Production Package - NYPD Character Profiles

Here are the mock profiles for some of the characters that are in Cthulhu. I will update regularly with sections and groups of characters that are categorised in a similar pretext. Here, I will show the first draft character profiles for the officers within the New York Police Department:

John Raymond Legrasse:

A strong independent man, Legrasse is a Detective Chief Inspector with the NYPD. He is strong willed, good natured and very dedicated to his job, often putting in overtime into the job he so loves, much to his wife’s dismay.  He has an athletic figure, with short thinning brown hair and dark stubble covering his face. He has an athletic figure, is relatively tall standing around 6 foot, and can look intimidating when he wants to be. Legrasse is in his mid-thirties and a father of one. Sometimes he gets too involved with his work, making him a good cop but also vulnerable to occasionally getting too emotionally attached to some of the victims he is trying to help. Legrasse is charged with being the lead Detective in a series of missing person’s cases that take place in a short amount of time. He will go through whatever means possible to solve a case, occasionally taking his position of power slightly too far. Upon meeting Professor William Webb, he has a hard time believing in the “mythology and fairy tales” that Webb is trying to explain to him. It is only when his own wife and child go missing that he starts to believe in the unknown.

Aimie Fiber

A Detective Inspector within the NYPD, she is partnered with John Legrasse and works with him in all of his cases. She is of a Latin origin. Fiber can often be quite feisty, and whilst she can keep a calm rapport she tends to have short outbursts when something displeases her. She has a rather sarcastic manner to herself, and enjoys making digs at people in higher authority then herself, including Legrasse and even her Captain, Peter Michaels. However, Fiber is kind hearted, and good at what she does, often putting in overtime herself. She is of average height, standing at around 5 foot 5 inches, with a slender figure and long black hair, usually worn in a ponytail.  She tends to dress quite smart, as she has to with the job. Having worked with Legrasse for many years, she knows him rather well and looks up to him, and in times of need and desperation, knows how to keep Legrasse grounded.

Captain Peter Michaels

Michaels is the Captain of Legrasse and Fiber’s department at the NYPD. Michaels is an older and experienced man, with many years in the field. He is in his mid-fifties and still going strong as an acting Captain. He is friendly and warm, however when it comes to work he means business. He will often try and push the detectives in his department to get the best results he can. He knows how to run and office and knows how to control his men. He is a huge New York Giants fan, with much memorabilia in and around his office. He is also a very caring man with a wife whom he cares for dearly, who unknown to Legrasse and Fiber has also gone missing, and he expresses worry but only to himself.

Sergeant Beaumont

A police Sergeant of the NYPD and a non-field officer, Beaumont spends most of her time under the care of Captain Michaels, working as his official secretary. Despite her high rank, Beaumont prefers the administrative side of police work, and does what she can to help out around the offices. She is a smart, well-dressed and strict woman, with Red Hair usually worn in a bun and oval glasses. She has a soft spot for the Captain, having once worked with him as his partner; they now work together to keep everything well maintained and appropriate in the office.

Detective Richards

Richards is an obnoxious detective who considers himself better than others. He constantly looks down on people thinking he is the best at what he does, which is reflected in the good results he gets on the cases he works. He is constantly at a rivalry with Legrasse, and tries to upstage him a lot of the time. He has a soft spot for Fiber, and consistently tries to hit on her, which is never too successful. Things take a turn for the worse for Richards however, when he is taken over by the Shoggoth and he becomes an important member of the Cult of Cthulhu.

Production Package - Filming

Over the weekend, James and I helped Jamie, who is in charge of the visual aspects of the package, with filming a couple of shots for the opening title sequence of Cthulhu.

We mocked up our living room to look like the meeting place of a cult, with a large pedestal with a big book standing upon it. The room was pitch black apart from a couple of candlestick holders with lit candles sat on ceramic pillar type objects. We hung black sheets on the wall to give a darker feel to the whole shot.

The following day we turned the same living room, into William Webb's lab, as best we could. We had a variety of science based objects scattered around a table, and Jamie did an ariel shot of the table. This included test-tubes, goggles, a double helix, magnifying glasses, a strange leather-bound book and much more. The results seemed rather successful.

Jamie will be putting all this together into a title sequence with chosen music and the actors names James has chosen coming up, as with a normal title sequence. Overall we said we would help Jamie out as we could with anything to do with his filming, as we are a team.

Production Concept - Scripting continued and Plot Summary

Over the past week, James and I have been hard at work adding more to the script. Before we continued we came up with the majority of the whole plot summary, outlining key scenes and everything that is to happen within them. This helped us to know what to include in the scenes we are writing, giving the script a better flow to it and making it easier for us to write.

We are currently almost half way through writing the script, with the aims to have the entire thing finished by the end of the week. Continuing on from the last blog about the script I wrote, we have written quite a few more scenes.

Within these scenes, Legrasse and his partner Aimie Fiber get put on new cases by the man in charge of them, Captain Michaels. Ever since the earthquake from the opening scene, New York has been under constant repair after the short unnatural earthquake struck, causing quite a lot of collateral damage. In this time Michaels explains that there have been a record number of missing person's over the course of the week, reaching almost 1000 different cases reported. He tells the duo that, as his best detectives, he wants them to look through the case files, and try and find a connection between them. Legrasse and Fiber see this as an impossible task but start to work anyway before giving up for the night. As they work however, their obnoxious coworker comes over to bother them, a man known as Detective Richards. He hits on Fiber and gets brutally knocked down, before wiping it off and heading to the showers. At this point Legrasse and Fiber head home as well.

Whilst in the shower, Richards is minding his own business, washing his hair when the shower stops. He manages to get soap in his eyes, and while trying to turn the shower back on, he doesn't notice the strange viscous, amorphous gooey substance excreting from the shower head. As it fully forms at the end of the shower, it jumps onto Richards face, latching onto it. He screams and struggles, trying to get it off. The blob manages to get inside of Richards just as he falls over. As he looks up we see his eyes are now solid black, it would seem he has been taken over by whatever this blob was.

Legrasse returns home, his wife, Rachel, not too impressed with him being late yet again, and a short argument takes place.

After a few more days, Fiber and Legrasse are back in the office still attempting to find a connection. Legrasse admits that him and Rachel haven't been getting along recently, due to him working too much and putting in too much over-time, thus barely getting to see his wife and child. Beaumont, Michaels' secretary comes and delivers a new batch of missing person's cases to the duo, who decide it would be best to start with the fresher cases. Fiber finds a cell phone number and suggests they call it, much to Legrasse's dismay. Upon calling, Fiber puts the phone on loudspeaker, as an answer is received, however it turns out to be a strange an unknown language, spoken in a strange voice. Legrasse records the voice on his phone, as a phrase is being repeated over and over again, and not responding to Fiber's questions. They decide this could be a lead and they could get the language deciphered.

Legrasse calls his wife Rachel, as he knows she could help as she had a Professor at her University who specialised in old languages, as a professor of Anthropology. She gives the name William Webb to Legrasse, who thanks her before hanging up, which doesn't impress Rachel too much.

The two head to the University of Columbia, where Professor William Webb is based. They enter his office and explain the situation to him. After replaying the recorded chanting back to him, he immediately manages to decipher it. He then tells the two about Cthulhu, and says that the missing person's cases could all be related to the resurrection of the Dark Lord, which the pair find very hard to believe and consider a waste of time.

With William Webb, we have implemented a series of quirks and mannerisms with him to make him seem quite strange and cooky, to fit within the character description that we have of him. He constantly says confusing things and never tends to look the detectives in the eye, showing a slight socially awkward characteristic of his. We show his enthusiasm of him being fascinated and incredibly happy to hear the language, running up and down bookshelves to find a particular book, which he seems overly proud of. The idea was to have him quite a bizarre character - an old nut, and so far I believe we have succeeded with this.

Production Concept - scripting

So James and I started writing the first part of the script for Cthulhu.

We managed to achieve the first 13 pages, including the opening scene. The opening couple of scenes, to roll before the title sequence, involve a group of marine biologists out at sea, on a rented fishing boat. While the fisherman do their work, the marine biologists are attempting to get readings on an earthquake hey believe to be imminent. As if out of nowhere, the bright sunny clear sky turns as black as night, fray clouds and a huge storm hits. This causes mass amounts of waves, and the biologists detect readings they never thought possible. Two marine biologists run out on to the deck, dangerously, and manage to get into their submersible, and head under water to see if they can find the cause. Whilst underwater,the biologists on the boat announce that the storm has suddenly stopped, much to their confusion. The two underwater continue on regardless, finding a giant underwater city with strange writing and decaying buildings everywhere. Suddenly the submersible starts shaking, and one of the biologists spies something, and a look of terror goes down his face. As the other biologist looks the outside of the submersible is seen, as a huge yellow eye opens, and the screen fades to black.

We then wrote the intro to the protagonist, which just included him at work, and a short phone all with his wife.

We intend to keep writing more and I shall keep this blog updated with everything we write which happens in the script.