It is finally done, it looks a little clip arty for my liking but i do really appreciate it as well so the pro’s far outweigh the con’s.

Also i had an Epiphany about my feeling that some of the episodes were going to feel the same. I discussed it with Tommy when I asked him to be a part of the project and I came to the decision of I do not have to direct every single episode.
Genius is what I would call it, I want to ask Lewis to direct the Ripper episode, Tommy (perhaps) to direct The Djinn episode, and I want a female director to direct The Morrigan episode. I believe I will still write the episodes but with this thought of seperate directors they will feel different in my mind.

I got the idea when I looked at game of thrones, The show had 2 show-runners that were in charge and wrote all the scripts but the actual directing was done by many different hands and i figured why not here. While I will admit Game of Thrones was doing it because they were filming multiple episodes at once and none of the episodes had majorly different tones I do believe it will work for Mythos.

I want to get more people involved in this, get more ideas flowing and come up with different shoot styles, settings and maybe even slightly dip out of genre to thrillers, or psychological thrillers, or action horror and perhaps even horror comedy ( though that is not likely in my mind) I believe this is where the circle of local filmmakers can expand and not only diversify but improve the stories even more.

I also loved all the different styles I have learned about while writing this bible out, taking ideas from animated movies, to new horror films on netflix, to comics and books. I really want to try and experiment and break the mould that is currently in movies. Doing weird things just to see how they work. One of my favourite so far was something I saw in a netflix show beastars.

It was a scene where two characters were talking but above one character these eyes were there along with a inner monologue as he was hiding something from the girl in front of him. Weird things like that taking inspiration from any and every media source to make weird and new things. It even matches the themes of the show which is showing stories from all across the world in the light they were supposed to be shown and not just as a localised western remake. If I can adopt some of the styles as well as the stories I believe this will exponentially increase the appeal and quality of the episodes.

And make me a better filmmaker in the process.

I have struggled a lot during this project and I will never forget those lessons nor let those issues get in the way of work again because creating this show has been one of the most fun things I have ever done and I am incredibly excited to carry on developing it further getting more experience and hopefully creating something genuinely fantastic (and horrific in the sense of genre at least)

Well thats all I have to post about for now, hopefully I keep this up as it is a nice way to vent if nothing else. More importantly though its a good place to see thoughts on “paper” and read them back later with a fresh mindset. Either way I will see you on the next blog post whenever that is!

Sooooo now that the deep rant about life is over lets get back to the good stuff.

After a while I managed to start making my Showbible and within a week i had a rough draft planned out with eight episodes and some concept art and a general layout. Daym it feels fun to be creative again

And there she blows. Yep its ugly and yep its a mess but I love the different styles and legends all coming together into one series. I have begun to envision some episodes already though I am a little concerned that a few of them especially The Morrigan and Djinn are going to feel samey and I really do not want that but at the moment I do not have a fix for them.

Also I thought about the idea of a The Thing like monster that I really like the idea of which was awesome, but more importantly I finally was able to come up with the a better answer to the future plans part of this project.

Firstly I want to get the pilot episode done and dusted then while that goes to a few fesitvals perhaps garnering a bit of interest I also want to make a social media ad that is comedic and horror at the same time as a sort of advert for the show. Between the advert and the festivals I am aiming to garner enough interest that I can start crowdfunding the rest of the series. I do realise this is not a groundbreaking idea but even if we can get just a little bit of money it can help make a better series.

Then obviously we create the series with whatever money we have crowdfunded and put together ourselves and we just make it. I already have people i know and trust but I want to form a proper group of filmmakers from this series that I can trust.

Finally best case scenario we garner enough attention to be able to make a second series or maybe a feature film. I am super excited by the prospects of future endeavours while working in media is great and working on films would be awesome, creating my own films would be even better than all of that.

I really think this could be a fantastic play if we can just get it over the first hill.

Well this is it the penultimate blog post… How do i know that well it is because I am mass publishing all of these as I write them in my lovely project book and then literally copy them onto this blog in batches for my course.

I cannot deny that I may continue this process after my course has ended as it does tend to organise ones thoughts. Anywhoo onto the reason for this blog post

This is a sort of ramble about things I have come to terms with during lockdown. Firstly I have never liked doing evaluations or research or essays or to be honest any amount of written work that i do not find inherently interesting. That is a fact that has been a part of my being since primary school however as I have got older I have compromised with myself to just get it done as it is in my mind the lesser of two evils. However this lockdown has really pushed me to limits. I have always had an underlying anger issue while it rarely flares up I am sure there are a handful of people out there that have experienced it firsthand sometimes even on shoots which while unprofessional and I hope never to repeat , is still a level of catharsis that is equal to nirvana…

However quite the opposite has occurred during lockdown, there is no where to vent I basically live alone, I cannot go to the gym, cannot swim, cannot do a lot of my usual anger and energy outlets. This has led to what I affectionately call “One more thing and I am going to launch something out the window…. disorder”

To put this bluntly I have been bouncing between a state of mutual hatred and anger to bouts of melancholy (fancy word I know but an apt descriptor) this in turn has affected my work flow. That is to say it is flowing about as smoothly as a brick wall.. so not at all.

Work piles up and just let it. Then when I push myself to do it something else happens and i have to go to a funeral. Suffice it to say it has left me rather Jaded to everything….

This story is not without a silver lining, lockdown is beginning to ease and I go away for a while up to Scotland where I find is far more peaceful then anywhere else I know. Then I come home and realise what an idiot I have been. I had come close to messing up and entire year all due to my own faults. Then to top it off pride intervenes so i try to fix and finish everything on my own quietly and without further failure.

That was all written over the course of a couple of months abridged down as my own scribbled thoughts tended to get repeated from time to time. Looking back I am glad this happened in a way as it showed me one of the biggest things holding me back in film, media and in general life. That being pride and arrogance, I could have easily helped myself out and asked for extra help off of my tutors but instead I would barely email them like a fool. This needs to be fixed going forward as filmmaking is only going to get harder from here and I cannot hide behind weakness forever. More than that if i want to make something truly great I need to be able to ask for help and collaborate and most importantly get the job done even when life is making it bad.

No more ranting now you can rest easy.

So this is the final draft for now, I am going to leave it alone after this so I can focus on the show bible.

However this was big changes. The script has been cut down, trimmed loads of fat off of it and lost about 5-6 pages. Removing a lot of empty dialogue and exposition so I can try that whole show don’t tell thing people are always going on about. Though I am a little concerned now that cutting it down so much means that we are not going to have long enough for an episode for the series…..

Bridges to cross another time I suppose. Will is doing an animatic for the Short as well so i can visually see the result and I think that will help me refine the script once he is done with that.

I did add a scene however, well more extended the scene with the two main girls talking, my girlfriend asked if I did it for the Bechdel test and I want to go on record to say something. Firstly no I did not do it for that test I just figured it would help make the characters feel more natural and Matt was the one saying that scene could be expanded upon.

MORE IMPORTANTLY I dislike the Bechdel test, I believe it is a bunch of crap. It is not an accurate measure of female representation in media. It honestly has as much standing as Asimov’s laws of robotics (THAT IS TO SAY ZERO STANDING)

Both of those are not scientific, zero research was done to come to either of these tests or laws. They were both created by a writer and society takes them way to easily as doctrine.

Apologies I just wanted to vent and that is what this blog is for….. so why am I apologising…. I dunno … god I’m losing it.

in all seriousness if you will pardon the title I am feeling a little better about the new project.

I have chatted to Matt and a few others and came to the conclusion that a show bible is the best course of action. I am excited as it means I can create a whole series with as many different villains as possible but more importantly different shooting styles. I already want an entire episode in first person like Resident Evil 7, not this found footage shaky camera nonsense though a little crispier than that…. Crisper is an adjective right, bah you know what I mean.

I also want an action horror movie like Train to Busan or even better The Raid but horror version. I just want some combat and stunts god I love that sort of stuff.

I think I will make it like the Stranger Things show bible in a themed way like wanted posters or something.

Also i finished the latest draft of the script I will post that next

Do not get your hopes up I am still weighing my options vis a vis the head having an abrupt meeting with my desk.

However i promised the scripts so here they are, now I was actually relatively happy with these scripts I gave version 2 to my tutor and my cinematographer as well as a few other people and these two scripts are the refinement of their idea’s.

Firstly the opening, finally thanks to Matt I am starting to get an idea for how the opening should go to give a little suspense with an opening kill before the more mundane opening scenes. I have to admit I am partial to the idea mainly cause I am thinking something like Halloween and Friday 13th or Scream where they like to do a dramatic drawn out kill to instil that sense of dread for the rest of the film. However I still want to link it to Japan in some ways so the inspiration is a mix of Friday 13th and Grudge to make it borderline uncomfortable to watch …. well maybe not that far… but it is the sort of mood im in these past few days.

Secondly thanks to Will my cinematographer he helped me with some of the dialogue that he thought still did not match the setting. This I believe was needed as while I had done better I am still not practices at writing a mixture of dialogue types. For example I believe we cut out 3 different times someone said “Peace” as a method of saying goodbye. I now understand that is more localised to me than everyone in Birmingham.

Finally the big one was the changes to the female characters most people kept saying the same thing, that they wanted to know more about the villain and the other girl character. I was of the mind it was not necessary until once again Matt drove it home with that the read as more plot drivers that actual characters. Now let me make this clear i believe that sometimes it is necessary to have the plot driven by events you write in…. HOWEVER I have made such a big deal about wanting this to be “realistic” with “believable” characters. That is was SICK of horror movie characters being borderline moronic at times… So when Matt told me that they did not feel like characters I knew that things had to change otherwise I am being quite the hypocrite.

Just when I was feeling at my worst about this film fate decided to hand me a mystery box. Was it good or bad?

Slowness in our schedule pushed the shoot date back 2 weeks this was to give us more time to find a makeup artist that had bailed on us last minute. However circumstances changed, Covid was finally a worldwide issue and lockdown was now in affect.

What did this mean for the film and for myself.

Well firstly 2 more versions of the script were created and there will be a separate blog post about those after this one.

Secondly the Film has be postponed indefinitely until we find out when we are allowed to film again, this is very disappointing as i had stressed myself out and now find out it was all for nought. Very clever on my behalf there – Sarcasm literally pouring out of the sentance – but a little relief.

Thirdly we have been informed we still have to produce an individual project which infuriates me because while I am sure some of the others in my course will still be able to produce a film off of their phones in the backs of their gardens, slap a mystifying voice over on top and call in an experimental masterpiece – if you had not guessed I do not hold those sorts of films in high regard – I have to find a way to finish my FILM course without a film if i have another post i will see you then but if you do not hear me assume i have been concussed from repeatedly hitting my head off of my desk.

This was the second script produced a lot of this was tiding up the language correcting grammar mistakes and rephrasing things so every character did not just sound like myself.

That was an interesting discovery to be honest. I had never thought about it until rereading the original script but when writing speech it is always how i see myself seeing which in the case of this script is only relevant to one of the characters.

To combat this i tried writing the next script in a public place because that is what every filmmaker ever will say is a good way to write a script so you can hear actual conversation…… I politely disagree with those imbeciles I could not focus so I instead ended up putting earphones in to drown them out. However i found that watching a TV show while writing helped me be a little more grounded so that is what I ended up doing.

Also gives ideas of how you want things shot or shown while writing. For example while rewriting extracts and watching Stranger Things I was really focusing on the music of the show and how it felt retro and futuristic at the same and loved how it matched the show’s aesthetic of modern and 80’s horror mixed together. This in turn made me also start searching for a sound designer for the movie.

I will probably do a bit old chunky piece of text for the script but for now let me move on to the other things.

Up until a certain event that will be talked about next post the plan was to shoot in the middle of March. There were many things to get ready cast, crew, locations, budgeting, food, editing timeframes, sound desingers and so much more. A note to myself, in the future get a producer.

I will not go into detail about each thing suffice to say that eventually everything was organised and looked like it was going to be shot on schedule.

I do want to talk about the producer statement, so far in my entire filmmaking experience I have done all the roles to varying degrees of success. Only getting people that were outside my skill set such as makeup artists and sound designers.7

This film however I finally learned the hard way that I cannot do this alone. In fact I will mostly likely try to avoid directing and producing at the same time in the future. This is due to the impact it had on my performance. I found myself unable to give either task my all resulting is lethargic behaviour to the point where my mental health decided to take a bomb and just say screw it and all the passion for the project went out of me.

I loved the idea of this film and I wanted to make it. However in the end my own hubris and stubbornness killed that love all because I thought I could do it all…

07/02/2020

Well the first draft of the script is done and what can I say. Well I like it it came together better that I would have imagined for the first draft. It does feel overly long something to address in the next draft. Also there is something nagging at me so indulge me a little while I explain.

Recently on a previous project the entire class generated another horror movie that was less than stellar, in fact I am embarrassed to be associated with it, the story is garbage, the set looked bad and the shooting style was oddly chosen. Through all that however and all the criticisms given to us by our tutor Matt one thing he said stayed with me.

“There is no threat at all, the first minute and a bit nothing is happening.” This has been bugging me while I wrote this script I wanted their to be a threat a sense of fear and danger that was present. Looking back I even agree that most horror movies do have their slow moments where there is not a threat which is important because it gives the character something to lose. They lose their peace and happiness. At the same time all of these horror movies start with a mood setter, a death to show what we are in for. The most famous I can think of is “Scream” . Drew Barrymore this pretty famous actress at the time who was all over the promotion of the movie and the adverts gets killed off straight away.

However my initial draft opens slowly without that shock or mood setter…. I need to help with this one.