Gruesome Legends of Gravelly Lake Drive

Gruesome Legends of Gravelly Lake Drive
A film by Julie P.

	Gruesome Legends of Gravelly Lake Drive is pays amorous homage to horror films like A Nightmare on Elm Street, multi-ending films such as Clue and monster movies. Set in the small town of Lakewood, WA the story follows a group of teens and twenty-somethings as they investigate the gruesome legend of the dead serial killer that still haunts Lakewood to this day. The film is dedicated to Alec Denbrough, a deceased friend of Julie who loved horror films.

The Setting: GLoGLD is set in Lakewood, WA purely because Julie is board of the same locations in US cinema and thinks that it would be cool to shoot a grime-y film in her hometown. The knowledge Julie has of Lakewood also provides her with an advantage when selecting locations to shoot.

The Characters:

•Hannah (18): a high school senior. Hannah is a plucky brunette equally known for rushing headfirst into a pickle but also being able to get herself out with far fewer scrapes than one would expect. The character exists to pay homage to Nancy Thompson.
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The Sound: Julie prefers sparse and very calculated use of both sound and sound effects. As a major fan of composer Sagisu Shirou her goal would be ultimately to invite him to score the film or at least license his prior music for reuse.

The Endings: GLoGLD pays homage to filmmaking techniques in general (particularly the works of An’no Hide’aki, Tsurumaki Kazuya, Masayuki and Shinbou Akiyuki) but as an homage to the film Clue it also uses different endings to give the audience something new to discover. Each cut of the film features a similar if not the same branching point although small, difficult to notice alternate takes for scenes prior to the branch point are also possible should the filmmaking team feel that they are necessary or interesting.

•Red Disc: All of the main characters are successfully killed. The Red Disc ending pays homage to “Kill ‘Em All” Tomino Yoshiyuki.
•Black Disc: At the branch point the film cuts to black and uses sound only to deliver an ambiguous ending. The Black Disc ending pay homage to sound-driven films and radio serials.
•White Disc: At the branch point the film cuts to a Naruto-style pep talk that takes place in a completely white space. The teens use their combined experiences throughout the film to peacefully resolve their conflict with the monster through dialogue. The White Disc ending pays homage not simply to Naruto and Shin Seiki Evangelion but also to the ‘bottle episodes’ of Star Trek, which involved minimal action and focused on characters debating. The White Disc ending could very well be the longest alternate ending, adding a good thirty minutes extra onto the film.
•Green Disc: At the branch point the film reintroduces Homeless Homer, a recurring drunk (and dirty as fuck) middle-aged man who rescues the teens from certain death by revealing that he the inheritor of a Kamen Rider belt but has live for disgrace and self-imposed exile after a great failure in his past. Homeless Homer transforms into a yet undetermined Kamen Rider to save the kids and defeat the monster. The Green Disc ending pays homage to tokusatsu while also serving as a twist to the usual ‘realistic’ endings of horror films. If licensing of the Kamen Rider brand is not possible then this ending would exist purely as a sort of ‘bootleg’ ending difficult to be found and so feverishly sought after.
•Pink Disc: At the branch point the film reintroduces Hannah’s wheelchair-bound mother. Hannah’s mom reveals how she really wound up in her wheelchair: long ago she protected Lakewood from horrifying monsters as a magical girl (name undecided). Hannah accepts her mother’s transformation device and succeeds her as the protector of love and Lakewood, [insert name here]. Hannah defeats the monster, signaling the beginning of her new, long battle as her home’s hero of love and justice. The Pink Disc ending pays homage to the mahou shoujo genre in Japanese fiction, in particular the Pretty Cure franchise.