Acting upon feedback; final improvements and new location

Our finalised idea consists of a journey, whereby the protagonist is running home after spending a day as her alter ego side of the split personality condition she has. The piece will include flashbacks of events that our character has been through that day and previous days of where she acts as her second personality. The idea of the opening is to show her coming home, not understanding what has happened or what she has been doing all day, getting into the bath to try and relax. If the film were to continue, the opening sets up for a story of how she lives with a double persona, and that she is completely unaware of the damage she causes when subverting into this. It stimulates confusion, tension and frustration.

New location:

Danson Park toilets
The toilets are a cold metal cubical that have 2 perpendicular mirrors, symbolising our narrative of a split personality disorder. We liked the green, rusty folding sheet that we utilised in the piece to show how the protagonist is trying to escape. The toilets had high key daylight lighting present already, which we thought would give a good urban-realism feel to the opening, as the setting is in a sub-urban town. The location is run-down looking, and uncared for, suggesting dereliction and isolation; parallel to how our character is feeling, so we thought this would work well to project her fear.

                         

                           

The house

Again, taking advantage of natural lighting, we used a small family home (Welling) to show where our character lives. It's an ordinary home, which contrasts well with the idea of our character's personality. Inside, there are wooden features such as the char, staircase, bannisters and doors, making the home look traditional and warm. In the bathroom, there are more mirrors to keep continuity of ideas and symbolism, and the mirror in the home is round in comparison to the rectangular, sharped edged ones of the public toilet. Also, in the bathroom we added cosmetic products and bathroom items to enhance the mise en scene and conform to gender conventions a little bit more - suggesting she is a normal girl who looks after herself, making the scene look slightly more relaxing than the 'flashback' bathroom scenes which are cold, blue and uninviting. 

                            

Location Photos 2

These photos were taken using an iPhone 6 by Katie Schartau

As an alternative location, I visited a local underpass at Penhill, Blackfen. This location has many advantages - the fact that it is local means easy access, the lighting inside the tunnel is high key and bright, there are winded railings and a long footpath at either end. The walls are relatively dirty, a dull white, with some graffiti to give it an urban edge. The entire tunnel is derelict looking, cold and empty, which will be perfect for shooting in, considering that in this scene our character is running, being chased. We also liked the bubble-mirror on the corner of the wall, giving a edgy, fish-eye effect, if we angle the camera cleverly enough. 

 

Location Photos...

Location Photos taken by Bobbie Notcutt with a Canon 700D

• Bedroom- here is where our main character will be staring at herself in the mirror, she will be contemplating within this location her past crimes and current vices, which are the culminated reasoning to her current mental state. Below are a number of close up, and medium shots of the room to distinguish the un-homely, bare, naked vibe, which continues into our main character as she strips her wall and fully recognises her inner self.

• Hallway- here the architecture of the hallway of the stone pattern on the wall, provides a medium to receive a shot where the alter ego is distinguished in shadows, yet recognised by the back lighting, demonstrating her existence. Moreover, in the glass of the door a dark figure could appear, yet due to its frosted affect their details will be distorted.

• Bathroom-  here is where we will film the drowning scenes, in contrast to the bedroom the warm tones are opposed by the cool tones found here (found with the dark whites and blue tiles), the close ups of the plug hole take aspects from Psycho, yet due to the modern taps and shower head it illustrates the time period the schizophrenia is occurring, within modern time.