This week’s 60 second film evolved from my initial plans to a quite different result. In the end, I had to rethink and adapt because of cost, time, and technical challenges, which I’m sure happen also in real life film projects.
I focused on the hand as protagonist of a horror narrative, linked to the knife crime crisis in London.
I tried to expand my knowledge of Premiere Pro by using new (to me) effects such as blurring around the edges and colour tints. In the film, we go from a red tint to a cooler, calmer one as the crisis passes.
Thinking about bodies and hands, I looked up how to say “The End” in British axing Language and included it as the last image.
The music I used is a cover version of “Midnight the stars and You” which I found on YouTube. The slightly weird singing makes it creepier, and I liked keeping the reference to ”The Shining”.
These were my initial thoughts:
I want this film to be created though a calculated, balanced mix of stop motion animation and real life.
The underlying theme would be body horror, not unlike the works of David Cronenberg, tough I want to have limits. There will be a narrative, but no narration, as I have seen experimental films work without having to lay every detail out in plain English. I want to film the first scene in the garden near the main campus and the next scene in my bathroom.
It will follow an unnamed flesh-craving zombie and it’s struggle for identity.
This short film is meant to mess with the average viewer on a deeply psychological level, not unlike “The Shinning”, Eraserhead, American Psycho or Shutter Island. Another connection to those films is that some questions they raised, and this one raises, are meant to be left unanswered so the viewer can make their own answer.
Props:
A mask for me to wear, to make me appear near or past death. I could buy and put on special effects make up.
A heart or a lung (bought from a butcher at a cheap price) and stab it while someone films me.
Lychee, which I would eat while being filmed, so it would seem I am eating an eye.
Fake blood to put on the mask or the heart or lung I buy.
The film ends with the zombie choking on meat and dying, hence the title.
Scene 1 – a corpse lies in a garden, pale and unmoving. It turns to healthy person, alive but unconscious. The turn back into a corpse and their eyes open.
Scene 2 – the corpse walks into a bathroom and looks at a mirror. In mirror we, once again, we see a healthy, living body. The reflection raises a hand and we see the corpse raise its own hand. We then see a heart and then the heart is stabbed with a knife. We the corpse stabbing the heart and eating an eye (lychee). The corpse starts gaging and choking. It falls on the floor and writhes before dying. Again.
I will sing “Midnight, the Stars and You” and then add it to the film, in a deliberate and loving homage to the shining. I sing it because “the shining” is a well-known horror film.
Tomás 