Plotting by Poster, Part II

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In case you missed the initial post concerning this topic, I suggested how movie posters can help to suggest plots and identified these guidelines for anyone who might like to try this approach to plotting stories:

1. If the poster you select promotes a movie you have seen, pretend it does not, and don't reference the film, even in your thoughts, as you analyze the poster. The poster should speak for itself, as it were.
2. We are taught to read from left to right and from top to bottom. Graphic designers know this and use our training to their benefit in creating designs and art and in communicating to us.
3. A poster is likely to have a central image, and this central image will be emphasized in some way—through its position, just off center; through color or intensity; by being of bigger than other images. It is obvious that the artist wants the viewer to focus attention on this central image. Text and other images, if any, will relate to this central image and help to develop its figurative aspects.
4. Most art employs various “visual” figures of speech—metaphors, similes, allusions, personifications, exaggerations, understatements, symbols, puns or other plays on words, synecdoches.
5. See all there is to see—not just size, but color, intensity, depth, balance, negative and positive space, shape, texture, size, density, position, arrangement, patterns. facial expressions, hairstyles, costumes (i. e., the models' clothing), age, sex, gender, class, income level. Also consider whatever props might be displayed.
6. Analyze visual evidence of behavior: care, neglect, attendance, abandonment, support, and so forth.
7. Consider the other four senses, too: what sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations does the poster suggest?
8. The text is the key that unlocks the visual imagery's figurative meaning.

With these guidelines in mind, start by describing the poster. Start at the top and work your way down. Include quotations of any text you encounter. Be detailed, but don't be flowery. At this point, be a camera operator, not a sketch artist, an objective viewer, not an interpreter.

After describing the poster, use the elements you identified to complete this table. In doing so, stick to the poster itself.

WHO?
WHAT?
WHEN?
WHERE?
HOW?
WHY?

Next, question yourself about each of the six phrases you entered into the table. In doing so, make observations; draw inferences from what you see and read in the poster. Look for potential relationships among the poster's elements. Look, also, for possible connections between your own thoughts, between your own feelings, and between your own thoughts and feelings. Ask yourself how the answers you listed in the table could be “flipped,” or reinterpreted.

As a result of this process, you may develop an idea for a story or even a synopsis of a plot for a story. At the same time, you will have a sequence of elements that are logically related and which, together, form a narrative thread upon which, by the questioning process and the use of your own imagination, you can embroider, or develop further. Statues of saints stand on pedestals connected to the same walls, farther along.

THE OFFERING

Text above the image reads, in blood-red letters: “The chosen will be sacrificed.”

Hanging, apparently from the ceiling of the cathedral in which their suspended bodies hang, visible from the knee down, are three corpses. They wear slips, skirts, or dresses, which suggest that the bodies of those of women. Blood trails along the wall on either side of the bodies.

The title of the film, The Offering, appears across the middle of the image, diving it into an upper and a lower half. The bodies of the women and the cathedral's ceiling and walls occupy the upper half of the poster. Below the title, the statues, blood-smeared pews, and a bloody cross appear. The blood trailing down the walls link the upper and the lower halves of the poster. The aisle between the ranks of pews is saturated with blood.

Observations

The women's legs seem to be lacerated; they have bled. They also appear to be scarred. Although they may wear skirts or dresses, it's also possible that they wear only slips. Although their legs have bled, they have not done so profusely, but the volume of blood in the cathedral—on its walls, pews, and aisle—indicate extreme blood loss. Even if the women bear wounds in their abdomens, it is unlikely that three of them could have shed as much blood as stains the cathedral.

The cross is neither the Latin cross of Protestant denominations nor the Catholic crucifix, but a Levithan cross (also known as the brimstone symbol, Satan's cross, the cross of Lorraine, and the Patriarchal cross). In some cases, the crossbeams (arms) of the cross are of different lengths, with the top arm shown as being shorter than the lower arm, but the crossbeams are also shown as being of equal lengths. The cross has various mystical meanings and associations.

WHO? The corpses of three bloody, scarred women
WHAT? hang
WHEN? during the day
WHERE? from a cathedral ceiling
HOW? by unknown means
WHY? sacrifices of a diabolical cult.

Result: The corpses of three bloody, scarred women hang, during the day, from a cathedral ceiling by unknown means, sacrifices of a diabolical cult.

Questions

Why and by whom were these three women in particular “chosen”? Did they “sin” against the tenets of their “faith”? Are their deaths meant to appease an angry deity or spirit? If so, how and why? If not, what is the purpose of their sacrifices? Who benefits from their sacrifices and how? Have they been left hanging so the blood would drain from their bodies or as a warning to other congregants? Were the women sexually assaulted before they were killed? Were they beaten or tortured? What caused their deaths? Why are the women's upper bodies not shown? How did blood get on the walls, pews, aisle, and Leviathan cross? How did blood from the Leviathan cross form two other crosses (or did this blood form the capital letter “H”)? Is the cathedral, a center and a symbol of Christian faith—and a house of God—being mocked? If so, by whom and for what reason? How can the story line be “flipped”?

SLITHER

Centered at the top of the poster, against a shadow in the form of a cross (the frame of a window), the shaved, bent right leg of a young woman appears above the side of a white porcelain bathtub located next to a tile wall; the bathtub is half filled with soapy water.

The scene is framed by the left jamb of a doorway and by the open door to the bathroom. On the edge of the bathtub, a red creature resembling a cross between a snail and a gigantic sperm cell perches, as a second creature follows it, through its trail of slime, leaving a trail of slime behind itself as well.

Below the second creature, a third lifts its body and appears to attach its head to the side of the tub, preparing to follow the other two creatures up the side of the tub. At least eighteen more of the creatures gather on the floor, near the tub.

Observations

The shadow could suggest that the story has religious significance or religious undertones. The cross formed by the shadow is Latin in design, suggesting a Protestant denomination. The fact that it is merely the a shadow could imply that the young woman's faith is insubstantial.

The door is open, although one would expect it to be closed, since the woman is bathing.

The creatures resemble gigantic sperm cells in shape, but they are meaty, red, and “raw” looking, both meat (phalli, perhaps) and sperm. Their appearance is disgusting, and it, like the number of the creatures, seems menacing. They seem intent upon attacking the young woman, as if they are parasites in search of a host. They are large, too, if they are intended to represent phalli. Long and thick, they might cause pain. Despite their sperm-like appearance, none of the creatures exhibits testicles, which makes them perverse as well as disgusting. The slime they rail behind them resembles semen, but, considering that the slime is behind them, it wouldn't be fecundating fluid, unless the creatures exude more of it during their assault. (The number of the creatures suggests gang rape.)

The film's title, Slither, emphasizes the method of locomotion the creatures employ, which is one shared by snakes, a smooth movement “over a surface with a twisting or oscillating motion.” The verb's synonyms suggest additional associations, “squirm,” “wriggle,” “snake,” and “worm,” which, in turn, suggest such qualities as furtiveness and evil (like “dragon,” “worm” and “snake” were associated with the devil).

In religious ritual, bathing is a means of cleansing one's soul, of washing away sins. The young woman's nudity suggests there may be a relationship between it and the devil, that her body has been an instrument of fornication, a sin against God, and that she now seeks to cleanse herself spiritually, albeit in vain, since the slug-like creatures resembling sperm cells have invaded her home, her bathroom, and appear to be about to invade her body as well.

The open door reveals a private act—the cleansing of the soul—making a personal and spiritual action a public spectacle. Despite the woman's attempt to gain absolution, the poster seems to suggest that her sins will be revealed and she must suffer for her indiscretion.

WHO: A naked young woman

WHAT: is about to be assaulted by bizarre creatures

WHEN: as she bathes

WHERE: in a bathtub in her bathroom

HOW: with soap and water

WHY: to cleanse herself and her soul after having had sex.

Questions

Is the young woman devoted in her religious faith? Why is only her leg shown? Why is the door to the bathroom open instead of closed while she bathes? Who opened the door? She? Someone else? The creatures? (Was the door locked or only closed?) What are the strange creatures? What are their abilities? Why are there so many of them? What led to their bizarre appearance? Why are they attracted to the young woman? Are they a menace to her? How could the story line be “flipped”?

Like to try the approach yourself? Here's a poster to get you started:

Plotting by Poster

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

In this post, I would like to suggest how movie posters can help to suggest plots. Before I get to a couple of examples, though, I offer a few guidelines for anyone who might like to try this approach to plotting stories. They have served me well.

1. If the poster you select promotes a movie you have seen, pretend it does not, and don't reference the film, even in your thoughts, as you analyze the poster. The poster should speak for itself, as it were.
2. We are taught to read from left to right and from top to bottom. Graphic designers know this and use our training to their benefit in creating designs and art and in communicating to us.
3. A poster is likely to have a central image, and this central image will be emphasized in some way—through its position, just off center; through color or intensity; by being of bigger than other images. It is obvious that the artist wants the viewer to focus attention on this central image. Text and other images, if any, will relate to this central image and help to develop its figurative aspects.
4. Most art employs various “visual” figures of speech—metaphors, similes, allusions, personifications, exaggerations, understatements, symbols, puns or other plays on words, synecdoches.
5. See all there is to see—not just size, but color, intensity, depth, balance, negative and positive space, shape, texture, size, density, position, arrangement, patterns. facial expressions, hairstyles, costumes (i. e., the models' clothing), age, sex, gender, class, income level. Also consider whatever props might be displayed.
6. Analyze visual evidence of behavior: care, neglect, attendance, abandonment, support, and so forth.
7. Consider the other four senses, too: what sounds, tastes, smells, and tactile sensations does the poster suggest?
8. The text is the key that unlocks the visual imagery's figurative meaning.

With these guidelines in mind, start by describing the poster. Start at the top and work your way down. Include quotations of any text you encounter. Be detailed, but don't be flowery. At this point, be a camera operator, not a sketch artist, an objective viewer, not an interpreter.

After describing the poster, use the elements you identified to complete this list, creating a complete sentence in the process. In doing so, stick to the poster itself.

WHO?
WHAT?
WHEN?
WHERE?
HOW?
WHY?

Next, question yourself about each of the six phrases you entered into the table. In doing so, make observations; draw inferences from what you see and read in the poster. Look for potential relationships among the poster's elements. Look, also, for possible connections between your own thoughts, between your own feelings, and between your own thoughts and feelings. Ask yourself how the answers you listed in the table could be “flipped,” or reinterpreted.

As a result of this process, you may develop an idea for a story or even a synopsis of a plot for a story. At the same time, you will have a sequence of elements that are logically related and which, together, form a narrative thread upon which, by the questioning process and the use of your own imagination, you can embroider, or develop further.

FRIGHT NIGHT

Text above the image reads: “There are some very good reasons to be afraid of the dark.”

It is night. There are stars and a full moon. Spirits swarm above a house. One appears to be the ghost of a vampire; its wide open mouth is positioned above the center of the house, near the domicile's rooftops. Two other spirits have a bestial appearance. The rest are heads with faces and fanged mouths—demons, perhaps.

Behind a simple white rails, a front porch runs the length of the three-story Victorian house. In the center, second-floor room (perhaps a bedroom), the silhouette of a standing figure, hands on hips, is visible between drawn drapes, against light.

Five low steps lead to the porch from the end of a sidewalk, the other end of which connects to a sidewalk that parallels the street out front. Low shrubs are planted along the front of the porch. A tree flanks each side of the front of the house; each is almost as tall as the house. The lawn is cut. Behind the house is a line of trees, perhaps the front rank of a forest.

Text below the image reads, “Fright Night: If you love being scared, it'll be the night of your life.”

Observations

Although the house could be in a suburbs, it seems more likely that it is in a more rural area. Not only are there large trees present, but the visibility of the stars suggests that the house is some distance from the street lights common to suburbs.

The swarm of spirits seem to fountain from the house, suggesting that it is haunted.

Although rather indistinct, the figure appears to be wearing a dress, which would indicate that the figure is that of a woman. It is impossible to tell whether she faces forward, but her presence at the window suggests that she is looking out of the room.

The house is in good repair, and the lawn is landscaped and well kept.

The text suggests that this is a special night; it is Fright Night. The text also suggests that the spirits are the “reasons” that one should fear the dark.

The text that reads “it'll be the night of your life” suggests that Fright Night will be momentous, probably unique.

The figure stands in a lighted room, surrounded by darkness. The room may be her “safe place,” but only as long as the light continues to burn.

WHO? A young woman

WHAT? stands watch

WHEN? at night

WHERE? in the lighted room of an otherwise dark Victorian house in a rural part of the United States

HOW? ready to become a conduit for spiritual warriors

WHY? to ward off a horde of demons that appear every decade on Fright Night.

Questions

Over what, if anything, do the demons rule? What powers do they have? Why do they appear every decade on Fright Night? Whom do they seek to frighten? Why is one the spirit of a vampire? Why are two of bestial form? Why do the remaining demons look similar? Where are the spirits' bodies? Why have they gathered here, at this particular house? Is the house significant in some way? Who is the young woman? Why is she in the house? Why is she alone? How can the story line be flipped?

IT FOLLOWS

Text above the image reads, “it doesn't think. It doesn't feel. It doesn't give up.”

Looking frightened, a tense, young blonde woman, eyes wide, stares into her car's rear-view mirror, which she adjusts. Outside, it is dark and perhaps foggy. Her headlights don't seem to penetrate the gloom.

Text below the image, the film's title, reads, “It Follows.”

Observations

The woman wears makeup, and her nails are painted red-orange. Her eyebrows, like her eyes, are brown, which suggests that she is a peroxide, not a natural, blonde. She wears her hair in a bob or a pixie cut.

WHO? A young woman

WHAT? looks into her rear-view mirror

WHEN? at night

WHERE? on a lonely stretch of country road

HOW? as she is driving her car

WHY? fleeing from a relentless, inhuman pursuer.

 

Questions

Who is the young woman? She appears to be alone—is she? If so, why? If not, why not? Where is she going? Where has she been? Is she on some sort of mission or is she just trying to escape? Why is she driving at night? Who or what is she fleeing? Why is her pursuer chasing her? Why is her pursuer relentless? Is her pursuer behind her, as she appears to believe, or in front of her? Her tension and fear suggest she may be involved in an emergency situation? Is she? If so, what is the emergency? If not, what else explains her tension and fear? Is her car a sedan? A convertible? New? An older model? How large or small is her car? Is it in good repair? Is someone expecting her? If so, who? Why? If not, why not?

In future posts, I may model this technique for plotting by posters again. There are many posters, after all—an inexhaustible supply of them. To generate a strong, intriguing, suspenseful plot, we need only one. Meanwhile, why not try your own hand at this poster:

Title and Caption: The Horror of the Evocative

Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman

Often, the titles and captions of horror movie posters are suggestive. They're enticing. They invite their viewers' minds to wander, to speculate, to imagine—and, of course, we imagine much worse things, much worse monsters, than those even the most talented special effects wizards and screenwriters are apt to show us. There's no substitute, when it comes to fear, for the human imagination itself, as H. G. Wells implies in his masterful short story “The Red Room.”

But this post isn't about short stories or novels or horror movies. It's about the suggestiveness of words combined with images, which together explain nothing, state little, and evoke much.

The poster for Dark Was the Night evokes terror, the fear of the unknown, both with its title (notice the use of the past tense), which refers to “dark” and “night,” which can be understood both literally and figuratively, suggesting both nocturnal hours and evil, and the poster's caption, “Evil's Roots Run Deep. . . .”

The text is accompanied by an image of a man wearing a uniform, probably that of a local police department, alone in a forest. Alone, he holds a flashlight in one hand, a rifle in the other, the tool parallel to the weapon. Technology and nature are thus symbolically juxtaposed.

But there is another juxtaposition, too: that of man and beast. Despite his flashlight and his rifle—despite his technological advantages—the hunter has become the hunted, his prey, a gigantic creature that looks simultaneously both fleshly and earthborn, has become the hunter. The creature, which may or may not have a head (if it does, it is low, below chest level, as if the creature crouches, although its body appears to be erect), is behind the human. In the wilderness, technology has its limits; in the forest primeval, engineering and its effects count but little, if at all.

The poster suggests that, in hunting the creature of the woods, the human may, in fact, be hunting himself, or the beast within himself, for its placement suggests that it could be rising from the man, a shadowy figure as much flesh and blood as leaf and dirt. It is the beast within, his on bestial nature, perhaps, that the man hunts, and it is this bestial element of himself which hunts him.

The poster recalls Friedrich Nietzsche's warning, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster... for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.” This idea of the beast within is reinforced by the letter “i” in “Night,” which is an image of a stunted tree, its branches superimposed upon the limbs of the forest's trees, its roots forming a clawed hand reaching down, into the portrait of man and beast.

By explaining nothing, but evoking much, the poster invites viewers to form their own explanations, to make the text and image mean whatever they think or want them to mean. In this sense, movie posters become Rorschach inkblots or a sort, by which, in projecting one's own thoughts and feelings upon the poster, viewers identify the monster in themselves (just as I myself have done, no doubt, in explaining such posters as Rorschach tests).

A review of the movie shows a few of my interpretations of the poster's significance are false in terms of what actually happens in the film. However, there is a lawman—two in fact: Deputy Donny Saunders and Sheriff Paul Shields, and technology is represented by the tools the victims, a group of loggers, use, who do encounter a monster. The movie makes plain some of the monster's characteristics and behaviors: it snatches the local townspeople's cattle, so, presumably, it's a carnivore, and it “leaves hoof prints in the dirt” and “scratch marks on metals,” suggesting it has powerful, sharp claws.

What about my supposition that the monster arises from the lawman (or from human beings in general)? A couple of the characters suffer from chronic guilt concerning a child for whose lose they blame themselves, but the film doesn't play on their guilt as a symbolic “root” of the monster and the evil it does; instead, New York Times critic Andy Webster points out, it's a sort of “ecologically minded demon that’s some kind of godless instrument of the Devil,” as is suggested by the “tree dweller['s] . . . fighting encroaching overdevelopment on its habitat (attacking those who don’t 'respect the land,' says a part-Shawnee bartender)” and its subsequent attack upon “huddled citizens seeking refuge in a church, as if to assault their faith.”

For Webster, this implicit explanation of the creature's motives, if not its nature, doesn't work well: Even in a horror movie, that’s hard to believe. ” My own idea, that the lawman's own character is the source in which the monster is rooted, seems a better explanation. It worked well for Robert Louis Stevenson, after all.

The creature seems to remain mysterious, although some suggest it might be the devil or a demon, and one reviewer sees it as a contemporary version of Spring-heeled Jack, “as similar creature” that terrorized the population of Devon, England, in the mid 1800s. This same creature, “or something similar,” apparently “made its way to America,” where it became “known as the Jersey Devil.”

Both creatures have interesting (and varied) histories, but neither seems to have arisen, Mr. Hyde fashion, out of their human, Dr. Jekyll, counterparts, so, here, my imagination doesn't dovetail with the movie's plot, but, then, the imagination often doesn't, which is one reason, perhaps, that we often say the imagination provides images not only different from, but superior to, many a movie and, for that matter, many a monster.

"Hidden" Images and Texts

Copyright 2018 by Gary L. Pullman

Although the once-popular concept of subliminal perception has been debunked, the use of “hidden” images and text continues to be included in advertisements, including movie posters, and, indeed, in motion pictures, including horror movies. These posters, in which the word “sex” is discernible, are cases in point.

 (“S-e-x” appears in the woman's hair. There is also the image of a man's head among the palm trees at the bottom of the poster.)

(“S-e-x,” printed in blood, appears on the woman's upper left shoulder.)

(“S-e-x” formed by the branches of the trees, appears on to the right side of the woman's right outer thigh. There's also a vague representation of a female torso among the trees, bare breast in evidence.)

The idea is that such “hidden” text and imagery, registered consciously, but seemingly without notice, heightens the overall picture's erotic and horrific effects.

Novelists and short story writers also often use other “subliminal” ways to effect such emotions, as we have seen in my previous posts, “Background: The Key to Interpreting Foreground,” and “'Heavy-Set': Learning from the Masters,” “Learning from the Masters: Ian Fleming, Part 2,” among others.

One way of creating “subliminal” messages in horror fiction that we haven't discussed as yet is description. For example, in the manner of a fine, impressionistic painter, Stephen Crane describes a forest as if it were a cathedral, the resulting imagery imbuing his novel, The Red Badge of Courage, with symbolic and thematic depth and richness that the story would not possess otherwise:

At length he reached a place where the high, arching boughs made a chapel. He softly pushed the green doors aside and entered. Pine needles were a gentle brown carpet. There was a religious half light.

Near the threshold he stopped, horror-stricken at the sight of a thing.

He was being looked at by a dead man who was seated with his back against a columnlike tree. The corpse was dressed in a uniform that had once been blue, but was now faded to a melancholy shade of green. The eyes, staring at the youth, had changed to the dull hue to be seen on the side of a dead fish. The mouth was open. Its red had changed to an appalling yellow. Over the gray skin of the face ran little ants. One was trundling some sort of bundle along the upper lip.

The youth gave a shriek as he confronted the thing. He was for moments turned to stone before it. He remained staring into the liquid-looking eyes. The dead man and the living man exchanged a long look. Then the youth cautiously put one hand behind him and brought it against a tree. Leaning upon this he retreated, step by step, with his face still toward the thing. He feared that if he turned his back the body might spring up and stealthily pursue him.

The branches, pushing against him, threatened to throw him over upon it. His unguided feet, too, caught aggravatingly in brambles; and with it all he received a subtle suggestion to touch the corpse. As he thought of his hand upon it he shuddered profoundly.

At last he burst the bonds which had fastened him to the spot and fled, unheeding the underbrush. He was pursued by the sight of black ants swarming greedily upon the gray face and venturing horribly near to the eyes.

After a time he paused, and, breathless and panting, listened. He imagined some strange voice would come from the dead throat and squawk after him in horrible menaces.

The trees about the portal of the chapel moved soughingly in a soft wind. A sad silence was upon the little guarding edifice.

The trees began softly to sing a hymn of twilight. The sun sank until slanted bronze rays struck the forest. There was a lull in the noises of insects as if they had bowed their beaks and were making a devotional pause. There was silence save for the chanted chorus of the trees.

Then, upon this stillness, there suddenly broke a tremendous clangor of sounds. A crimson roar came from the distance.

The youth stopped. He was transfixed by this terrific medley of all noises. It was as if worlds were being rended. There was the ripping sound of musketry and the breaking crash of the artillery.

His mind flew in all directions. He conceived the two armies to be at each other panther fashion. He listened for a time. Then he began to run in the direction of the battle. He saw that it was an ironical thing for him to be running thus toward that which he had been at such pains to avoid. But he said, in substance, to himself that if the earth and the moon were about to clash, many persons would doubtless plan to get upon the roofs to witness the collision.

As he ran, he became aware that the forest had stopped its music, as if at last becoming capable of hearing the foreign sounds. The trees hushed and stood motionless. Everything seemed to be listening to the crackle and clatter and earthshaking thunder. The chorus peaked over the still earth.

It suddenly occurred to the youth that the fight in which he had been was, after all, but perfunctory popping. In the hearing of this present din he was doubtful if he had seen real battle scenes. This uproar explained a celestial battle; it was tumbling hordes a-struggle in the air.

The use of another type of “subliminal,” involving a shift in the story's point of view as it is read through the eyes of minor characters, rather than from the perspective of the protagonist, can provide yet another dimension to a story of horror, as we will see in a later post.