Production Package - Contributers

This blog is to credit our contributors and collaborators and highlight what they did to help work on the project with us.

Jamie Drabble - A 3rd year Illustration Student at the University for the Creative Arts. Jamie created the titles for us, laid our book out in the correct format so it could be printed and designed the costume profiles located within our Art Portfolio.

Domantas Lukosius - A 3rd year CG Arts Student at the University for the Creative Arts. Domantas designed our preliminary designs for Cthulhu, which eventually lead to us having the full artwork for him made.

Jordan Grimmer - A professional concept artist who is self employed. Jordan used the base designs provided by Domantas, as well as clear description through my contacting with him, to help create the final two images we have used for our monster design of Cthulhu. Jordan's website can be found at: http://www.jordangrimmer.co.uk/ and his Deviant Art profile, can be found here.

Production Package - Finished Package

The finished production Package includes many different elements. Contained within are the bound script, the book, an art portfolio, a poster, a t-shirt and the DVD box art along with the DVDs of each individual video file, presented in an attractive and appropriate way.

This is the folder used as the art portfolio. Contained are each of the monster images in progression to the final designs, as well as the character costume mock ups we had made.

The fully bound script, 103 pages long and the fourth draft.

This is the book we had made. Contained within is the introduction, broadcaster information, synopsis, character profiles, casting profiles, crew profiles, promotional materials and the very early preliminary monster designs.

The Inside Cover

Contents Page

The Introduction.


Altogether I believe the package has come together very well. I have hit a few snags along the way, down to my own fault of poor time management, but an unbelievable amount of work went into creating this as what it is, and I believe that it has come together to the best of my ability, with all the bits I have worked on, as well as everyone James and Jamie's contribution to the project.

In the future to improve, I would manage my time better, balancing it out with the other projects I may have. This would entail me to have gotten more copies of the script as a draft for my tutor to read and give feedback on, helping me to make it as good as it possibly can be. Also it was a struggle to find anyone for the monster designs, and after people pulled out, I should have looked earlier. Nonetheless, who I managed to employ for doing it to us did a stellar job that I believe really brought our finished product together.

Production Package - Sourcing the box

The box was rather difficult to find, as we wanted one that would fit our package quite well. A dark coloured, rusty old box, which would look like it would house a rather old ancient book. We checked every where for one, going on websites such as eBay and Gumtree, and we found many that looked appealing, however they were either too expensive, or collection only thus quite far away. We found that quite often they were also too small to house everything we intended in, or in fact too large.

However, looking in an antics shop in Maidstone, Trash or Treasure, we came across an old 1940's WWII medical chest. It was rusted and worn down, and looked perfect. The only problem with it was it was white, with a large red cross on the front and back. This is why we bought black spray paint, and after giving it a couple of layers, I managed to completely remove the crosses from it, yet at the same time keeping it with its old rusty look and feel. It fits our piece perfectly and is the perfect size and item to present our package in. Here is the finished painted box.

Production Package - Character Costume Designs

I wrote detailed character profiles which have been posted previously in this blog. However, separate to these, I had mocked up 5 costume designs for the main characters, which are included in the art portfolio. With these, I found multiple pictures of the actors chosen, as well as each individual bit of costume I wanted them to wear, before giving them to our artist, Jamie Drabble, to mock up for me. With each image I included a short profile explaining why they would wear what they do, as well as giving in more detail apart from just the image, what they are wearing and the colours I imagined them to be. These were the finished designs drawn up that are in our art portfolio. Note, the characters do not have their full faces, as these are in the casting profiles, and these were made specifically for costume, yet maintaining the characters actual body shape and hairstyle.

John Legrasse was easy to decide what to wear. Being a detective, most in the NYPD don't dress in uniform, but rather dress in a smart attire, usually wearing a suit and tie. I had Mr Drabble draw this up for me, with my selection of trousers. Highlighted on the side are the colours of everything he wears, as well as a short reasoning as to why.

 Aimie Fiber, again, was easy to decide like Legrasse. Being a detective, she wears a full suit, however rather than a shirt and tie, a white blouse has been given to her. In this mock up she does wear her hair down quite long, however she is also seen with a ponytail a lot of the time in the script.

Professor William Webb was a difficult one to decide. I debated having him in a white lab coat for a while, but then decided against it, as I thought it may look slightly out of place. Instead, we have given him the clothing of what you would possibly imagine an old american college professor would. Corduroy  slacks, plimsolls like shoes, a shirt with a patterned sweater-vest sitting over the top.

Gustaf was a simple one to do again. Being a student, we didn't see it necessary for him to have any form of elaborate costume. So instead, we simply gave him t-shirt and jeans combo, a standard for many American college students.

This was also a simple design to use. These are the robes Don and Hannah wear as the leaders of the Cult of Cthulhu. Quite simply, long black hooded robes that cover the majority of their face when worn up. It gives a sense of the occult, which we were aiming for.

Altogether, I feel these designs came out rather well, in the way we imagined. Looking into the package further highlights the colours and exact clothing specifications each character has. This blog mainly says why we have chosen them and my reasoning.

Production Package - The Introduction

I had to create the introduction for our entire package to go at the front of our book. It wasn't particularly difficult and wasn't subject to much change, as it just detailed what was going to be in the package as a whole. Here was the finished product in the book.

Production Package - The Synopsis

I was in charge of writing a synopsis to go with the book we were producing. This took some time, as I had to tell the story, without giving the story away. It was also quite hard to do so for a feature film and making it one page long, so it ended up a page and a half, although, transgressing that to the book, and with a larger font size, it became almost 3 pages. It was subject to change quite a lot, as we changed and edited different parts of the script, so too did I have to do so with the synopsis. Whether it was rearranging or combining paragraphs or even cutting bits out altogether, I believe I have managed to tell the story, without giving every last detail away. Mainly I just summarised the scenes by grouping them together. This was the finished product:

The film starts off on a fishing boat just off the East Coast of the North Atlantic Ocean. Upon this boat a team of four archeologists, renting out space within the boat, are searching for an ancient city named Rl’yeh, believed to be hidden at the bottom of the Ocean they are on. They are searching for a place believed to constantly have a storm over it. Reaching the coordinates of the supposed ongoing storm, they become confused as all is calm. Suddenly however, a massive storm emerges, and they know they are in the place they are looking for. Despite the storm, two of the scientists Don and Hannah, rush out to an underwater submersible, and head underwater to see if they can find the city they are searching for. They discover an underwater city, which they believe to be Rl’yeh, exactly what they wanted to find, and head deeper to investigate. Whilst underwater however, the submersible starts malfunctioning, and before they know it, a giant creature sits in front of them, opening its eye causing them to scream and vanish.

One week later we see the city of New York. On the rooftops of the bustling city, a Detective, John Legrasse and his partner Aimie Fiber are in pursuit of diamond thieves. After a struggle, they eventually manage to capture the perpetrators, not without massive damage to police equipment, much to the anger of their Captain, Peter Michaels. As punishment for the destruction they have caused, and the two detectives reckless, but heroic actions, Michaels orders them to stay in the office and take on some new and important desk work. He explains to them that a record number of people have gone missing in New York within the past week, and he asks them to look through all of the reports and files of the missing people, and see if they can find any correlation behind the disappearances. The two detectives unwillingly accept.

Legrasse’s family, back in the suburbs are properly introduced now, as his wife Rachel, prepares to give their eight year old son Tommy a bath. Things do not go according to plan though, as whilst running the bath, the water stops. Instead of more water coming from the spout of the tap, a strange viscous substance arises, engulfing the entire tap. Intrigued, Rachel goes in for a closer look, and she is attacked by the substance. She wrestles with it, trying to get it off of her face, but sadly fails, and the gooey substance enters her body through every orifice on her head. Tommy, terrified by what he has just seen, checks to see his mother is alright, before her eyes open, and they are now pitch black.

As we continue, Legrasse and Fiber struggle to find any connections behind the missing peoples reports, and they get harassed by a colleague, Detective Richards. Afterwards the pair give up and go to their separate homes, but Richards, who takes a shower at the police station, suffers the same fate as Rachel. Upon arriving home, Legrasse’s family are nowhere to be seen, which panics him as it is so late. He tries to call his wife on her cell phone, but receives a strange voice talking in an unknown language, answering in her place. Legrasse quickly runs back to the station, getting Fiber to meet him on the way. Legrasse plays the message he heard over the phone to Fiber. They realize that there is a slight echo to the voice on the message. Looking into it more they discover that all of the people who went missing’s locations were on the same path of an underground sewer system. Figuring they need to get the message translated, they look up online someone who may be able to help, and discover an Anthropology Professor at Columbia University. On their way out, the pair are attacked by a naked brainwashed Richards, whose eyes are of a pitch black colour. After restraining him, they attempt to talk to him, but he continuously speaks in the same language heard over the phone. The two detectives decide they need to get to this Professor’s place immediately.

The pair arrive at the office of Professor William Webb at Columbia University. They play him the recording, and he recognizes the language immediately. He refers them to an ancient book, and tells them the story of the ancient God Cthulhu who ruled over Earth thousands of years ago, and that a cult might one day rise again to bring him back. Legrasse finds the idea of a giant monster implausible, but has reason to believe the story of the cult is true.

At an abandoned church on a cliff front, just off the main city of New York, hundreds of people gather, all with pitch black eyes, and sit in a church. Fore fronting are two people dressed in black robes, who then reveal themselves to be Don and Hannah, the first two to run into Cthulhu, however they now have pitch black eyes, and are heading the cult. They head to the cliff front, and chant a spell, causing the stars to glow and form a beam of light on the Ocean. At that point of the Ocean, the giant monster Cthulhu then rises, picking up a boat once coming out of the water, and throwing it towards the mainland. The boat comes crashing down in New York, killing many people. This process is repeated with multiple boats and whatever gets in Cthulhu’s way as he makes his way to the city.

Back at Webb’s office, a young man enters from a separate room at the back of the office. This is Gustaf, Webb’s best student and assistant. Gustaf enquires why the police are there. Legrasse and Fiber ask more about the cult and Cthulhu, explaining everything that has happened to them over the past few hours. Fiber then receives a call from Michaels, and the four gather together in Legrasse’s car, as they have just received word that boats are raining down on the city. Webb and Gustaf go with them after agreeing to help find the cult.

They reach the Brooklyn Bridge, and witness Cthulhu rising out of the water from under the bridge, causing much destruction as he does so. The four all run for their lives, Legrasse looking more terrified than ever before, and he pushes civilians out of the way in an effort to save his own skin. Whilst running, he spots his wife Rachel, who walks down an alley and he follows her. When he reaches the alley she is nowhere to be seen, and he breaks down completely. Fiber goes after him, but Legrasse is a wreck. He can barely move, he is crying, and he eventually accepts in his mind that his wife and son are probably dead. In his weakened and reckless state, Legrasse from the alleyway, climbs to the top of the building via the fire escapes to confront the giant monster nearby. He shouts at Cthulhu, grabbing its attention. A cat and mouse chase ensues, with Legrasse jumping from building to building as Cthulhu smashes each one he runs to. Managing to barely escape, Legrasse meets up with his team and they head into the underground sewer system for safety.

The group head on, following the sewer system, losing Gustaf in the process. This eventually brings them to a church, where a final showdown between the cult, the detectives and Cthulhu begins. But who will succeed?

Production Package - Script Finalising

In the end we managed to get to draft 4 of the script before we were ready to submit. The piece ended up being 103 pages long.

The feedback we received after the second draft pushed us to change up many of the scenes, and help make the dialogue seem less forced. To do this, we got our housemates to help with a read through of the entire script, in order to tell us which lines didn't work, and which did. This took place after the third draft was completed and we sent the edits over for feedback. The improvements were noted, however, as I said, the dialogue still came out slightly too forced over some of the script. We believe we have made significantly better changes to the dialogue, so it is less 'lets tell the audience the plot through our speeches' and more natural.

The ending was difficult to change and mock up, seeing as it was still quite weak after the feedback from our third draft. We changed it slightly, to incorporate a more over-the-top SyFy style, with Cthulhu going out with a bang, quite literally. To do this, we got inspiration from the SyFy Movie, Sharknado. Towards the end, the main character gets eaten by a Shark but cuts himself out with a Chainsaw. This made us think to ourselves, if Cthulhu can't be hurt from the outside, what about the inside? This resulted in Legrasse, saving his partner from being eaten by the beast, and has him jump into its mouth himself, yet holding a fuel cannister. Just before Cthulhu is sent back, Legrasse manages to blast his way out of Cthulhu's torso, and is the first time we properly see Cthulhu in actual physical pain.

Regarding Cthulhu and Legrasse, we needed to incorporate a scene with an actual confrontation between the two, rather than just at the end. This resulted in Legrasse climbing to a roof top and confronting the beast head on, resulting in a, rather action packed, cat and mouse chase between Legrasse and Cthulhu, with Legrasse representing the mouse, and Cthulhu chasing after him. Despite his size, Cthulhu does have factors of personality, as he is a highly intelligent monster, compared to others that you get in monster movies, who tend to be large creatures acting on instinct.

We also needed Legrasse and Fiber to do more detecting, as they are detectives, but I believe we managed that quite successfully, despite sometimes it being quite subtle when they do so.

Overall, despite the cutting of many characters, the changing of others, all is necessary in a script. We encountered many problems but managed to make amends to the best of our ability, using different techniques of other people proof reading, and doing read throughs ourselves with an outside source of someone who had never read the script.

Now, all 103 pages are properly bound, and is placed in our production package.

Production Package - Final Artwork

So last week we successfully managed to source an artist, Jordan Grimmer, who designed Cthulhu for us as well as the artwork we have used for the DVD cover. We have placed all in an art portfolio with the package, documenting each image in it's progress state as Jordan sent to us. The final designs look as follows.

With the first image, we expressed to him from the original designs from Domastas, that we wanted to use a similar head for the creature, and colour a greeny, brown body. We asked for rather long arms as well as decayed wings, which can be seen on his back, they are currently not spread. We feel the design worked perfectly, and just how we imagined.

For this second image, we wanted Cthulhu with his arm stretched out towards the person viewing the image. This  image however was subject to a lot of change as I worked things out with Jordan. Initially, we were going to have Cthulhu underwater, again, with his hand reached out. It looked good, however still looked relatively plain, like in the first image. Talking to Jamie Shaw, who was in charge of the dvd design, he thought it would look better if Cthulhu was out of the water, surrounded by buildings on either side, as if he was already on a New York street, with a stormy clouds over head. Again this looked good, but we asked Jordan to place Fire and Smoke below him, which gave a sense of the impending destruction that he would cause.

It was a good experience working with Jordan, and was well worth the money. Not giving him a clear direction for the second image hindered us slightly, and meant we had to ask Jordan to put some more time into the piece. However by doing so, I believe we got the perfect artwork done for our piece. Having mocked the second one up into a poster, with the titles on the bottom and the tagline "Evil from the Depths" above Cthulhu, I am very happy with the end results.

In future however, I need to sort this out quicker, as I neglected thinking of someone for the main design, due to many dropouts, however, it all worked out in the end, and we couldn't have chosen a better artist.