Final plans

All of our original plans have essentially gone out the window. We decided than it was going to become a little cliché and would easily become a series or random shots and ideas and we didn’t want that.
We have now decided on a final plan but this has come through several stages of development. We wrote down loads of words, flicking through book stopping on random pages and picking out words. From doing this we stumbled upon the word suffocation. From this we thought about all the connotations of the word. Through this we came up with the basic idea of society suffocating out human emotions and desires. As it is important for us to have a strong theme, we saw this as a way to be free within an idea but still have a central idea to relate to. From this we came up with several shot ideas that were visual metaphors for being unable to express your emotions or true feelings.
Shot idea 1. The first idea for a shot is t have several people with black tape over their moths to symbolise being unable to speak.
Shot idea 2. To have a circle of people with tights over their heads to show being enclosed. The tight are a physical barrier for the thought that will not be aired to the real world.
Shot idea 3. To have someone with a plastic bag over their head with the camera inside to show literal suffocation that would relate to a figurative suffocation of words.
From this the idea evolved again when we saw a verse of Edgar Allen Poe’s ‘the Raven’ on Stephen’s can of energy drink.
‘Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the darkness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, `Lenore!'
This I whispered and an echo murmured back the word, `Lenore!'
Merely this and nothing more.’
The line,’ Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared dream before’ really struck a chord with us. The idea that there are thing that we dare not say, dare not even think. Also the idea that in the poem the protagonist is being tormented by this raven was something we were interested in. This then formed into our final idea.
The main outline is to have a main character who has a voice inside his head who is tormenting him to do the things he really desires. Having cast Ben our main character is therefore called Ben. We are going to create a physical manifestation of this voice by filming Ben being that ‘little man’ in his own head. This is where we intend to employ the use of lighting that is not generally considered as a convention. We will film in one of the performance studios so we have a completely black environment and then using colours of light we will create moods of anger and sadness or loneliness in order to show the inner workings of this character. We also intend to be inventive with the use of sound. It is integral and will help to create this atmosphere of tension that is between Ben and his inner self. We hope to break away from normal conventions with this use of lighting and sound and also in the edit by making the cuts in places that will make everything seem unhinged.
Now we have a final plan we can now start filming!