Abduction:signs of insanity research

When creating our protagonist for "Abduction" we understood that in order to create an authentic character in which the audience would question their mental stability we decided to look at insanity and how signs of mental instability manifest themselves.


A mental illness is defined as a diagnosis of a behavioural or mental pattern that can cause suffering or a poor ability to function in ordinary life. such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitting or occur as a single episode.


To outward society it is clear that our protagonist suffers from a mental illness and to be more specific our protagonist would be seen to be suffering from psychotic depression of a melancholic nature wherein the patient is seen to be suffering from delusions, in our protagonist's case these would be of aliens. Through our research we also found that those suffering from this illness are also more likely to turn to substances such as alcohol and drugs in order to cope as the symptoms are usually congruent with mood this is an aspect which we feel is necessary to implement into our film in order to get the audience and also our protagonist's friend to question his well being, further reinforcing this with other common signs associated with depression such as a disheveled appearance and also erratic behaviour.

Abduction: Analysis of psychological thrillers

Before we create our film we must establish codes and conventions of the genre in which our film takes place. Although we wish for our media product to be very much an amalgamation of various genres I would most identify it as a psychological thriller.

A psychological thriller can be defined as a thriller which has emphasis on the psychology of its characters and their usually unstable emotional state. Notable psychological thrillers include "Shutter island" and "Memento". I will look assess these films in order to gain an understand the forms and conventions of this genre.

Shutter Island

Brief plot description :In 1954, U.S. Marshall Teddy Daniels travels to the Ashecliff Hospita for the criminally insane on Shutter island in order to investigate the disappearance of a patient.

Forms and conventions established: From watching "Shutter Island" i have learnt a lot of the forms and conventions which we must incorporate into our film, The most notable was the doubting of the protagonist's own sanity, this was a key element of the film as throughout Teddy's search for the missing patient Rachel, With hallucinations throughout the film being the focal point to make us as an audience question our protagonists' sanity until the end when it is revealed in a twist that he was intact insane and the whole search was a role playing exercise in order to get him to come to terms with his own reality rather than construct a new one in which he is the hero. This is a key element which we would like to incorporate into our film, Another key element which this film established was the extent to which enigma lays a role within the psychological thriller genre as the main focal point of our film is Teddy's search for Rachel and the 67th patient of shutter Island with the twist serving that he was the 67th patient. From a cinematography standpoint looking at Shutter Island also gave me some insight into how we can convey tone and atmosphere through aspects such as filters, within the film they use a minimal blue filter to convey the dreariness and bleakness of Shutter island, this is an aspect which i would like to incorporate into our media production.





Memento


Brief plot description: Leonard is tracking down the man who raped and murdered his wife, however he suffers from a rare form of memory loss which prevents him from remembering anything after the accident.



Forms and conventions: Memento similarly to Shutter Island also makes use of a mentally ill protagonist who is also trying to come to terms with his wife's murder however unlike Shutter Island our Protagonist is aware of his mental illness throughout the film and is in fact trying to counter act this throughout the film by leaving a series of messages for himself via tattoos and photographs, However this proves to be futile in many respects and actually results in him mistaking his friend for the murderer of his wife and therefore in many aspects his attempts to over come his mental illness serve to be his downfall. This is an aspect which we may wish to incorporate into our media production, another common instance between both Memento and Shutter Island is the bleak and somewhat disturbing subject matter which they deal with, this may be due to having to deal with subject matter which must test the stability of their character and therefore must in many regards challenge the audience at the same time albeit non-directly. 

Filters also play a large role within the narrative of Memento with the use of black and white filter to signify a different timeline, it is clear that the use of filters from a cinematographic standpoint are important within the genre and it is an aspect which needs to be incorporated within our film to some degree.

Changing concepts

After trying to create our initial idea we found that in the process we were not achieving the quality we had hoped for and following audience feedback in which the audience had expressed that they found that it was hard to follow and convoluted at times we found that ultimately the plot of our short film was the problem and therefore we have decided that in order to create the highest quality product we would have to rethink our project from the ground up.

Firstly we had to create a new concept for our film that also adhered to the three key features of short films we had found and we decided to go back to one of the other ideas from our initial brainstorm which was some form of psychological thriller. This would allow us to create a similar type of suspense as our initial idea, However in order to allow ourselves to take a fresh and original approach on the genre we are also implementing aspects of science fiction films as this will allow greater possibilities in terms of narrative.

However before doing this we must first look at various psychological thrillers and also science fiction films in order to establish a further set of forms and conventions so that we can properly understand the genres which our film will portray. 

Initial idea Script: Second Draft

 Upon initial audience feedback from our first draft of the script we found that our project had a sound basis for a plot but many of the audience felt that it was not original or distinguishable enough from other film in the Thriller Genre. Taking this into consideration we decided to take a more unconventional approach through adding a mise en abyme in that the first portion is a smaller story which then proceeds to converge with the "real world" of our film.


scene one (real world)

The hand of an unknown man is seen placing a dvd into a dvd player, The camera then pans to the screen in which the titles are displayed

scene 2 (within film)

Doorbell rings.  David opens the door to find a briefcase sitting there. He looks around the area before he brings it inside. When investigating the briefcase, he finds an unseen object and a note stating nothing but, "He is coming."

scene 3 (within film)
A man approaches a woman asking where the directions to David's house, The woman is visibly horrified by the man whose face we have not yet seen however she tells him the directions and quickly hurries away

scene 4 (within film)

David and his friend, PAUL are discussing what to do and who the note could refer to, they decide to leave but David insists on going to get stuff from the shop.

paul: We can’t stay here, come on, we have to leave!

david: Hold on, we need to get food and some money first. we don't know how long we'll be away.


scene 5 (within film)
David returns home to find the door ajar, he approaches as our assailant chases him down, David hides in an alleyway as the shilouetted assailant approaches the same alleyway. The assailant then calls out "come on kid just give me it and I'll make it quick" David then jumps out at the assailant and they wrestle for the knife with David managing to overpower and Stab the assailant seemingly killing him before running home

Scene 6 (within film)

David returns home and proceeds to mourn the loss of his friend when in the background we see the assailant with visible stab wounds he then stabs David before turning directly to the camera and saying "I'm coming for you next"

Scene 7 (real world)

It is then seen that the viewer of the film is disturbed before a doorbell is heard, our viewer opens the door and looks shocked before the film cuts to black.

Initial Idea: Storyboard

Initial idea: story boards

Below are the storyboards for our initial idea which we have now decided against using following feedback.