Research: News Article, Voicebox Transplants

A woman in the US is able to speak for the first time in 11 years after a pioneering voicebox transplant.

Brenda Jensen said the operation, which took place in California, was a miracle which had restored her life.
Thirteen days after the surgery she said her first words: "Good morning, I want to go home."
It is the first time a voicebox and windpipe have been transplanted at the same time and only the second time a voice box has ever been transplanted.





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When discussing ideas, we remembered a news article from the week before about a woman who recently recieved a voicebox transplant, and decided to add this to our plot.

Proposed New Opening Sequence

The scene starts on the tube. A girl is sitting down, alone, with her headphones in, loud music blaring out. We see clusters of people on the tube, all with their phones out, texting and showing each other things excitedly. A man approaches her and taps her on the shoulder. She takes out both her earphones to look at the man, and we hear the tube is in total silence. He stands, staring at her, his phone out, when we hear her phone buzz, piercing the silence. She looks around at all the other groups of kids, they are texting each other frantically and yet none of them speak. She pulls her phone out of her pocket; she has a text. 'You dropped your purse :-)' The man points to the floor, at her purse, then moves away. She picks it up, and steps off the tube, as her voiceover comes in. For the remainder of the scene, we hear an intermittent voiceover from the girl. She speaks slowly, bleakly. We cut to her arriving home to a silent house. She walks into the front room, her younger brother is playing on a games console. He pulls out his phone as she watches, and simultaneously texts her with one hand while playing the game with the other hand. She reads the text: 'Mum wants to talks to you'. She leaves the room and moves to the kitchen. We expect her to greet her mum and maybe talk about how their days have been, but instead she gets out her phone and types away in silence. This serves as an anticlimax for the whole sequence and leaves the audience wanting to know why nobody communicates vocally. Her mother types back on an ipad, and we see a closeup of the phone with her response, something like 'Hard day at work. How was your day?' The girl texts back then goes upstairs and immediately logs onto her laptop. On her homepage, there is a news article about a scientist who has been arrested on suspicion of developing voiceboxes in a lab. Before she has a chance to read it, her phone buzzes again: dinner is ready. She gets up and leaves her room, leaving the camera to zoom in on the article so it is the last thing the audience sees. As this is a very simple idea, a chronological narrative which just sets the scene for the rest of the film we can be really elaborate and artistic with our shots, with lots of focus pulls and titled frames and whip pans to demonstrate our technical ability and accompany a creative storyline (written and adapted by group members).

Possible Character Names

Lexis (meaning 'word' in Latin)
Ava (meaning 'voice' or 'sound' in Persian)
Tacey (from Latin meaning 'be silent')

New Synopsis

Living in a speechless world where evolution has led humans to be born without voice boxes, Ava meets two rebellious boys who have somehow managed to keep their voices.
Together, immersed in a world of revolution and secrets, they flee the country to locate a team of rebel scientists developing their own manmade voiceboxes. The only thing they need is the DNA of a human who can speak, but the government is on the team's trail and what began as a journey of hope turns into one with only the tiniest chance of success, even if they do make it in time.
A thrilling, fast-paced Action-Drama from Binary Studios™, Mute is far from the average rebellion story and certainly doesn't end in fairytale perfection, yet audiences are guaranteed to be glued to the screen from the first second to the last.

Research: Inspirational Films and Genres

Some of IMDB's Best Action Feature Films:

Inception (2010)

The Dark Knight (2008)

The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)   

Die Hard (1988)

Avatar (2009)

District 9 (2009)

Some of IMDB's Best Drama Feature Films:

Forrest Gump (1994)

Black Swan (2010)

The King's Speech (2010)

127 Hours (2010)

Pulp Fiction (1994)  

Se7en (1995)

Memento (2000)

Films based on/including technology:

The Social Network (2010)

Iron Man (2008) 

Transformers (2007) 

TRON: Legacy (2010)
The Net (1995) 

The Matrix (1999)
WALL·E (2008)

Films including an alternate/dystopian world:
Children of Men (2006)
Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984)
A Clockwork Orange (1971)

TV Programmes that include a lot of technology: 

Gossip Girl (2007)

Pretty Little Liars (2010)

Blog design change

Because of our genre switch from Psychological Thriller to Action/Drama, we thought it would be appropriate to change our blog's design to fit more with our film.

Here is evidence of the work we had done on the original design: (click to enlarge)

We also created a list of our favourite Psychological Thrillers that influenced us:

New Film Plot

Here is the short story we are basing our film opening on, by Jessica Wilson.

Voice

To be done over the weekend (29th/30th Jan)

Charley: 

• Blog new treatment
• Practicalities - confirm actors and locations

  Jess: 

• Post new film idea
• Re-do blog design

Odelia & Robbie:

• Research new genre
• Research similar films and influences

Change of idea

After much discussion with our teachers, we decided that the idea for our opening sequence just didn't fit with the rest of the film, mainly because we thought of the idea before we thought of the film's plot.
The standalone opening sequence would not have made sense to viewers and therefore to the examiners until they had watched the rest of the film, which of course we are not going to make, so as a coursework project the idea didn't really work.

After deciding this, we had a group brainstorm and decided to switch genre from Psychological Thriller, as we thought it would be best to start from scratch to avoid not getting distracted by our original idea. We also decided that we wanted to do something a bit different, as a lot of groups have made Thriller films in the past so we wanted to try something new.

The best way, we decided, to come up with an idea was to think about what story we wanted to tell, and after a few ideas we thought about a short story one of us had written earlier in the year, as it was quite unique and would have been simple to turn into a film. Everyone read the story and liked it, so we decided to go ahead with this new idea, changing our genre to Action/Drama.

Film theory

Todorov's theory of equilibrium:

Equilibrium: Maya and Tom are 'happily' dating. They seem very in love.

Disruption: Maya dumps Tom.

New equilibrium: Tom kills Maya then kills himself.



Propp's Character theory

Because of the Arthouse, unconventional feel of our film, our characters don't really fit the roles of Propp's conventional character theory.

We do have:

1. The princess (person sought for during the narrative)
2. The hero or victim/seeker hero, reacts to the donor, weds the princess

However, this "hero" turns out not to be a hero at all, but a very disturbed, unlikeable character. This shows the ways that we have gone against the conventions and therefore makes our film less mainstream and more niche.



[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

The film plot

Opening sequence:
Tom is in a coma. He is trapped in a metaphorical white room inside his mind, hallucinating. These are hallucinations based on his memories with his ex-girlfriend, Maya. We then see the title 'Six months earlier' and the rest of the film shows the events leading up to this coma.

Rest of film:
The story starts when Tom meets Maya on a bus. They get talking and end up going on a date to cafe. They go on several more dates and it is evident that Tom is very much in love with her: infatuated. The audience can see that Maya is not as keen on him as he is on her, but Tom doesn't notice (dramatic irony?).
On one date, Maya breaks up with Tom because she doesn't feel it is working. Tom doesn't take it well. He can't accept their separation and continues to stalk her.
The film comes to a climax when Maya sees him looking into her window an confronts him. It ends in a violent fight in her kitchen, and in a moment of anger and passion, he grabs a knife and stabs her. Realising what he has done, he decides he cannot live without her, or with the guilt, and stabs himself too. Missing the fatal spot, he is taken to hospital in a coma.
The final scene shows the life support machine being switched off.
We then see Tom in his metaphorical white room in his mind again, the four walls falling down and the bright white cuts to black: he is dead.


[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Our Revised Final Treatment Idea

The opening scene starts in darkness. We hear a woman’s voice saying softly, “Is there no way out of the mind?”.
We then see an ECU of a man’s bloodshot, frenzied eyes.
Then we are shown a wider shot of the entire room, revealing that this man is sitting on a single chair in the middle of a tiny, white room. He is in a coma and this room is a metaphor - he is trapped in his mind. He then hallucinates various events from the past 6 months that appear in the room with him. One hallucination is a woman sitting on a bus seat next to him, reading a poetry book. Another is the same woman sitting opposite him at a café table, eating a sandwich. Throughout these visions, the man sits completely still and does not speak; only the woman speaks. The editing between shots will be very jumpy, and continuity rules will purposely be broken to reflect the confusion in his mind. The lighting will be very bright, giving the scene a sterile look.
A title will come up at the end of the sequence saying ‘6 months earlier’, then the clip will end. The rest of the film shows the events leading up to how he got into a coma. The scenes he hallucinated in his head at the beginning happen in real life, so the audience will recognise these scenes, for example the bus seat, then when he meets her on a bus in real life they will make the connection and feel satisfied.


[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Confirmed Actors for 'Our Empty Rooms'

Academy Award ™ Nominated

Josh Pedro

Anjelica Barbe, winner of the Orange Rising Star ™ award after her performance as Courtney Love in the biopic masterpiece ‘Cobain’ (2009, Scorsese)



[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Treatment

TreatmentFINAL



[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Our Film's Synopsis

Tom Booly (Pedro) takes the number 91 bus every single day from his home to The British Library, where he spends his time immersed in his favourite poetry and literature. One day he misses his bus and happens to meet Maya Stone (Barbe), the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, who is also a fan of poetry. From that moment on they become inseparable and live the romantic life that Booly has always fantasised about. But Booly’s underlying mental issues soon emerge and it becomes evident that their relationship is not as perfect, or even as authentic as it appears in Booly’s mind.

[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Our Final Treatment Idea

The opening scene starts in darkness. We hear a woman’s voice saying softly, “Is there no way out of the mind?”. We then see an ECU of a man’s bloodshot, frenzied eyes. Then we are shown a wider shot of the entire room, revealing that this man is sitting on a single chair in the middle of a tiny, white room – a cell in a mental institute. He then hallucinates various scenes from his past that appear in the room with him, although in actual fact he is entirely alone. One hallucination is a woman sitting on a bus seat next to him, reading a poetry book. Another is the same woman sitting opposite him at a café table, pouring ketchup into a sandwich. Throughout these visions, the man sits completely still and does not speak; only the woman speaks. There are also various strange sounds and flashes of light throughout the scene, adding to the confusion. The editing between shots will be very jumpy, and continuity rules will purposely be broken for effect. The lighting will be very bright, giving the scene a sterile look. We will possibly include a location switch as one of these visions, involving the man imagining himself to be standing on a roof. The majority of the sequence will be shot inside this white room, however. Other things appearing in the room may include a pool of blood, a gun, or even the woman dead on the floor, foreshadowing the film narrative’s tragic ending.
A title will come up at the end of the sequence saying ‘6 months earlier’, then the clip will end.


[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Genre Research

According to Wikipedia, the definition of a Psychological Thriller is

"Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies (which is often the case in typical action-thrillers), but rather are reliant on their mental resources, whether it be by battling wits with a formidable opponent or by battling for equilibrium in the character's own mind. The suspense created by psychological thrillers often comes from two or more characters preying upon one another's minds, either by playing deceptive games with the other or by merely trying to demolish the other's mental state".

The webpage also lists some key themes typical of the genre:

• Reality – The quality of being real. Characters often try to determine what is true and what is not within the narrative.
• Perception – A person's own interpretation of the world around him through his senses. Often characters misperceive the world around them, or their perceptions are altered by outside factors within the narrative.
• Mind – The human consciousness; the location for personality, thought, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. The mind is often used as a location for narrative conflict, where characters battle their own minds to reach a new level of understanding or perception.
• Existence/Purpose – The object for which something exists; an aim or a goal humans strive towards to understand their reason for existence. Characters often try to discover what their purpose is in their lives and the narrative's conflict often is a way for the characters to discover this purpose.
• Identity – The definition of one's self. Characters often are confused about or doubt who they are and try to discover their true identity.
• Death – The cessation of life. Characters either fear or have a fascination with death.

The ones highlighted will be particularly relevant to our film plot and opening.



[Please note that this research is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Potential Film and Character Names Brainstorm

Film Titles

• Our Empty Rooms - from a poem by T.S. Eliot called The Waste Land, written whilst he was having a nervous breakdown

Character Names:

• Tom Booly - anagram of Lobotomy (a neurosurgical procedure used to "treat" mental patients)
• Stella - meaning star ie. out of this world, unreachable, distant
• Maya - everything is an illusion, taken from Hinduism
• Aisling - Gaelic name for dream or vision
  

[Please note that this planning and research is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

A brief idea of how the film should start

• Black screen

• Woman's voice whispering a line of poetry - perhaps from Apprehensions by Silvia Plath (http://www.eliteskills.com/analysis_poetry/Apprehensions_by_Sylvia_Plath_analysis.php)  

"Is there no way out of the mind? "

• Then cut to the man with his eyes wide open, looking very bloodshot and erratic
• The woman is sitting on the bus seat in the room, reading aloud from a Sylvia Plath poetry book

[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Draft Treatment

For Wednesday's lesson, we must prepare a treatment for our film to present to the class and teachers. Here is a rough sample of how our treatment will be presented.

[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Booking Shoots

We got in contact with Janet Osborne from the Art Department to check if we could use the white screens and use the Seward Studio for shooting.

[Please note that this planning is no longer relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Inspirational Clips - Trainspotting

[Please note that this research is not relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Inspirational Clips - Shutter Island

Here is a sequence from Shutter Island that we particularly liked, and thought would be beneficial to look at for inspiration. We thought the purposefully broken continuity rules were used really effectively, as it made it obvious that it was a dream sequence, and also made the sequence look slightly odd. (e.g. when Dolores turns around in one shot, and then is looking out the window in the next) The continuity rules are broken, but it works effectively to show that this is Teddy's dream, and hints that he is slightly insane or is having psychological problems and nightmares, showing the genre and letting us know more about his character.
We also liked how there were random objects in the room, especially with the falling pieces of paper, as this is what we intend to do with our sequence: have random objects and props appearing in the room.


[Please note that this research is not relevant to our final idea, only our original idea, as we changed our concept: see our change of idea post]

Group Meeting no. 2 notes

After discussing our initial ideas, we came up with the concept of a man trapped in a cell in a mental asylum hallucinating. The opening sequence would be him imagining things appearing in the room with him. The rest of the film would explain the events leading him up to being institutionalised.


Location possibilities:
- Make our own room with white screens
- Odelia possibly has contacts who could help
- Charley's list of locations she got during her photography work

Prop ideas:
- Bus seat
- Cafe table + ketchup
- Dead person?

Influences/inspiration:
- House episode 'Joy'
- Trainspotting
- Jennifer's body opening (mental institute)
- Shutter Island
- American Beauty
- Black Swan
- Sherlock Holmes hallucination scene

To be done over the weekend:
Jess - type up meeting 2 notes
Charley - type up meeting 1 notes
Odelia - location brainstorming
Robbie - Find the relevant House episode
Everyone - find clips of similar films/tv shows for inspiration

Group Meeting no. 1 notes

We had a group meeting at lunchtime to discuss any initial ideas and get going on the project as soon as possible.
All group members were present.
From this we decided we were all on a similar wavelength and chose our film genre to be Psychological Thriller.