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Day 3 Assignments
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Gabrielle’s Characters for Horror
ASSIGNMENT – Day 3
Specifically designed as a Contained, elevated horror script with limited cast.
“What I learned doing this assignment is…?”
I enjoyed the specificity of the character archetypes. It’s interesting to see it distilled down to a formula this way.
1. SOCIAL GROUP – (but not everyone knows everyone else at the beginning)
2. DYING PATTERN – The characters experience the terror and survive together, but one or two die.
3. Character Types:
Leader (Introvert/Loner, love interest to one of the other characters): without any actual outdoorsy experience, the leader uses her book smarts and obsessive prep to help everyone survive the forest monster. Her kind nature often has her helping others to the detriment of herself.
Out of Control/Obnoxious (love interest to another character): Prissy bitch, always looking out for number one, but this is a lesson that the leader needs help in learning.
The Carrier (Also red herring, love interest to the leader): His idea of a romantic anniversary is taking his allergy ridden girlfriend camping, with hidden motives. He brings the beast out of hiding and is the first to be taken.
Complainer (Also red herring, love interest to obnoxious girl) The kind of guy whose every word is double sided, and a often a complaint about something. A perfect fit for his obnoxious GF. The 2nd to be taken by the beast.
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4. In this assignment I learned to make my characters more than just a few plot points. By structuring them properly, I can bring the audience a better experience – connecting them back to those emotions they are seeking.
1. Group: Social Group (family + caretaker) &
Concept: During a pandemic lockdown a mother becomes convinced by a malicious spirit that she must kill her family to save them
2. Dying Pattern: B. The characters experience the terror and survive together, but one or two die.
3. Characters:
– Mother: Carrier: Maria, while very much once the leader, has grown tired and used up while taking care of her ailing mother. She has come to resent and distrust members of her family. This has left her susceptible to hosting the spirit of the house.
– Grandmother: Introvert: Nearly deaf and blind, Abigail is a shell of her former self who keeps her door locked at almost all hours and does little more than look out the window to catch some rays of sunlight.
– Son: Innocent: Jason is in his early 20s and believes things will always turn out right. He often overlooks danger as he can’t imagine it.
– Older Daughter: Leader: The new “leader” of the family, Katie runs the house and finances for her mother and father.
– Younger Daughter: Sacrificial Lamb: Frieda is only six years old. She is, unfortunately, an easy target.
– Husband: Red Herring: Roy was once extremely charming and extremely good at climbing the social ladder. He is now conspiratorial and drunk, often making loud outbursts at family members during hangovers. That said, he is going to a therapy group and understands his shortcomings.
– Caretaker: Moral One: Tricia is both there to tend to the garden and poetic. She even sees good in Roy despite his outbursts. Katie and Tricia spend a lot of time talking about family, as Katie has considered leaving to avoid going “down with the ship.”
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Bob’s Characters for Horror
What I learned from this assignment is to create a group in a confined space to deal with the horror. The initial roster of characters is likely overpopulated and will be honed down in future lessons.
Concept
Part night at the Omega Chi Fraternity. The group to be terrorized are the brothers at the party. Among the party goers is Diane Lynch. Diane is beautiful, confident, sexual.
And she has a mission.
Her sister had been raped at a prior fraternity party and her mission is vengeance.
Using seduction as her weapon, she lures fraternity brothers to an isolated room where they meet their death at the hands of her alter-ego.
Dying Pattern
Six to eight brothers form the core of the group. They are killed off one by one.
Character Roles
LEADER: Caesar, fraternity president. Should have taken moral responsibility for the rape so is a fitting victim.
CARRIER: Blago, the rapist. He is the reason the villain enters the party.
MORAL ONE: Hawes – religious, virgin. He interacts with the villain but may be moral enough to survive.
RESCUER: Nad, pledge at his first party who investigates disappearances.
OUT OF CONTROL: Uncle Barf, alcoholic and pathetic figure.
INNOCENT: Mort, oblivious to seduction technique. Constantly changes the subject.
RED HERRING: Sue Weal, steady girl of brother Froggie. Born again Christian who learned about the rape and may be seeking justice.
LONER: Froggie, introvert attached to Sue Weal. Suspects his date may be the killer.
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I learned that each of the victims serve important functions and create deeper levels of tension. Plus I learned that there is a clear pattern as to how the killings happen
The purge group in Turducken are the USDA inspectors and the family of the monster who notified the inspectors about the genetic altering of the poultry at the farm
The 8 characters die one by one until only two remain.
Characters:
Leader – USDA inspector in charge of investigation. A rigid by the book bureaucrat.
Innocent – Protagonist Violet USDA inspector who instigated the inspection. A former meat handler who was fired and recently started working at the USDA. Her curiosity gets her in dangerous situations.
Out of Control – Jeb – brother of Turducken Man who is a loose cannon. Hothead who wanted inspectors to throw Eli in jail before he died so he could take over the farm.
Complainer. Third USDA inspector Oliver who is not the brightest bulb. Never wanted to investigate the farm and blames others for the situation they’ve gotten into.
The red herring – Rhoda sister of Eli. She disappears before the monster kills its first victim. Her body shows up later.
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Chris Grant’s Characters for Horror
“What I learned doing this assignment is…?” and put it at the top of your work.
The logic of my story is still coming into clarity. I need to do more investigation about who on this list of characters needs to be present.
1. Tell us your Concept and the Group you have chosen.
Concept: SEA MONSTERS feeding on the dead. Superstitious fisherman who believe they are being preyed upon by sea monsters discover there are worse things in the ocean than malevolent spirits.
2. Tell us the Dying Pattern of this movie.
Fisherman are forced ‘walk the plank’ by drug smugglers who then steal their engines and maroon them at sea. If they refuse they are fed to the enormous hordes of squid who have gathered to feed on all the dead animals in the area. But the main character, seeking revenge for his lost father, turns the tables on the drug dealers and they end up getting eaten instead.
3. Give us an Identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group.
• Leader – Harbor Master who hires fisherman to inadvertently prey upon one another. He works for the drug cartels.
• Rescuer – Cristian, the main character, is a marine biologist (and drug addict) who tries to get everyone to understand there are no sea monsters. But he ends up discovering the monsters are really the men themselves.
• Innocent – People who are being smuggled by the drug dealers who try to flee but end up getting eaten before the can get very far.
• Out of control / Obnoxious – The fisherman in the village who don’t like Cristian. They’ve bullied him since he was a kid and refuse to help him find his father.
• Red Herring – Harbor Master, who pretends he wants to help Cristian but is really just sending him to his death.
• Complainer – The fisherman who are complaining about the loss of fishing revenue because of the sea monsters.
• Rebel / Rule Breaker – The woman being smuggled who has just lost her husband to the squid. She jumps into the water and manages to swim to the Isla De Los Muertos.
• Introvert / Loner – Cristian is an outsider who has been a pariah from birth in his village.
• Moral One – The Drug Dealer who forces the fisherman to prey upon each other. His morals are completely backwards even as he understands there is no win for anyone in this situation.
• Monster Bait – The fisherman who refuse to heed the warnings about the sea monsters.
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Dan’s Characters for Horror
What I learned doing this assignment is… the many different types of victims/survivors in horror movies can pretty much be categorized into the aforementioned groups.
Concept: A group of teens are terrorized by a monster that literally paralyzes them with fear.
Group D- Thrill Seekers. It would be cool if these teens were thrill seekers, since those types are very active and have a lot of cool physical abilities that perhaps the monster can “copy” from them when it paralyzes them. I think the terror would hit harder if these super active teens had to deal with paralysis, and it would give them a good excuse for being somewhere to explore where the monster could be lying dormant for decades.
Dying Pattern: A – six to eight friends form the group. They get picked off one by one.
Identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group:
Rebel: Bailey, 16 – former gymnast who wasn’t disciplined enough to keep up with the competition. Now she’s drawn to high adrenaline thrill seeking because she can use her body in similar ways, and it is the only thing that makes her feel alive.
Leader: Aiden – Bailey’s boyfriend, 17. He wants to go viral for his stunts (stuff like you see on the @lifeontheedge IG account) and thinks he can make a career out of thrill seeking activities. He’s not wrong – people do it – but he definitely puts his pride above his safety.
Rescuer: Chuck – Aiden’s best friend, 17. He’s always double checking the physics of the stunts and wants to be there if Aiden cracks his skull or something. He’s also usually the one filming.
Out of control: Trevor – Aiden’s friend/rival, 20. Tries to out-do Aiden and is even more reckless. He’s more punk rock and freestyle; Aiden is more by-the-book with their stunts.
Complainer: Heather – Bailey’s friend, 18, thinks this is stupid and ridiculous but is sleeping with Trevor and has nothing better to do but to tag along. It’s summer, after all.
Moral One: Jess – Bailey’s 13-year-old sister; thinks Bailey and her friends are up to no good, so she sneaks in their van and goes with them, hoping to bust them. She unfortunately gets caught in the supernatural craziness.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by Dan LoBrace.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 8 months ago by
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Day 3 Assignment
Paul’s Characters for Horror.
4. What I learned from this assignment are some of the rules or parameters of successful horror to which I had never given any thought. It also helped me put some flesh on the bare bones of my concept.
1. Concept: An extremist feminist party carries out a coup d’état and begins executing all men. But when the sperm bank runs dry, a brutal civil war breaks out between those who want to import foreign men and those who prefer extinction.
Group: A social group – All men, starting at conception.
2. Dying pattern: Men will be hunted down by the “amazons” and executed. Those who try to resist will first be castrated and then executed.
3. Characters:
Innocent: there will countless, innocent men executed.
Rebel/rule breaker: women who try to conceal male relatives are also executed.
Introvert/Loner: there is one woman who dares stand up to the feminist dictator and does so in a smart, low-profile way, but also suffers death just before toppling Madam President.
The Carrier: Madam President, who launched the terror, becomes the final victim.
END
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What I learned was a more cohesive plan for character development, to the extent of their deaths defining the type of character, and character journey for each character.
Social group: Family
Dying Pattern: Pattern A: They experience the terror together, and are killed off one by one.
Characters:
Daughter: Rebel / Rule Breaker and Complainer. 16YO, resents being moved to a new town against her will. Also the carrier.
Mother: Rescuer. Tries to help her kids adjust to a strange environment, but also attributes her daughter’s concerns about the town to teen angst.
Little Brother: 10YO. Daughter is protective of him, but is innocence and her protective nature makes him an attractive target for the evil entity. It uses him to terrorize the daughter.
Daughter’s Best Friend From Previous Town: Red Herring, perhaps? Along with ‘Daughter,’ the lone survivors.
Best Friend’s Boyfriend: Leader / Moral One: Takes charge in attempting to solve the mystery and save the group. However, this makes him a bit impetuous, leading him headlong to his death.
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Judith’s Characters for Horror – Lesson 3: Survivors and Victims
What I learned doing this assignment is to relax and go with the lessons, things can always be adjusted along the way.
Concept: A revengeful man and his psychiatrist girlfriend plan to terrorize the man’s fiancé who he blames for his childhood trauma.
Group: Social group
Dying Pattern of this movie: C: No one dies, but the characters are brought to the very brink of death and/or insanity.
Give us an identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group:
Revengeful man’s finance: innocent
Innocent is a stressed-out woman who is going to therapy for a terrifying memory that has come to her about her past that she just remembered.
The psychiatrist: the Carrier – the one who brings the horror to the group
The Carrier (in order to help her fiancé) is the innocent’s shrink who plans to terrify innocent with her learned knowledge she gained as her doctor.
The Revengeful man: false leader
The Revengeful false leader is the brother of the innocent who was hurt by her as a child and blames her for the death of their mother.
The grounds keeper of the cabin: he’s the red herring who turns out to be the true
leader.
The grounds keeper is a kind man who observes what is going on and decides to help innocent see who is terrifying her and help her survive.
The housekeeper of the cabin: complainer
The housekeeper is the comedy relief sorta as she complains about her troubles taking care of all the visitors to the remote cabin.
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ASSIGNMENT – DAY 3
What I learned from this assignment is: I can carefully construct my characters to make the horror more authentic or to provide humor/release.
1. Tell us your Concept and the Group you have chosen: My CONCEPT is a dystopian cooking competition television show. The MONSTER is show host Layne Bailey. The GROUP is SINNERS — “A group of strangers who are selected as victims because of their perceived sins.”
MOVIE: THE CUTTING BOARD
GROUP: SINNERS.
DYING PATTERN: A. The contestants will die one by one as they are cut from the competition.
CHARACTERS:
INNOCENT: Daisy Montoya, an unassuming housewife in her mid-fifties, stole from a ruthless drug cartel to save her husband from his gambling debts. Her objective is to pay off the cartel. She is the “protagonist” and has the greatest character arc.
REBEL/RULE BREAKER: Champion boxer Finn Boyle was convicted of murder after a fateful match in which he killed his opponent. He was granted a new trial and will use his winnings to mount his defense and gain his freedom.
OUT OF CONTROL: About to lost the Midwest farm that’s been in her family for generations after her online shopping addiction left her broke, Charlotte Hopenaught would use her winnings to get out of debt and save the farm.
MORAL ONE: Steve. According to the host, “we’re not really sure why he’s here, but we suspect it’s voluntary. He just thought it would be fun to participate.” He emerges as “the moral one” who got himself on the show to undermine it.
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Tully’s (and her writing partner’s) Characters For Horror
What I learned doing this assignment is that it’s really hard and annoying to have this many characters LOL!!
CONCEPT: An idealistic young woman determined to help her long lost relative with a hoarding problem learns that there’s much more hiding in there than just the junk.
GROUP: All the friends that Erin pulls in to help her on her crusade.
DYING PATTERN: So… it’s like a mixture of A and C? They one by one EITHER leave OR get killed… we’re still deciding if anyone will actually get killed. But certainly there will be horrific injuries. None of them have Erin’s pathological desire to be a savior, so when they’re hurt (or when they understand that this house is haunted), they bounce. So there’s the “one by one” element, but they’re not necessarily dying they might just be leaving the group. Yeah.
CHARACTERS:
LEADER/RESCUER/MORAL ONE – Erin, the protagonist. Charismatic, but it’s not enough for these people to stay and be terrorized by a ghost. But she’ll keep going without them, laser focused and stubborn.
THE CARRIER/INNOCENT – Sherrie, her aunt, who lives in the house. She could have saved Erin and the others, but her desperate desire for human interaction is too much. She lets them in, and the ghost has at them.
RESCUER/POSSIBLE SACRIFICIAL LAMB – Erin’s mother June. We’re still developing this character, who may need to die to get Erin through the final stages of her arc.
THE POSSE – top of head, guessing what roles will be filled in by various people Erin ropes into this:
· Out Of Control / Obnoxious
· Red Herring
· The Psychic One (not on the list, but you know what I mean – the one who can FEEL that something is horribly off here)
· Rebel / Rule Breaker
· Monster Bait / Innocent (someone pure hearted like Erin but more afraid, an easy target)
· Complainer
· Too Cool (not on the list, but you know what I mean – disinterested, winds up a red herring or a monster bait / red shirt)
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What I learned doing this assignment is… to identify the groups, characters and dying patterns that are typically present in horror films.
Tell us your Concept and the Group you have chosen.
Three friends seek shelter in a rural southwestern farmhouse that only appears when living trespassers cross the property line. My Group is a SOCIAL GROUP comprised of two sisters and their friends/classmates.
Tell us the Dying Pattern of this movie.
The characters experience the terror and survive together, but one or two die.
Give us an Identity and a sentence for each character that makes up your group.
LEADER: Lori – older sister; college senior; planned the road trip; used to having a leadership role thrust upon her.
RESCUER: Kyle – Lori’s younger sister; college sophomore; is more astute than her carefree spirit would seem to suggest; willing to do anything to save her sister and friends.
OUT OF CONTROL/OBNOXIOUS – Kimmy – Lori’s friend who dropped out of school and engages in more self-destructive than Lori realizes; is oblivious to the perils the group is facing
INTROVERT: Faye – Kyle’s best friend; college sophomore; studious and moral; the first to fully realize the danger they are all in but not assertive enough to articulate it well.
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Lisandro Boccacci’s Character for horror
What I learned from doing this assignment is to lay the foundation for my characters, their roles are clear, and it creates the dynamic for themselves on the individual level and social relationship level, who they are to each other. I can see what kind of people they are… sets the course for these characters, they serve a purpose.
A group of youtubers called Constitutional auditors are in their car getting set up by a revengeful ex police officer. I will be using, A. Team of professionals. The group is known for setting up cops, video recording them, streaming live on some occasions to catch out of control police officers. They are known to sue, officers, take them to court, on some occasions, officer lose, have to pay a large sum, sometimes they get fired, and sometimes they are sentenced to prison. They mean business.
Dying pattern is B. The characters experience the terror and survive together, but one or two die.
Leader: talks a lot, isn’t afraid to speak his mind. has a history of breaking the law. Has experience going through the court system… he learned the law… and has created a YouTube channel to get police officers in trouble.
Rescuer: one of the officers has to take action to save their lives from the out-of-control ex officer.
Moral One: he is a family man; he owns and drives the car. He is a teacher by day, and a constitutional scholar. he has partnered up with the leader to make these live streams.
complainer: one of the officers who goes along with what’s happening, complains and warns the other officers about the laws they are breaking and the trouble they can get into if they get caught.
out of control: the main protagonist. He is one of the officers who was fired, sued, and sent to prison for three years. That changed him as a man. It has also left him disfigured. In prison his face was slashed up, and his nose was cut off. He wants his revenge.
the carrier: he is the younger brother to the girlfriend. he trying to fit in, be part of the group, but also the one who gave the group the tip about the public parking lot, and how the cops are taking advantage of people there.
introvert/loner: he is another youtuber who does the same thing on his own, when he sees the livestream, he recognizes where they are located and he heads to the same place with his live stream, little does he know the hell he is about to enter.
love interest/ lovers: the girlfriend of the leader, lives with the leader, they share everything together, works as a waitress during the day, she joins her boyfriend for the thrill, loves the idea of getting back at cops. she also has a history of back encounters and drug use.
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