planning for a murder mystery party.
i decided to start recording our process here. we'll see how far i get.
around a month ago i first got the idea to plan a murder mystery party. i originally just got the idea that me and my two best friends should dress up as the powerpuff girls for halloween, because our hair colors match, and realized i didn't get invited to any halloween parties last year. decided to make my own. as i'm deciding who to invite i'm seeing that we have two very distinctive friend groups, who are historically bad at interacting outside of the already formed groups, so i wanted to come up with an activity to get people mixed up. i was starting to decide upon doing some sort of treasure hunt when i got the idea, and then i found some page online about hosting murder mysteries and i was instantly hooked. i think i stayed up like three hours later than usual creating some sort of outline for the story, guest list, ideas for clues, etc.
also, i think this recollection of our efforts might be historically worth something, because we are inviting 30 people, and have never done this before. so from what i'm getting from instruction videos etc, our approach is.. well, rare.
our plan also seems to stand out in that none of the guests know that they are going to a murder mystery party, and because of that we're not giving out roles; everyone plays themselves.
tonight we first worked on our equivalent of the character sheets. so since everyone plays themselves, they won't be character sheets really. we'll instead provide everyone with a personal schedule of what they did that day, so it will be reasonably difficult to figure out what information is actually interesting and plot-driving.
we also worked on mine and sophie's own schedules which are as follows:
18.00 H+S welcome guests, chill
19.30 S: gather everyone, dress up as cop (in this case meaning putting on a fake moustache & maybe a coat) and announce that the murder has occured, that no one is allowed to leave the building, that the pathologist will be arriving soon, and that everyone´s phones will be gathered. (we're planning to leave a bunch of analogue and digital cameras around so people can still remember the evening, but removing the live-instagramming distraction from the rest of the evening)
19.30 H: sneak away and plant some evidence that we don't want to be found before the concept is announced and the doors are closed. many smaller things will be hidden so well they likely won't be found until people start actively looking, so the only things i need to worry about are a change of clothes, with a pocket containing a letter, aswell as a book with some blood stains. then i'll be doing some makeup, and placing myself in the room where i will have died.
19.40 (perhaps) S: undressed from the cop costume, handing out everyones schedules. the sheet will also contain some personal secret information; so the people who aren't directly involved in the murder will have some personal goals (i read somewhere that that is something you should or could aim for). some people will get information they might not want to share with the rest of the room as it might be incriminating or giving the wrong idea. asking people to stay in the room and spend some time with their schedules, she will go and use police tape to close off rooms that are not to be used, and also closing off the entrance to anyone that may arrive late. after that is done, point people towards the crime scene.
19.40 H: finish planting evidence and start playing dead, probably quite early, to like, get my pulse down and really get in character. i'm worried that i'll start giggling!!
after this we'll see when people seem ready to see "the body" and give them approximately 15 minutes, maybe less. there's not that much to see ON the body, we want them to find my head injury and just to create a cool vibe i suppose. we'll then have the coroner/pathologist/cops come and make people leave the room, allowing me to get changed and spend the rest of the evening as a ghost, just enjoying our work hopefully! and keeping an eye on how people are doing, seeing if we need to plant more clues or red herrings by listening to the conversations going on.
we're then planning to let an hour pass, before some sort of half-time. we're thinking that at this point people will probably have figured out our first red herring; the guy who i'm having a secret relationship with. at this point, the police report will arrive; which will reveal that the death was by poison, not blunt force trauma. this will hopefully spice things up! the actual murder was by a girl who is sort-of-famous for sleepwalking. so she won't know about it, which will probably prove nice when doing a surprise murder mystery.
we decided that we won't steer the results too much. if they aren't able to figure out the connection between the sleepwalking and the poisoning, we will allow the murderer to "win", thus keeping everything neatly within a two to two and a half hour timeframe. we'll explain that since you failed to identify the murderer, she fell asleep again and put more poison into everyone's drinks so everyone died. alternatively, if there are a bunch of different camps, the winning theory (if one of them is right) will be praised by the police, and the other camps will get put into prison for tampering with the crime scene. this is fun right?!?!?! we're planning to then do a sort of dramatic reading of the script, and we also wanna make a funny video reenactment of the murder that we can show. after that people will be allowed to leave (lol if someone really needs to leave i don't know what we could do to stop them) and it will be like a normal party for the rest of the night. we're also doing a costume contest so we'll announce the winner(s) for that aswell.
we sent out invitations on sunday evening the second of october, and the party is planned to be held on the 29th. already we have 19 yes's!!! we have a lot of work to do until then but nothing that feels out of hand. mostly we are excited to create a bunch of differently styled cops that sophie can dress up into; and making a bunch of physical evidence is exciting too!! this really feels as our magnum opus as a friend duo; we are such a perfect fit creatively AND practically, truly i haven't experienced possibilities like these before. so i think that's all i'll write tonight! hope this will be of use to someone, someday.
2022/10/05
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