A "Choose Your Own Adventure" horror movie. During class, there was mild discussion about different ways of dying: burning, drowning, shot. I found this subject quite interesting and tied it into my second project. The overall plot of this project is that the viewer is the main character, and you hear a noise that wakes you from your sleep. You control your way through the house trying to avoid being killed. Unfortunately, since it is on DVD, I could only post the DVD files, and not the interactive movie. Follow the link the the right if you want to burn the DVD, or contact me for a copy.

EXPLANATION:
i used to read those "Choose Your Own Adventure" novels as a child. But I have always been more of a movie person than a book person. So why not make a "Choose Your Own Adventure" movie? With all of the students talking about different ways to die during class discussion, I decided to make a project where you could die several different ways. In the movie, almost every death is from a different weapon; whether it be a knife or a golf club. As you progress through the movie, you are forced to make choices with your DVD remote.

If you get far enough, you are actually able to fight back with your weapon of choice. So at this point, instead of choosing your own death, you get to choose how to kill another person.

This project obviously links with the class discussion of different kinds of deaths. But it also references the Tibetan Book of The Dead (a class reading assignment). The Tibetan Book of the Dead talks about controlling your death through meditation. It claims that proper meditation can lead to a long period of solitude between one's phycal death and the spirit leaving the body. This means that one can control part of his/her death (i.e. how long he/she spends in this middle stage of death). In my project, you can also control part of your death (how you die). Though you do not make the choices knowing what the outcome will be, the decisions you make do affect how you die.

This aspect of my project also leads to another link to one of our class discussions. Some people mentioned that one's death is part of his/her's fate. This means that you cannot control how and when you die, but rather it is predecided for you and you are just waiting. My project speaks against that mentality because you are able to make decisions that affect how and when you die. Maybe if you didn't check under your bed you would still be alive...

HOW IT WAS MADE:
The movie aspects of the project were shot on MiniDV. I play the main character and my friend Johnny Gonzalez plays the killer. First, I planned out all of the decisions that could be made on a piece of paper. Then I did a small amount of storyboarding to ensure continuity with all of the different decisions. Next, we shot the movie portions of the project. I did most of the camerawork just by holding it in my hands and walking through the house. Any scenes where I am in the frame were shot by Johnny. The video portion was shot in my house and on my street. Here is a picture of us having a good time as I attempt to give some direction:

After recording the video, I captured any sound effects that were necessary. Then I edited the video using Sony Vegas. Every decision was made into an individual movie file. Lastly, I linked all of the individual movie files with different menus using DVDLab.