Initial Ideas (with reflection)


·      General idea: Office/school group teambuilding trip, monster horror/comedy

-          Monster in the lake/woods or whatever kills the teambuilding leader and the group have to handle the situation. More simple: breakdown or lost on the way to teambuilding trip

-          Twist ending where the monster was never real and the whole thing was a teambuilding exercise

·       Characters

-          Eccentric teambuilding leader who “dies”

-          2 groups of 3? 2 sets of pairs?

-          Teacher?

·       Monster:

-          Land based

-          Not able to see much of it

·       Specific ideas

-          Shots from angles as if they are from hidden cameras- because the company is watching them the whole time, but the audience still doesn’t know

Act 1:

-          The group arrives at the teambuilding facility, meet Dale and find out about the first exercise which is orienteering

-          Dale takes them to a clearing which is far away from the lodge and explains the exercise

-          The groups go off on the exercise

Act 2:

-          Whilst walking, Group A hear Dale scream, they run back to the clearing and find his “remains” (bloodied Hawaiian shirt, tufts of fur etc.)

-          Group A freak out and run off to try and find Group B

-          They find Group B not far from the clearing playing uno

-          They tell Group B everything and start to formulate a plan

-          The groups attempt to navigate back to the lodge

Act 3:

-          Those who are left make it back to the lodge where the teacher is inside listening to Barbara Streisand loudly- they have to bang on the windows to be let in

-          They tell the teacher what happened but before they can finish Dale jumps out of a cupboard, very much alive

-          Dale reveals that it was all a teambuilding exercise, and the film ends with the groups’ reactions

characters

·       Dale

-          Eccentric team-building coordinator

-          Wears a Hawaiian shirt

-          Australian?

·       Caroline

-          Student (Group A)

-          Organized and rational

·       Emma

-          Student (Group A)

-          Stressed and dramatic

·       Heather

-          Student (Group B)

-          Revels in the incident, dark minded

-          April Ludgate

·       Dean

-          Student (Group B)

-          Himbo, very scared

·       Teacher

-          Unenthusiastic

-          Stays in the lodge listening to Barbara Streisand

      I ended up cutting my character list down to just three as it was brought to my attention that operating with a large cast could be problematic. I decided to cut the characters of Heather and Dean and stick with just one pair of students. I also found that the character of the teacher was largely unnecessary and so decided to just have Dale as an authority figure. 

Films for inspiration

Idiots out of their depth: Severance, tucker and dale vs evil, game night, keeping up with the joneses, tropic thunder, pineapple express, date night, murder mystery, the lovebirds, attack the block, shaun of the dead, horrible bosses, spy

Monster horror:

Iconic creature features: the host, jaws, the thing, them!, the beast from 20,000 fathoms, Gojira, tarantula, the beginning of the end, attack of the crab monsters, fiend without a face, the blob, the creature from the black lagoon, the crawling hand, piranha, the fly anaconda, snakes on a plane, jeepers creepers, invasion of the triffids, the birds, gremlins

Relevant to me:  lake placid, the blob, the creature from the black lagoon, the crawling hand, piranha, tremors, evil dead, island of terror

monster horror conventions

“The structure of monster movies normally follows, in sequence, the following narrative conventions: the peaceful beginning; the first intimations that something is wrong; half-seen glimpses of the monster; disbelief of the first reports; attacks of increasing ferocity in which the monster is fully revealed; the fight back against the monster and its destruction. Often there is also the revelation in the final frames that more monsters are hatching.”

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