Final Project Proposal: 10-20 minute horror film - Michael Hubbard

For the final project, I’d like to work on a 10-20-minute experimental horror film, the script for which I have been working on since this winter break. The film, with the working title Dick’s Idol, will be a well-shot, self-serious piece of work that will fall much in line with Baudrillard’s concept of the “hyper-real,” or the perversion of reality, where overwhelming visuals and audio are king at the cost of real narrative substance, much like Italian horror film director Dario Argento’s very arty work. Despite the inclusion of a heavy-handed narrative, the film will mostly remain experimental in nature and execution. On the surface, one might identify the film as tackling the idea of addiction and trust, but in reality it is an exercise of visual and auditory style over substance. The basic plot of Dick’s Idol is that friendship of two young men, Dick and Bernie, is tested when the latter uncovers an ancient relic that can alter the bearer’s behavior and change his life for the worst and is more importantly unseen throughout the film, its terrifying presence only implied through descriptive exposition and revealing dialogue. Dick’s Idol is already a working, 20-page script, and is near completion, and my crew of two actors and I have already begun shooting one of the few flashback sequences in the film. The score of the film is expected to be of original content, with quieter ambient tracks done by myself, and more uproarious, emotional music composed and performed by musicians I have worked with in a past short film. Two major inspirations for this more ambitious project than I have done before are of course Dario Argento and well-known American horror auteur John Carpenter, who, like Argento, is typically lauded for his visual style, but is more importantly noted for having a big hand in his instrumental scores of his films that are generally electronic or ambient. What one can expect from Dick’s Idol once its completed is (1) a dumb, poorly written, incoherent, pretentious story that will surely be alleviated by the improvisation talent of the film’s two actors, Kip Hathaway and Ridley Tankersley, (2) strong cinematography and insane, colorful imagery similar to that of the music video I did earlier this term, and (3) that the film, for the first time in the list of films I have done in the past, will have actual recorded dialogue, and the script is chalk-full of it, and that hopefully there will not be a single dull moment within the longer than average running time that I am used to producing. To accompany this ambitious project, in case it does not succeed in all fronts, I also plan to put together an avant-garde, found-footage short documentary on the nature of war in the twenty-first century that will incorporate psychedelic imagery and music both of my own making and that I have ripped from YouTube, and a completed video record of visiting artist Tony Orrico’s performance art piece back in January.