Idea for the group By Aidan Codd

Idea for the  group

EXT: misty air around a water factory on top of a hill above a swamp.

ESTA : the camera cycles round the factory and follows the pipe that is connected to it that leads down into the swamp.

As the camera does that the narrating voice goes ‘If we do not do something fast man as the dominant species on earth will be extinct within the year!

You then go back to the camera going back through the swamp with news paper clips flying in front of the screen with old swamp related play on words  like ‘ creature  seen that makes an alligator look like a kitten’

Then the camera goes out of the swamp and into a silhouette of the creature.

Then you jump into fast screen shots of the chaos that is getting caused  by the creature.

At the end have a voice over saying ‘People we have hit a state of emergency’.  

This is a story board as well as a influence map

Mix of amphibians

So as I was asked I've done a bit more elaborated creature designs. I used examples of different amphibians and here is a result - quick, dodging and fleshy creature sketch.

Rough Storyboard (Opening)

This looks a bit too rough but it is an opening idea I kind of like. So to make things clear: The camera zooms into the swamp (more like the corridor the hanging trees created) and then dives into the dirty water. A silhouette of a creature with bright red eyes appears in the distance and approaches. The whole scene turns black. Then quick scenes of the contamination in the swamp is shown.

Research on Swamp Creatures

After reading Phil's comment on Dom's sketching, I decided to do more research on swamp creatures so we can have a bigger variety of choices when deciding on  our mutated creatures. There is a huge list of creatures living in them sort of ecosystems. So are beautiful with bright colours, others look slimy and re vaulting. All in all, swamps are definitely a place where you can come across any sort of creatures.
These particular creatures are found in 'Everglades National Park, the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, boasts rare and endangered species. It has been designated a World Heritage Site, International Biosphere Reserve, and Wetland of International Importance, significant to all people of the world.'

Hemidactylus mabouia

Apalone ferox

Pseudemys nelsoni

Rana sphenocephala

Notophthalmus viridescens

Golden Orb Spider

Buckeyed Butterfly

Lobber Grasshopper

Alligator mississippiensis

Agkistrodon piscivorous

Lempropeltis getulus

Gekko gecko

Bufo quercicus

Gastrophryne carolinensis

Some Quick Creature Designs

These are a couple of sketches of how I visualised the mutated beings from the swamp. They could be some kind of slugs or tadpoles (?)

Some concepts for possible ideas

I just started making some concepts. Firstly I wanted to show a bit more detailed view of abandoned factory kind of flooded in the swamp. This could be used for a sliding shot in the begging of the trailer just to define the environment.

Then as we had some discussions of what kind of mutated creatures we could have in the swamp killing people around I really liked tadpole and frog idea. Mother frog could be like a boss and tadpoles with younger frogs something like minions. With this next concept I wanted to show the evolution of this creature.

 

In this third concept sketch I was thinking that since it is a b-movie there should be a cliche hero with a gun massively fighting against evil. I can easily imagine angry redneck in Alabama doing this. This sketch also helps to define the size of the creatures compared to people.

Some Drawings By Aidan Codd

These are some drawings I did the other day for the slug idea.

@the group By Aidan Codd

Today we had a great talk with Alan that helped us go more into the B move category , we all will go and gather ideas for Monday’s meeting    

First Thumbnail Sketches

In this set of thumbnail sketches I tried to make the factory the centre of attention in the scenery, but simultaneously making the surroundings clear (the forest). I tried different styles of drawing ( I don't really know which works best for the mood).

First Quick Story Ideas and Final Idea

After 3 days of struggling we finally made our decision and have a good base for our trailer/story.

We are going to stick to our 3rd idea an move on from there...

1) Abandoned Factory

In a misty pine tree forest of the American countryside there is an abandoned factory which lies near a contaminated swamp. Two forest wardens, doing their usual shift, confront themselves with the factory where they get attacked by mutated workers.

2) Underwater Civilization

Two scientists explore the tropical jungle of the Amazon. They discover Ancient civilization ruins in a swamp which leads them to an underwater civilization, in a cave. They uncover a legend which talks about a curse that made this civilization vanish and were attacked by unknown creatures that wanted to defend their territory.

3) Final Idea

Our Third story idea derived from the talk we had with Phil today, after he showed us some cheesy trailers from the 1970’s films. They were all based on the theme man vs nature and how messing up with nature’s balance can have terrible consequences. So eventually we decided that our story will be based on a factory (like our first idea) which pollutes the nearby swamp. All the living beings in the swamp eventually become mutated and bigger in size. They attack the nearest villages and spread panick to the people.

Lets see what's to do next then .. :)

Some trailer ideas By Aidan Codd

This is a hand full of trailers’ that I found looking on you tube to help give the feel of a monster / retro film trailer. The mane ones we should look at are: The wolf man and the lay out of Alfred Hitchcock Psycho and The wrong man trailer for voice over influence.   

First Ideas and Influence Maps

Hello, Welcome to our Blog!
We are called The Black Lagoon Team (deriving from the Film The Creature from The Black Lagoon-1954 ) and we will be working on a project with the title The Killers from The Swamp. We are expected to produce a 1:30 min 3D Trailer based on our given title which has to be inspired by 1930's to 1960's film trailers.
So after of couple of days of brainstorming we came up with a lot of ideas that surrounded swamps, misty forests, abandoned nuclear factories, mutated people (monsters) and more. We have loads of story ideas to put up (which will be uploaded really soon) but for know we have a number of influences to show which will pretty much sum up in which direction we are heading to.

Influence Map 1: Films and Games 

So we obviously first looked into films that had to do with Characters being born from swamps. Then, in search of a mood we looked into films and games that had this sort of foggy, moist feature into them.

1. The Swamp Thing (1989)

2. Vanishing Hitchhiker (Videogame)

3.The Swamp Devil (2008)

4. Bioshock (Videogame)

5. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

6. Anakonda (1997)

7. The Creature From The Black Lagoon (1954)

Influence Map 2: Location (Swamps in Forests and Abandoned Factories)

Location-wise we've been looking into misty forests, specifically into the American coutryside and creepy nuclear factories.

Stills From The game The Vanishing Hitchiker: