Development
Hello, my name is Liam Cooper and I am the director of Love After Life, a short horror-comedy film written by Adam Schierau and produced by Tania Goncalves. When I first read the original draft, I was instantly hooked by the story, its themes and characters. I looked at this script as a homage to slapstick comedies and campy horror films which were the kind of films I used to
watch as a child. A lot of times, most student films have darker and depressing tropes that I want to avoid using and try making something that’s not meant to be taken seriously but enjoyable to watch.
As I read the script, I felt like the theme is about obsession, how being obsessed with reaching your goal can descend you into madness. In this case, the main character, Thomas, starts off as an innocent and loving husband who becomes unhinged as he tries to prevent his wife from killing herself. The audience can understand what it's like to be obsessed with something that can make them do questionable things.
Ultimately, my goal is to make the audience laugh and feel disturbed when watching this film. The moment the first frame appears onto the big screen, I want the viewers to instantly sit on the edge of their seats and feel like they’re about to have a wild experience. In addition to that, I don’t want the audience to expect what is going to happen. I want them to feel shocked and ask “What the hell is going on?” while watching this film.
The overall style is hugely inspired by the works of Tim Burton and Sam Rami who both made films that were cartoonish, bizarre, and hilariously terrifying. However, I do want to create a style of my own. The first half of the film will have a very subtle tone where most of the shots are static, music is less dramatic, and the lighting is mostly warm. But as soon as the second half starts, that’s when chaos begins. Camera movements become more exaggerated, pacing becomes faster, and the lighting starts to exaggerate (hellish red, greenish shades on characters’ close ups). I want the overall atmosphere to feel like a film during the early 1990s like Dead Alive and Death Becomes Her where it uses horror elements to tell a humorous story.
When it comes to acting, I want to find actors who have a wide range of performances from someone that is loving to a complete psychopath. Thomas, the lead, is a husband who starts off being kind, charming and a little clumsy but then slowly becomes manipulative and unhinged.
Maggie, the supporting character, begins being flirtatious and loving until her demise. Then when she comes back from the dead, she is irritable, powerless, and hateful towards her spouse.
In addition to that, her parents are completely oblivious to their surroundings and are pure-hearted. But once they see the truth of their daughter’s passing, they start swearing which is completely unexpected to their personalities. The overall idea of how these characters are being portrayed is the ironally that the actors will have to pull off.
