Proposal – The Tell Tale Heart – Lauren Birch

From the selection of stories, I have chosen to make an adaption stop motion of the Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe published in 1843. I had previously learnt about this story in school and was very interested in developing the story into my own perspective. The story is told from a man’s point of view, he is denying that he is going mad and talks of this old man he lives with who has an eye that’s always watching him. He watched the old man at night and stands in the corner of his room going crazy at the thought of his eye. One night he kills the old man and hides him away. He can still hear the heart beating louder and louder. A policeman comes to visit and in the end the mad man confesses that he killed the old man, going mad from the heart beat.

In my adaption I would love to make this into quite a scary horror stop motion, I think from the story the atmosphere of it can be very creepy and dark already and with some good camera angles and puppets it could be a true horror. My first idea when thinking of stop motion for the Tell Tale Heart was to have the characters move like puppets. I want them to be quite janky and not smooth as I think it would fit the horror genre and be scarier. I imagine the puppets to be quite tall and thin with spindly fingers and long legs as I think this can give off a creepy look for both the old man and the madman. For the old man, I think he could either have one working eye and one glass eye, or just be a blind man, this will give the idea that he isn’t really watching him and the other man is going insane. He could even have no eyes and just be holding on to one of his eyes in his hand, that the madman thinks is watching him. Both characters will look similar however the older man with less hair, obviously with an older look. The policeman on the other hand I can imagine him being a bigger, more jolly character to lighten up the story slightly. 

I think the main scenes to focus on will be the introduction of the madman and of course the old man, then with him watching the old man at night, the night after then kills him and then the police arriving. I think if we stretch t out any longer than that it could get quite a repetitive narrative. The heart and the eye are very important parts to focus on and I think that they should come across as imagery that keeps repeating and getting more and more common as he becomes into full madness. Quotes from the poem could also be on the walls of the set but become more prominent the more he goes crazy. I don’t want to stray too far from the original story because it’s very good as it is and a very enjoyable story, however I want to add some new twists and maybe some more backstory as to why he goes mad, or about the old man and why they live together.

As for sets, I don’t think we need to build too much. The main sets are a living room and bedroom. Under the floorboards could also be an option to show a perspective of the dead old man looking up through the floorboards to see the policeman and madman there. A very thin and dark hallway could also be good as I can imagine a shot following down the hall to the old man’s room over him asleep then lowers to jumpscare with his eye opening. I think everything should be dark and colour dimmer as it’s an older story and written in old english and with the dark theme of the story I think it would suit well. I have an idea to twist up the ending, I still want him to confess to the policeman however when he confesses we realise the policeman isn’t real and he’s imagining him. I will try to put little hints that he’s not real through the scene and I think that this would be an interesting alternative ending. Overall, I have many ideas to put together for my version without changing too much of the great original story but with my own twist.

We have kept our set very simple overall as its a focus on characters and we wanted it to look dreary. The furniture is removable as we can use the same room for both a living/dining room with the table and chairs, and the bedroom with the bed and drawers. We have small items to add to the set like jugs, clocks and books and other cabinets to make it look slightly more filled out while still keeping it simple.

When making the puppets for our adaption we started with two basic wire bodies, one for the old man and another for the son. We bulked them up with styrofoam around the limbs but it wasn’t very stable. Soon we realised the wire bodies we had made would not be stable enough to hold the heads of our puppets and balance and also wouldn’t work very well when filming because we had only made the doubled the wire.

The new bodies were made in better proportion to the set as our other ones were very tall, and we bulked out the bodies with milliput instead as its harder and would be more sturdy. The heads were made from styrofoam as we cut them out to make a head shape and then added on facial features such as eyebrows, noses, ears, and mouths. We carved in to the puppets faces for eye sockets as we wanted to place eyes in there so we could move them around and take them out when needed. Paint was used over the face and bluetac eyebrows and hair to make them look more human however we still wanted a slightly creepy puppet vibe. With the eye holes, we painted inside red/pink so when the eyes are removed it can look slightly more gruesome and when the eyes are in it gives a crazed look. Our puppet heads are slightly oversized than the body because we want it to look slightly odd and make the audience be a bit uncomfortable. Hands were fashioned out of blutac too because we tried milliput and they were too hard and we wouldn’t be able to move them if need be.

These are the puppets clothing for the son and the old man. We firstly stuffed the bodies so they would look more full, however ended up having to take a bit of it out because it was too bulky. The old man has patchwork old looking pajama bottoms that we hand sewed together and then around the body. He also wears a casual top because we want him to come across as old and kind and keeping him in simple clothes is a good way to show him. The son has a more put together look as he cares about his appearance and is vain. He has an long coat on as we thought it would be quite smart and show he cares about how he looks while also having it a little deteriorated because he is so worried about how he looks he is going mad.