1st Animatic

Unfortunately due to laptop failure and my own carelessness I no longer have my first animatic to post here. The feed back from the rushes session was to “cut the fluff”, the shots that are unimportant to the development of the story which add nothing to the film. I decided to cut the entire part between Shelley finding the mark on Orphan doll 1 and Orphan 2’s transformation.

I feel that these take away from the drama of the situation and it is more effective to have the action run together.

I was also encouraged to take another look at my shots,  look more closely at the camera angles used in  horror films and use that knowledge to change them so they fit better with the genre. It was also suggested that I add colour for my next animatic and put shots through after effects. I’m in the process of creating my next animatic. I’ll post it when finished.

Storyboard ready for 1st animatic

Having decided to start the film at the orphanage I have begun with a close up of a Nun with Shelley at the entrance to the room at the orphanage. I didn’t want to start with an establishing shot of the building as I feel it is more important to get straight in to the action. I also wanted to encapsulate Shelley and the other orphans in their own space with no outside interference so it feels more like there is no one in the world to help them when strange things start happening. I feel having them isolated makes it more dramatic.

Scene1

In this scene Shelley enters the room and opens the box containing the doll resulting in a flash back. It shows all the important parts that I mentioned from the first boards. It will be noticeable as a flash back because I will use fades and cross dissolves through out. The scene also introduces the two orphan girls. It ends with Shelley pushing the doll back in the box, chucking it under the bed and curling up to sleep. The box falls open underneath the bed.

Scene 2

In this scene the two orphan girls wake up to sneak a peek at the doll having caught glimpses of it earlier. They open the box to find nothing inside and the doll missing. They go back to bed unsuccessful and find kiss marks on their pillows. Slightly confused, but too tired to care, they turn the pillows over and go back to sleep.

Scene3

Orphan 2 is abruptly awoken by Orphan 1 who is bleeding quite badly. The first few shots are from Orphan 2’s POV. Orphan 1 transforms in to a doll and lies limp on the floor where Shelley picks her up. Shelley notices a kiss mark on the orphan doll’s cheek.

Shelley takes the doll over to Orphan 2 who at first reclines in fear  but catches a glimpse of the mark and points Shelley towards the same mark that was left on the girls’ pillows. Shelley goes over to the former Orphan’s pillow and turns it over. When she sees the mark she hugs the pillow. She is startled by a blood stifled scream and looks over to her left where Orphan 2 is bleeding and transforming in the same way that Orphan 1 did. the doll from the box is visible on her bed. Orphan 2 turns in to a doll and smashes her head open on the floor revealing steaming brains. Shelley looks closely at the doll from the box and  recognises the colour of it’s lips. The same colour as her mother’s lipstick, the same as all the lipstick marks.

Shelley sees her mother in the doll and kisses it. The doll shakes violently and Shelley drops it on the floor where it begins to absorb the pool of blood left by the Orphans. She grows and transforms in to Shelley’s Mother. Shelley hugs her and the end shot shows her Mother’s eyes glazed over like a dolls.

Initial Idea & Storyboard

My film is about a girl (Shelley) that finds a cursed doll hidden in the loft of her home which unbeknownst to her traps her mother (her mother is presumed dead).  Leading her to be put into an orphanage where she is put in a room with two other girls.  They are horrifically transformed by the dolls curse leaving Shelley to find the truth and perhaps save her Mother, I want the ending to be ambiguous.

I started my storyboards from the doll’s POV.

I began the shot looking from inside the box through the keyhole with little light, it then moves up to a mouth, an eye and finally zooms out to a young girls face.  Although I liked this sequence it set the pace to slow for the beginning of my film which being a horror needs to be quite fast, leading quickly to a dramatic event.

After this, it cuts to a long shot of the girl exploring the box and finding a key at it’s base which she uses to open it. I drew her flinching away from her first glimpse inside the box, afraid at what was inside and then timidly look again and discover the doll. She sits in awe of the doll until the last shot, where her mother calls for her.

As this whole sequence of looking in the box, finding the key, opening the box and finding the doll would take a long time I decided to take out the key altogether. Had it stayed I felt it would have also created a hole in the story because I had built it up as an important object for opening the box and as such having it float around as I had originally intended would have been illogical. I was going to have Shelley’s Mother slam the box and lock it and then have Shelley come back that night to get the doll. If the key were important Shelley would have kept it hidden, meaning her mother couldn’t then lock the doll away again or Shelley’s Mother would have taken and hidden it meaning that Shelley couldn’t have got the doll back. It’s for these reasons I feel justified in completely cutting this from the film.

Next there was to be a scene of conversation between Shelley and her mother. Shelley’s Mother asks what she has been doing and in response, Shelley shows the doll.  At this point her mother becomes erratic and panicky, pulling Shelley from the loft hatch and sending her off to bed. Her mother then shoves the doll back in the box and slams it shut. It then cuts to later that evening with Shelley being tucked in by her Mother and refusing a goodnight kiss. Her mother instead kisses the pillow.

It match cuts to a scene later that night where Shelley ventures back inside the loft and takes the doll. She goes back to her room to sleep but when she wakes up in the morning it has gone. She walks to her Mother’s room to find a pool of blood, the doll sitting on her Mother’s bed and her Mother no where to be seen.

The realisation dawned that it took far too long to set up the story and get to the dramatic event at the end of this scene. In my story Shelley still needs to go to the orphanage, see the children there meet a bloody end and have the story resolve. I decided instead to incorporate the important parts of these boards (Shelley finding the doll, Shelley’s Mother putting it back, Shelley refusing a goodnight kiss, going back for the doll and losing her Mother) into a flash back whilst at the orphanage.