May 26, 2012

The Key to Midnight Movie’s Most Striking Images

A Director’s Storyboard Comparison

by Jack Messitt | Published September 21, 2009

(Page 3)

3 – Bridget Alone: After Josh dies (sorry for the spoiler but… well everyone dies; it’s a slasher movie after all), the original script leapt to Bridget finding Timmy in the theater. While this felt right on paper, it seemed way too abrupt when watching the movie.

So I penned the scene where Bridget falls apart in a storage room while Radford stalks her in the hall. Inspired by the scene in The Silence of the Lambs where the FBI rushes Buffalo Bill’s house in Chicago, only to realize that they are not at the right house, this scene is a trick of editing meant to play with the audience’s expectations.

Through this scene, I was able to emotionally bridge the gap between Bridget’s loss of her boyfriend and her finding the courage to save her brother. Rebekah’s great performance really sells this transformation. And within this scene, I was able to give the audience a look at the mystical way Radford appears and disappears from our world—a much needed missing element to the film. Previous to this, it is only seen in a shadow just after Harley gets killed in the closet, and that just wasn’t enough.

The VFX featurette on our DVD shows some of our early “film burning” entrance/exit effects. While I loved this concept, we ultimately went something more effective for our budget (a recurring theme, isn’t it?).

For his entrance, Jan Leung, my effects wizard in Cebu, Philippines, came up with some great alternatives for us. When Radford enters our world, his broken skull mask appears and starts to drop to the floor, leaving our killer in it’s wake. For his exit, Radford turns into the black-and-white film version of himself and melts away. They weren’t our initial ideas, but adaptation to challenges is the key ingredient to making a movie.

Note: As you can see in these storyboards, when we actually shot this scene I reversed the screen direction (what was left in the storyboard, is now right), but everything else stayed pretty close to what I had planned.