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gmjames

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...hey everyone just wanted to introduce myself. My name is Greg, look to my profile if you want to know more about me. Anyways, I have an idea for a movie and have started a basic plot outline, character bio's for it. I just need some other peoples point of view on it.

I am writing a vampire/horror film. The difference is going to be that I want it to be filmed in a way similar to the movie Cloverfield. I don't want just one camera though, I would like to make it like a documentary style film. The main plot of the movie would be that some pharmaceutical company was working on a drug that makes people stronger, faster, and able to heal faster (for the military). Even though the desired results were achieved (faster, stronger..) the side effects were too numerous for the drug to be made and distributed. Extreme anger (think roid rage times 100) causing the test subjects to attack anything in their way, blood craze (the subjects driven crazy, would devour their kill). So the project was in the process of being cancelled, but one of the subjects managed to escape and start infecting people near by. Their would be three main story lines, one about the pharm. company executives trying to deal with the escape of one of their illegal human test subjects, one about the military generals trying to keep this underwraps and handle it secretly (failing), and one about a group of people just trying to survive the outbreak.

Thoughts? Criticisms? Too much all at once?
 
Yeah, everything you said seems ripped straight from 5 or so different movies. With the addition of the Cloverfield style it might make it unique enough, but I would go back and re-think the whole drug aspect.
 
Kind of reminds me of 28 Days/Weeks Later. But I do love movies like that so I'd probably be interested to watch it. Especially if it was shot in the first person, handheld format.
 
Any ideas on the whole problem of where the vampires can be created/come from? Maybe an asteroid or something?
 
I don't like the military element. I'm sure a lot of people will, but I am getting tired of seeing thriller/horror films where the military is involved in some sort of coverup regarding a "secret drug" or something like that. Does the military really need to be in your story? You could still keep the drug testing idea, if you wanted, removing the military element, so maybe a group of people looking to make a quick buck put themselves forward to test a dangerous drug..something like that. Still not terribly original or fresh but it's a start.

You could play with the ideas of a blood disease or infection, there are more original ideas out there, if I think of anything I'll let you know, but it depends what your story focus is, ie how much into the origin of the vampires do you want to cover, etc.

I find the human element of survival is always the most interesting thing and that's where you'll probably get most of your response audience wise. Creating interesting characters will be the most important part -- people we care about, dynamic characters.The fight to survive is exciting - how far people will go to save themselves, what kind of danger these characters will be faced with, etc. Not just running and hiding. There needs to be conflict everywhere.

Keep in mind, if you're planning on shooting this yourself you will want to be carful about what you include - write for your budget. If it's got too much VFX or the need for big sets etc. then many independent filmmakers will struggle to pull it off.

Documentary style is alright if you really know what you're doing and can be clever with it. It can get really old fast. If you can come up with a creative way to show everything, then you can get away with it, I suppose.
 
Yea, thanks for the responses everyone. A couple of updates, I have decided to scrap my old idea (too complex for me right now lol). Instead I just tweaked it a little bit. I know Chris said to get rid of the military element, but I think that a first person view of the military would be kind of cool. My aim with this story is to make everything seem real, like if you were watching the video you would have to remind yourself that it's a movie.

So, lets say a government video crew (from the pentagon or some secret part of the military) is told to tag along with a sweeper team to clear out a quarantined area (for research/archive reasons). Around 50 troops are sent in, and the camrea crew follows just a unit of 4. The farther the unit goes into the quarantined area the more they realize they got into something that will probably claim their life. They find some survivors along the way, obviously fight some vampires, and the end of the film would be just show helicopters flying over a deserted neighborhood, and about 20 seconds into the shot you start seeing vampires and people and the helicopters start shooting them. Then go to a shot from farther away showing about 10 helicopters (gunships) just firing away at the neighborhood.
 
ultimately its a survival story involving regular people thrown into a very weird yet terrifying situation. The documentary style is what the difference is here. Also the vampires aren't really like any vampires from any other movies, they sort of form a loosely structured form of order between themselves. They don't really care about anything else, only on finding their next prey. They can work in groups if they have to. Think of the human form of raptors (yes the dinosaur) and you get my vision of a vampire.

Obviously this project is still in its infancy.
 
gmjames said:
im not planning on making this.
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Oh. I was under the impression that you were writing this to make it yourself. Now that I know otherwise it makes commenting easier haha.

When I hear that the main focus will be a 4 man sweeper team sent it to a neighborhood, I think Quarantine. If you haven't seen it its shot in hand held and it follows a group of firefighters sent into a soon-to-be quarantined building. You say they will meet survivors, so I assume that the survivors will be joining the 4 man team, or what's left of them at that point. And then end is just a total evisceration of the neighborhood they were sent into by helicopters? So they all die?

I know trying to write something original nowadays is almost impossible, being a writer myself I know that all too well, but vampires born from drugs is pretty much exactly what I Am Legend's creatures were. So if you want to keep the drugs, I wouldn't go too far into the back story, you want to keep it realistic anyway so the audience would only know what the characters on screen would know, which is very little if they are just trying to survive, but I digress, like I was saying keep the back story to a minimum and maybe only mention the fact that it was an experimental drug once of twice just to let the audience's imaginations wander.

I'll keep thinking on the subject and post any new thoughts. Hope this helps at all.
 
Ezekiel667 said:
Oh. I was under the impression that you were writing this to make it yourself. Now that I know otherwise it makes commenting easier haha.

When I hear that the main focus will be a 4 man sweeper team sent it to a neighborhood, I think Quarantine. If you haven't seen it its shot in hand held and it follows a group of firefighters sent into a soon-to-be quarantined building. You say they will meet survivors, so I assume that the survivors will be joining the 4 man team, or what's left of them at that point. And then end is just a total evisceration of the neighborhood they were sent into by helicopters? So they all die?

I know trying to write something original nowadays is almost impossible, being a writer myself I know that all too well, but vampires born from drugs is pretty much exactly what I Am Legend's creatures were. So if you want to keep the drugs, I wouldn't go too far into the back story, you want to keep it realistic anyway so the audience would only know what the characters on screen would know, which is very little if they are just trying to survive, but I digress, like I was saying keep the back story to a minimum and maybe only mention the fact that it was an experimental drug once of twice just to let the audience's imaginations wander.

I'll keep thinking on the subject and post any new thoughts. Hope this helps at all.
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any outside opinions help, thanks. Yea, I'm not really going into the whole back-story of how the vampires were made. Anyways now that I've thought about it I'm still gonna work on this, but my other projects are going to take top priority because I keep changing my mind on what I want to do with this.
 
Randall_Oelerich said:
Maybe study the script for Cloverfield, since you want to film something in that genre or style of filming.
https://www.scriptfly.com/searchpage/resultpage.php?search=c
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Good idea to study Cloverfield's screenplay. Since you are writing this as a spec script, I don't know how you would really write a documentary camera style into the script. The big thing to avoid with screenwriting, unless you're going to be directing it, is to not include camera directions.

I like your overall idea though. The three story threads could add a different dimension not found in the average linear film narrative.

One suggestion... instead of following the military generals covering things up, why not have the corporate CEO's trying to cover up the whole thing? This way you could make the normal joes trying to survive the A-story, while the corporation's storyline is sort of the B-story/subplot.

As for integrating military characters, maybe have a platoon of soldiers meet up with your average joes and join forces to fight the vamps. Or you could make the soldiers a secondary villain (already done in 28 Weeks Later, unless you can find a different spin on it) by having them ordered to put down anyone that they think might be infected with the virus.

Of course if you go with the military angle then that is a C-story. That could be very interesting.

A-story: average joes trying to survive.

B-story: corporate suits trying to cover the whole thing up.

C-story: military called to restore order and keep the virus from spreading, no matter the cost.

This way each storyline has a separate goal. I think this is more believable, since this is probably how it would actually go down if a vampiric viral outbreak occurred.

Your idea reminds me of one I've always wanted to do, an alien invasion documentary film. My idea is to just have a detailed outline, and film interviews with actors playing the characters. Then film staged real life footage with a bunch of different cameras to simulate the fact that a global event would be captured with everything from an HVX200 to a pocket camcorder. I would then intercut the fake eyewitness and news footage with the random interviews of the survivors of the war.

So, if you want to use a similar approach, this could be a D-story for you. Little bits of random interviews taken after the fact with survivors of the chaos. These could be people that are not in any of the other stories, but their stories would add to or counterpoint the A, B, and C stories.

Also, don't forget news footage that could be used as exposition: where certain things are happening, what roads are closed, how fast the virus is spreading, what the so-called experts think, what the health authorities are telling citizens to do, etc. You could have a scene or two showing your A-story characters as they watch the news or listen to the radio for information.

I apologize for the long post, but the little elves in my idea factory are working overtime tonight.
 
The movie Lifeforce sort of did something along that line. Good movie actually, starred Mathilda May (The Jackal, etc), Patrick Stewart (Star Trek NG). If you like the nakedness LOL she walks around buck naked almost the entire movie.



gmjames said:
Any ideas on the whole problem of where the vampires can be created/come from? Maybe an asteroid or something?
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Lifeforce was pretty cool. I love me some 80's sci-fi horror flicks.

Although for the vampire virus origin idea in this thread's topic, I'd say stay away from using an asteroid. It is not as compelling as something created by human hands and minds.
 
Nektonic said:
Lifeforce was pretty cool. I love me some 80's sci-fi horror flicks.

Although for the vampire virus origin idea in this thread's topic, I'd say stay away from using an asteroid. It is not as compelling as something created by human hands and minds.
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yea, I'm sure I will think of something more original.
 
Actually a virus quite likely could survive the re-entry. Fossilized evidence of bacteria in meteors has been discovered, and viruses are even more primitive than bacteria. Google panspermia, or bacteria discovered in meteor. Re-entry would not pose a problem if shielded within the meteor/comet.

Nektonic said:
I think that is a wise choice since I forgot to also mention the fact that an asteroid bound virus might not even survive the re-entry of the Earth's atmosphere.
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Randall_Oelerich said:
Actually a virus quite likely could survive the re-entry. Fossilized evidence of bacteria in meteors has been discovered, and viruses are even more primitive than bacteria. Google panspermia, or bacteria discovered in meteor. Re-entry would not pose a problem if shielded within the meteor/comet.
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You're right, it could survive. I'm thinking that with the narrative you'd then have to explain that so the audience doesn't feel like the story is unrealistic. Of course, with this being a documentary style piece, that kind of exposition would be easier than in a traditional film narrative.

He could always combine the corporation and the asteroid concept. Maybe the bio-engineering corporation found the meteorite and then started using the alien virus as a starting point to create the vampiric virus?
 
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