Script Research (AKA Ari Aster Save Me...Save Me Ari Aster)

    I've never really written a script for anything, so I figured before I start working on any of THAT, I do a little bit of screenwriting research. I found this article by Studiobinder breaking down tips for how to write a horror story. Advice that they emphasize again and again is to watch and analyze other film and directors to shape you own vision. And so, I went down a rabbit hole of reading and watching interviews of some of my favorite productions. While most of the interviews I found had little relation and offered no help for my endeavor, I did find a No Film School interview with Ari Aster that offered some insightful advice. Aster discusses how he built his own fears and past experiences into the making of Hereditary. When asked about how his own life bled into the screenplay, he said this: "What's beautiful about filmmaking is that you're able to take more personal stuff, put it through the filter, and out comes an invention". 

What Am I Scared Of...

    I really like Aster's way of looking at horror, I do think that incorporating my own fears will be much more effective than doing a cliche rehash of another horror idea. After some introspection, I begun to brainstorm what I really find terrifying, so I guess here's a little storytime. When I was eight, my friend received a chainmail that, long-story short, said that she would disappear if she didn't send the message to a certain number of people. The message was so obviously fake, but I was an eight-year-old with an overactive imagination and bad anxiety. I think what terrified me so much was this feeling of having absolutely no control of what could happen next. For months, I was paranoid at any sound or shadow in the corner of my eye. It's fascinating to me is how after experiencing trauma (talking more in general now...not implying that receiving a prank message is traumatic), our brains become unable to separate reality from imagination. I know that horror film exploring trauma and mental health have become a little disliked by audiences in the last couple of years, but I truly want to use this my own opening. Obviously, it'll be hard to express a character's trauma in just two minutes (especially without professional actors), so developing context (showing the actual traumatic experience) will be necessary.     With the similar theme of confusing reality, I find the possibility of myself losing my mind to be absolutely terrifying. One of the most underrated horrors I've seen, We're All Going to the World's Fair, uses this fear to show a character's spiral. I loved We're All Going to the World's Fair so much because it's very ambiguous in whether the character's experience were real or if she was truly losing her mind. 

    These two fears seem really different from each other, and I might not incorporate both, but I do believe that both will make a great basis for a horror film. Just for brainstorming reasons, I was think generally that the film should open with the character viewing someone else losing their mind (maybe being chased by something that's not there) and have that be the character's catalyst for trauma. But for now that's all I've got.

Where Do We Go From Here

    I think this'll be my last research post for a couple days, I've done quite a bit of research thus far and I think it's finally time to get started. Tomorrow, I hope to get started on the script (and maybe even finish a first draft of it). I'm excited to see how all of this research will shape my story. 

Sources

Buder, E. (2018, June 7). “hereditary”: How Ari Aster pushed his horrifying film “as dark as it could go.” No Film School. https://nofilmschool.com/2018/06/hereditary-ari-aster-interview

Kench, S. (2023, October 30). Horror writing tips for Fiction & Film. StudioBinder. https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-write-horror/