Character Development

John Wright - Lumberjack = John Wright was a reserved man before the events in the film. Before his sister was kidnapped he had a regular job working as a lumberjack in the nearest logging plant. He was known by his fellow workers for his skill with the axe and he was extremely accurate with his cuts and physical blows to most things. His preferred axe is the double-edged axe. When he finds out from the police that his sister has been kidnapped he goes mad. He forgets about everything else in his life and goes blood drunk. This has never happened to him before and he is surprised by his own anger and rage. With his trusty axe he goes on a murderous rampage killing all those responsible for the kidnapping. Upon loosing his axe John uses anything or anyone as a weapon to kill.

Unknown – The Scientist = Not much is known about the scientist. He grew up as a young boy testing on animals and soon switch to kidnapping and testing his vile creations on humans. 

Costume ideas - Lumberjack

The character will be wearing a typical lumberjack style coat, similar to this, but in blue. We already own the coat so we won't have to worry about costs. The coat pretty much makes the lumberjack look like a lumberjack. He will also have a hood up to hide his identity and will be wearing normal jeans and some boots. His weapon of choice will be a huge log.

Treatment - full film

Working Title

Duration: 90 minutes

Audience: 15 – 40 year olds, mainly males however it is expected that some females will like it too. fans of horror films, scientific plotlines and gore.

Synopsis: A group of strange and psychotic scientists have been kidnapping young women and testing on them for a deranged satisfaction. During the 'tests' the woman are tortured, mutated and forcibly addicted to very powerful drugs. The main character is a lumberjack who's sister had been kidnapped and the found brutally murdered months later. He finds a pocket diary that she kept during her captivity in a desperate attempt to keep her from going insane. The diary reveals the horrors that she witnessed and experienced and some information on the 'scientists'. The lumberjack then seeks revenge and starts to kill off each person involved one by one. However, he becomes so obsessed with murder that he starts to lose his mind and perform similar procedures on the scientists as they had done to their victims, which he found in the pocket diary. He keeps killing more and more people and eventually just starts killing random and innocent people and becomes absolutely obsessed with slaughter. As he kills more and more innocent people he starts to become physically pained by his mind due to turning insane. Eventually he is attacked by a group of thugs hired to take him out. They are hired out by a teenage boy who's father was killed by the lumberjack, and the boy has also been killing innocent people in hope to attract the killer's attention to lead him into a trap. He is attacked by about 5 men at once, manages to survive but finds himself bleeding out in a church. He then sees a child crying, holding a blood-covered bible with most of the pages torn out. He suddenly realises the horror he has produced as if it was a message from some god. He then dies on the floor of the church.

Video research: Chase scenes in the woods

As our first two minutes will be a chase scene in the woods, we started to look at similar style chase scenes from existing media projects on youtube. We tried to find some clips from existing films but couldn't find any.

This is a chase scene made for someone's media project which is similar to what we want to do.

This chase scene isn't really in the horror genre but still shows the tension and danger we want to capture, this is also from a media project someone did.

This final video is another media project is very similar to what we want to do. The idea of the victim in desperation and the murderer slow yet in power is what we are going to use.

Target audience

Our target audience is 15-40 year olds, male or female but mainly appealing to males.

Obviously it would be aimed at people who like horror films with a balance of a complex plot and gore.

Pitch (Plot idea updated)

Our film is about a group of strange and psychotic scientists who have been kidnapping young women and testing on them for a deranged satisfaction. During the 'tests' the woman are tortured, mutated and forcibly addicted to very powerful drugs. The main character is a lumberjack who's sister had been kidnapped and the found brutally murdered months later. He finds a pocket diary that she kept during her captivity in a desperate attempt to keep her from going insane. The diary reveals the horrors that she witnessed and experienced and some information on the 'scientists'. The lumberjack then seeks revenge and starts to kill off each person involved one by one. However, he becomes so obsessed with murder that he starts to lose his mind and perform similar procedures on the scientists as they had done to their victims, which he found in the pocket diary. He keeps killing more and more people and eventually just starts killing random and innocent people and becomes absolutely obsessed with slaughter. A boy who's father was killed by the lumberjack also seeks revenge and starts to kill innocent people in order to call out the lumberjack and kill him.

The first two minutes of the film, which we will be filming is a chase scene through the woods. The lumberjack is pursuing a scientist. Although at the start of the film, this is the last slaughter to take place, as this scene would stop just before the murder and cut to a flashback, which would then carry on and show the series of events that take place to lead to that scene and eventually catch back up with it.

Possible location to film

The location of these three images is either side (above and below) of Ardsley

Typical Horror movie settings

Boat/Ocean Example - Jaws

Carnival/Theme Park -The Funhouse, Freaks, Zombieland

Cemetery/Graveyard - Night of the Living Dead

Desert - Tremors, The Hills Have Eyes

Hospital - Dead Ringers, 21 Days Later

Hotel/Motel/BnB - Psycho, Vacancy, The Shining

Jungle - Cannibal Holocaust, Predator

Mall/Department Store/Shopping Centre - Dawn of the Dead

School/Classroom - Carrie, Scream, Graduation Day

Spaceship/Station - Alien,

Cabin/Campsite - Friday The 13th, The burning

Theater - Suspiria, Opera

City/Town - 21 Days Later, I Am Legend

Inspiration

We have researched many horror movies and learnt the common themes and devices they use, we did this by studying some of the most famous horror films that have been made, below is a list of some of the horror movies we looked at

Psycho

Alien

The Exorcist

Dawn of the dead

Evil Dead

The Wicker man

Texas Chainsaw Massacre

Friday The 13th

Halloween

Plot Summary - Draft still being worked on.

Plot summary: Scientist chased through woods then hunted down in woods by a unknown killer(s). The Killer is killing off a group of scientists that had kidnapped and tested on the murderers sister who then died after a great deal of suffering. The killer is actually out for revenge.                 

Description of horror movies and information about their history.

Horror films are movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, horror and terror from viewers. Their plots frequently involve themes of death, the supernatural or mental illness. Many horror movies also include a central villain.

Early horror movies are largely based on classic literature of the gothic/horror genre, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

More recent horror films, in contrast, often draw inspiration from the insecurities of life after World War II, giving rise to the three distinct, but related, sub-genres: the horror-of-personality Psycho film, the horror-of-armageddon Invasion of the Body Snatchers film, and the horror-of-the-demonic The Exorcist film.

The last sub-genre may be seen as a modernized transition from the earliest horror films, expanding on their emphasis on supernatural agents that bring horror to the world.

Horror films have been dismissed as violent, low budget B movies and exploitation films. Nonetheless, all the major studios and many respected directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, Roman Polanski, Stanley Kubrick, John Carpenter, David Lynch,William Friedkin, Sam Raimi, Richard Donner, and Francis Ford Coppola have made forays into the genre. Serious critics have analyzed horror films through the prisms of genre theory and the auteur theory. Some horror films incorporate elements of other genres such as science fiction, fantasy, mockumentary, black comedy, and thrillers.