Observation Analysis
I have procured scenes from three films to analyze for areas of improvement. Naked Lunch (1991) is surreal science fiction, as is Strawberry Mansion (2021), though the latter adds romance into the mix. Death Becomes Her (1992) is black comedy and fantasy.
Naked Lunch
dir. David Cronenberg, 1991
An exterminator gets addicted to his own pesticide and hallucinates that he is a secret agent. After killing his wife, he flees the country to write a report about the death as directed by his insectoid handlers.
Strawberry Mansion
dir. Albert Birney & Kentucker Audley, 2021
In a reality where dreams are taxed, a government agent is assigned to audit the dreams of an elderly woman, which are recorded on VHS tapes. After her death, the agent develops a romance with the woman's younger self in her dreams.
Death Becomes Her
dir. Robert Zemeckis, 1992
Actress Madeline steals her friend Helen's fiance, Ernest. Years later, Helen returns to steal Ernest back, causing Madeline to take an immortality potion to remain young forever. Helen & Ernest plot to kill Madeline to be together, since the marriage between Madeline & Ernest is unhealthy and unhappy.
I have chosen to experiment with updating Naked Lunch through changing the visual style of the film to emulate Strawberry Mansion. This will include changes to the color palette and cinematography. To demonstrate my idea for the visual changes, I have drawn up a proof of concept sketch.
From here, I started a basic animatic. After watching scenes from Strawberry Mansion and taking notes on the kinds of shots used in the film -- mostly medium length, static, and centered -- I re-drew the shots from the scene in Naked Lunch with slightly altered compositions. These are still unfinished. All but one are not colored, and the back half is still in the rough sketch stage. I also have yet to address the later part of the clip, in which Bill is typing in the new Mugwump typewriter. I am going to sketch out those shots, then go back to line (and color, time permitting) the rest of the shots.
Here's an updated animatic. I haven't been able to do much work on since I've had some long shifts at work the past few days, but I've added the last few shots to the end and lined everything that hadn't been lined yet. I also added flat colors to the characters in some shots. I'll be able to work on this more in the next few days.
Another updated animatic. The colors have been laid in (though I would like to refine the look, time permitting). I also want to mess around with the audio track to keep the dialogue, but cut out and replace the score that comes in for the second scene. If I can find a program that adequately isolates the vocals for the one line in that scene, I'll put in a synth soundtrack a la Strawberry Mansion.
Here is the final animatic for my changes of Naked Lunch. I have not had time to add additional detail or alterations to my drawings, but I did replace the background music in the original clip with something that felt more Strawberry Mansion-esque. Of course, I don't have access to the original audio files from the creation of the film, so I problem-solved by using an online tool to separate out the vocals from the background noise. The audio quality took a hit in doing this, so the audio fades from the complete audio into the vocals-only audio right before the music comes in. Fortunately, there are only a few lines of dialogue after the background music starts. I downloaded audio files of typewriter sound effects and an ambient synth track to replace the sound effects and music of this scene.