Camp Jesticle - Final Evalution

For this project, we were given the task of making a short horror film. My group wanted to make a body horror, which involves gore and trying to make the audience feel uneasy. The plot of the film revolves around 4 friends (Clifton, Jessica, Nick and Jack) going camping in the woods to get away from their normal lives, until a slug-like creature known as the ‘Jesticle’ makes its way into the camp and terrorizes the 4 friends. Some of our influences for our film include Alien (Scott, 1979), The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986), The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) and Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel, 1956). 

The project started with the group researching into different types of horror sub-genres such as Body Horror, Monster Horror and Sci-Fi Horror as these were the sub genres that fitted with our idea the most. When we were doing the initial research, there were some disagreements with the story. Me, Jes, Archie and Dan wanted to make a very serious film which was very gory and violent as we were fond of the Body Horror genre, whereas Barnaby wanted to make a very silly/comedic horror film as he was fond of the Cult Horror genre. When the story was being written, we compromised and mixed the two ideas together using tropes from each one. The name of the monster in the film, is not a play on words, but instead it’s named after a drink from a bar in Southampton called Jesters. ‘The Jesticle’ is a drink only found in that bar, and we personally thought it would be a great name for a slug-like creature. The original Jesticle was going to be made from clay, and we were planning on mixing stop motion with live action. Barnaby created multiple concept drawings and test shots to show what it might look like. We even researched into claymation as a genre such as how it began, the success of Aardman and Nick Park with its films like Wallace and Gromit (1989-2024) and Chicken Run (2000), and films that included live action with animation such as Jason and the Argonauts (Chaffey, 1963). We decided to scrap the claymation as it would have taken a lot of time to animate it within the real world. I think the idea was a good one and the final product would have looked cool, but we had a very tight schedule to stick to and doing the animation would have taken up a lot of that time. A positive of not showing the Jesticle is that it leaves it up to the audience's imagination of what the Jesticle looks like.  

The filming for Camp Jesticle was a mixture of good and bad. We had to delay filming twice due to personal reasons and it was something that was out of our control. Filming was meant to take place about mid-October, but it started at the beginning of November. Due to the very short amount of time we had to film, we had to cut the majority of the opening. The film now starts with Clifton getting possessed by the Jesticle, whereas the original script starts with the four characters arriving at Alver Valley and setting up camp. With the film starting with Clifton getting possessed, it does get the audience hooked from the very start, but the original opening did introduce the characters, the location and the story. Another problem faced during filming was lighting due to daylight not being available as much as we would like. In most of the scenes, the lighting starts off normal, but as the scene progresses the lighting gets darker and darker due to the sun going down early. For the shots that were quite dark, I fixed them in post by playing around with the contrast and the brightness which didn’t fix the problem but made it much better. The location we used for the film worked really well. We set the campsite within the woods which symbolised that the group were trapped and contained within the forest. At the end of the film, Jessica makes her way out of the forest and into the open plains. This contrasts with the enclosed woods as it now shows that she is free from the monster. As one of our sub genres was Body Horror, we wanted to include as much gore as we possibly could. As the production value wasn’t a lot we decided to use ketchup for most of the fake blood as it looks somewhat decent and was very cheap to buy high quantities of it. We also made most of the characters be sick as their reaction to what is going on is what we want the audience to feel like. We used pea and ham soup for one shot as the green colour corresponds with the theme of the film. For the other shots, we used rice pudding mixed with Guiness as these two mixed together made a very realistic sick. At the end of the film, Clifton is covered in slime as he got attacked by the Jesticle Cocoon as the start. We wanted to cover Clifton in the slime as we wanted to make the audience feel very uncomfortable as the slime looked very sticky all over him. The combination of the blood, sick and slime will hopefully make the audience feel a wave of emotions throughout the duration of the film. Finally, we wanted a big part of the horror to be within the sound. We used scores from other horror films and a wide range of sound effects to build the tension. We wanted the audience to feel like they were there within the world so using a wide range of sound effects layered on top of each other amplified the experience for the audience. For example, in the scene were Nick gets attacked by the Jesticle, I layered multiple sound effects such as music, peeing, a bug crawling, a heartbeat getting faster and the liquid noice of the monster bursting out of Jack’s chest to build the tension for the audience.  

Overall, making Camp Jesticle has been filled with ups and downs but we have learned to adapt to obstacles that come when making films. My favourite part of making Camp Jesticle was editing it as I loved seeing it come together and playing around with different techniques and sounds. I also loved acting for it even though I felt uncomfortable doing it at first but as the filming progressed, I started to enjoy it more and more and was quite sad when we finished filming. My least favourite part of making Camp Jesticle was the pre-production stage as I wasn’t very keen on the project at first. If we were to do it again, I would definitely make sure that we were a lot more organised when it came to filming days as filming took a lot longer than expected due to not being organised.