1930s Movie: "Gatorman

Our story follows a group of teens who are counselors at a summer camp in Louisiana. On the last night of the camp, they put their campers to bed and decide to go out and have a good time. They go out on the lake and start drinking alcohol. Soon they decide to go swimming. When the main character, Johnny jumps into the lake and disappears, and becomes Gatorman, and the only way he can reverse this is if he finds a new victim. This movie is designed purely for entertainment. There is not underlying message we want to convey, but rather something that the audience, more specifically teens, can enjoy.

Our movie is a horror movie. We chose this because it was a popular genre in the 1930s. Many of the horror films in the 1930s dealt with the monsters as being the antagonists (i.e Frankenstein, Dracula). That is why our story contains a monster-Gatorman. The director we chose, James Whale, works for Universal Studios and directed Frankenstein. He is also said to be one of the greatest horror film directors of the time, and that is why we chose him.

We have chosen Universal Studios for his movie because they do a lot with horror movies. Also, they have one of the best horror movie directors, James Whale, working for them. The scale of this production is big because, like mentioned, horror was a popular genre, so we want this to be a big production and one that will attract a lot of attention.

For the cast, we chose actors employed by Universal. Our main male actor, Boris Karloff who starred in Frankenstein, has experience with horror movies and with our director. Our main female character, Lilian Bond (right) who stars as Mary is one of the bigger names with Universal so we wanted to cast her. The supporting actress, Valerie Hobson who stars as Nancy, is another big name, and by having her as well, we hope to attract more people. Our focus for this movie is in costume/makeup for obvious reasons. Since we have a monster, the makeup will have to be intricate. To help us with this, we chose Max Factor for the makeup artist. He is a leader in the industry, doing work for many different films and studios. We believe that would be able to help us pull this off.

We decided to use color technology because that is the popular technology for the time. It's new and people respond well to it, and we want to attract as many people as we can to see this movie. The Hays Code affects a few different aspects of this movie. Because there will be a level of romance between the two main characters, we have to be careful not to show it too in depth. Also when the characters go swimming, they cannot be shown undressing. The alcohol is part of our story, which according to the Hays Code is acceptable. One other thing we would have to be weary of is the death. If our monster kills people, it cannot be shown in detail on screen, therefore we would have to hint to it.

If I were on my own with this project, I probably would not have done a horror movie because I'm not a fan of horror films. Possible options would have been gangster or comedy. With this change, I would have chosen a different studio to accompany the genre so I would have different actors as well.