Picking from the archive...

To incorporate this idea of the Resolution being an old conspiracy that's stretched back many, many years and to add to this idea of it's being a constant treat to society, we decided to add in some archive footage. Using crackly, vintage footage should get this across - also, a good way I think to make it seem as if your budget were larger than it actually was and I think people react to shots like these, the crackliness making the actual footage seem all the more real, and eerie that it's been happening for so long.

Jonestown: Massacre News Real

Jim Jones is perhaps the most famous of all cult leaders, creating the notorious People's Temple in the 1970's and then in fact creating his own small village, Jonestown, which culminated in the horrific Jonestown massacre where 909 people committed suicide through arsenic laced KoolAid, 303 of them children. It gained worldwide infamy - mainly for it's absolute unbelievability and atrocity, and we liked this idea of our cult being borne from there's so included vintage footage of him giving a speech to imply this in our readers mind. Perhaps the People's Temple has been lying dormant all this time and adapted into the Resolution? Perhaps they are just inspired by the teachings of Jim Jones? We thought incorporating footage of his teaching would imply he was a figure looked up to by the Resolution at least, an inspiration? He could definately add to the danger we wanted to generate for our cult and how close to the edge this could be to reality - the Jonestown massacre was very real and very tragic. We included footage also of the actual massacre itself, bodies piled up, to show this true reality - the nasty, dangerous side of the cult. We only used brief segments of the News Reel - only three of four seconds, we wanted the Resolution to be its own cult, not in fact the People's Temple, but we liked the connotations it could add, the conspiracy and danger.

Atomic Bomb

We thought the ultimate conspiracy, and time for conspiracy, was obviously the Cold War, so much uncertainty, living in constant threat and fear - technological threat and fear, hopefully like our cult will induce, and we thought linking our cult to that again could add these threatening, edgy connotations. We used a few seconds of the actual A Bomb itself being denotated at the climax of our trailer, hopefully becoming the climax of what our cult could achieve. We still live in threat of bombs and bombings everyday so we thought this would relate all the more to our audience and show the thoughtfulness and relevance of our modern technological cult in our world of terrorism and conflict, and how it could latch on to this and develop.

"To me death is not a fearful thing. It's living that's cursed."

"As early as age 18 when he watched his then idol Mao Zedong overthrow the Chinese government, Jim Jones realized that the way to achieve social change through Marxism in the United States was to mobilize people through religion." - Marceline Jones

WHO IS HE?

Jim Jones, the leader of the People's Temple, born May 13, 1931, died November 18, 1978, as instigator of the Jonestown massacre, a mass murder of over 909 people, the second greatest single loss of American civilian life in a non-natural disaster in American history, behind just 9/11. Jim Jones, a manipulative and yet highly intelligent man, within his life time, single handedly created one of the most notorious and deadly cults - the People's Temple, creating even his own village, 'Jonestown' - a 'sanctuary' and 'social paradise' as he dubbed it, of which nobody was allowed to leave and abuse - sexual, physical, psychological seemed to thrive, as well as his own drug addiction and psychological paranoia, as his members remained brainwashed and enthralled by his magnetism and powerful leadership, but in lethal danger. In a time when racism was rife, he travelled through America setting up interracial churches and organizing anti racist rallies, attended by prevalent politicians of the time such as Harvey Milk, and even helping rebuild slums in Rio de Janeiro - perhaps how he first began to establish himself as this revolutionary he imagined himself, but was always harbouring an unhealthy extremism, idolizing Communist leaders and fascinating over death and religion as a child, fantasizing about the domination of America through Marxism - his infiltration of the church being part of his plan to instigate this. These obscure fascinations, his paranoia and psychological complexities combined with his extreme Communist principles and a drug addiction culminated in the People's Temple and the eventual Jonestown massacre - high on LSD and marijuana, he convinced his followers that fascist forces were coming to convert their children, that they would parachute down and torture them all and that they should commit not suicide, but 'revolutionary suicide,' protesting the conditions of the inhumane world they lived in and 909 people, 303 children, drank the cyanide laced Kool Aid he had prepared, dying minutes after in their 'sanctuary' province in Guyana.

 We incorporated a few seconds of the above footage of Jim Jones, raising his arms after he'd finished a speech, literally two or three seconds because we felt this was all we needed to make the statement we wanted - to allude to the real threat of cults, the manipulation and psychological control they exercise, the very real danger they can present - and we thought incorporating some archive footage of him could imply not only that our cult was deeply ingrained into history, perhaps that it was some incredibly current reworking of an old cult that had been brewing underground or suddenly reappeared, but that it had the power and the weight of Jim Jones, probably the most powerful and manipulative cult leader that has occured, behind it. In the same way Jim Jones played on the politics of his day - racism being the key issue, as well as Communism and this idea of an equal, unoppressed society and the fears these instilled into people, we wanted our cult to play on the fears of present day - the ever present threat of terrorism, the threats of the internet, of the two combined, cyber terrorism etc. and we wanted to really induce a sense of paranoia and fear that we thought Jim Jones could inspire.

Inspiration: Communist Propaganda

For our poster we began looking to this idea of political posters and this idea of recruiting people through propaganda, specifically Communist propaganda. I don't think cults have too much propaganda, because generally their cults revolve around some level of illegality I'm not sure they're allowed to advertise quite as overtly as political parties who set up huge, costly advertising campaigns and we looked back to old dictatorships who used brainwashing in much the same way cults did. In the Communist posters we looked at, we were inspired by their use of images and symbols and words, as opposed to photographs - colour schemes seemed to be particularly important, most of the Communist propaganda being heavily dominated by red. I think repetition and this idea of subliminal messaging is key - repeating slogans, symbols - the first is quite predominant in these posters, and relaying and relaying them until they're inside people's heads.

Inspiration: Cornfield Chase in Harry Potter

INSPIRATION: Whitechapel Intro

Using inspiration from the intro - up to 00:57, the old archive shots integrated into the intro, the old, vintagey looking footage of notes, propaganda, maps, landmarks, people etc. Using shots like these in our own trailer will make the cult look as if it's well founded, as if it's been around for years, perhaps even a conspiracy laying unnoticed beneath history making it seem all the more dangerous and real. Obviously there are copyright issues in using other people's old footage so we will have to trail through our parent's and grandparent's old films or find a way to give new footage we can collect the same vintagey feel.
I think the editing in the intro is very clever - using flares of lights and reflections to transition between shots and the slowing down and distortions. One shot I find particularly effective is the shot at roughly 00:46 where the camera is between four men's shoulders, all dark and suited at night walking along a street and the handheld quality of this shot moving up and down with the rhythm of their walking.

INSPIRATION: Scooby Doo, cult video

In this clip, though not the horror context of film we'd like to create, there is an example of a cult-esque video, with a patronising news reporter type woman, the kind we'd like to emulate.

On the Rebound.

New narrative idea: Cult Promo Video?
 Continuing with our ideas of obsession and being controlled, we've been toying with the idea of a new narrative surrounding cults and dangerous religious sects. Our current idea is something along the lines of a promotional video, almost advertising the cult - something like the Scientology video I've embedded below except with a more sinister and eerie edge. Half way the tape would cut to a girl being held captive in the exact same room the promo video is filmed in, bruised and smeared in blood, and the tape would then cut again to an image of the cult's symbol written in blood on the wall, assumedly hers. The promo video would then continue, hopefully more sinister and eerie than before knowing the true nature of the cult and a series of shots will follow - random, disorienting images sharply edited, almost like a brainwashing video.

Scientology Commercial:

ANOTHER INSPIRATION HIT: Mouth by Natasa Vojnovic and Barnaby Roper

http://showstudio.com/project/fashionbody/video/mouth

This is a short film I found on Showstudio.com in their current project 'The Fashion Body' - entitled 'Mouth' and is focussed on, perhaps decipherably, the mouth, lips and the confusion and sexuality they can provoke. I'm quite besotted with it - every shot has something edgy or different to it, and the mash of close ups of lips and layering of speech and sound was exactly how I'd envisioned our Lolita trailer. As my friend said when she watched it, it's almost like slipping in and out of consciousness - the way the sound dips in and out and echoes and layers - and combined with the jumpy, snappy editing and caledioscope camera flares (some shots look like they've been filmed off mirrors or through water), it's almost like how I'd envisage some sort of LCD trip. There's definately something psychological about it - the section in the middle when the voices are reduced to a whisper and she seems to gasping for breath is quite intense, but oddly throughout that comforting sound of a human voice doesn't seem to make it overly disconcerting.

NOT QUITE A TRAILER: Alexander Wang

This is the new Alexander Wang Fall Winter Ad Campaign, created with British fashion photographer Craig McDean - though of course not a trailer, I've been something of inspired by it, the composition of the high fashion against dilapidation, the glossy and new, against the old and dirty and aswell, the complete abandonment incorporated through the whole thing, that the whole thing is on the edge and at an end - I think it's very eerie and slightly pscychological to watch. I love the rough handheld camerawork and the lighting too - having it focussed centre screen almost unnaturally bright and the edges being dimmed, the fast and pacy, but altogether messy and erratic editing and I particularly love the paper being strewn about in the wind - it reminds me of natural disasters - tornados and twisters with everything recklessly flying about, and I imagined the complete vanity - or apathy - of the model to keep desperately clinging to her own beauty and fashion and to keep posing amid catastrophe and potentially the end of her world.