Summer Project: Cold Blood early development

The Terror Wreck Details:

  • Erebus and Terror left England in 1845 to search for the North West Passage.
  • Led by: Sir john Franklin, Francis Crozier and James Fitzjames. All 129 crew perished.
  • Last sighting was by a Whaler in Baffin Bay.  
  • Main woman, 30s?, canadian. How does a PHD student end up at the wreck of the Terror.

Character ideas:

Discovery team: Canadian coast guard, hydrographer, archaeologist, canadian ice service, navy, nunavut government repsresentatives.
Archaelogical team: archaeologists, divers, hydrographers, coast guard, nunavut reps

Setting/ conceit:

  • Drilling a hole into the ice to reach the wreck.
  • Archaeologists bring up artefacts
  • “The Canadian Government established a research and conservation facility in collaboration with Inuit of Kitikmeot Region at a small town on King William Island.”

Original Story hook:

  • One of the artefacts found on the ship is a corpse room, inside is the partially preserved body of a woman sailor.
  • As the only woman on the team of archeologists, main woman asks to be in charge of exhuming the body.
  • When diving, she hurts herself and needs to be rescued.
  • The dive is called off and she is treated on the ship.
  • When the dive resumes the following day, the woman’s body is missing.
  • An intern falls off the ship and is eaten by the vampire.
  • The next day the woman’s body is found on the deck.
  • As she can no longer take part in the dives, the woman is put in charge of preparing the mummy for transport to the mainland.
  • More people go missing, and the ship is quarantined while a search is carried out.
  • The main woman realises that the body is becoming less and less decayed after each night.

Final Idea (Presented at the beginning of the year)

Eco-Horror/ anxiety about the state of our world. Inspired by failed expeditions in the age of exploration, the melting of the permafrost and mythology.

  • Mythology existing in our social memory, living in a pre-historical time period.
  • The cold, it existed before us and it will be there when we are done.
  • The declaration of something as impossible, only to find out it has been done before.

Cold Blood

Logline: A ship responding to a distress call in the arctic circle rescues a young woman in a life boat who refuses to disclose what happened to her. An archaeological vessel researching the melting of the permafrost opens a tomb that should have remained closed.

(The Terror meets Carmilla.)

Synopsis: After recieving a distress call, Laura, a crew member on The Sheridan, spots a life boat floating amongst the fractured ice of the north passage. After bringin the vessel aboard, they discover a young woman inside, who is severely wounded. Being the ships surgeon, Laura adminsters first aid and a blood transfusion. The woman seems catatonic, only waking late in the day. She shares a strong bond with Laura, but refuses to speak about what happened to her. Upon hearing that that ship is answering a distress call is able to help steer the ship towards the wreck she came from.

An archaeological research vessel “The Karnstein” excavates three graves off of Beechey Island, Nunavut. They discover an unusual ice mummy, what appears to be a young woman wearing maritime sailing wear. The crew remove the body, intending to take it to the mainland. During the return journey the ship becomes stuck in pack ice, and the stranded crew begin to disappear one by one.

Upon arriving at the wreck, the crew of the Sheridan discover the Karnstein a desolate grave. Sure enough their crew begins falling to the same fate. Laura tries to radio in a mayday from the captains cabin, where she finds pictures of the Ice mummy. The woman they rescued and the mummy are one and the same.

An aspiring archaeologist joins an unsanctioned research team in the northernmost reaches of the arctic circle, sponsored by an elusive benefactor with money to burn. Their goal: to locate the wrecks of the failed Franklin Expeditions, The Erebus and The Terror. The young woman is treated with suspicion by the otherwise veteran crew, who consider it bad luck to have a woman aboard. We join the team as they locate a potential wreck. They come upon the shattered hull of The Terror, sunken 48ft beneath the ice. As they set up camp nearby, the woman dives below to investigate. During the dive, she finds a corpse room, filled with ice mummies. Inside she finds the well-preserved corpse of a woman. Perplexed by her presence, the team attempts to recover her. In bringing up the body, the woman is injured. Her blood seeps into the water. She is rescued. While she recovers, the body is examined. One by one, the small crew begins vanishing. With each disappearance the mummy becomes less and less decayed. Until she resembles the body of a freshly dead young woman. The crew becomes increasingly isolated, no longer with the manpower necessary to return to their ship, they decide to sled to the closest settlement on Nunavut. The woman is tasked with bringing the mummy as the only proof they found the lost expedition. As polar night sets in, the team are attacked by a polar bear. The bear is then slaughtered by the mummy, who kills the captain (revealed to be the benefactor of the expedition) and the other members of the team. The young woman runs, but is injured in the attack and starts bleeding out on the ice. The body, a vampire, comes to her with human meat on the brink of her death, and feeds her gently.

Themes:

  • The cold is the great equaliser. It exposes the hubris of man and does not discriminate in it’s violence.
  • Climate change. The expedition will only be possibly dues to unseasonably weather, which proves to be unreliable as it rapidly freezes as the research continues. As the ice melts, it brings buried dangers with it.
  • Time and time again we declare something impossible, only to discover it’s already happened.

Research:

  • Research trip to the Royal Maritime Museum in Greenwich, to see actual artefacts recovered from the expeditions.
  • Watch the 2018 Limited TV Series ‘The Terror’ (well researched and inspirational in terms of set design.)
  • Research superstitions around women on ships and figure out how we can incorporate those into the vampire lore.
  • Research similar expeditions to come up with a core cast of roughly 3-4 characters who would represent the larger crew.
  • Analyse underwater animated media to discern how we should make the characters move (different frame rate or art style?)
  • Read ‘To Build a Fire’ by Jack London (survival horror)

Goal:

Short film of 10 minutes + trailer. Team of 5-7 people roughly (roughly 1:30/2 minutes per-person, in theory). Want people with a confident sense of anatomy, who are interested in really improving technical skills like drawing on model, who would be willing to work on all aspects of production. Would like people with a musical/ sound design background to join in the later stages.

  • This story would focus an queer main character, so I would like people who are happy to enthusiastically represent a lesbian relationship.

Production timeline:

(Before term)

  • uncheckedInitial concept art.
  • uncheckedRough character explorations
  • uncheckedScript and animatic.

October-November: Concept art, character design and second animatic

December-January: final animatic, preparing to begin tie downs and key frames in January

January-March: Each person given a minute of animation to tie down in a consistent style. Work will be separated from this point into background painters, key frames artists and inbetween artists.

April-May: final film ready except sound design and colouring/ compositing

June/July: Compositing, post production.