Planning Phase

 Hello everyone, it is me Sherjil, back with another blog, today I will go through what my team and I have planned for our film opening. So, over the long weekend, we were brainstorming ideas and had a baseline of how we should structure the storyboard. We already created a draft, a storyboard, and a script. All we need is to combine those elements into the story. As I sat down with my partner, Issac Gonzalez. I came across for these ideas of what to have in a horror thriller movie. 

• Set a dark, eerie location to establish mood and a isolated setting.
• Use low-key lighting  and color of theory concept such as the color "blue" to represent mystery and emotions. 
• Film with suspenseful angles (POV wide shots for isolation) 
• Add realistic sounds of things moving around and creaks/distant noises being applied. 
• Create an enigma why the garage is open and  what is inside
• Build a quick square of antagonist threat that is incoming that will transition to a quick scare or a cliffhanger

THE FILM OPENING'S STORY:

• The film will start off with a close up shot that will show a sign that will say, “I am glad you are back, Dhost” (a word in Urdu/Hindi that translates to “friend”). 
• Then, it will transition to the next camera shot by utilizing a whip pan to a car with two kids entering the neighborhood without noticing the sign. 
• There will be an over-the-shoulder shot showing the two characters driving around the neighborhood and enjoying the bond they have with each other. 
• The two boys were just there to explore the neighborhood as they never heard about this place before, and found it unique that it is a bunch of houses and there is no residence living there. 
• The driver/friend, which will be our antagonist, insisted to drive around the neighborhood since it looks cool, and he says, “Let’s go check out my house.”
•  The friend weirdly agrees with him to join him for this adventure. 
• As they drove around the neighborhood, the setting’s atmosphere showcased the neighborhood being dark and isolated with nobody being involved.
•  After multiple cuts of the boys driving around the neighborhood, the protagonist looked out the window and saw a random garage door open. 
• He insists to check it out, and the driver states, “Oh yeah, this is my house.” When the two boys parked in the driveway of the house, the house was noticed to be haunted, considering the roofs were dark and there was barely any light visible inside the garage. When the protagonist enters the garage, he noticed things moving. 
• He explored many dangerous things that were scattered all over the place, such as broken pictures and broken lamps. This led for the protagonist to question what is going on, and when he does so, he came across a random box with a warning not to touch. 
• Even so, he still opened the box and a random doll popped out. When the protagonist asks for help, his friend hits him in the head, and he faints to the ground. Then, after that, he takes the body to the patio and ties him up in the chair.
• The driver goes inside and changes to his evil doctor suit and wears a mask this time so his friend does not notice. After the protagonist wakes up, he was surrounded in a setting location where everything was not visible and dark, which made the character feel more clueless. He consistently asks where he is, and when he saw the masked person standing in front of him, he keeps asking, “Where are you?” The doctor’s response was the same word in the beginning: “Come over here, dhost.” The only word he would say is dhost, and after the screams, the protagonist gets killed with the doctor, who violently killing him with a chainsaw where physical blood was shown. After that, the antagonist wraps the body around and puts it inside his car trunk, Then, smashes to the title card, "Dhost". The reason of this title comes with a story: 

The title Dhost was inspired by a personal childhood memory. When I first met my cousin after moving to a new city, one of the first words I said to him was, “Hey, dhost,” which means “friend” in Urdu/Hindi. However, because dhost sounds similar to the word ghost, he misheard me and began to cry, thinking I had called him something frightening.  This moment stayed in my mind, and it later became the inspiration behind the title of my film. I found the misunderstanding meaningful because it reflects one of the central ideas in my opening: appearances can be deceptive. Just as my cousin misinterpreted the word dhost, the protagonist in my film misinterprets what a true friend is, as the antagonist hides his dark intentions behind the image of friendship. Since the spelling of dhost is actually "dost, I decided to add an H in the middle to represent what my cousin misunderstood and how it applies through the representation of my film regarding betrayal. 

Reflection: Considering, we already discussed our story layouts, thanks to me and Issacs's effort we affectingly came up with a concept that will be compelling enough to be represented the horror film opening. As this may be a confirmation of our film opening's layout, we still need to discuss more on how we can actually apply certain camera angles or shots that will build the movie's suspense up. But for now, I am going to stick with this plan, considering, it will be good to have a layout so we can have a clear mindset to make our breif.

For now, that will be a wrap! We will catch up in the next post where we will shift gears on discussing of what type of characters or roles will be involved withing our film opening.