Narrative
The mountain cabin is home to a hermit who survives by scavenging in a sci-fi dystopian world. The collapse of society was brought about by a deadly plague that only a tiny fraction of the population survived. This is inspired by classic zombie apocalypse stories but subtracts the zombies coming back from the dead and instead leaves a devastating and terrifying realism. They haven’t seen another person since the events which wiped out the rest of the human race and they don’t expect to ever see anyone again.
The centre piece asset is a robot created by the lone scavenger who’s living in this post-apocalyptic world. The robot is an attempt at making a companion. Although the character tries to remain indifferent to the loneliness the creation of the robot shows that there are some feelings about it being pushed down.
How is this communicated
There’s military crates all around the cabin which are often seen in dystopian media particularly zombie media. These crates being in a cabin in the woods instead of a military base suggests something is different about the world as in a normal world people wouldn’t have that in their home. It makes it look like a doomsday preppers house which was what I was going for to explain how this character has survived the collapse of society.
There’s a generator on balcony at the front of the house to show that the character living there has rigged up their own working electrics and has the knowledge to fix and build machines.
There’s not many supplies outside of essentials there’s canned food and electronics showing the character doesn’t care for luxuries or is unable to worry about it and instead has to focus on survival.
The fact the character lives alone is communicated by there only being one single bed in the cabin and one backpack and the robot shows their loneliness.
To make the cabin look like someone could actually live and survive there I added a kitchen counter with a dish rack, canned food and a bathroom in the back room despite these not being explicitly dystopian I wanted to ensure it could house a person.
Music and sound effects
I searched through electronic music to find something that felt like a soundtrack to an apocalyptic sci-fi film or game and chose music by Koi Discovery (2022) that reminded me of the guitar tracks in The Last Of Us () soundtrack as it felt dystopian and post apocalyptic like the game.
I also added a wind through trees sound effect since the trees I used are animated to have wind so I thought it would fit well withy the environment it plays when the camera is outside the cabin (keweldog, 2013).
References
keweldog (2013) Breeze. [Downloaded] Available Online: Freesound – “breeze.wav” by keweldog [Accessed 06/05/2023]
Koi Discovery (2022) Nowar [Downloaded] Available Online: Koi-discovery – Nowar – Free Music Archive [Accessed 06/05/2023]
Naughty Dog (2013) The Last Of Us [Video Game] Sony Interactive Entertainment: Playstation 3