Torment
by Keara22HI, HSM filmmaker
Ever since Juggernaut Games released the Cutteridge Estate, it’s fascinated me.
I enjoy entertainment which has paranormal elements. If you never played The 7th Guest or Darkseed back in the day, you’re missing out. In the realm of television, nod your head if you agree with me that Coop is still searching for Laura Palmer. And chances are, if there’s a haunted-house movie out there, I’ve probably seen it. So I’m predisposed to like Cutteridge.
But let’s be honest: Juggernaut did very nearly everything right with this estate. The setting. The artwork. The sound design. The update which brought weather controls and poltergeist furniture. The light that casts shadow.
Beyond that, though — the mysterious passages. The sealed room.
And the crying woman who vanishes.
Everything about this estate pulls you in and makes you wonder, “What the hell happened here?”
This is very important. HSM has (correctly) observed that Home estates are a very saturated market, and far too many of them are simply pretty settings with a horribly static feel to them. It’s very, very important that an estate have something more to offer, and a backstory is very, very tantalizing.
So I decided to explore a possible backstory.
This machinima is a bit darker than the usual lighthearted fare I churn out. That’s due in large part to some really outstanding editorial guidance from Norse. When he viewed the first cut of the video, he simply replied, “That doesn’t scare me. Stop trying to tell the story and show me the story.”
I’ll say this about Norse: he’s a perfectionist and occasionally a challenge to work with (like any good editor I’ve known over the decades), but damn if he isn’t right most of the time. In order to depict a haunting in Home, he really pushed me to come up with a machinima that functioned as a visual experience, not just a written story augmented with pictures. He urged me to go very minimalist with the dialogue, and to convey as much as possible purely through visuals. So I rewatched silencieux, the HSM depiction of a haunting in Home’s Gothic Manor, and tried to stretch into areas of cinematography I haven’t touched before. The end result is something much more unsettling than the original cut.
No, this isn’t a Kubrick masterpiece, but I really do believe there are one or two images in this film which should leave a lasting impression. Which, ultimately, is what any filmmaker hopes to achieve.
So let’s now revisit the Cutteridge Estate, and uncover the mystery of the veiled woman.
May 25th, 2012 by keara22hi | 5 comments
Keara is also known in Home as DarthGranny. She is a wicked little old lady with a wild sense of humor.
In the words of an old Earthworm… WELL DONE!
Love it granny, but i don’t care how spooky you try to make that house look, i adore every nook and cranny within its walls
Very well done, Keara.
I just watched the Woman in Black on blu-ray the other night; there are some definite parallels between that classic gothic horror tale and the Cutteridge Estate personal space. While watching the movie, it dawned on me that the backstory for the WiB could easily apply to the Cutteridge Estate’s crying lady.
Nice take on this Granny. I loved the different effects you played with. Good job!
That’s it, Keara. You are done with Home. No more. You need to go and make video games! Awesome Story and editing. So many shots. Very nicely done.
I see that took forever to put together. Thanks for inspiring me now! We are even.