Short Films Development (1) / 'Man's Best Friend'

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'Man's Best Friend' a 4-5 minute student horror.
The main focus being on the usage of homemade practical effects having been inspired by sources such as 'The Thing 1982' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Bottin), 'Evil Dead 2' (which in turn spawned the now popular series known 'Ash vs the Evil Dead') and 'An American Werewolf in London'. I feel as though making a modern-day homage to these cult classics will serve as a testament to the cinematographic art form that is practical effects production.





For my short film I have planned to limit myself to a 5 second limit on the use of animated practical effects as I feel as though attempting to make anything longer than that would be either unrealistic from a production standpoint, or a waste of time relative to the amount of usable footage gained. Though the overall plot of my film is relativistically speaking, very basic, however I believe that my focus on practical effects will stir back memories of old classics that did not have to rely so heavily on CGI that they lost what initially grounded them to a realistic setting (i.e. 'Blade Runner', 'The original STAR WARS trilogy', etc.).

(Relative) Progress:
Initially I planned to create a 2 minuted animated short but it quickly became apparent that that wasn't feasible in due to both the set time frame and my general skill level. However I decided I would not fully abandon the idea since my dad had always taught me about the artistic usage of practical effects and visual illusions in film making. From there, I began to craft a simple film plot, reminiscent of something one would see in the late 80's / 90's; from there all I needed was a Monster.
I have spent around 12-14 hours working on a silicon arm model with a custom aluminium armature so as to allow retained movement for the creation of a 5-6 second stop-frame animation that will be included in the final version of my 'student film'.
One of the main issues I have come across during the production of this short, is the prevention of drag within the film's plot. I must allocate more of my focus towards the filling of time, ensuring that (almost) every scene possesses some kind of sensory/creative/ideological value. One way i might go about doing this with the inclusion of dramatic irony, by providing the viewer(s) with (sensory) information that isn't detected by the film's protagonist, I can imbue previously low value scenes with a sense of worth, transforming them into scenes of critical importance that help to drive the plot forward and improve the film's narrative structure.

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