I can personally count on one hand how many people’s phone numbers I have received in the last year. Whenever I get my phone bill and see ‘unlimited texts’, I can’t help but wonder why I need them. I certainly don’t use them. I use data. Data for Facebook messenger. Because everyone I know uses messenger. It was no different for this project. We made a group chat and took the brainstorming there.
However, one of the limitations of a group chat on Facebook messenger (or, any form of text) is the ability to loose information due to relentless scrolling… information can get lost so easily. So we made a google doc, which allows all the ideas to be spaced out and also for more in-depth discussions, with different colours being assigned to different people.
This was particularly useful because it’s logged all our past ideas. For example, this past idea (which, unfortunately did not survive for too long).
One of the most interesting things about brainstorming, is how an idea can come from a seemingly random comment. While we were discussion potential locations, I mentioned that my home has a lot of birds, therefore filming would be difficult unless at night (when the birds are asleep). This brought forwards the idea of having a bird motif, though as we already have ‘Doc’ – the demon thing – this might be overkill.
In history, birds are often used as a motif in film. Hitchcock was a particularity passionate user of birds – and that’s even without thinking about ‘The Birds’ – his use included…
In ‘The Lady Vanishes’, Hitchcock has a bird fly into the fight scene.
In Psycho, Norman Bates has stuffed birds in the lobby. Including docile birds (like his outer personality) as well as birds of prey (inner personality).
Barton wears a hummingbird pin before falling to her death, and scenes of death are inter cut with seagulls. Birds are used to signify something more sinister.
This was from our Google doc…
BIRD MOTIF..
Allows lots of b-roll of bird footage as well. We have access to bird.
- Sid immediately checks that the bird cage is locked when he gets home
- Sid trying to get to his bird in the climax
- Sid has gone and tried to open the cage to set the bird free, with Doc holding him back he reaches out and finally manages to unlock the cage, the bird hops out and flies away.
- Bird motif
- Sid owns a pet bird
- Sid is like a bird trapped in a cage due to his OCD.
- His compulsion of locking doors keeps the bird in the cage, if he can let the bird out it shows he can overcome his OCD.
- Repeated shots demonising the bird in the cage can suggest various things to the audience, like how Sid is his own worst enemy, or how our perception of people suffering from OCD is false
- Is two motifs – pet bird and Doc- too much? Can we connect them somehow… is Doc
holding the bird in some nefarious position? (Can he somehow harm the bird?)
- What if bird is his only friend, and Sid’s compulsions all relate to his bird dying? And he does everything (even if it’s hurting himself in some way) it helps calm him that the bird isn’t going to die? Dunno about the end then.
So even though we ultimately decided not to go through with having the bird as a motif, we had all the information and can use it in the future (which, we are already thinking of doing…)
Besides, this is the bird we have access too. It is not threatening unless you are a seed.
So, while birds have a clear history of being successfully used as a motif in horror films, we felt that having two motifs was overkill for the sake of this project.
We also didn’t have the best access to the right animals, and, as classic as James Nguyen’s ‘Birdemic’ was, it’s not really the feel we’re going for in our film.
