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.