Today as part of my research I watched the 2001 low budget horror movie Dagon. Dagon is the closest to a film version of the shadow over innsmouth book that we are basing our final major project around. Before I get into writing some test scripts I wanted to make sure I know the law of Hp Lovecrafts world that revolves around the God Dagon. I had some understanding going into the film through my conversations with Alex however I wanted to do some more in depth research myself starting with watching this film. The film is a low budget horror and although we are making a mockumentary I still learnt a lot about how things like how the fish men's look can be achieved even on a small budget. Prior to watching this film I had through my searching of the internet always thought of the fish peoples look to be a full on monster head and that is what we were looking for media make up to make for us. In this film however their are only a couple of defining features that show that these aren't humans. Those are the teeth which are often hidden until they attack and the eyes which are often bigger and pop out more than human eyes do. I think if we tone our ideas down when it comes to how our character looks it will not only but less expensive but it will make more sense in the world we are creating as our character is a teacher and I think the students would be suspicious if their was a creeping fish man teaching their class and suddenly people start going missing.
Outside of how the creatures look I have noticed they hunt like sharks in that if they smell blood they are attracted to it. The main goal of these creatures is to murder any people who do not worship their God Dagon. With male characters they cut their faces off and with female characters they often impregnate them so that another member of the tribe is born and then kill them once they've given birth. We don't want our film to be as graphic as that though as it is a comedy so I would want to play on this idea that's represented n the film and that is that any none believers get sacrificed to Dagon. Being that they are fish people they are able to swim under water so my idea would be to have our character asking to take the kids on a school trip to the beech and then sacrificing them one by one by taking them into the ocean and eating them.
I know it is thinking a bit far ahead but I also liked the foreshadowing of the first death in this film as the women has her red wine knocked over and then a few minuets later is eaten. I like using the red to foreshadow death and I will be looking to get this into my script.
In conclusion , I got a lot out of watching Dagon and I am starting to feel more comfortable with the law around the fish men and how they work. My next steps are to speak with Alex and see what he thinks about changing how our fish man will look and then continue my research so that I can eventually produce a test script.
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