Friday 23 September 2011

Narrative - Idea Process

The last couple of days the group have be tossing ideas to one another and hitting them back with much needed feedback to develop those ideas. Those ideas have all been up in the air and they consist of things like, what if this happened here, what if we enlarged this and made it attack this place or what is it that comes from the centre of the earth that comes up. So far they didn’t have any solid grounds because by the time we all liked something, we’d follow on from that with something that has reminded us, and we would forget all about the idea.


Originally my initial ideas were the following:

IDEA 1 – To have the planet as a living “Brain or control network” and give it the ability to control the crude oil that has been taken from it by man, which in essences is being used and destroying the planet with the waste. Crude oil is used everywhere, everything from the petrol in cars to the gas in on the stove. I thought it would be cool from the planet to control this to destroy man and return the planet to its original stat in time. If we were to set this in the Second World War period, we could use the old war planes and maybe turn the war into a man vs. machine war, (Too much like Terminator? Okay). However if the time period was in the future, then Daniel’s Plane a day project that he did over the summer would be able to play a beautiful part in the designs and development. I think B-Movie mixed with a Sci-fi genre would look really nice with this idea.

IDEA 2 – There’s a sudden earthquake in our location that causes a giant crack in the ground. The crack unlocks a chamber that holds a giant monster of some kind that has been locked away for thousands or millions of years. With that much time with yourself as company, you’re going to want to get out there and make an impression. So this creature rises to the surface and causes destruction. The creature could be Plant-based, Animal-based, Element-based or perhaps a mix of all three.

IDEA 3 – This idea came about while I was watching “War of the Worlds – the remake” and is the reason from the idea. The link with the film is that there’s something buried underground (possible in the very centre and it’s what the earth was formed around). Then alien life forms come down to retrieve it up from the ground and destroy. (Okay it’s pretty much exactly like the film, maybe I was watching it a bit too closely). But perhaps we could make it a bit more horror and B-movie like than what the film is like, although that’s more like the original. – I think it’s safe to say that this idea wasn’t going to get much attention....

IDEA 4 – This idea is like the first idea, but instead of the planet controlling the crude oil, it controls the nature. I think the idea of the trees attacking the buildings to knock them down, or the vines and other plant life, pulling a car to pieces. Then the animals can come in and once again attack man (this would be like the birds but on an extreme level!!)

IDEA 5 – This idea starts off with a group of humans searching a new cave, and via some wrong turn, or fall or something, they awaken a creature that has been down in the cave for a long time. Then that creature comes onto the surface and wreaks havoc. This idea once again would be a B-movie approach with either sci-fi or horror genre or possibly both.

Sum up of the ideas

What I noticed with the ideas that I initially started with, is that I definitely prefer the B-movie approach; I think that it could be a very interesting way to go. I also seem to favour the destruction of man and Earth having its revenge for what we have done to it in some form of way. I knew that these ideas were only my own and wanted to hear what the others had so we could determine a cross reference or a link or a new idea completely.

Kolade and Daniels ideas were really good, they were diverse some were well thought about. Kolade had a beautiful idea about an army of Golden Ants, Daniel had ideas about an evil genius’ base in the centre of the earth and it’s that character that causes destruction. We had plenty more ideas together as well, but as I said, they were all in the air waiting to be served.

However, we had a chat with Alan, and he helped us cement some things down for us in terms of where to go with these ideas. He depicted that most of the ideas sounded like they were more in the sci-fi genre, with a little horror thrown in. He also pointed out that the ideas were leaning more to the B-movie approach. He made us all realise as well that a giant beast of some kind destroying some sort of city or location, could look very interesting. Alan gave us some ideas on how to make it look like a B-movie, with his ideas of having a slight shake from the set, or make sure the creature looks like a puppet and show the strings that control it.

This meeting seemed to be all we needed to really get cracking because great ideas started to flow and were eventually set in stone. We all agreed that there should be a creature destroying a famous landmark in America because as Daniel pointed out, America is the only place B-movies are made in or set in. The two locations we came up with was the Hollywood sign and LA or New York City. We decided New York City would be the best location because of the water that surrounds it; it gives us a wider range of story positional.

So that’s all agreed on, next thing we wanted to come up with was the “What if” situation. Basically, how did the creature become the size it did? Where did it come from? Etc. The idea that kept cropping up was nuclear waste dump into the water and infection this creature in it normal stat. There was also an idea of an evil scientist dumping some chemicals to create something on purpose.

However, are titles is “Invasion from the centre of the Earth”, so we need to have something coming up. This lead to an idea of having an earthquake or general crack in the ground that infects something down there and its mutated self comes back up. Then bang we have our monster.



We set ourselves a to-do-list to do for Monday, which was all of us create some ideas of what the creature could be and come up with a some sort of plot that we could put with what we already have. This will include finalising the “What if”. As well as this I will be setting my own task of watching some more B-movie films because my knowledge of them is weaker than in could be, plus it could spark ideas.

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