepdad; he rides a motorcycle and possesses basic survival skills that he’s picked up during a lifetime of backpacking and camping in the outdoors, having once survived an encounter with wolves. He survives.
Moral One: A black woman (late-thirties) from Brazil, she recently defended her dissertation on slavery in the northern United States at the University of Texas at Austin, which landed her a job as an assistant professor of Black Studies at Central College, which is why the family ended up in this small college town; she’s smart, suspicious and conflicted about having taken this job and moving to a place that scares the shit out of her. She’s killed when a police car driven by a white werewolf-human hybrid cop chases her into on-coming traffic while she’s riding her bike home from the university one evening. She survives the “accident,” but dies in the hospital the night of the Harvest Moon Festival, just before the mass violence explodes.
Loner: A highly intelligent and introverted biracial girl (14) who is bilingual and reads fantasy literature, loves horror films, and listens to a lot of emo music on her wireless earbuds that always seem to be in her ears; she has a love/hate relationship with her much younger half-brother and is furious at her mom and stepdad for uprooting her from the city she grew up in and misses desperately, along with her best friend, whom she keeps in touch with via her Instagram account. She survives with her stepdad’s help.
Innocent: A young boy (8) with thick glasses and even thicker curly hair; his happy-go-lucky attitude toward life stands in sharp contrast to the rest of his family members, all of whom he loves with gusto, despite a sibling rivalry with his half-sister. He is killed at the Harvest Moon Festival after being separated from her, dying before the eyes of his father, who can’t save him.
b) Social Event – Townspeople
BEFORE THE HARVEST MOON FESTIVAL
Monster Bait: A white college kid stumbling home drunk after he leaves a frat party late at night is followed and viciously killed by a rage monster (who we don’t see) lurking in the woods in the opening sequence; he’s reported as a missing person (and his remains are not found until later in the film), which puts the tight-knit community on alert.
Red Herring: A poor, white older hermit with a criminal record of minor offenses for marijuana possession and the like (before it was legalized) who is the prime suspect in the suspected murder of Monster Bait since he lives off the road between the frat house and Monster Bait’s house; just after being released from jail, he’s attacked (by a rage monster we don’t see) and his damaged corpse with his heart ripped out is found on lying on his porch the next morning by a young white girl riding her bike to school, much to the alarm of the authorities who try to hide the evidence of such inexplicable foul play, but the girl shares the truth on social media, causing hysteria to circulate around town. The police blame his death on wolves, as the population has started to come back in the region in recent years. A band of hunters go searching for them.
Obnoxious: The Family of Four’s nosy neighbor, a middle-aged “Karen” whose outward hospitality doubles as a thin veil for keeping a close eye on this new group of outsiders. As she starts to transform, the veil drops in her interactions with the family. She’s killed in public after asking for a manager when she becomes irate with a Mexican-speaking server in a Mexican restaurant. She’s killed by the manager, who is a Mexican man that has also started to transform into one of her hybrid kind when he stabs her in the heart with a sharp knife during a heated exchange. (After a struggle, he’s arrested by a black police officer who’s dining at the same restaurant and witnesses the murder; the police believe they’ve found their man and frame him for the other two deaths, calming the townspeople.)
DURING THE HARVEST MOON FESTIVAL
Innocents: Unprovoked, a “lone wolf” fully transformed rage monster unleashes his wrath during a performance inside the high school gym during the Harvest Moon Festival. He viciously attacks multiple innocent victims as chaos ensues and people try to flee the building, only to be met by more rage monsters outside who’ve been attracted by the smell of fresh blood, something that accelerates the transformation processes of many of the townspeople trapped inside into rage monsters as well. Normal people and hybrids try to hide, flee or fight the rage monsters lurking everywhere, creating the atmosphere and body count of a zombie film. However, when people or hybrids are killed, they stay dead.
Love Interest: The burgeoning love interest of Loner (16), the only black student at the town’s small high school who Loner is immediately attracted to despite herself. He’s torn to shreds by a gang of rage monsters who corner him after he flees the initial outburst of mass violence along with Loner, who witnesses his gruesome death before managing to escape during the feeding frenzy on his body.
-
What I learned doing this assignment is the idea of groups in horror seems to be more import than in drama. Horror does seem to have more of a pattern.
Characters for Horror
Septimius <font size=”3″ face=”ARIAL, HELVETICA”>Mulholland</font>
<font size=”3″ face=”ARIAL, HELVETICA”>Victoria <font size=”3″ face=”ARIAL, HELVETICA”>Mulholland nee Boyle</font></font>
<font size=”3″ face=”ARIAL, HELVETICA”><font size=”3″ face=”ARIAL, HELVETICA”>
</font></font>As you saw in the example THE PURGE, create the Survivors and Victims of your movie.
1. A husband and wife team confront a tribe of cannibals living in a nearby disused graveyard.
2. They survive, but others die
3. Give us an Identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group.
Septimius <font size=”3″ face=”ARIAL, HELVETICA”>Mulholland – a loner gentleman medical researcher in the Pathology department of The Queen’s University, Belfast.</font>
<font size=”3″ face=”ARIAL, HELVETICA”> Victoria <font size=”3″ face=”ARIAL, HELVETICA”>Mulholland nee Boyle – his wife, a natural extrovert and leader, fellow <font size=”3″ face=”ARIAL, HELVETICA”>medical researcher</font></font></font>
-
Rich’s Characters for Horror:
What I learned doing this assignment is the joy of setting up your characters like bowling pins to be mowed down by the monster. The proverbial “box of chocolates” of personalities helping inform how they fall and how it helps tell the story.
1. Tell us your Concept and the Group you have chosen:
• TEAM OF PROFESSIONALS/SOCIAL GROUP – The parents of the kidnapped teens supported by the rest of their fire department crew. They are, by virtue of their profession, both required to venture into hostile environments as well as a close group/extended family. (Assisted by an outsider.)
2. Tell us the Dying Pattern of this movie.
• Reverse B. The characters experience the terror and die together, but one or two survive.
3. Give us an Identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group.
• LEADER: Samantha (Lieutenant/Mom) – Leads the team and work, leads the team to rescue her children.
• RESCUER: Benjamin (Senior Firefighter/Dad) – Saves people for a living. Damned if he isn’t gonna save his family.
• REBEL / RULE BREAKER: (Firefighter /Driver) Sean – “Borrowed” the truck without permission and “encouraged” the team to volunteer to help. He’s always got Ben and Sam’s backs.
• OUT OF CONTROL: Emma (Firefighter) – Gung-ho and ready to go. Let’s do this! Volunteered without hesitation. Sees her job as fighting death anyway.
• COMPLAINER: Kyle (Firefighter) – Guilted into volunteering really. Pretty sure he’s gonna die. Not happy about it. He’s probably right.
• MORAL ONE: Mikey (The Probie) – Not as close to the family as the others. Realizes this is insane. One foot out the door. Probably gonna be the first to die.
• THE CARRIER: Priest – Brings the initial information about the Demon and his network to the family after the children are taken. Goes with them to fight. First time successfully locating the demon and his lair.
• SACRIFICIAL LAMB: Olivia (Daughter) – The Demon’s original victim.
• MONSTER BAIT: Noah (Son) – Used to locate the monsters lab.
Log in to reply.