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IDEATION

First off, just to introduce, my group cponsists of Chiharu, Pei Wen and Rebecca!

So we started sharing childhood acquaintances and friendship stories with each other, and we decided to work on someone from Pei Wen’s past. To put it simply:

She knew a guy by name but they never got the chance to interact until they were assigned to the same class. From there, they managed to click and became friends through common interests. Things got a little weird as this guy appeared wherever she went, tagging along whenever there’s something she’s attending to. Then one day he confessed, but she had no mutual feelings so she rejected him. He seemingly stopped but returned to tell her that he had dreams of her and nightmares of her being trapped and helpless. Not only so, he texted saying they need to ‘move on’ and ‘forget each other’, when there was literally nothing between them at all. It was really strange, though she realised he had depression and his clingy delusions probably stemmed from that.

Deciding on a more mysterious and psychological theme (yet again), this person fit the role well.

The character was delusional, so we did some research on mental illnesses of the like. Schizophrenia became the main focus of our research, as we wanted the character to be unable to discern between reality and her work of mind. She would go through unstable moods, aggression and hallucinations.

With the character’s base set, we needed a premise. What would stir a little drama but also balance out with the mystery we wanted to have? Thinking back to how the original guy would be unintentionally clingy, we gave the character someone important that they end up losing. The main character would probably cling on to whatever memory she has of that loved one, who was her sister, and in turn the obsessive behaviour blurs her boundaries of reality and imagination.

The intended climax – the main character eventually realising her sister is gone and won’t ever come back, and she has to learn to live on without her.

https://imgur.com/HtEWH3k

Goodnight Mommy (2014) is an Austrian film that features a pair of twins but one of them is actually dead, a figment of the living twin’s imagination. This was a good example of what we wish to achieve for shots with both sisters.

Once the storybeats were finalised, Rebecca and I worked on some draft storyboards:

SHOOTING

The storyboards were followed loosely as we went with the flow and got better ideas for shots along the way. We actually had to reshoot on different days due to conflicting schedules and the availability of some of the locations. Also, props to Chiharu for shooting for us! It was a tiring ordeal!

While shooting we faced the difficulty of portraying the non existent sister: do we want to use blur? Put her outside of frame? Lower her opacity?

We tried using motion to create the blur, hoping it shows surreality but it just ended up looking like she was moving very fast all the time.

Remembering how Goodnight Mommy places the dead twin in shots, we positioned the sister either uncomfortably out of frame, partially covered or simply oddly placed without following rule of thirds.

So the filtering began and we finalised on a decent amount of usable shots.


Then it was the photo editing! I edited most of them, tweaking them into black and white, adjusting different settings and levels to ensure the photos fit the intended moods perfectly. Following the film noir aesthetic of being mysterious and serious, the black and white visuals really enhances the mood while also minimalising noise and distractions.

There were a few shots that required further manipulating as we did not have time to completely reshoot – mostly removing certain elements of the photo. When the drawings are on screen, it becomes the only thing that’s coloured to bring focus and also giving off importance and sentimentality, like how Sin City (2005) does it to guide the viewers’ eyes to crucial elements.

Audio will be covered in the Final posting!

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F I N A L
Chiharu|Pei Wen|Rebecca|Yi Ting 

STORY
The concept we’ve finalised was vaguely based off an old distant acquaintance that cut off all contact after showing signs of being delusional. It narrates how this character goes through just another daily routine with her sister in the present and how a repressed event haunts her.

SUMMARY
As the film goes, it simply starts off with a shot of two toothbrushes, a basic daily routine with just the main character alone, nothing strange, a normal practice. The sister greets her and they share a moment of kinship before leaving to meet a friend. They stare out the window for a short while and shut the curtains, ready to set out. They chat, laugh, the main character realises – why did their friend not greet or reply her sister? She confronts the friend, there is confusion, puzzled tension.

The friend says, ‘No one’s there.’

That’s when the main character snaps and we are pulled right back into her dimly lit room, her desk messy with a stack of kiddy drawings of her sister and her. She looks through them and is suddenly assaulted with memories with her sister. And how she is now, alone. She takes a moment, stares at the closed curtains and finally opens the curtains and windows, light and natural sounds flooding through the opening. The last shot, an cup with a single toothbrush.

INTERPRETATIONS

The film is in black and white as it sets the melancholy, ‘boring’ but yet mysterious mood.

The story starts and ends with the toothbrush shot – right at the beginning there was an empty mug, then there were two; at the end it was an empty mug again, but then there was one. It shows how the main character has been living an imaginary life with her supposed lost sister and after the dispute, she has a revelation and now she’s back in reality, where it is just her left.

Another shot that sets the start and end is the curtains shot. As the siblings ponder at the window, it was oddly silent before they shut it and all light disappears and they continue on with their day. The lack of noises causes it to feel just slightly out of place, depicting how it wasn’t real, it being a part of the character’s mind. When the main character opens the curtains alone, light shines through and a stream of different sounds enter, showing how she is taking a step forward, moving on from the loss of her sister.

Using reflections and mirrors allowed us to portray the feeling of duality and the fine line between delusions and reality. There are a number of shots that has either reflections, half-half lines or contrast of lighting just to show that.

AUDIO

Taking some inspiration from a Swedish drama film, Through a Glass Darkly (1961) by Ingmar Bergman, which tells the story of a schizophrenic woman. It has effective uses of silence and minimal audios when the woman is faltering between reality and madness, with the audience only hearing what’s in reality but the visuals might say otherwise. I heed that in mind and slightly twisted it a little to fit the purpose of this film more.

http://siochembio.tumblr.com/post/146851512747/through-a-glass-darkly-1961

For instance when the water drips from the tap, there is never a ‘plop’ sound, no implication that the water even dripped at all, getting at the idea that this moment is unreal. Similarly mentioned earlier, the part with the sisters at the windows, there is no sound, another surreal moment.

As for the melody added as they leave their home, it’s suppose to show that the main character is contently living this ‘fake’ life as in reality there is never background music ever. It’s quickly cut off when the scene switches to the drawings, a blatant punch in the face back to reality.

The heartbeat was to create tension as it slowly sped up until she punches the friend, resulting in a cut to black.

The humming was to create a mood of somber self-reflection as the main character thought about the past and how she should deal with it now. The bouts of laughter sparking the need to move on.

Quick to note, I avoided adding any form of speech or subtitles, hoping to instead let the audience interpret the narrative by themselves without the blunt aid of words.