Further research into the name of our female protagonist.

2)

In reading my previous annotations and explorations, this is rather self explanatory. It reflects the ideas of premature and undeserved death which is also something shown in our opening sequence.

3)

Again, this doesn't need much explanation; it reflects three of the main characteristics that we want Lily to show- innocence, purity and beauty.

The Name of our Female Protagonist

We decided to call the female protagonist in our opening sequence Lily, this is because of  different connotations and meanings of the name and the imagery associated with it.

We liked the fact that there were a number of Lilies each with their own meanings and connotations; this reminded us of our character Lily as she has many contrasting characteristics herself.

We already knew that Lily had multiple connotations that were relevant to the protagonist in our storyline.

However, this afternoon in our lesson, both Brogan and Tiffany were absent and the computer with all of our work on was not working. Therefore, I decided to do some further research into the name Lily to ensure that it was the correct name for our protagonist.

It turned out that the name was perfect! Below are a number of things that I found and annotated during the process of exploring the name.

1)

- I found that Madonna Lillies were a symbol of purity and associated with the Holy Virgin and religion. I liked this because it reflected the youth and purity of our protagonist which also helps to emphasise her innocent characteristics and increases the empathy felt towards her after her loss.

-This Lily also was used as a wedding flower (reflecting the love felt between the young couple in our story) and also a connotation of death (reflecting her losses).

-I also found that historically it was thought that Lilies spontaneously appeared on the graves of those who were executed for crimes which they did not commit. I thought that this reflected the way in which the male's death was undeserved.

-Dreaming of Lilies at different times of year can also signify different things. "Dreaming of lilies in spring signifies marriage, happiness and prosperity"; I thought that this reflected the fact that the spring of their relationship (the beginning) was extremely loving, happy and idealistic. "Dreaming of lilies in winter signifies frustration of hopes and the premature death of a loved one"; this contrasted with the spring and reflected the winter of their relationship (the death of the male), and again emphasised that his death was premature.

-The medieval connotation of feminine sexuality also appeared relevant but I wasn't 100% certain on what was meant by this; so I looked up the meaning of 'feminine sexuality' itself. I found the below. I thought that this was also relevant because of their age and the fact that teenagers are at the stage where they are exploring sexuality.

Changes: Soundtrack

Soundtrack

We decided to use 'The End Where I Begin' by The Script as our soundtrack because it related to the topic and main idea of our film and also once again reflected the cyclical theme. It is a well known song and therefore even hearing the acoustic version people would associate what they see with the song title which we felt was relevant. It also was a gentle song which changed in pace and tone throughout which, we thought, reflected her emotions and also helped to set a mood for our film. However, as the music in our opening sequence was unable to be copyright, we found that we could not use the original version of the song. Therefore, we asked a friend of ours (who is conveniently very interested in the soundtracks of films) to play an instrumental version of the song on the piano, changing a few notes here and there so it wasn't the same as the original so that we were able to use it in our production.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2b7p2Pr_Rhg

Changes: Flashback

Flashback

Having a flashback in our opening sequence meant that we could include a section of montage editing. To make it apparent to the audience it was a flashback we decided to add an effect in order to make it clear and understandable. We found it difficult to choose the most appropriate one as we felt that each effect we tried gave a different message. There are a lot of effects to choose from on Final Cut Express (and also rendering the clips takes a while) therefore, after a substantial period of time, we added an echo effect that made the shots echo themselves creating a blur. Watching it back, we think that this effect works well and in asking another audience, feedback shows that they could tell that it was a flashback, meaning that we had succeeded in making it clear enough for them to understand.

Changes: Voice Over Transition

Voice Over

We decided the transition between the locations and the hospital scene weren't clear enough for the audience as they were unsure of which character had died, be it the female or male. Although this would become clear later in the story, we decided that we wanted our opening sequence to be as clear as possible in order to capture the attention of as many people as possible. Therefore, we decided to try and include a voice over of a nurse or family member telling the protagonist (Lily) of the unfortunate loss of her boyfriend in the car crash.

Changes: Crash

Crash

From the very beginning our storyline was based around the ideas and impacts of a car crash. We felt that because this was one of the main events that took place in our film that it should appear in our opening to help engage the audience. When researching different films and looking at clips and scenes for inspiration and ideas we came across 

Raise Your Voice, which is where our most protuberant ideas came from for the crash. However, as it is not a particularly well-known film there is not many YouTube videos for it, and none that show the section of the film as it is in the actual film, but rather are montages that people have made using clips of the film.

This is a link containing the section of Raise Your Voice that gave us the most influential ideas. Particularly the section from 1min20 onwards.

1min35 onwards also shows the crash scene that inspired us.

This montage also shows all the individual clips from 'Raise Your Voice' that inspired the crash idea for our opening sequence.

Changes: Circles

Circle Theme

When researching our initial film idea we had a lot of varied ideas each of which we liked equally but we didn't know how to unite them into one storyline; therefore we had the idea to tie all of the different ideas that we had brainstormed together by using a theme that would run throughout the opening sequence. We decided that this theme could be circles as it reflected the idea of the continuity and cyclical events of our storyline. When we presented our pitch, the initial feedback from our classmates showed that they didn't fully understand the importance or significance of the circles. Once we explained further, they became more interested and thought the idea was perhaps better than first expected. Hearing this, we decided to either make the idea more apparent to the audience or remove the idea completely. We tried to make the idea more apparent but with our new footage it wasn't as easy as we first thought. We did however include the idea into a few of our shots like the carousel ones or the ones where you see a point of view from the female protagonist spinning around to continue with the ideas of cyclical events and confusion.

Changes: Isolation

Isolation
When we presented our pitch to the class, we discussed the idea of singling out the female protagonist from a  crowd making her appear more isolated and individual. They really liked our timelapse and felt that this was a particularly effective section of filming and editing, as it not only successfully singled out our protagonist as an isolated character in our story, but also showed our media skills well. However, the use of drugs soon seemed less than original and therefore lost it's effectiveness to us as a group and we decided to remove it from our opening sequence. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZfEEzKFEv8
We watched the opening scene of Collateral and we liked how the two males were singled out in a crowd, we therefore used this scene to develop our idea and make it more apparent.

Changes: Drugs

Drugs

We had originally planned to incorporate drug-use into our opening sequence but after seeing the rest of the pitches from the people in our class, we realised that almost every single group had decided to use the idea of drugs in their opening sequence. In seeing this, as a group, we therefore decided against the idea as we wanted our film to be original and not too similar to anyone else's. Also, we wanted our sequence to look as effective and realistic as possible and therefore the fact that drugs are quite a difficult thing to create the effect of, this too made the idea seem less effective. 

Shooting Scripts

As we were required to re-do our storyboards, we also needed to create new shooting-scripts. Here they are:

New Storyboards

We showed a rough cut of our opening sequence to the class and handed out audience feedback sheets for them to fill in. They gave us both positive and constructive feedback and therefore, we needed to make a number of changes. We tried making changes to our original storyboard but it wasn't as effective, hence we have almost completely changed our storyline and ideas.

Here is our new storyboard:

The Name of the Film

We decided that the main idea in the film would be cyclical and keep happening to the same girl, suggesting she is the one perhaps causing or creating the incidents that happen.

As we decided it was a car crash and the male would die, this means the female would be left alone and would most probably end up mourning over the death of her boyfriend. Referring back to the cyclical idea means that she would be mourning more than once.


We therefore decided to use a play on words and call the film 'The Mourning After'.

New Storyline

As there have been changes to our ideas and filming locations we have been required to simplify and adapt our old storyline and essentially create a new storyline. We are also required to plot the basic storyline for the rest of the film. So, here they are..


Opening Sequence:
Our new story begins with a young couple in a car. The couple are talking and consistently turn to look at each other, through the windscreen we then see a car coming towards them from the opposite direction. The car gets closer and closer until we all can see are the headlights. The lights are becoming so big that that it fades to a white screen, together with the sound effects the audience know that there has been a crash. The white screen fades into a hospital scene, where we see the protagonist gaining consciousness, at the same time we see the female being pushed down a long corridor on a bed. She then closes her eyes and the scene fades to a blackout implying the idea that perhaps the female has simply fallen asleep or perhaps has fainted or even slipped into a coma. We then begin a section of montage editing, where we see the female looking through photographs of the past times that her and her lost love spent together and we see many flashbacks provoking her emotions to spiral which is reflected in the angles and effects in some of the flashbacks. She sees the times when perhaps when she was more happy, spending quality time with her partner who sadly passed away.



Main Storyline:
After the opening sequence, we see the investigation of the crash but the approaching car drove away and all they know about it was that it was red. The film will follow Lily's emotional journey and life will appear to get better and better as time goes by and the memories fade. Throughout the film strange things keep happening to her whilst in the presence of men or boys. Lily also becomes extremely wary of being in cars as it brings back memories of the tragedy of her boyfriend's death and will only go in a car in the day time. The period of mourning passes and as if by unusual coincidence there is a repeat of the crash with a red car but with Lily's best friend and her lover. Nobody thinks of it as anything but a coincidence and it is treated as a separate matter. Lily then becomes obsessed with the matter and aggravated by the lack of official response; she therefore decides to take matters in to her own hands and find the red car and its owner. The rest of the story then follows Lily in her journey of horrific discoveries alone. Unfortunately, due to a number of false paths and clues she has led them down even her closest friends and family think that she is simply delusional or damaged from the initial crash..