SIDE REACTION
Narrative Demo: http://philome.la/leilawangy/side-reaction
In the final project for New Direction in Narrative, I am going to collaborate with Leila (Yin Wang) who is making an interactive video series.Leila is the director who writes the screenplay for Side Reaction. My role is a filmmaker whose responsibilities are accomplishing a particular visual effect in the project.
The story of Side Reaction is a university student who has a second chance to change his fate after suffered a fatal accident. Audiences will participate in the interactive story by watching video clips. The narrative develops when participants choose one of the multiple options provided at the end of each video. Every decision will reveal a new part of the story and the goal is keeping the protagonist alive.
(Side Reaction, Narrative Structure)
In the week 9’s class, Leila and I has discussed a several of things about the interactive project. We exchanged some ideas with each other and we developed a consensus toward the project.Technically, Leila defines the work as a comedy horror genre. She provides me a complete view of Side Reaction by demonstrating the storyboard and the narrative structure. We find a visual reference, Deliver Me to Hell, which is the particular style matching her requirements.
Deliver Me to Hell is an advertising commercial made by Hell Pizza New Zealand. It is a comedy horror story about human beings fighting against zombies. The protagonist has to deliver a pizza for the customer who is surrounded by the antagonists, the zombies. So participants will make decisions for the protagonist in each clip so that he is able to complete the mission. Deliver Me to Hell is a useful visual reference for Side Reaction.
Comedy horror is a genre that combines elements of comedy and horror fiction. The genre almost inevitably crosses over with the black comedy genre. Comedy horror will often use satire on horror clichés as its main source of humor or take a story in a different perspective. The particular genre is famous for a several of films such as Shaun Of The Dead (2004) and Get Out (2017) which is showing in the cinema recently.
The lighting treatment is challenging and interesting in comedy horror genre because it is a contradictory genre which makes you laugh one moment and scream the next. Conventionally, a pure comedy film employs high-key lighting techniques meanwhile a real horror film is using low-key lighting techniques. High-key, where white tones predominate the scene, allows actors’ funny performance. Low-key, where mid-gray or black tones predominate the scene, create mystery and conceal details. These are two completely different methods. So I need to research how did the predecessors deal with comedy horror genre. Do they need to make a compromise while rigging the scene?