What came first? A guest blog.

                             What Came First? The Plot or the Deaths?

By Joe Dugdale

(Joe Dugdale lives in Bridgewater, Somerset, England with his partner and three pet children.

He works with authors helping them prepare for publication and marketing their books.

He is currently in preproduction of ‘The Paranormal’, a film and TV series, all being made on a zero budget with a cast and crew with no experience of film)

 

As we watch films or read books, when it comes to horror, the deaths are often an integral part of it. There are times when the deaths are the only good thing taking place.

As an author and filmmaker, I sometimes look at these in a different way and it takes me back to when we made our first film.

I remember it well. We had just finished watching Camp Blood, which was an indie homage to the Friday the 13th film series but, just to give you an idea of how good it was, it was far distant from being as good as those films – even the latter ones. Somehow though, they had managed to get their DVDs into every Blockbusters.

We decided that if they could do it, then so could we. So that night, we obviously worked on the plot to ensure it would all go smoothly.

No.

That isn’t what happened.

When it comes to making slasher films, the plot is secondary. What we did that night was come up with some cool deaths that were different to what we’d seen before. We then looked at the plot, by seeing what would fit the deaths.

For me, this is a problem, as I like my horror to be as good as any other film when it comes to having a story that I can follow. I like a beginning, middle and end.

This all happened over fifteen years ago, and we are now in pre-production of a new film, to be followed by a tv show. The budget is a little bit of a problem – we don’t have one. This isn’t going to stop us from making something we can be proud of though.

Working out the plot is far more complicated when you have a TV show in mind, and especially in this case, as I have worked out the main thread for the film, plus five seasons. I haven’t even worked on deaths yet, for this I’ve put together a creative team, made up of local people who will be making this with me, here in Bridgwater, Somerset (that’s in England). We’ll also be working on a number of sub-plots, to keep everybody interested.

What is more important though? 

Is it the deaths, the moments of horror or the plot? 

Do you really need a good plot to make a good horror? 

Do you need a plot at all?

What do you look for when it comes to horror?