bethyear2

[bethyear2]

I struggled with writing my screenplay and rewriting it as I have never written one before, as I’m sure a lot of people haven’t either on the course. I thought it was a great learning experience but struggle at keeping it to 1000 words as I realised there was quite a lot to fit in.

If I was given more time and was able to rewrite it there are a lot of things I would change about the story, for example I would make some things clearer. Like at the end of my screenplay where. Vesper realises it was him all along, I don’t think it’s clear as to how he figured out that it was him, or what exactly gave it away to him that he was at fault. I think I would also add more things in to hint clearly what time it was set in, for example giving one of the background characters a Walkman or something to give it away.

Despite the fact that I would change a lot about it, overall I enjoyed the experience of writing it as I’ve never done it before and I hope to do it again the future to improve my storytelling skills and writing skills.

[bethyear2]

Taking into account what I was told in the group crit about trying to add some forshadowing I did some research about different hymns that could be sung in the church in the background of some of the screenplay and plan on using a couple of parts to these in it as I think the words in some of them would be good to hint at future things to happen.

[bethyear2]

After some consideration and a lot of research on different time periods, despite my reasoning for setting the screenplay in Victorian times, I’ve changed it to be set in the 80s. This is because as much research there is about the Victorian era, there wasn’t a lot on the night of Halloween around then which is the opening to my screenplay. I wanted to choose the 80s as I was inspired by things like the tv show Stranger Things and the film Stand By Me, also if I was to make the screenplay into an animation I would want one of the key factors of the visual of it to be a more 80s film colour scheme where the colours are very muted about it.

As well as this I’ve changed the setting of London to be a small northern village where it has the atmosphere of everyone knowing each other in it.

[bethyear2]

I wrote a very detailed improved storyline using as many of the points from my group crit as possible.

I decided to set it in Victorian London because of the gothic nature and it’s architecture of that time period and thought that it would fit the theme of gargoyles.

I also decided to write it on Halloween as a way to give an excuse of why spirits would be rife on that particular night and also an excuse of introducing characters as Vesper can see people walking passed preparing for the day from his spot. I also researched about how apparently Queen Victoria was a big fan of the holiday so thought it fit nicely.

As well as this I added in a different character perspective to the story as I thought having the main character as a statue was very restrictive on what I would be able to do with it.

[bethyear2]

After going to a group cricket, these are the notes that I took during it with ways to improve my work. I agree with all of these and will try to include as many improvements in my future drafts of a storyline as I know the one I took to the group crit was very rushed.

[bethyear2]

I then decided that I should come up with a name for my character and went through the a lot of ideas for one, but finally decided that since I looked quite a lot at bats for my character that it should be something to do with that and came up with ‘Vesper’. Thus derives from ‘vespertilio’ which means bat in Latin.

[bethyear2]

I sketched out some very rough ideas as to what could happen in my narrative for the gargoyle, with a lot of gaps still to fill in but still, it’s a starting point.

[bethyear2]

After doing a lot of research I’ve to sketched out some rough character conecepts using the help of my moodboards, and throughout the process of doing so I have decided that I’m going to choose the gargoyle idea to further develop into a finalised character and screenplay. However I’m glad that I still developed my clown/jester idea as I did because I used a lot of the development from that in my ideas for my gargoyle design, such as the fact that I kept the Venetian mask looking facial appearance on my ‘Jekyll’ character.

[bethyear2]

I created a bunch of storyboards, some for clowns and some for gargoyles. The gargoyles ones are solely revolved around them and then I researched about some animals that I thought would be interesting to include in a character design of one. The clowns one, however, I strayed away from clowns and started looking at different jesters, like court jesters and circus jesters as I think this is a more individual idea over clowns since I was starting to worry that a clown was a general idea that’s been doing a lot before. As well as the jester ideas I started looking at the idea of Venetian masks as I really like the design of them and I think they can be quite creepy looking as well. An example of a creepy looking, Venetian mask wearing, antagonist in something would be the ‘clockwork droids’ out of doctor who. (Not to relate everything to doctor who but they just keep happening to have an antagonist that fits along the lines of some of my ideas lmao.)

[bethyear2]

Looking through my notes I found this exercise we did from a writing workshop and realised I’d forgot to post it so thought I’d post it here. In the writing workshop we had to basically just write a complete random bunch of words and see how much we could write about a given phrase on the board. After that we had to write an in depth description of a door we know really well, going off of the first chapter of Jekyll and Hyde “story of the door”. I got really carried away with describing my bedroom door at my flat that I purposely started to add a humorous undertone to it and make it end in ‘it was all a dream’ because of how awful that ending is.

[bethyear2]

I noted down some quick ideas I had for the narrative of the play for it I was to go with the gargoyle idea.

The idea I came up with that the gargoyle comes alive to kill people reminded me a little bit of doctor who’s ‘weeping angels’ as they had a very similar concept so I was trying to stray slightly away from falling into accidentally creating a version of a weeping angel lol.

[bethyear2]

I also continued research into the gargoyle idea too and have found out that one of gargoyles and grotesques purposes was to protect the church or building they were placed outside of from evil spirits, which I thought could be a really interesting idea to go off of.

I also had the idea of the gargoyle coming alive at night and read that there was actually already a legend of this sort that said something similar that they came alive at night to fight off spirits and protect people.

[bethyear2]

Continuing my research into clowns I looked into if any other clowns were known to be particularly creepy in this way so I did some rear history about them and looked at some of the most well known clowns.

Whilst doing this I wondered whether killer clowns had an impact on the amount of people suffering from clown phobias or how crowns are generally perceived as being creepy and are seen as antagonists in many films and horrors.

I found this really interesting to read about famous clowns such as Grimaldi and Jean-Gaspard Deburau’s Pierrot who were both very famous and “where Grimaldi was tragic, Deburau was sinister”, as the former had sad things happen in his life, and the latter ended up killing a boy in the streets of Paris. So it’s no wonder with their slightly weird looking appearance that a reputation has been made for them given all the popular clown figures to be known for things like that.

[bethyear2]

This is another character concept I have which I’m not sure what to do with as I really like it and have a brief idea for a narrative idea about it as my friend pointed out that he looks like a gargoyle so I might try and base something off of that since I really like that idea. However since I’m unsure between this one and the clown one I’ve decided I’m going to develop both ideas and see if I can merge them somewhere down the line, or until one of them becomes the easy choice.

[bethyear2]

This was the website I was researching to find out more about Jack the Ripper and saw about John Wayne Gacy on there, which was interesting since one of my ideas looked like a clown.

[bethyear2]

This was my first idea, which I was intrigued by as I researched a lot about serial killers after learning that Jekylland Hyde was the same time as Jack the Ripper and I found that there was a man named John Wayne Gacy who was a killer clown and thought that could be an interesting starting place to develop and maybe inspiration for a story.

The colour scheme for each of these designs as well are important as I read that clowns were popular in the 50s which was a time when colour Tv was first introduced so I thought maybe tailoring this idea into the designs by making one in bright clown-ish colour and the other in black and white, or lowering the saturation to make the colours more dull.

[bethyear2]

We’ve been set to read the Jekyll and Hyde book which I’ve read the first few chapters for already and am really enjoying them so far.

I think that reading the Jekyll and Hyde book alongside the project will influence some of my ideas, as whilst reading it I’ve already decided that I want a similar character chemistry as Jekyll and Hyde have, the contrast on good and evil between them and one being capable of murder.