Plan for Foundational Portfolio

Foundation Portfolio - Concept:



Title: PTSD

* this name was chosen due to us not wanting to over complicate things and use a name that clearly states what's wrong with the character and thus gives the audience straight away a basic understanding of what wrong with Christian. This name is called a disorder increases the impact and meaning of not just the name but for the title itself. 





Target Audience: Teens 16 -21

* This is due to the impactful nature of the disorder of PTSD having a strong mature standing and thus would potentially and most likely be appreciated ununderstood by those with a more mature understand and level of maturity. The dark and almost violent themes would also be inappropriate for younger audiences due to us and potentially their parents having a hard time to predict how they would perceive and understand the film.



Character(s):



Christian: * He suffers from PTSD due to traumatic incidents from his past. Due to this, he suffers from visions that make out the worst in people despite them not doing anything. He has voices in his head that he battles with and he has also started to see his reflection taking its own embodiment and is now pulling him apart and tearing him down. In truth, he is slowly driving himself insane.


Symbolisms of character:

Mirrors & reflections
Conflicting thoughts
PTSD
Pills 
Pessimism & negativity
Tainted perfection
Defragmented mind
Conformation to the traditional conventions:

Seems like a geek/nerd but in truth is perfect at almost everything
Anti-social
Violent tendencies -> lashing out etc
Mentally unstable -> slowly breaking up
Setting/time:

School: highlights his defragmentation and his slow but sure progress of losing his mental stability, shows its progress. An interesting location to be used to showcase a characters mental battles and deterioration. This is usually shown at home in a more private setting but we felt that if we had decided to use a public setting where most of the surrounding extras were people of his age, this would increase the impact of his breakdown and thus cast a stronger emotional feel over the audience and the impact would also be increased dramatically as well.
Day: Shows the contrasts and fights the convention that bad things happen at night. His slow deterioration is happening despite the time. In daytimes, we do not usually expect to see dark themes like a reflection sprouting its own personality or a mental breakdown, however, we felt like choosing a day setting would highlight that such problems do not wait for a certain time but actually progress throughout the whole day, respective to day or night. This also highlights the power the reflection and the voices have over Christian as he is unable to fight it off even in the presence of light which may cause the audience to think how he fares of at night or even in sleep, or is he even able to go to sleep.
Props/costumes:
Mirror: The use of a mirror, hold many possible themes and symbolism. Firstly, the reflection it creates becomes conscious and this is what really starts to torment Christian. The impact the reflection has is symbolised when he breaks the mirror at the end. The defragmentation of the mirror probably holds the most symbolism for the prop as it shows us as the audience how defragmented his mind and personality is, and that his reflection still being present in the mirror and as he smiles, its confirmed to the audience that he has taken over.

Plot:

Christian is a student that excels academically. However due to circumstances form his childhood, he is plagued with PTSD which causes him to see things that are not there. We follow his downward spiral into a mental breakdown, as his "visions" start to get worse. When his reflection starts to take a mind of its own, he gets haunted by it and it starts to plague him to the point where he smashes the mirror but the reflection only smiles as it now knows it has taken over Christian.

Film Inspirations:

BLACK SWAN

In Black Swan, we see a character that is slowly losing their mental state due to the pressure of her needing to be the best in order to gain two parts, the "White Swan" and the 'Black Swan". We see her slow mental deterioration when her reflection in the mirror starts to move on its own, even causing the light to go out in one of the scenes, sacring our main character. I used this as inspiration for the morro scene that we are going to use to emphasise our characters mental deterioration.

SPIDERMAN 1

In this film, the protagonist Osborn suffers from the torment of his reflection taking up the alter ego of the Green Goblin. He is seen in this scene to be arguing with his reflection, and we intend to implement it in our bathroom scene where our main character Christian, fights with the reflection that is tormenting him slowly, insulting him.

THE PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER.

In this film, the main character Charlie suffers from PTSD. We see it come up at random times in this film but it is fully expressed near the end where his friends leave him. I feel like this representation of PTSD is the most realistic presentation of the disorder on film that I have seen. We tend to use this example and try to portray our character in the way Charlie acts.

Our basic plan went through 2 renditions:

Rendition 1:

BASIC PLAN

PTSD:

Characters:

Christian - Addison

- excels at everything

-has PTSD from early childhood experiences

- Has a voice in his head

Gets an A* in his test and looks up to see his teacher tormenting him, however, he is not really but is actually praising him for his good work. he turned to his right and left and where his peers are admiring him, he sees in place them ridiculing him, and making fun of him.

Leaves class and in hallway voices start going on in his head he fights with them and he turns to his left where he sees his reflection (evil) talking down to him

Enters locker room a peer is making fun of him, talks about something sensitive he lashes out and punches him. 

looks up and everyone is shocked 

cut to him sitting on the edge of his bed, hears in background parents arguing about him

-talking about his PTSD what they did to deserve this etc, cut to parents actually talking about how precious he is and how to help him. 

Walks to his bathroom washes face looks up reflection returns and start bickering, sink waster turns in to blood and the reflection pulls out a gun Christian screams and punches mirror breaking it

 zoom into him hand covered in blood clenching into a fist.

location:

School

max's house

Rendition 2:

BASIC PLAN ver.2

PTSD:

Characters:

Christian - Addison

- excels at everything

-has PTSD from early childhood experiences

- Has a voice in his head

Gets his report card with all A's and looks up to see his teacher tormenting him, however, he is not really but is actually praising him for his good work. he turned to his right and left and where his peers are admiring him, he sees in place them ridiculing him, and making fun of him.

Leaves class and in hallway voices start going on in his head he fights with them and he turns to his left where he sees his reflection (evil) talking down to him. reflection explains everything of his past etc (backstory)

Enters locker room a peer is making fun of him, talks about something sensitive he lashes out and punches him. 

looks up and everyone is shocked 

cut to him running to the bathroom. fumbles pills and when he's about to take one notices in the mirror his reflection. torment him so much hears in the hallway teacher explaining to someone about his predicament reflection uses that so extreme, he punches mirror.

in the fragmented mirror, his reflection smiles  

location:

School

Teacher and Peers= people staying back on Wednesday

Script (Vernnon):

Storyboard:

For our storyboard for our FP, we watched a tutorial beforehand that explained how and why we should put in more effort to create more detailed drawings in order to make it generally easier for us to interpret our drawings in its reflection to the actual physical shots. The addition of the idea of arrows allows us to get a stronger understanding of the characters movements and the camera's movements throughout the shot.

These detailed illustrations would allow us as the directors to waste less time trying it to interpret stickman drawing like we had used previously and the added detail would allow us to direct our cast more efficiently.

Shot List:

For our shot list, we adapted it to suit the extras as due to their huge yet minimalistic input into this film, we decided that we would put all the scenes involving extras first as not only did it follow chronological order(would allow us to have that fresh in our mind to decrease risks of continuity mistakes), but it would allow the cast to come early and finish early, leaving us with just Christians actor to film, not only allowing us more focus to get the harder mirror shots done but the smaller cast size would help boost efficiency in general.

Prop List:

Fake Blood:

This is used to replace the water in a sink when Christian hallucinates, this adds an additional layer to the complexity of his disorder and creates a more sinister view of his deteriorating mind. We found out that it was easy to create ourselves due to a discovery of an easy recipe online, and thus chose to do that to save time and money. 

Prop Report Card:

 This was done in order to add an additional layer to the realism of our portrayal of the character being a student and is also an efficient way to highlight his intelligence. The report card is important as we as the audience get to see that he is a straight a student, and thus adds a layer of complexity to his character, almost being the perfect student but with one outstanding flaw.

Pill bottle and Label:

This adds once again to the realism of our film up to the point where I photo-shopped the name of the actual medication a person suffering from PTSD takes. The pill bottle also adds onto tension on the mirror scene when we see him attempt to take it to calm down but rejects it in anger, lashing the bottle out at his reflection.

Pill Bottle:

With fake medication in the form of candy, we are going to use this mainly for realism but also for storytelling practicality. It highlights his illness and that it needs medication. It heightens tension when he decides not to take the pills but instead smashing it into the mirror with his reflection, ultimately showcasing the reflection having had won. the pill bottle also implies the situation of his illness, being so dire that he requires to constantly take pills to suppress his illness and deteriorating mental state.

Informal Attire:
At first, we were going to use our school uniforms due to the accessibility and how easily it would have told us it was a school. However, due to practical reasons such as actors having different uniforms, we decided that a mufti attire would be worn. This is useful as it allows our main character a more "breathable" and comfortable attire to wear throughout the shoot which is important when he has to portray Christian in the bathroom breaking down.



Logo and Rational:

For the logo, I decided to keep it simple but packed with symbols that represent us as a group.

For the final product, I took the sketched renditions and I trace them in Photoshop, add the stylised underline and add the film reel symbol. Once I was happy with my trace, I imported it over to After Effects, adding a shattered effect to it.

The signatures represent me and Max and also adds a layer of professionalism to our group. Our names first letters also being used in the name of our company, MV Films, this creates a personal touch to it, rather then if I had chosen to use an impersonal word to represent our group. The symbol of the film reel signifies that we are a film company and adds a descriptive element to our logo. The shattered effect symbolises the title and theme of our film and I took inspiration from Warner Bros. who allowed developers to take the Warner Bros. logo and adapt it to the themes of their film. Taking this in mind, I not only added the shattered effect but I also changed the colour of the mirror background to a tinted red version, symbolising blood and thus reminding us of the thriller theme the clip is based on.

First Rendition:

Originally, I decided to go with a theme of flowers, for they represented death and life. The separation would have highlighted one of the major themes in a thriller, with that being Deaf and life, the separation shows that our company would and have explored both spectrums, implementing them in our films.

2nd rendition:

In my second edit, I decided that I would go for a more recognisable symbol rather than roses. The depiction of a girl next to a skull makes a clearer and bolder statement about the themes of life and death. The addition of 2018 at the bottom was to add a feeling of professionalism as it highlighted the date our group/company was founded.

3rd rendition:

In my third rendition, I decided to completely remove the symbol of life and death and was going to put up once again, a ladies face that was split in half but this time, one half would have been behind a shattered mirror, going with one of our major themes in the film being shattered mirrors and reflections. However, due to time constraints, I returned to photoshop and decided to use this as a template and work and create the logo of there, using after effects later to cause the logo to shatter like a mirror.