The Monkey: Storyboards

For the storyboards, we sketched out rough ideas of what we wanted on paper, and then made our final versions in Photoshop. Neither Ethan or I are artists, so Photoshop allowed us to easily make templates and adjust our work to our liking. When setting up our template, we made a typical, 1920x1080 Photoshop document to emulate the typical 16:9 aspect ratio of most viewing devices. Since our movie is in 4:3 aspect ratio, we created a blank, 4 by 3 inch white work space in the middle of the original document to lay out our shots. 

The first shot aims to establish the presence of an unknown figure. The camera slowly and shakily zooms in on our main characters as heavy breathing and a dark, one-note synth compliment the visuals. We were very inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween for this first shot.

The second shot shows our main characters playing a video game in a warmly lit room. The video game (Nintendo Entertainment System), set design, and costuming aims to establish the 80's mise-en-scene we were going for with the film to pay homage to the slasher genre so popular at the time. The decision to make it a scene of teenagers engaging with media was heavily inspired by the opening scene of The Ring (2002), since it helps our target audience better sympathize with our main characters.

The next shot aims to build off the mise-en-scene of the last shot, showing both the old, tube TV and the vintage gaming console. The handshakes that the characters say goodbye with will also match the mid-80's time period. Also, the leaving of the friend's signals a change in tone, as things go from warm, relate-able, and cozy, to cold, lonely, and uncomfortable. To accent this change in tone, Corey will turn off the lamp giving the room it's warm lighting, and will enter the harsh, fluorescent lighting of his hallway and kitchen.

This shot is meant to establish the layout of Corey's house as well as the presence of the killer in Corey's house. Once Corey leaves the frame, a face pokes out of the closet door at the end of the hallway.

This one is pretty self explanatory. Corey cuts chicken on his counter, and feeds it to his dog Snowy in the next frame.

We made the decision to keep the dog out of frame for two reasons. Firstly, the location we were filming in didn't allow animals, so we were forced to make all aspects with Snowy auditory. Secondly, we didn't want the focus of the scene's tragedy to be the death of Snowy, but instead the death of Corey. Corey is portrayed as an upstanding individual, avoiding the smack-talk between his friends and caring lovingly for his dog. Showing the dog might have distracted the audience from who we wanted the true emotional center of the scene to be.

This shot mimics the shot from earlier of Corey walking down the hallway. However, unlike earlier when Corey seemed nonchalant walking down the hallway, he is know shaky and unsure of what he will find behind the closet door. We wanted to highlight this change in emotion with the parallelism of the shot. The shot stays the same, but Corey's behavior changes.

For this shot, we were inspired by a shot from Hereditary (2018) shown below, where Toni Colette's character, Annie, reacts to the death of her husband. We really wanted to highlight the horror Corey feels, so we wanted to focus on his face instead of Snowy's dead body.

Annie (Toni Colette) reacts to the burning of her husband in Hereditary (2018). 

Much like the hallway shot, we wanted to utilize repetition/parallelism to demonstrate the change of tone from the beginning to the end of the scene. The same shot was used earlier to make the audience feel warm and nostalgic, but is now being used to show panic and fear.  

For this shot, we were once again inspired by John Carpenter's Halloween. In the shot shown below, we are initially focused on Laurie Strode's cries of relief in the foreground. But since there are two-thirds of dead space in the frame, we are forced to question what the director is trying to show. This creates tension and build-up leading up to Michael Myer's iconic sit-up. In our scene, we wanted to emulate this shot by focusing on Corey initially, but leaving the open closet door in the background to create tension. The focus then changes to the background to reveal the presence of the killer.

Laurie Strode rests in her doorway after supposedly killing Michael Myers. The dead space in the rightmost two-thirds of the shot creates tension, leading up to the reveal that Michael Myers is still alive.