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.