FILM TITLE -The Unknown

Our group spent time discussing possible title names for our film. It needed to be something that grasped the audience's attention and suggested what sort of themes the film would include.

We decided to name our film 'The Unknown'. This is a fitting title for a sic-fi film as it creates mystery as to what is happening.

Our film is set in purgatory, a place unknown to the protagonist. He does not know how to escape or if escape is possible. It is unknown whether or not he will have to spend eternity here.

As he explains how he got there we learn that once he began to drown his decision of suicide was full of regrets which is something that his family and friends still living could not know.

Dylan is in isolation. For someone who had previously been very sociable and happy, his lonely and unhappy existence in purgatory is not something he would have been familiar with.

It was also unknown to Dylan what was going to happen to him once he died. Being stuck in purgatory does not seem to be the afterlife that Dylan expected.

Another thing is that Dylan's situation is unknown to the people he left behind on Earth. There is no way for them to know what has happened to him as they cannot possibly know what happens after death let alone what happens after death by suicide.

Throughout his voiceover, Dylan speaks of how he does not understand what is happening to him. He feels stuck and describes the setting as a "middle ground".

The title helps to give some background information to the audience as well as making them question what is happening throughout the film. Also, it creates enigma in line with the Barthes Enigma Code.

Filming Day

https://www.emaze.com/@AFZQRTCT/filming-day

Filming Day Schedule

We are filming the scene on the beach, the part of the film set in present day, on Friday
 22nd of January. This will cover the majority of the filming. The flashbacks from Dylan's life will be added in at a later date. Our group will all be travelling separately. I will be travelling on the train with out assistant cinematographer Andrew Murray from Dunmurry train station getting the 8:30 am train as we have all agreed to be on set by 9:20 am.

I am spending the majority of the day on set. The filming should take roughly 5-6 hours. In the group, I have the job of cinematographer and so will be in charge of taking the shots. I will have a list of things to bring with me. Below is a photo of my list:

We will spend about 20 minutes talking to our actors about what they will have to do and setting up and then filming will commence at 9:40 am. We are aiming to wrap up filming at around 2pm and so will have a lunch-break during the day to eat and rest while talking about the schedule for the rest of the day. The drowning scene will be filmed last so that our actor in the sea can get changed and go home quickly and won't have to sit around after being in the sea. 

Once shooting is over myself and the rest of the cast and crew will aim to travel back to Belfast city centre by train and make our own ways home from there.

There will be six of us in total at the location during the day. This includes: myself, Ellie and Eimear who are part of my group, Micheál our lead actor, Jack our stunt double actor and Andrew our assistant cinematographer.

Reece Part 4: Props

Props are a crucial part to any film. They act as devices through which a story is told. Through characters using/finding them and through various camera shots capturing them in a scene, they help to give information into a particular character or the overall story.

As part of our preparation before filming, our group had to discuss what props we would need to use in our film. We had a meeting together to go over possible prop ideas. Each of us wrote down props that we thought could be interesting and/or useful to have in the film. We wanted to ensure that we had all the necessary props and that each prop helped to tell the story and was important. The result of this was that we decided that it was a good idea to have Dylan find random objects on the beach that remind him of his life. As I have explained previously, these objects will cause Dylan to relive memories of his life which will make him think about everything that happened to him and so cause him to tell his story. 

The 6 definite props that will be used for this are; a jacket, a school book, a red rose, a bracelet, a picture frame and a notebook. Each object shall symbolise a part of Dylan’s life. The jacket could be a jacket that he wore often throughout his teenage years and so would be something that was physically close to him a lot of the time. The school book will help to represent his teenage years and the happy times he had with his friends before he left school and left the country. It will emphasise how Dylan had had friends previously and show how the sudden change to being lonely and isolated at university was very shocking to him.Together we decided that the red rose and the bracelet should be gifts given to his ex-girlfriend. This would help add to the story as it was the break up that was the start of the turning point in his life where everything started to go wrong and hence could be a reference to the beginning of Dylan’s end. The picture frame will also represent this time in his life as it will be a photo of him with his family emphasising how family life started to change negatively before he moved out. It will help to show that before they started fighting they were happy and content as a family. The notebook is also a crucial prop. I thought that the notebook could have been a sort of diary for Dylan. Dylan could have written his feelings in this notebook and so it could hold the stories of the good times of his life but also the more recent darker times and so would contain an explanation of the pain that Dylan went through towards the end of his life and why he felt the need to commit suicide. It could be seen as Dylan’s only “friend” for the last few months of his life but eventually his action of pouring his heart out to this notebook just wasn’t enough to keep him alive anymore. Our group all agreed on using these props as we thought they were essential for our film. 

Additional props will be needed for the flashback sequence. As there will be numerous flashbacks, that will include more action, there will be more props required to help tell the stories in them. For the flashback to Dylan as a baby we agreed that it would make sense to have a baby’s blanket. The flashback to Dylan as a young child going to school will include a child’s schoolbag. The following flashback will need two more schoolbags for teenagers as it shows Dylan at 13/14 years old with his girlfriend. The final flashback before the flashback of Dylan’s death is of him alone in his room at university. The props that we are thinking of using for this flashback are; a stack of study notes, file paper and pens.

In terms of getting the props, it was very straightforward. Most of our props were very easy to find. Many of them were objects that we already owned or our actors already owned and so we could use them. The only prop that we had to get was a child’s schoolbag and we ordered this online. It came within a few days and so there was no problem using it on the day that we filmed the  flashbacks. 

I have made a list below of the props that we be needed overall for the filming on the beach as well as the filming of the flashbacks: 

List of Props

Props for beach                                                 

Young men’s jacket

School book

Red rose

Girl’s bracelet

Picture frame with photo of a family in it

Average size notebook

Props for Flashbacks and Which Flashback They Will Be Used For

Baby’s blanket - Dylan as a baby

Young child’s schoolbag - Dylan as a young child going to school

Teenagers’ schoolbags - Dylan at 13/14 at school with his girlfriend

Stack of study notes - Dylan isolated at uni

File paper - Dylan isolated at uni

Pens - Dylan isolated at uni

Reece Part 3: Location Choice - Helen's Bay

Our group spent a lot of time discussing the location for our movie. We all agreed that we needed to film on a beach as our intention was to have Dylan looking at the sea an walking in the sand as he thinks about his life which hints at the plot twist of his intentional drowning.

In our film, Dylan is portrayed as being isolated. We needed to make sure that the location we chose would not be crowded and that there would not be that many people at the location. For this reason, we thought of Helen's Bay beach as we were shooting in the morning into early afternoon and we knew it would be quiet at that time.

Another reason for choosing Helen's Bay is that our location had to be accessed easily. Helen's Bay is not difficult to get to by train and therefore we would be able to get there for early morning and be ready to start filming at a reasonable time. We decided to each travel separately and were responsible for getting ourselves there and back. The location is also not that far from the train station meaning that it won't be that difficult to walk to it while carrying all of the equipment.

Reece Part 2: Actor(s)

Originally, as our film only had one character, we only chose to gave one actor. Each member of the group sat down for a meeting about how to decide how to go about the casting. In order to narrow it down and make the process quicker we outlined some requirements for our actor:

• We wanted our actor to have some experience with acting. We wanted to make sure they knew how to act and weren't completely new to it which would make the filming day easier when working with them.

• They also needed to look somewhat similar to the image our director had in her head of how Dylan would look. This meant our actor needed to be a male in his late teens.

• The sound in the film was to be recorded after filming in order to be used as a voiceover. We planned to record it though our school's music department's equipment. This meant therefore that our actor would have to be a pupil in the school as they would need to be present to record.

• Our actor needed to be someone we knew well enough to know that they were reliable and someone that we could count on. They would need to be able to dedicate themselves to the project when we needed them.

• They needed to be available on our filming day.

We then decided to have Dylan watch himself drown through a panning shot. Another actor was then introduced whose arm would be shown in the shot. This meant that we needed to find another boy in his late teens who was dedicated to the project as well.

More actors would also be needed on a separate occasion to be part of the flashbacks. Four actors would be needed for these; one for Dylan as a baby, one for Dylan as a young child and two for young teenage Dylan and his girlfriend.

After a lot of thought we decided that our friend Micheál Lynch should play the role of Dylan. Our other friend Jack McGarry agreed to play Dylan in the flashback.

Reece Part 1: Costume Choices For Dylan (Our Protagonist)

Our group spent a lot of time looking at possibilities of clothing for Dylan. A lot of thought was put into the way that we should present Dylan onscreen. His clothes needed to reflect the type of person he was so as to give the audience information into who he was. We all agreed that he needed to be wearing clothes that were quite plain and nothing out of the ordinary so as to not cause his appearance to take away from the main point of the film.

 Our main choice for an outfit was: a grey hoodie, blue jeans and black trainers.

Then, after some discussion, we decided to come up with an alternative outfit to keep our options open. The alternative outfit we agreed on was: a black zip-up hoodie, a white T-shirt, black jeans and the same black trainers.

Hairstyle was another important discussion we had as a group regarding Dylan's appearance. We have decided that Dylan's hair will not be styled. Our reason for this choice is that as he is in purgatory he will not have access to hair products that would be typically used by guys of his age.

Dylan is not going to be wearing jewellery or have any type of make-up however he will discover a bracelet at one point in the film. Our reasons for this are that as he is in purgatory, he is alone and will therefore not care so much about his appearance.

The plain clothes will be typical of males of Dylan's age group. He will not be wearing anything over-the-top as he is in isolation. Also, as previously stated, we did not want Dylan's appearance to take away from the main point of the film which is to show Dylan's loneliness and desire for human connection and we believed that due to this it was best to keep costume simple.
Shoes --> Dylan will be wearing black trainers. The colour black is typically associated with death and helps to create the morbid tone to prepare the film for the plot twist.
Grey hoodie --> Grey can be seen as the colour between black and white. Dylan is stuck in purgatory between life on Earth and the afterlife, between heaven and hell.
Blue jeans --> Plain blue jeans are often worn by young males so the jeans would emphasise the normality that Dylan's previous life was.

Overall, our group is confident that our costume choices are very suitable fro the film and for Dylan as a character and hope that they will help to give some background into Dylan's personality and life.

Dylan's Discovery of Objects from Life

Throughout the film, our main protagonist is going to find random objects around the beach. These objects will be from his previous life. Dylan will see the objects and recognise them and then reflect on his life and explain his life through a voiceover. The reason for choosing this idea was that it helped to add to the protagonist’s speech. 

This idea helped us to add much to the film. Each object gave the audience some insight into Dylan’s life. They also made it clearer that he had had a relatively ordinary life before everything started going wrong. The audience can relate to him as he is just another person only he is dead. On seeing the objects, Dylan begins to remember certain incidents/people in his life. They cause him to think about his past. The objects we are choosing to use are: a jacket, a bracelet and a notebook. On the day of filming we may decide to add to these objects with more objects that we find to be useful. 

The finding of these objects helps to add to the drama and build up of tension throughout the film. It also creates a sense of nostalgia as they all make Dylan remember how his life used to be before everything went wrong. Through this, we can gain a positive audience response. They will watch Dylan thinking of memories and feeling upset and, as a result, will begin to feel sympathy for him. As he remembers his childhood and teenage years and how they are over, it will also be easy for older audience members to empathise with him as they remember their own youth. 

SCRIPT

As scriptwriter I had to do a first draft of the script and then a redraft. This is our final draft.

FADE IN:

BEACH - DAY

On a beach in Northern Ireland that appears isolated.

DISSOLVE TO:

Young man in his late teens is walking along the beach.

DYLAN, teenager, Northern Irish, contemplating his life.

DYLAN

I’ve been alone here for some time. I don’t know how long I have been here. I don’t know how to get back. I have no escape from this absolute hell, this middle-ground. It’s been so long since I have seen another face. My life has been swapped for isolation and loneliness.

I was truly happy back then….

BEGIN FLASHBACKS (5 seconds each)

FLASHBACK 1: Dylan as a baby

FLASHBACK 2: Dylan as a young child going to school

FLASHBACK 3: Dylan in his early teens at school with his girlfriend

FLASHBACK 4: Dylan fighting with family just before moving out

FLASHBACK 5: Dylan at university looking alone

END FLASHBACKS

DYLAN

When I was younger I always enjoyed helping people. I decided to study medicine at university. I had dreams of becoming a doctor. I had very high hopes about starting but, at the same time, I was stressed. I started fighting with my family, we started to grow apart. We were no longer the hoary family I had loved. 

When I moved to London I envisaged this amazing life for myself. I thought I would make lots of new friends, get excellent exam results and be truly content. However, not everything happens the way you think it will. During my first month there, my girlfriend broke up with me. She said she couldn’t handle the distance anymore. Making friends was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. After years of being used to surrounding myself with the same people I found it extremely challenging to find new people to socialise with. I believe that is when I started to become seriously depressed. My grades started to drop, I studied all the time but I couldn’t concentrate. My mind was occupied by other thoughts.

Now I’m here. I keep thinking about my family and wondering how they are.  Sometimes I think I can hear their voices; talking, laughing…but then I listen again and all I hear is silence. There’s no point in me pretending that I’m fine. I feel lost. Sometimes I’m overcome with emotion and other times all that I feel is numb. Everything that I had, everyone that I love is gone. They are not here with me. This is how it feels to be truly alone.

BEGIN FLASHBACK

Dylan going into the ocean. He begins to sink but instead of trying to stop himself, he lets it happen and drowns.

END FLASHBACK

I began to feel nothing. I stopped caring about my studies and couldn’t care whether I did well or not. I gave up on making friends and lost contact with my family. My life became pointless to me, so I decided to end it. One day I went to the beach, I got into the water, and I let myself drown. Now I regret it. I wish I could go back to that day and force myself to keep living. But that’s not possible. I’m stuck here, in my purgatory, with no chance of a happy ending. 

FADE OUT.

Ideas for Filming the Drowning Flashback

Dylan, like the character in the video above, dies of a suicide drowning. We spent some time thinking of how to show this. Options are for Dylan to jump into the water from a height or to walk into the water and swim to the deeper ocean and then stop making effort to keep his body floating.

In terms of the actual drowning we wanted it to seem realistic. Many drowning scenes in movies show hands and arms flapping about and the character shouting for help. Through our research we realised that a person is not drowning if their head is above the water and has the ability to keep themselves up. Also, as it was his choice to drown and only a choice he regretted in death, having Dylan shouting for help wouldn't be in-keeping with the storyline.

We will show Dylan in the water as he sinks. This will be filmed on a Go-Pro in the water. The last shot will show Dylan's arms falling into the water and then the camera will pan around to reveal Dylan standing on the beach watching his death. To do this, we will need another actor in the sea to put their arms up as it is all one shot and our actor will already be on the beach.

Genre(s) of Our Film

Independent: Also known as indie films, these types of films are feature films which are produced completely, or for the most part, outside of the major film studio system. They are also produced and distributed by independent entertainment agencies. These films are easily recognisable through their content and style due to how the filmmaker's personal artistic vision is realised. Marketing is normally characterised by limited release, however, can sometimes have quite major marketing campaigns and a much wider release. It is possible for it to rival a mainstream film production if it receives necessary funding and distribution.

Sci-Fi: Short for science-fiction, sci-fi is described as "a genre of speculative fiction dealing with imaginative concepts such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel, faster than light travel, parallel universes and extraterrestrial life". It has been called a "literature of ideas". Historically, they were meant to have some grounding is scientific fact or theory but in recent years this has changed dramatically.

Horror: This film genre is "seeking to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on  the audience's primal fears". The genre started off with films inspired by authors such as Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker and Mary Shelley and have existed for over 100 years. Typical themes include the macabre and the supernatural and these can overlap with fantasy, supernatural fiction and thriller genres. Often, they deal with the viewers' "nightmares, fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown".

Camera Shots

Our film has a unique yet simple filming style. there are 3 main types of shots that we will using over the course of the filming day.

For the drowning flashback, we plan to show Dylan sinking into the water. We have looked at a number of videos and photos that are similar in action and style to gain inspiration for our filming. The photos below are almost identical to the style that we are planning to go for in the shots for this flashback. The shots will hopefully capture the moment of Dylan's sinking and then the moment of his death. It is crucial that we film these shots well as they will be extremely important in telling the story as they will be the shots through which we reveal the plot twist that Dylan is actually dead and in purgatory. 

For the shots of Dylan on the beach our main aim is to show his isolation and loneliness. The shots should make Dylan appear completely alone as he is without human connection and that is his biggest problem in regards to his death. He misses family and friends. We also wanted to show his emotion towards being so alone. The photos below are similar to the shots we have thought about filming of Dylan as they show him sitting and walking on the beach in great despair.

We also decided to have a blurry lights effect as part of the shots in our film. This helped to create the indie style as well as exaggerate the otherworldly setting. Myself and the other cinematographer spent a lot of time preparing how to create these types of shots with our DSLR cameras.

Using A Plot Twist

Our short film consists of a huge plot twist. Through watching many different short films over a number of months we realised that a common feature of short films is the use of plot twist. As we intended to have our film in-keeping with the codes and conventions of most short films, we decided that we should use a plot twist in it.

Throughout the film, our protagonist appears to be isolated in another universe. He speaks in a voiceover about how alone he is and people and things he misses in his life. At first, the audience may assume that he has been stranded here on a mission or that some tragic effect has caused him to be stuck somewhere without any human contact.

Our film will be using a number of flashbacks to show moments in Dylan’s life. As the film progresses, the flashbacks will get gradually darker as Dylan explains the difficult time he had when he began university. He fights with his family before leaving and shortly after getting there his relationship with his girlfriend ends. While at the university, Dylan begins to spend a lot of time alone. It is clear that Dylan’s life stopped going as planned at this time.

The very last flashback shows Dylan drowning in the sea. He explains that his life got so out of hand that he killed himself as he did not see the point in going on anymore. Through the voiceover we learn that this mysterious universe he is currently in is, in fact, in purgatory. Dylan is forced to stay here as his cause of death means he is not able to enter heaven.

We also learn that Dylan regrets his choice to end his life and that he now wishes he was still alive so that he could have the chance to fix things. He now realises that things were not as bad as they seemed and that he could have made something of himself but now he has it worse off in purgatory. 

This plot twist causes the audience to be in shock when they find out what has happened. everything comes together at the end of our film as the truth is revealed to the audience through the protagonist.

The Role of a Scriptwriter

In our group, I was assigned the role of scriptwriter. A scriptwriter is defined as "a person who writes a script for a play,film, or broadcast". I met with the director and went over the key points in the film that I needed to include. I thought about the message that we were trying to convey through the character of Dylan and what dialogue would be best to use in the film. I had to have a good idea about who the character of Dylan was and what type of person he was. I also needed to understand why he was reflecting on these previous incidents in life. I had to think of every aspect of his character to make sure that I wrote the script in the best way to tell his story.

In the writing I had to make sure to get Dylan’s pain and loneliness across as the audience needed to have sympathy for him however I made sure to avoid it being too dramatic and over-the-top as they needed to empathise with him.

The dialogue also needed to clarify that Dylan was previously extremely happy and therefore give the audience background information that helps them to understand that his misery has only occurred recently making them assume his current feelings are the result of a tragic event.

Mentions of specific scenery/images and sound effects were also added into the script to give a vision into what would be visible while Dylan told his story as well as what was available to hear. This would therefore make the filming day easier as the director would be able to tell myself and the other cinematographer what exactly needed to be filmed. It will also make editing easier as we will already have a basic plan of what type of sound effects will be needed and will not have to spend as long planning our sound effects post-production.

After the first draft of the script was written, I showed it to the group so that we could decide together what changes we needed to make. We agreed that the twist needed to be more dramatic and shocking. This meant that the script was redrafted to make it appear that he was stranded but not dead so the plot twist worked better. During the long discussion we also thought about the case of Dylan's death and decided to change it into a suicide. Due to this we had to make the flashbacks turn from being upbeat at the beginning to dark/uncomfortable memories towards the end showing how his life fell apart which caused him to take his own life. This also meant that I had to add in some lines about how he felt that he was full of regret for his actions as he now wishes to be alive again but, at the same time, not give away that he was in fact dead which was a challenging task that caused me to have to think and plan a lot before writing.

Use of Flashbacks For Main Task

Our main task will include flashbacks. Flashbacks are often used in film and TV to give background information into a character's past. They help the audience to gain knowledge to make the scene more straightforward.

In our main task we plan to have a number of short flashbacks that will appear as the main protagonist refers to them. Dylan is remembering people in his life and his passion for sport as well as how he was due to become a university student. These flashbacks help to show how Dylan was previously living a happy life with which he was content. This creates a huge contrast between happiness/inclusivity and lack of emotion/isolation. The audience will, as a result, have a better understanding of just how much Dylan has lost and so will be more likely to empathise with him.

The flashbacks also create a sense of nostalgia as he thinks of his family, his friends and his girlfriend and admits to feeling lonely without them. The audience pity Dylan as they can see his struggle in losing them. He was never used to being alone and is at a loss without them.

Our aim is to show how Dylan's previous life was full of love and joy and contrast it with the loneliness that now consumes him.