One of the first steps Prima and I took during the pre-production was producing the script. Because of the uncertainties I had on my pitch, I decided to do the production based on Prima's initial pitch. (for further information about her pitch, visit her website: primaxmedia.weebly.com/part-1---pitching-an-idea.html) Her initial pitch of the film was about a voodoo doll haunting the main character. She developed this into a script, which was still a rough draft. I first read her script and started suggesting different ways for the plot. By going through this process, we refined the plot and made the final draft. Prima's initial rough draft:
After first reading the draft, my initial commentary addressed the plot of the film. I believed that the climax required a certain amount of follow ups, such as the character having more motive in her actions. Prima and I discussed about this, and decided to create a solution by changing the character's motive. In the rough draft, Charlie's motive for committing such violence was her growing jealousy of her best friend befriending someone else. We changed this to her being bullied, as we thought it would cause a bigger emotional response. After outlining the main character's motive and her surrounding environment, we were able to add more context to the foundation of the plot. This process was recorded in our shared document on which we've wrote new segments of the plot and also elaborate on parts of the story that existed before.
Summary of the updated plot: The film opens with a scene of Charlie being bullied by her peers. She later finds a voodoo doll around her house, which she uses to get revenge on her bullies. However, after gaining dominance, Charlie starts to adopt new characteristics that once belonged to her previous bullies. A figure whom Charlie first does this act upon traces Charlie's movements. Later on, the figure steals Charlie's voodoo doll and commits the same act as well. The film ends with Charlie's shocked expression. Artistic Intentions: The person, as mentioned in the script continuously, is shown as a dark figure whose face is hard to identify (in fact, the film never reveals the dark figure's face). This was Prima's idea of representing Charlie's karma, which is essentially her wrongdoings tracing back to herself. The voodoo doll is a symbol of power, in which it is constantly abused in a violent way by those who gain possession of it. This represents the cycle of the abuse of power in a high school environment. It is possible to interpret the film simply as a horror film about a voodoo doll, but the film also displays the theme of high school violence.
2. Developing a storyboard
As it was my specialty, I was given the responsibility of producing a clear and coherent storyboard. The storyboard that I produced did not correlate with Prima's shot list, as I made the mistake of not recognizing the need of making both tools be in accordance to each other. Instead, I've put my personal vision on the film's style through my storyboard.
I tried to incorporate a variety of shots to make the scenes more interesting. I did this by increasing the variety of angles. As it was a conventional element of a horror film, I made effort to incorporate the dutch angle in certain shots in intense scenes. Some examples can be seen below:
On the shot on the left, Charlie is seen to be suffering her situation at school. This shot is, in fact, the last shot of the scene right before the scene of her discovering the voodoo dolls. The shot on the right shows Charlie running towards her lockers to discover the dark figure waiting for her with the voodoo doll. As such, both shots have a foreboding tone of horrors; which is the reason why I thought the dutch angles would be suitable.
Prima developed the shot list separate to the storyboard. After creating the storyboard, I've edited some parts in the beginning of the shot list to match it with the shots in the storyboard. However, I had stopped editing the shot list and decided to mix both styles in hope that the mesh would result in a new style.