Ellen and the purpose of the series to come...
Finals are over, Spring Break has started, and I am not taking the time for granted!
Between watching Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I planned a large portion of the pilot episode of Nosferatu in Love, put together a livejournal layout and soundtrack for it which are being tested at my unused community unknowncolorx, and I did two profiles for my modern-day Ellen and Hutter. Hutter's was a much rougher sketch than Ellen's - hers was begging to be colored.
(I would be remiss in mentioning that it was Fleetwood Mac's "Silver Girl" that inspired the picture.)
I've taken some time to contemplate on her, too. I mean, I'd better!, given that she's the second main character and I have to know who I'm dealing with if I plan to write 100 pages of script, starting in... just a week from now! My gosh, it's already so close.
I think I'm very comfortable adopting her as a character. A little while ago, when I made my first posts about being obsessed with Nosferatu, I was saying that I didn't like Ellen or the performance of her done by Greta Schröder, but I've warmed up to both of them since then. Now I just have to have a believable interpretation.
I decided she might have a case of depression, for reasons she doesn't entirely understand (and often people don't.) It's not because she's in an unsatisfactory marriage, which she admits guiltily because she really does love Hutter. They try to spend lots of their time together, and neither do very well on their own, but they're still a mismatch of personalities and interests.
As far as she knows, the reason is also not that she lacks direction - she has goals and dreams like everybody else. She never went to college, but she wants to, and with her own money, not Hutter's. Although, at the same time, she has bouts of severe pessimism about it, thinking nothing would come of it.
Then there's the issue of both ignoring death and ignoring life. She ignores the fact that life is temporary and is only as good as you make it, but does so guiltily and by habit. Her fear of feeling alienated keeps her in the house a lot, or close to it. She's very clingy with Hutter because it was only a couple of years ago that she lost both of her parents, and she doesn't have other close family or friends. She's always been afraid of the dark, but this sent her overboard.
As a side story to Orlok's attempt to woo her (most ineptly), she and Hutter will be trying to figure out how to have a fulfilling marriage and communicate effectively. She will realize that, through that haze of depression, the world has to have an equilibrium of good and bad, and it's not a dark place because of the bad. She'll realize she has a husband who means more to her than anything else, and she would protect him by any means. Her way of coming to that is being so confronted by death, and also a control of her own death, in a weird way. I read a review for Nosferatu that said watching it is like being in the same room with death. She will be often in death's presence. She will finally confront it, oppose it, and finally choose it, and lure it into her own trap, of life. Does that make any sense?
Yes, despite that this series is half comedy, it's also half drama, contemplative, and a homage to its origin, which means she has to do away with Orlok by means of cross-elimination. It's funny, in that regard, because she will be choosing Hutter by choosing Orlok. There's something rather intimate about dying in the same room together, aware of it, and the cause of the other person's death!
I've really made this sound very dramatic, though. Truly, Nosferatu in Love will make you laugh hard if you have a sense of humor similar to mine. Orlok will dance, in his rigid little way, to music he hears in his head, Hutter will hurt himself trying out a new coital position once Ellen tells him she's faked nearly every orgasm since their honeymoon, and Ellen will wake up in a cold sweat after a nightmare about she and the Count in a field of flowers.
To my experience, comedy is hardly achieved when characters are used as vehicles for jokes, however. It's why so many things on Comedy Central during the weekend are utter Scheiße, and why typecast comedy actors have faces you just want to punch. Comedy comes from shared experiences; shared personalities, and shared problems. The realer you can make people, the more you will laugh (at least I think), to the point where a tiny context-less joke may merit a chuckle, but that same joke, to do with a close friend, graduates to a serious knee-slapper. In the case of Orlok, turning him into a comedic vehicle is downright disrespectful. A balance of poking fun at eccentricities and thoughtfulness about its subject is the most appropriate decision if I'm really going to do a re-imagining of one of the most (at least academically) respected horror Classics. There are those who nod to it all the time with visual techniques, but people as obsessed with it as I am, if they are really going to create something to do with it, have to full on bow as if they're praying to Mecca. (take that joke lightly, Muslim readers, if you please)
I feel really glad I made this post. I feel full-on inspiration and a sense of purpose, and opportunities in every direction to exercise my creativity on this thing. I feel it as deeply as if I were writing He's There.
Script Frenzy, here I come!
♥,
J
Between watching Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and reading Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, I planned a large portion of the pilot episode of Nosferatu in Love, put together a livejournal layout and soundtrack for it which are being tested at my unused community unknowncolorx, and I did two profiles for my modern-day Ellen and Hutter. Hutter's was a much rougher sketch than Ellen's - hers was begging to be colored.
(I would be remiss in mentioning that it was Fleetwood Mac's "Silver Girl" that inspired the picture.)
I've taken some time to contemplate on her, too. I mean, I'd better!, given that she's the second main character and I have to know who I'm dealing with if I plan to write 100 pages of script, starting in... just a week from now! My gosh, it's already so close.
I think I'm very comfortable adopting her as a character. A little while ago, when I made my first posts about being obsessed with Nosferatu, I was saying that I didn't like Ellen or the performance of her done by Greta Schröder, but I've warmed up to both of them since then. Now I just have to have a believable interpretation.
I decided she might have a case of depression, for reasons she doesn't entirely understand (and often people don't.) It's not because she's in an unsatisfactory marriage, which she admits guiltily because she really does love Hutter. They try to spend lots of their time together, and neither do very well on their own, but they're still a mismatch of personalities and interests.
As far as she knows, the reason is also not that she lacks direction - she has goals and dreams like everybody else. She never went to college, but she wants to, and with her own money, not Hutter's. Although, at the same time, she has bouts of severe pessimism about it, thinking nothing would come of it.
Then there's the issue of both ignoring death and ignoring life. She ignores the fact that life is temporary and is only as good as you make it, but does so guiltily and by habit. Her fear of feeling alienated keeps her in the house a lot, or close to it. She's very clingy with Hutter because it was only a couple of years ago that she lost both of her parents, and she doesn't have other close family or friends. She's always been afraid of the dark, but this sent her overboard.
As a side story to Orlok's attempt to woo her (most ineptly), she and Hutter will be trying to figure out how to have a fulfilling marriage and communicate effectively. She will realize that, through that haze of depression, the world has to have an equilibrium of good and bad, and it's not a dark place because of the bad. She'll realize she has a husband who means more to her than anything else, and she would protect him by any means. Her way of coming to that is being so confronted by death, and also a control of her own death, in a weird way. I read a review for Nosferatu that said watching it is like being in the same room with death. She will be often in death's presence. She will finally confront it, oppose it, and finally choose it, and lure it into her own trap, of life. Does that make any sense?
Yes, despite that this series is half comedy, it's also half drama, contemplative, and a homage to its origin, which means she has to do away with Orlok by means of cross-elimination. It's funny, in that regard, because she will be choosing Hutter by choosing Orlok. There's something rather intimate about dying in the same room together, aware of it, and the cause of the other person's death!
I've really made this sound very dramatic, though. Truly, Nosferatu in Love will make you laugh hard if you have a sense of humor similar to mine. Orlok will dance, in his rigid little way, to music he hears in his head, Hutter will hurt himself trying out a new coital position once Ellen tells him she's faked nearly every orgasm since their honeymoon, and Ellen will wake up in a cold sweat after a nightmare about she and the Count in a field of flowers.
To my experience, comedy is hardly achieved when characters are used as vehicles for jokes, however. It's why so many things on Comedy Central during the weekend are utter Scheiße, and why typecast comedy actors have faces you just want to punch. Comedy comes from shared experiences; shared personalities, and shared problems. The realer you can make people, the more you will laugh (at least I think), to the point where a tiny context-less joke may merit a chuckle, but that same joke, to do with a close friend, graduates to a serious knee-slapper. In the case of Orlok, turning him into a comedic vehicle is downright disrespectful. A balance of poking fun at eccentricities and thoughtfulness about its subject is the most appropriate decision if I'm really going to do a re-imagining of one of the most (at least academically) respected horror Classics. There are those who nod to it all the time with visual techniques, but people as obsessed with it as I am, if they are really going to create something to do with it, have to full on bow as if they're praying to Mecca. (take that joke lightly, Muslim readers, if you please)
I feel really glad I made this post. I feel full-on inspiration and a sense of purpose, and opportunities in every direction to exercise my creativity on this thing. I feel it as deeply as if I were writing He's There.
Script Frenzy, here I come!
♥,
J