The Coin - Film Idea

Not everyone is high born, in fact come to think of it not many people are high born, but where does that leave everyone else, where does that leave you?

In 340 BC when Rome was slowly on the road to greatness there was a city. This city was called Astapor and in Astapor there was something different. Something not like the other cities. The high born were high born but the others. Well the others had to get by there own way. Each year there was a competition in the colosseum but no ordinary competition. Thousands will be entered but not by their choice. You're given a choice when you are born a peasant you either become a slave or you become a solider. Each year 1000 soldiers are picked from random age groups from 12 - 60 and if you're picked you have to go through the 250 challenges where you face all kinds of animals and people as they sometimes fight each other and then sometimes team up to beat others and no one gets out alive. As soon as one person makes it through all 250 challenges they win, but if more than 1 person makes it through then only one gets out alive. So far no one at all has ever completed all 250 challenges and lived to tell the tale, until today. A man named Jonas Valhalla takes on the challenge but does he make it?

Horror: Zombie- film research and conventions. (Simular films, Youtube links, Settings and generic conventions)

Horror: Zombie film research and conventions

Zombie films are a sub genre that span off from horror films, Like most Horror creations, Zombies have come from old stories and myth . In Haitian folklore, a zombie is an animated corpse raised by magical means, such as witchcraft. The first thing to contain an idea the most similar to that of the zombie would be Frankenstein, the novel published by Mary Shelley in 1818.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

Zombies began to appear in movies as early as 1932. George A. Romero is considered to be the one that set the standard for modern zombies. He first portrayed zombies in the classic 1968 movie, "Night of the Living Dead". In this film zombies were shown to be slow moving, flesh eating corpses that have been reanimated due to radiation from a satellite returning from Venus. Although the reasoning for the zombies differ from film to film, There is always reasoning behind their reanimations and the boundaries set by Romero tend to be followed and remain consistent throughout most classic zombie films.

Your Stereotypical  zombie. Decaying, slow moving flesh-eater.



 Zombies are also seen to be very strong, and invulnerable to pain and usually the only way to kill them is with a blow to the head, destroying the brain. In most zombie films, Zombism is contagious and can be passed on through making contact of getting bitten by the undead, The bite either turns them or kills them, in the case of the latter, they become reanimated anyway due to the same force that created the other zombies. This often leads to the antagonists (Zombies) outnumbering the protagonists, making the whole experience more intense. In these films, There are three common endings: Everyone dies, A cure if found or you are left on a cliffhanger.

Poster for George Romero's "Night of the Living Dead"

The typical settings for modern zombie films usually begin in isolated, abandoned locations. This creates a build up of tension for the viewer. The characters are usually placed in a setting alone.  There are also stock props that are found in most Zombie movies, these include; blood, heavy gory make up, weapons: e.g guns, knives, baseball bats, Food and brains.

In more modern depictions of this sub genre, Zombies are found to be faster and more intelligent, in the film "28 days later", it portrays all the conventions of a zombie film but it does not actually contain zombies.



Poster for the 2002 film, 28 days later.

In modern times zombie films are few and hard to come by but the concept of zombies still remain popular, an example to show this would be the Television series, "The walking dead", Which the number of viewers have broken the record number of views set by a cable TV drama, hitting 17 million as of October 13th 2014.

The following videos allow you to see the differences between the old and new zombie films.

Old zombie film comparison

New zombie film comparison

The Tale of West Creek ( Film Idea)

 

The tale of west creek.
 

Genre: Mystery

 



The nice, quiet old town of West Creek holds a  terrifying secret.
Danny Wilson has the perfect life working as a cop in the city and living with his caring girlfriend, Jessica DeWitt
However, when he finds a dead body in his basement, he begins to realize that things are not quite as they seem in the Wilson family.
A funeral leaves Danny with some startling questions about his past, and he sets off to the Wild town of West Creek to find some answers.
At first the people of West Creek are kind and helpful. He is intrigued by the curiously cunning Librarian, Hannah Clark. However, after she introduces him to the towns real history, Danny slowly finds himself drawn into the criminal world of Assault, Robbery and perhaps, even Murder.
Danny tries to resist the charms of Hannah, but to no avail. She manipulates him into believing that the body he found at home was killed by him and his journey to west creek is merely to find a false truth so he doesn't have to live with what he has done. Hannah believes that the only way he can become free of this burden is to die. Danny will not let this happen. The two begin to fight and brawl until Danny draws his gun, He warns that if Hannah gets closer, he will have to pull the trigger. She pounces forward and gunshots ring throughout the town. Sirens can be heard as Danny drops to his knees, realizing that nobody will believe his story, He turns the gun on himself and his demise becomes yet another mystery held by the townsfolk of west creek.

By Ellis Byrnes

Film Idea - War of Daisy's

Jamie McEvans lived in a small town in Scotland. Far away from most people. He didn't have many friends other than farmer Tom, his closest friend who still lived 2 miles away. Although Jamie all his life had been away from civilisation, he had one dream. To travel the world. The film starts off with Jamie lying on a bed of sand in Syria. It then goes back to the beginning where it shows him growing up quite fast. He then sets of on a plain to Europe but suddenly gets into some money trouble where he is took to Syria to train as a Syrian rebel. But because he doesn't want this he manages to escape then starts a peace revolution that takes the world by storm but it is not over for Jamie. Due to his new found power with peace there are forces that want to kill him but not before he ends the Syrian war. But it's not the happy ending you think should happen then end scene is the same as the beginning on however a bit longer and right at the end Jamie is shot in the head but he goes out with a smile, knowing his job is complete.

Reflection (film idea)

Reflection
Some say they eyes are the window to the soul. Others say mirrors are a peep into another dimension, then others further say that the souls of those who die violent deaths stay trapped in the living world. All three are true as it happens so one night in the 1900s when poor little Catherine met her end by the hand of her abusive step father a strange phenomenon occurred. Her broken, sliced body was tossed by the sorry excuse of a man into the spare room. A room which only contained an antique mirror covered by a sheet. In the fury of the act the sheet fell from the mirror and the body of Catherine stared into her own dead eyes for hours until her body was recovered. 
Little did the family know that the body they were removing no longer contained Catherine's essence, her spirit was gone. Now spirits that die suddenly in this world become confused, they're not what they once were and as if this wasn't enough little Catherine was lost in another dimension all together, her only link to her world was through the mirrors that she arrived by. 
Catherine's step father, whom had gotten away with her murder, was shaving his beard one night with a cut-throat razor in front of a mirror. When he could have sworn to have seen a small child standing behind him, regardless he continued. Then suddenly he lost control of the razor, like another presence was guiding it. He glanced at the mirror to see a bloody Catherine trying to slit his throat, but when he turned around there was nothing there. The spirit disappeared, the step-father ran into the hall  where another few mirrors were hung. He could see a crying Catherine in all of them. Wise to the idea of mirrors he barricaded himself in the bedroom, a dark room with no mirrors. Yet the man felt a piercing pain in his eyes, all he could see was little Catherine. She did not need the mirrors to avenge herself, just the reflection in her step father's eyes.

The Funfair ( Film Idea)

The Funfair, media Film idea.

A group of 4 friends consisting of four boys go to an abandoned Funfair that hasn’t been set foot in for 33 years. The state of the fair itself seems to be frozen in a decade from years before, the wear and tear of every ride and attraction tells a story of the amusement that was once had there. The characters consist of your stereotypical jock, who has managed to persuade his other cautious and quiet friends to sneak into the property at night. The characters speak about the eerie vibe that the place gives off, almost as if they’re being watched. This is when the audience witnesses something in the distance, someone, or something, lurking in the shadows.

 The group continues around the fair, laughing and mocking the quirkiness of the various rides and props they see, this is, until they reach a tent, replicating the style of an old fashioned circus tent. They enter to find nothing but a lever. He jock pulls the lever and a spotlight turns on, projecting its beam onto a life-size wax figurine. The group are at first startled to see this but within a few seconds they laugh it off and begin to pose and take pictures of the figure, One of the characters then trips up and falls towards the figure, toppling it over and snapping off the arm as it crashes to the floor, The group all laugh but this is short lived as they realize that under the figurines wax coating and once structured arm, There is now decaying human flesh oozing out from the broken figure. Horrified, they turn to see a silhouette blocking the exit of the tent; In the panic and confusion one of the four knocks and breaks the switch, turning off the spotlight permanently. They all run for their lives, but only the jock seems to make it from the tent. As he runs towards the outer fence of the fair, He sees a police car and he begins to shout and scream ecstatically, but before he can get closer he is knocked over the head, cutting to black.

The Jock wakes up in a daze, looking up to see that he is once again in the tent he tried to escape from, confused, he sparks up a match and sees 3 vague figures in the distance, it has to be his friends, he walks over cautiously before he holds the match up to their faces, He recognises them, it’s his friends, but they’re motionless, frozen into place, The burning match in his hands begins to make the faces of his friends slowly melt, The realisation has hit him that his friends are now wax figurines, like the one they found earlier, before he can react he hears a soft laugh from the darkness, his fear turns to rage, he demands to know who’s done this. The voice then calls out:

“You’re lucky, I killed the others first, because I wanted to let you see, how pretty you’ll soon be”

The match goes out.

Epidemic (film idea)

Epidemic

Ebola has been an outbreak that has set the world apart for many years. This is set in 2020, when 2/3^rd of the population has been wiped out by the finest virus killers of it’s time. Many people have died, however a minority has awoken from the dead. Death is a crazy thing, so much so that the world has turned into a purge like environment. People kill for resources, land is taken through people shouting ‘Claimed’ and the word ‘ebola’ is such a killer, nobody should say it by it’s full name.

Person A is called Nick Astley, he was a cop that woke up just as Ebola hit the world. Ebola kills people once someone coughs on them, this is why people should take germs more seriously, and the outbreak first came from Africa where it first hit. People coughed on each other for personal revenge. This could have been prevented through taking more care but because of the poor education given through the LEDC places, this is unfortunately a reality and people died and spread the virus.

Nick Astley, wakes up from a coma and gets out of the hospital with a wound to his hand as his dog knocked him over because his dog found it’s love of it’s life. The dog was never seen again after the incident. Nick walks out and meets a stranger called Marcul which has an undead wife.  Marcul also has a little son and they’re both really good friends as they watch each other under the most brutal fighting of the undead. Marcul cannot kill his wife because he is in denial that she has Ebola. This relates later on in the story. Nick Astley, Marcul and his son go on a hunt to find Nick, and through the way meet a group and goes through shooting ebola-walkers in order to keep alive. This has never been as upsetting as it has. Nick then mentions that he was a cop. A cop has weapons. Duh, so they went to the copshop and took some double barrel shotguns and some interventions to do some quick-scopes and no-scopes on ebola-walkers. This leads onto saving many people’s lives. We meet a character called Glen, with one ‘n’ in his name. He is Korean and only came over in the summer holidays before the outbreak for his summer school adventures.

Glen finds the family through killing people, and Nick Astley finds his wife, Loli. They both have good times together through the weeks however Nick figures out that Chain, his old cop best friend has been looking after Loli for a long while, which results in a pregnancy.

The whole camp fight in many places of New Mexico to keep themselves alive and they find a person called Perl, who has some blue crystal meth, from Walter White. Perl becomes very volatile and creates a huge issue in the camp as they risk everyone’s safety. Perl has his hand chopped off and he ends up making a hook so that he can hook the ebola-walkers on the go. Perl is never seen again as he gets really upset that nobody cared for him. Loli dies straight after Perls attempt at risking the camp, as she had a C-Section for the baby, Loli returns as an ebola-walker and Perl hooks her, saving the baby child’s life. Nick Astley can never give her up, never going to let her down. He’s never going to turn around and desert you.

Hacker (film idea)

Hacker

This is going to be based off a world in which has a technological aspect that people could not live without. Computers control the world and everyone has pocket technology in which they cannot physically live without. This controls the entire lifestyle of which one plays in.

Two characters are going to be the main aspect. Person A, who is a good guy. Person B, who is a bad guy.

These two people have huge conflicts with each other as they both have their special abilities which makes them unique to everyone else. This starts to take place where one has a business proposition to make the whole entire world into a central system which can be controlled by anyone. The other person objects to this however Person A is really technical, Person B has common sense and can see the impacts that this could cause.

It could cause the world to shut down entirely from a single hack. This is bad and Person B should not allow this to happen. His plan is to get this guy to stop in the formal way he does. This however does not work and Person B hears that Person A goes into an evil plot to control and take over the governments, the currencies and the traffic within every connected place of the world.

Person B however tries to get this sorted out through contacting authorities, which can cease this. This doesn’t work. This is where Person B becomes really cool and starts to put his leather gloves on and twist a silencer onto his 9mm pistol.

Things gets real, really quick.

Person B goes undercover to get Person A to stop, through lethal means. Person A figures this out through some plot-twist and a big war goes between them both. Technology vs. weapons and stealth.

Person B wins the fight through a really sick and awesome death scene, and an ultimatum between disabling a nuclear bomb as a suicide mission or saving his pet rabbit, Steve, from his wife.

The story ends here.

“This is really good, I consider this a 10 out of 10 from me!” – New York Times

“I’ve never heard of a story plot more amazing than this, I wish it was something I could have wrote myself. You do sure have a talent!” – Daily Mirror

“Ebola.” – BBC News

Katuna (film idea)

Katuna 

The film starts in the year 1912. A small band of mountaineers ascend a mountain on a dangerously snowy day. They continue to trek up the mountainside as the storm worsens. Eventually they a forced to make camp on the only rocky ridge they can find. They have only waxed canvas tents and a few sparse trees for shelter. As the blizzard lashes outside eventually the mountaineers become seriously worried. To everyones surprise the steadfast leader of the group ,Marshall, stops breathing. Despite the crew's best efforts of something that resembles an old form of CPR Marshall passes away from a combination of hypothermia and frostbite but not before leaving these parting words "If it comes to this, i want you boys to eat my body, do what you can to survive." The three remaining members obviously refused this until the hours turned to days. They ashamedly ate Marshall as per his last wish. 

After finishing their 'Meal' the boys sat in utter silence, listening to the wind, it sounds like it is judging them as the angry flapping of the tent drove them mad. It wasn't long after that Jack died too. Steve and Michael , the last surviving members of the once strong group , repeated the same process. The human flesh made them feel rather peculiar. They felt powerful but hungrier, so much hungrier, but only for one thing. Arguments broke out between the pair and in a flurry of rage and hunger Michael hit Steve with an oil lamp and began to eat his unconscious body.

None of the boys were to know the curse of eating human flesh. The body becomes larger, stronger, practically immortal and distorted into a hideous monster. But with these 'advantages' comes the curse. The total loss of your mind, an unquenchable thirst for human blood and hunger for human meat.

The film then continues 100 years later four teenagers set up camp on a mountainside. This mountainside now rich with tall trees and bushy undergrowth has been plagued with mysterious deaths for years, but the teenagers were not scared, they wanted to tempt fate and overthrow the legend of the woods. They huddle around a campfire on a rocky outcrop. They sit singing and laughing until they see a figure between the trees in the distance, it looks like a man, that appears to have been in an accident. He draws closer. The teens sit deadly still. Thunderclaps in the distance. They turn to look . They turn back to the figure. He is bang next to them now. Michael. The monster. The Katuna. The film ends with a close up on the Katuna's face.

Best Served Cold (film idea)

Best Served Cold

The film starts 10 years in the past with a woman walking by herself down the streets. As she walks many people throw and kick things at her and shout hurtful words in her direction. The woman runs home and decides she cannot take this anymore and when she gets home, she hangs herself.

Now in modern day there is a husband and wife just arriving home from work. On the windowsill there is a poster that says 'Death to Sarah'. The couple have tea and go upstairs to brush their teeth. Suddenly, a woman appears in the corner of the room. The woman screams and the man asks what she is. The woman says that she is their worst nightmare and quickly flies straight at the man and he dies upon immediate contact and the woman disappears.

The wife now left alone in her apartment with her dead husband calls the police. When they arrive they suspect that she has killed him and take her in for questioning. During the interrogation the woman breaks down and starts having a fit so is taking to the emergency ward at the local hospital. She awakens in the hospital in the middle of the night and starts screaming as standing right in front of her, at the end of her bed, is the woman who killed her husband. Suddenly, she can no longer speak and that is when she realises that her mouth is sealed shut. Her lips are gone and the skin at either side is now joined together into one flat piece of skin. When she asks the woman what she wants she says that she is Sarah Baldwin, this is when the audience find out that she is the Sarah from the poster, and that she wants to make her pay for what the wife and her family did to her. The wife slowly starts to rise into the air and is suddenly slammed into the floor and life is taken from her. 

The woman has now gotten her revenge by taking the couple's lives from them as they did to her and she is finally able to ascend into the afterlife with a peaceful soul. The film ends with the woman raising up into the sky never to be seen again.  

Deep in the Woods (film idea)

Deep in the Woods

The film starts with two men walking through the woods when they stumble across an old military base. They decide to go inside to have a look. When inside they see blood across the walls and on the floor. Person A suggests that they should leave but Person B says not to. They continue through the base and suddenly Person B is attacked by an undead zombie. In the panic Person A manages to escape.

When Person A gets back to town he goes to the police station and is laughed away. He then goes to see a private detective called Detective Johnstone. Johnstone says he will help him and organises a team of other detectives with guns and scientists to help find out what has happened.

They set off back to where the incident happened. When they arrive they enter the same door that the two men went in before and are immediately attacked and one of the detectives is killed. Johnstone manages to shoot the zombie attacker before anyone else is hurt. Johnstone begins to talk about how this isn't the first time he has had reports of undead sightings in his career.

They head for the science lab and when they arrive they see smashed test tubes all over the floor. One man steps on some of the glass and it goes through his skin. It is now that the scientists in the team figure out that this is a chemical that has been released from these test tubes into the air. The air is now thankfully clear however the man who stepped on the glass suddenly drops to the floor dead. He then begins to slowly rise back up as a zombie as the chemical had got inside his body from the glass and Johnstone shoots him. This shot is heard around the base and hundreds of undead come running at the lab. Luckily, the door to the lab is very strong so holds out against the banging from the other side. In the meantime, the scientists find some of the chemical in a flask and manage to come up with a way to kill them all. They tell everyone inside the room to put plastic masks over their noses' and mouths and to open the door.

When the door is opened they release the new chemical and all of the zombies are killed. They appear to be free when Johnstone turns around and holds his gun up to Person A and says that everyone else will stay here except for him. When asked why he is doing this he says that he is corrupt and wants to watch them all die. Person A kicks him in the shin and takes the gun. He grabs hold of Johnstone and they walk free from the base and back into the normal world.

Runaway (film idea)

Runaway:
Runaway is about two businessmen that test their friendship when a business deal goes south. It starts off in the opening scene as a flashback to one of the suited men killing the other (who is tied up) however doesn’t show you any faces. Then it will go to where the two men met in university and it will tell you that the two boys were friends and it will show you them smoking cannabis and watching them buy from a local dealer there will then be a time lapse and it will show the two business men working in an office and then they break off to go find a man who contacted them about a business deal which then turns out to be an american mob who tie them up and ask for money to be smuggled to them from their business when one man cracks and transferes the money the other man shows his true colours and we find out he is part of the American mob and the last scene is the same as the first however with faces.

Group Photo

Tom Smith, Darren Stamp, Callum Mitchell and Ellis Byrnes