Notes from Thursday 20th.

Okay here are the basics from our meeting with Alan yesterday:

• Style-wise the fifties illustration is a good idea. Alan said that, that style on a monster could create something quite naive and unique and that naivety is key as it's a mix of the illustration style and the fun simplicity of the Scooby Do monsters.

• As for our storyboard, it's a good structure but we need a money shot, a clip in there that suggests that the chaos caused in the town has really escalated to a serious level (like King Kong on top of the empire state building). Also, we need to look at the lab scenes in Tarantula as that will basically give us what we need shot-wise.

• To determine the money shot we need to decide on our monster.  Alan suggested that the monster can be a mix of two or more creatures as this will allow for the monster to have unique and scary instincts. No matter what we decide, the one the monsters will have is the desire to escape and survive.

• These instincts, such as a spider's to get food for its home and secure it there, need to prey on people's fears. When something is on the ground they can normally deal with it but if it can fly then it's something much scarier. Maybe we could include an aspect of flight in there, or maybe the creature is just so nimble that it can get around almost like it's flying?

• Traits that the monster could have is regeneration (perhaps from a newt or lizard that can regrow its tail), flight or extreme agility; basically it could be made from primordial soup allowing it to have pretty much anything.

•  To save on modelling we can just make lots of the same creature, so whatever mixed crazy hybrid we come up with will be basically duplicated with maybe minor differences. Also, there needs to be a leader, we can always indicate this by it being the biggest one.

Film examples:

• The Thing That Came From Outer Space:
• This is people in a small community being attacked by a monster from the outside
• The Mist:
• The aliens are all hybridised creatures. One of them is an alien spider that has acidic webs.
• Tarantula:
• Science gone wrong.
• Frankenstein:
• Starts off fairly small and weak and then escalates to murder and at one point ends up fighting Godzilla.

Basically, we need to get up drawings and ideas for the monster combinations. I quite like the flight idea, it could have the same effect as Hitchock's The Birds and the money shot could be something like the heroes all end up outside but unbeknownst to them, all of the monsters are on the rooftops watching them.

I think that to have lots of smaller monsters with one larger leader would work well, having a swarm of them so they could really look like a threat to our heroes might be the best money shot (there's no Empire State building in small Texan towns so maybe multiples are better than one :P)

Anyway, comment on here, let me know your thoughts and basically start thinking animal combinations: what would they do and why would it be creepy. :P