Inspiration Walk #5

Thursday 12th November 

This morning, i received a voice note from Reagan basically stating what gaps needed to be filled within  the set design and the lighting. I felt like the only way to solve this was to try and work on the story more. If an idea isn't working, it's usually because there's something wrong with the ending or beginning of the narrative.

I took myself for a little inspiration walk just to get some ideas flowing:

-I feel the shadow should play more of a part. It's eerie having him standing there which is what we want, but then he just walks away. Is this a good thing? Does this create more conflict within the audiences mind as to what could be going on? I get that it's a metaphor for part of him leaving but instead, what if we have him trying to face it? Wouldn't that me more of a satisfying ending than having him smash everything up? 

-What if, instead of having roots on the wall, when the black out happens, we see the shadow figure illuminated behind the man? When the man moves, this figure imitates every action. This adds conflict as we finally have these two characters interacting with each other after wondering who this mysterious shadow in the window is?

-Maybe he starts to realise that his mind isn't actually that scary when he comes face to face with it. This shadow can be an attachment of the room, so the room is still a metaphor for him mind; this figure is just a part of it? A part of himself.

-The first thing that comes to mind is illuminating this figure in the way people illuminate themselves with glow sticks. Obviously we'd find a better way to do this as it looks a bit basic to do it that way, but just to begin to visualise it. 

-Look at Annihilation, Avatar, horror films.

'Annihilation', Alex Garland

'Avatar', James Cameron

-What if we split the set into two rooms? He begins by going into the blue room (the logical side so it has its own aesthetic). It's filled with memories, antiques and a cold blue moonlight. We then give him some motive to go into the other room. Maybe the logical side is arranged with clues? This will make his interaction with objects more motivated and interesting. The door in the other room doesn't have to be a conventional door. We can think creatively for this. Then, he enters the red room. Filled with strange creative things. This room can be weirder as it's the right side, so that's where we can play around with more lights if we wanted? Or we have the lightbulb ceiling in the first room and the lamps in the second? So we split the craziness between two rooms so it seems more organised and it's more of a journey then. All we'd have to do would be to put a divider in the middle of the room so it wouldn't bee unachievable. 

-Think about where the blackout could happen and if it still does. Also, think about the fact that there's going to be a shadow in the window so will we need two windows or just have him enter the room with the window last?

All these ideas are rather jumbled when I read them back and there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered. Some of these ideas could potentially confuse things even more but i think it was good just to get them all down to open up more ideas and dialogue to keep trying to develop the narrative; finally get to the root of the story. I'm glad that i have these ideas down to always come back to if i need to.