#Dynamic duo they just deal with paranormal activity

[spoiledskullz]

is it really possible for a cowboy and a ghost hunter girl to be in a relationship

(Sad yeehaw)

(Terrified of ghosts yeehaw)

[mozzaremi]

finally working on the ghost hunter au that i started a few months ago (?), but i did a complete rehaul on the concept

INFODUMP:

(okok, english isn't my first language and i'll probably edit out grammar mistakes when i'll find them, so please bare with me lol)

Initially, Aubrey and Kel meet as internet pen-pals, both share an interest in horror and all things creepy (tho aubrey prefers the creepy but cute stuff). While Aubrey is more of a casual fan, Kel is a full on enjoyer of anything and everything that's spooky: horror movies, creepy stories, and especially the ghost stuff.

Kel would always share to Aubrey about his fantasies of being a professional ghost hunter and maybe having a tv show all about his and Aubrey's adventures in the paranormal world.

Aubrey and Kel both live in the big city, tho Aubrey often visits Faraway as that's where her mother resides. She would often meet up a friend of her's named Basil: a shy guy who's really interested photography and everything related to plants. While hanging out with the flower boy, Aubrey would frequently do Basil's hair and makeup, later on he picks up some neat beauty tips from her that allowed him to explore his style. The visits to Faraway wouldn't last long, only being there for the weekends and holidays before she'd have to go back to her dad in the city.

Eventually Kel and Aubrey make a blog for Ghost hunting. Their content on there is amateur at best, but they gain a loyal following of other ghost enthusiasts, and non enthusiast, mostly just people who really enjoy kel and aubrey's friendship dynamic and their banter.

In their endevours, they would earn a loyal hater, who goes by "The Maverick" who would nickpick any and all instances of paranormal activity. Although sounding pompous and theatrical, he always finds reasonable proof to debunk all their findings.

Skip a few years, Back in faraway basil has to deal with the grief of his grandmother's passing, he would often stay at the graveyard just to mourn. The graveyard in faraway was infamous for having an unknown being living there, no one knowing if it's human and harmless or something paranormal and dangerous. No one has ever been able to get photo evidence of the entity, so they are more often percieved as an urban legend.

One foggy evening, Basil was back at the graveyard, doing his usual mourning session, when something sat besides him on a bench. Eyes full of tears, he didn't dare to face the person, so he continued with what he was doing. Eventually the person(?) starts asking questions to get Basil to vent to him and maybe calm him down and it works. Felling a little bit better Basil faces the person to see a guy his age in a very strange outfit. Once he got a better look at him, he jumped off the bench realising it's the fabled ghost boy of the graveyard. He runs away, but notes the fact that guy he talked to was very nice...

After that, he starts believing in a life after death, and his grief lessens knowing that possibly his grandmother is in a better place

Basil finds out about Aubrey and Kel making a ghost blog, there the two would film themselves searching through abandoned areas to find ghosts... or something, anything really. While they never found anything scary, they had a very good duo dynamic and Basil became somewhat of a fan of theirs. Basil noticed the poor video quality due to it being recorded on a crappy phone (android lol) and it inspired him to purchase a video camera.

When Aubrey visits Faraway again, he offers his cameraman services to her and she agrees. She introduces Basil to Kel and they all hit it off.

One day, when Aubrey and Kel are feeling hopeless of their Ghost Hunting adventure, Basil tells them the time he met a ghost in the graveyard back in faraway. They both take his word for it.

They get Hero to drive them to faraway, Hero who is a Uni dropout, he really doesn't have anything better to do besides taking up odd jobs to pay rent. He has saved a lot of money throughout the years of being uni-free and working at basically every retail job in the city, so the though of having a road-trip didn't bother him.

Once they are at the town of faraway, Hero hands them a packed lunch, and the gang is off to find a ghost! Being in the graveyard, things felt fruitless, not a lot of things were happening besides the fog that started to form. Kel got tired and started reaching for his bag to get the sandwich that Hero packed him. But there was a problem... there were no sandwiches to be found in his bag... Suddently his eyes meet the figure of the faraway ghost boy who was snacking on a BLT...

Kel alerts his friends to come grab some footage of the ghoul right in front of him, but an issue arose... the video camera wasn't working and couldn't get Sunny in the shot without the device glitching out.

The ghoulish boy named Sunny sees how restless, but persistent the ghost hunter crew was, he found their antics humorous at best, but once the big brother Hero comes to check up on them is when Sunny is on full guard

He summons chains from under the ground, binding the 4 visitors in place. Aproching them again he threatens to suck all the life out of them. They start pleading for their life and a idea accured...

Sunny gave them an offer to help him find his long lost sister...He is unsure if she's still alive or not, but he still feels the presence on her in the living world through the Something chained to his foot. In return he would spare their life and let them film him for their ghost blog. The gang agrees to his offer and just so they don't double cross sunny, he lays a curse on them that if they leave him behind on purpose, they would have their souls taken away from their bodies, turning them into lifeless husks.

AND SO THAT'S HOW THEIR ADVENTURE STARTS! they have this sorta mystery gang adventure going on, traveling across the US to find Mari while also having wacky high-jinxs and sunny allerting the others of ghostly presences in the area for Aubrey, Kel and Basil's ghost hunting blog content, just so they would get enough blog donations to keep traveling!

[westphotolukedas]

Production Journal - The X-Files

251019

The X-Files is an American science fiction television programme that was influential on my development as a creative. The original pilot aired in 1993 and ran for nine seasons with 202 subsequent episodes. It had a cult following during my adolescence and my peers and I would discuss each episode in depth. During a hiatus in programming, two feature films were released - The X-Files (1998) and The X-Files - I Want to Believe (2008). A tenth season was aired in 2016 and an eleventh in 2018, this is suggestive that the fan base still exists and has remained loyal for decades.

The series leads are Fox Mulder and Dana Scully, played by David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson, who both gained celebrity status from these characters. They are Special Agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation and solve cases involving paranormal activity. The dynamic between the duo is the main draw of the programme. Mulder is a believer in extra-terrestrial life following the abduction of his sister as a child. His unorthodox theories align with The X-Files - a department dedicated to unsolved cases. Scully is the objective voice that counters Mulder. She is a medical doctor who is placed at the department to challenge her partner’s zeal. The interplay between a believer and sceptic allows individual story arcs to unfold, usually around a monster of the week.

John Bartley (Born 1947) was Director of Photography for The X-Files from 1993-1996 and the second feature film. I will draw from his techniques during the production of my staged tableau. He received a nomination in 1994 for Outstanding Artistic Achievement from the American Society of Cinematographers and an Emmy. He has continued to develop the cinematography for television series with similar premises such as Roswell (1999-2002), Lost (2004-2010) and Bates Motel (2013-2017).

Bartley developed the visual identity of the television programme, which was based around many practical effects. For example, in the pilot when an arsonist torches a motel room to destroy evidence, the flames were actually real. To Barley, darkness was a character on The X-Files and the interplay between light and shadow was critical. Mulder and Scully probed the unknown with their xenon flashlights in conjunction with lighting equipment that included HMIs, Dedolights, KinoFlos and MiniFlos. Light was implemented as a counterpoint to the darkness to emphasise aspects of the frame that the audience could not see. Beams of coloured back and sidelight were used to accentuate foreground shadows and slow moving steam added to the eerie feel of each scene. During an interview, Bartley commented, ‘We actually blend light and dark. Some things the audience can see, and other things they’re not sure if they saw them or not. It adds to the aura of mystery. I don’t use much fill. I started that on a series called Booker. With today’s films I’ve been five stops underexposed and have still recorded details in the highlights and shadow areas. I like to use the full latitude of the stock.’

The X-Files was conservative with colour during its first season. The nature of the content did not lend itself to vibrancy. For the second season, Bartley was more adventurous with the low-key lighting that he had established as a foundation. There was greater contrast and harder lighting than he had previously employed in addition with super-blue fluorescent tubes. ‘These tubes are so blue, you can’t even read them on a colour meter. Then I added just a little tungsten on their faces and a very hard top light overhead. It doesn’t have to look real or match anything. That makes things more interesting. I think it’s what makes The X-Files different,’ he explained. (Bartley, 1995)

Shane Harvey, Unit Stills, 2018

Fox Network, Dana Scully, 2018

Summary

It was encouraging to research the lighting design that Bartley established in television and draw commonalities with Crewdson and Starkey in stills photography. There is a great deal of overlap. Promotional material for season eleven was also worth my consideration and here are my summary intentions for the shoot.

The final photograph will be low-key with significant proportions of the frame depicting total darkness. All sources of light will be hard and appear to be the ambient illumination from an alien abduction. Gels will be clipped to barn doors for this to be achieved. The colour choices of purple for the key light and blue for the back light reference Bartley and Crewdson. Preferentially, these are my colours of choice for aesthetic reasons. They should complement each other and work independently in the composition. Finally, I found it fitting that season eleven features these hues as a recurring theme. The absence of a fill light means that dramatic shadows will form, which is another homage to Bartley’s lighting technique.

Bartley and Crewdson both favour practical effects and this is a challenge given my budget. I will position blinds held by a cross bar and stand in front of the key light. This will cast a shadow from the slats and light from the key light simultaneously onto my subject. In reference to Starkey, it should suggest that the setting of the photograph is in doors. A supernatural moody effect will be added with a smoke machine. Many scenes from The X-Files featured background smoke and it has become a trope associated with the series.

Actor Tashi Bullman is fully committed to depicting the character Dana Scully and I will do a test shoot with one of my classmates. A lone female subject is another parallel to Starkey’s work. Tashi has sourced a suit jacket and blouse that are in keeping with Scully’s wardrobe. If possible, a flashlight and FBI badge should feature too. These will pose a challenge due to being another source of light and a reflective surface respectively. The posturing and expressions of the character will be decided jointly between Tashi and myself on the day.

Production Notes

My classmate Gyorgy Englert was a phenomenal actor during my initial lighting experiments and for this test shoot. My lighting design was efficacious and there will be little modification needed for the final shoot. The equipment was set up as shown in the lighting diagram and the flash heads functioned as I imagined. I noted 5.0 stops for the key light and 4.0 stops for the back light. The camera was set to f/11, 1/125 and ISO 100. This aperture was needed to achieve a broad depth of field and this shutter speed is appropriate for the flash sync speed. Setting my digital camera to 100 ISO should give me some indication of the results that will be achieved with film of the same sensitivity. The shadows from the slats were only visible when Gyorgy was within inches of the blinds. A flashlight appears in my example shot; however, its constant light was obliterated by the power of the flash heads. I will remove it for the final shoot. The FBI badge was also sourced from an online fancy dress store and it does not look passable enough close up. I will have to come up with a solution for this when Tashi wears it. The final noteworthy point was that the smoke machine was temperamental. It needed minutes to heat up and then each burst varied in intensity. My timing was also crucial to obtain a photograph with the smoke engulfing the sitter and it was better to position it in front of the blinds.

Bibliography

Bartley, J. (1995). John Bartley Shoots The X-Files On The Edge Of Darkness. Eat The Corn. Available from www.eatthecorn.com/?itw=in-camera [Accessed 12/12/2019]

Lighting Diagram

Behind the Scenes

Behind the Scenes

Test Shot, f/11, 1/125, ISO 100