Decisions made

After creating our test storyboard and having a tutorial about how it worked out, we decided on some major decisions:

The actress
My initial idea was to find an actress to star in our film, who would look petite and innocent with blonde hair. This would have fit with the theme of her being oppressed by society before she turns rebellious, and also the blonde hair would stand out against the black background. However we decided based on the opinion of our supervisor Lewis, that I would be able to pull of the role because I did quite well in the test shots. My black hair also fit with the dark tone of the film, and we could make this stand out using back lighting. This would also save time and possibly money (in terms of food and travel) if we don't have to find another actress; it may be easier to direct the film as well if I already know what i'm doing with my vision in mind.


Costume
Our original idea was to have the white dress to contrast against the black, which is something we have agreed worked out really well in the test shots. In the test we used a long sleeved frilly dress, which is not something I planned for the actual footage (I wanted something much plainer) but the test dress actually looked really good and so we have decided to keep it. Now that I am going to play the character in the film, I believe the long sleeves were a good idea to cover my tattoos, so that they don't distract from the imagery of the film. The lace and frills look quite Victorian in style, contributing the Gothic tone of the film, and the chain belt around the waist adds to the theme of restraint.


Photographs
Our first natural thought when making film is to use video footage, which is what we planned to do. However after looking at our photographic storyboard in the tutorial, we realised that the use of photographs actually told the story quite well alone, and at quite an effective flowing pace. We have therefore decided to seriously consider just shooting stills and making the film from them, not only because of the narrative works but because it's artistic and unusual way of presenting this narrative makes it quite eerie for the audience, again further adding to the tone.



Simplicity
Talking through ideas in the tutorial, it was also apparent that with the use of photographs, and also due to lack of time perhaps, we couldn't necessarily create the gory melodramatic piece we wanted at the start. One of the reasons for this is it would possibly look like we were putting random things into our film for the sake of it, such as the gruesome hooks in the skin, the elements such as fire and water etc. when the simple idea of the girl struggling to reach her goal only by the rope restraint works well on its own. Therefore, this is what we should concentrate on instead, and keep the film as simple as possible as to keep the audience engaged without 'taking them out of the film'. 

Test shots and photographic storyboarding

We went to the location we plan to shoot in, in order to do some test shots to see if our lighting and composition of shot ideas would work. As we don't have an actress and no final costume yet, I just put on a white dress in place of the actress for these tests. We were then able to make a photographic storyboard of what kind of shots we are expecting to get on the shoot day, and we were quite happy with the results. We put this together in video format so it was a clearer timeline for us to see visually.
  The only problems we encountered were slight issues with some lighting, however we only did the test shots with a headlamp and so the outcome will be much nicer with bigger redheads for example on the shoot day. The space we got to work in was brilliant in terms of size for the long shots, and the darkness that was in place when the lights were off, to get the effects we wanted in contrast with the white dress. From this we were able to realise what we would have to do on the shoot day, such as covering up some white wall fixures in the background, covering the windows on the doors, and perhaps putting some black fabric or paper on the floor to get a darker effect; however, we actually thought the way the floor looked was much better than we anticipated, and we might not necessarily need to cover it, depending on the shots we use.
  The lighting on the razor we used worked well - to get a full metal one was a good choice. Also the fact my black hair blended too much into the background suggested the fact we would probably be best with a blonde actress for the shoot as planned, or back-light the hair more.

Storyboarding

Using the ideas we had come up with so far, we decided to create a storyboard that illustrated these ideas in a timeline of events. Jack drew a rough outline of the shots we wanted, as shown:

During a tutorial with Lewis, we agreed that some parts of the storyboard were a bit vague, such as the bit where the hook is cut out of the character's back, we need to show how this would be done with specific shots. Further development therefore would be possibly to do a photographic storyboard where we can test shots properly to make sure they work, and put them in a more accurate timeline.

Props

Props play a very important role in this film because not only do they help tell the story but they symbolise the struggle of humanity, which is the point of the film.

Fish Hook

The fish hook will seemingly be in the flesh of the back of the main character, attached to some chord which is restraining her, not allowing her to move past a certain distance. This represents the way the world has power over people, social psychology being able to control the behaviour and restrictions of everyone, even so in a person's individual struggles in society, whether it's puberty, womanhood, homosexuality, race, etc. The fact it is a hook through the flesh is a metaphor for how it is painful mentally to be oppressed and 'hooked' in these ways, however also very painful to try and break away from this also. In order to do this we would need special effects make-up, and so I looked at a few tutorials online such as the one below:

Hook in skin make-up tutorial

Alternatively, we could do these scenes in more explicit detail as close-ups, where we could actually hook these things through actual skin to give a better effect, such as using pigskin like the realistic kind tattooists use for practice on, which can be found quite cheap online.

Straight Razor

The use of a straight razor adds more pain to the narrative - it is what the character will use to cut the hooks out of her back, representing how again it is painful to try and be individual with the judgment of the world looking on you. However it also represents the goal, which is this freedom. The story involves the girl trying all that she can to reach this razor so that she can be free, further representing how someone would go to so much effort to simply be themselves, no matter what the sacrifice. We plan to use a plain silver metal one, so that no obvious logos are shown but also so that the shine coming from the whole razor and not just the blade will reflect nicely in the lighting we plan to use.

The Elements

Fire, Earth, Air and Water are considered the four elements that make up the earth in stories and ancient beliefs, and we thought we could use these as extra struggles for the character to represent that the world is seemingly against her. Obviously we can't bring these things into the set for the actress to try and fight through, for health and safety reasons, so this is where we thought the Kuleshov effect would be useful to simply show the audience that these things are of concern and edited in juxtaposition with the actress walking towards the blade, where we can shoot things like fire and water in a much smaller, controlled setting. We would literally only need a flame for fire and water pouring for water, but we thought we could still use air and earth safely. We could use a wind machine pushing against the actress to make it harder for her to walk forward, and sandbags for earth for the actress to pick up and try and walk with added weight. These things would also allow the actress to get more into character and show the struggle, because she is literally struggling herself. 

Location

Location plays a really important part in the film, as we have to find somewhere we can darken easily, and is quite a big space, that we can use for free, but also light the way we want. It was then Jack's idea of using the Student Union stage room, which is often a venue for music, market and nightclub events, because it seemed to fit this criteria. It even has a balcony incase we wanted to do any overhead shots.

We asked at the Student Union whether this would be possible, and they said that we have permission just as long as we give Jason, the stage manager, plenty of notice for when we want to book it for. We went on a recce, and decided that the space was perfect in terms of size, we would just have to alter a few things such as covering windows and maybe covering the floor to make it darker. It had plenty of necessities such as plug sockets for the lights, and lots of shadow when the lights were off.  We all agreed that this was the place we wished to film, and plan to do some test shooting here and also the real footage in a few weeks time.

Costume

Costume is something we considered this week, as one of our main focus points so far is achievable visuals. As it stands we are still set on our idea of 'contrast' to represent how our protagonist is different to the other characters. Also using inspiration from German expressionism films as well as powerful visual films like 'Black Swan', I still very much like the idea of black vs white, where white is the colour our main character will wear to stand out from the dark background; this will also look beautiful visually, particularly if we also use things like blood to stand out against the protagonist also. 

White symbolism - innocence, purity, angelic, peace.
These all show how the character doesn't conform to the dark and destructive world around her, which is the opposite of these things - a microcosm for the real world, which is the message of the film.


White is also quite ghost-like, particularly if we use lose-fitting clothes that are quite spirit-like. This will add to the surreal nature of our film, further implying how metaphorical it is where the audience is supposed to interpret it more as a dream sequence. 

We are also thinking of using blood as a main point of production design in this film to represent the pain the character is going through. Blood would look best visually (as well as clearer to see against the black background) on white costume, which would also represent her downfall from innocence by breaking the rules. I was particularly inspired by Dorian and Lily's blood dance scene in Penny Dreadful for also showing this.

Dorian and Lily in 'Penny Dreadful'

Nina in Black Swan

Victor and Emily in 'Corpse Bride'

Where I wanted black figures in the background to contrast against the white character (and represent social conformity) I thought that hooded figures (almost like Harry Potter dementors or even the Grim Reaper) may be a good idea, to add an essence of mystery to them but also give them less of a direct personality, as the main focus is on the main character who is different to them.

Further Development

Restraint Visuals

The main thing we have developed in terms of our idea is the form of restraint on the character. We originally wanted marionette strings to make it look like she is a 'puppet to society'. However we figured this would be really difficult to do, especially when we don't really have anywhere to suspend the strings from. We were inspired by the election advert from 2014 that shoes some individuals struggling to reach a goal (the man) to place a hook on him so that he 'springs back' on the bungee chord (because he hasn't registered to vote). From this we thought we could also perhaps use a hook and some bungee for our character - it would be much simpler to do in terms of production design, and would still fit with the large hook idea inspired by Hellraiser. Also pulling against the bungee would add to the effort the character would need to have to 'pull away from the restraint'. This is a metaphor for how difficult it is to break away from the barriers the world has created to keep communities all following the same rules.

Another thing we developed was the idea of a goal. In order to have a narrative we figured that the character needs to have a clear end point where she is attempting to go to get away from the restraint. At first we thought she could walk away into the light, but that raises the issue of how she could get away from the chord. So we thought a tool to cut out the restraints that bind her would be useful. If we are to still use hooks then the character could be trying to force herself throughout the film towards the razor in order to cut herself free. If for some reason we can't make the special effects with the hooks work, then she could always just cut the chord with the razor. We thought putting the razor on a dramatically lit display table may be best to show the audience that this is obviously what she wants in her possession.

Restraint

Our film has a particularly big focus on the idea of restraint - being held back from essentially doing what you want, due to the norms and laws put forward by the culture you belong to. Our initial idea was about portraying this through marionette strings being attached by hooks onto the characters. However, this might be quite hard to do visually, particularly on a small budget. Also, it might be quite hard for the actors to show genuine reactions to it. As discussed in our tutorial, we might be better considering other ways for the characters to be restrained, where the actors themselves would find it difficult to reach the goal of breaking away, which could result in more genuine reactions.

I looked at the work of Matthew Barney, who did a project named 'drawing restraint', where he attempted to make artwork through drawing and painting whilst some kind of force was holding him back, such as bungee chords. We took inspiration from this, where we could consider giving the actor a task like this to represent the struggles that they have with the world they live in, which is something very achievable.

Matthew Barney on the origins of 'Drawing Restraint'


Examples we came up with:

- The path of the protagonist is somehow blocked when she is trying to reach the razor she will use to cut the restraints from her body.

 - The character is chained up and struggles against the chains to reach the light.

 - The protagonist experiences more negative force the further she moves from her original position, such as adding more weight for her to carry. (e.g. sandbags or something alike.)

 - Wading through water (water resistance). See clip from Under the Skin.


 - Air resistance or lack of oxygen (not sure how this would work).

 - Fire - the fire blocks her path and gets bigger. (we can achieve this easily using the montage editing technique)


 - Something repetitive that seems to never end (such as climbing endless stairs) to represent the endless routine in society.

(A video I made with fire when experimenting with editing technique)

Editing technique

After constantly deciding whether the piece should be a screendance or not, we realised that the issue we were trying to tackle related to the flow and movement of the film - how could we present it on screen to an audience that would keep them interested without movements from characters being too slow, rigid or less visually pleasing than the rest of the film, which is why we have considered dance.

 However, during a tutorial we decided to consider editing techniques rather than just the way we would shoot it, as a way of keeping the audience hooked. For example, doing it in a montage format would break up the imagery in a way that wouldn't require very long shots and could make the film more spread across a time period. It would also allow us to use more shots of other things in the film to portray meaning and provoke emotive responses from an audience which would be harder to do through continuity editing if we were simply following the character around. 

 We looked at the work of Kuleshov, an editor who famously experimented with montage editing, who used it in a way to keep his films fluid and interesting, yet still obscure and arty (a bit like the look we ae going for).

We then tried our own version of the Kuleshov Experiment in relation to our own ideas and concepts using our own experimental shots. You can see it here: