Black Swan inspiration

We decided due to the nature of it being a psychological thriller, and the use of a schizophrenic multiple personality main character to take and gather inspiration from Black Swan with the use of mis en scene and camera angles/ framing. 

Dance of the White Swan

The high key, key and fill light used here accompanied by the top lighting, within an eye level close up shot, emphasises her innocence and naivety but also accentuates the pure sadness and distraught facial expression. We used a similar shot within the bedroom by the innocent persona, using torches to highlight her expression, but lacked any back light to demonstrate the immense darkness she experiences as a result of her mental health issues.  

We additionally, use light as a medium of disorientation or confusion of the innocent persona, as a means to demonstrate the distinct difference between her dark and light personality traits. This is generally a key light, such as the spotlight in Black Swan which is instead a light in the tunnel within our chase scene. 

 

Here the makeup reflects the face of our character within the contrasting bath scene, the eye level close up shot with the shoulders included is parallel to the character within the bath tub. The pale face to highlight her cheekbones, determines her as thin and ill whilst colour on the lip here being red the alternative in ours being black connotes tension and suppressed anxiety.

We use a similar close up eye level shot of our character crying, as a means to demonstrate the depth of sorrow and anxiety they are feeling, in both there is a greater use of back light to contrast the character to the great darkness surrounding them.

Similarly, the use of the pastel colours and lighter colour scheme within her dressing room we imitate further in our bathroom with the stereotypical beige and wood inner decor to contrast greatly to the flashback images of the alter ego. 

  Odile Appears

These two close ups of the alter ego "Odile"'s eyes demonstrates the inner battle between her sanity and her sanctity, yet here we finally see her relinquish to this demonic part of her mental state, evident in the close up and more extreme close up of her face with focus on her eyes. We took inspiration from this by having a number of close ups of her face within the mirror(s), in the bath tub, and further in her flashbacks, with the flashbacks having white contacts as a contrast.

Despite the dramatic makeup being used in Black Swan being used as stage makeup, we used a similar concept as a means of contrasting with the two aspects of her personality. The extremely dark and more manic eye makeup is used on the darker aspects of her personality, as a visual representation of her alternative personas. Even with the more passive and innocent character, we use shots where she attempts to rub off this enhanced eye makeup, to reveal and free herself from this part of her soul.

 The Bedroom

The most iconic part of this scene is the use of mirrors as a symbol of duality within a person to demonstrate the two distinctive alternative personalities found in one body. We thus used this in the more intense and industrial toilet setting, but again also in the more domesticated bathroom in her house. The two bathrooms also providing a clear contrast from each other, being an extended metaphor of her two personalities within the surrounding setting. The cold, lifeless public toilet in contrast to the cosy, homely bathroom.

The extreme close ups of the scratches and injuries as an outward representation of her transforming schizophrenic state, we use visually with dramatic makeup the focus on her eyes as this visual representation with her confusion and extreme rubbing of them demonstrating her intense fear and desperation to be separated from this alternative persona.

The red contacts here imitate the white and black contacts we use in her alternative personalities, these are clear to distinctly identify along with the costumes which persona is dominating the main character at that point in the sequence. 

Improvements to storyline (acting upon feedback)

After showing our first draft to teachers and fellow peers, we have decided to alter our storyline in order to create a clearer narrative.

Alena Fitzgerald has a split personality disorder caused by a lifetime of obeying strict rules suppressed upon her from her proud parents, and pressures from school, the agony of pushing herself to be the top achiever throughout her schooling life. She is at a breaking point and therefore, a rebellious side of her slowly unravels to reveal her lack of personal control and stability.

To portray this, we plan to contrast her innocent side with the rebellious, using a completely new morning scene in the opening.

Things to include: Setting

• Girly bedroom
• Morning daylight
• Bedding, cushions, mirrors, books, fairy lights, glasses, school supplies, sensible clothes hanging up, neat, ordered and tidy
• Train journey

Costume, hair and make-up:

• Plaits
• White nightgown
• Slippers
• Face-cloth
• Mascara
• Natural nails
• No make-up
• Sensible clothes/ school uniform
• School bag

We plan to use jump cuts to form a more impactful, clearer montage to show the contrast of her two personalities. This way, the narrative is made evident, as we experienced some confusion when showing the opening to fellow students. Many said that the story was "weird" or hard to grasp, so by including the new idea of Alena having an innocent side should help boost our opening's strength and impact, but also to establish what the film is about if it were to carry on. 

During a peaceful morning routine scene, we will see Alena brushing her hair, wiping her face and putting on some mascara. She will see a slight cut and bruise on the side of her eye, of which she doesn't remember getting. This is the signal to show how she does dangerous things in an unaware state, and to notify that there is something wrong. Then we will cut to the fast-paced running scenes and bath scenes to establish the difference in the way she acts when she is released from the constraint of her parents and teachers - her sudden rush into maturity that breaks away her sanity. 

Character Profile

Name: Alena Fitzgerald (played by Silvia Presente)

Born: October 4th, 1998

Age: 17

Height: 5"7

Weight: 8.4 st

Hair colour: Red

Eye colour: Brown

Ethnicity: White British

Skin colour: White

Personality traits: Good-girl, innocent, girly, naive, peaceful, content / moody, anti-social, secluded, isolated, disturbed, delusional, depressive, schizophrenic, troubled.

Conditions or health problems: Mentally ill with split personality disorder. 

Cause of mental illness: A lifetime of the "good girl" reputation, conforming to her parent's and teachers needs, and consequently being bullied for this.

Refining Film Title Ideas

After completing our title research, we had around five ideas for what the title of our opening could be, according to the plotline. As we were putting our clips together though, we realised that to build our character profile effectively and to make the scene as obvious as possible, a split personality would be harder to represent. As a result we changed the idea of our opening slightly, now instead of a split-personality wherein our actress is haunting herself, she is now terrified that her twin who died prior to this event is following her around.

This led to us narrowing down our film title choices down to three candidates:

• Psychosis
• Idiosyncrasy
• Non Compos Mentis

Out of these three the one that stood out the most was "Non Compos Mentis" meaning: 'not of sane/stable mind'.

This is the title we have decided to use and we are going to overlay text of the title and the opening credits during the first longer clip of our main character crying. During this quick cut montage, we plan to have the name of the film appear in the centre of the screen and then as that fades out we will have the credits at the bottom of the screen during the entire duration of this clip.
We believe that this is more accurate to the genre of a psychological horror as the name in itself sparks an interest into what the film is going to be about, by having it at the beginning overlaid on one of our effective clips, it should appear creepy and engaging.