Firstly we decided to brainstorm a character that we had in our heads, and what characteristics this character would have, what gender they would be, age and appearance. We also took into account any past issues they've had prior to the stage of their life that is going to be in the film. We decided that our character would begin the film with having suffered a truamatic loss of a loved one, but in contrast is pregnant, therefore she does try to be strong for her unborn child. The main aspects we decided were:
- they were female
- young adult
- pale (reflects illness)
- slim figure
- dealt with traumatic situations
- mental illness
Our next task was to build a plot around this character, we also had to think of a big unexpected twist within the story as this is one of the key conventions of thrillers and is what will make the film itself "thriller". We also had to take into consideration that we are only doing a trailer, so we have to think of a twist that can in some way be reflected in the trailer without giving to much away to the main story line.
Research into Mental Illnesses
We knew from the start that we wanted our character to suffer from a mental illness to include the psychological element of our thriller. One of the first illnesses that we thought of what schizophrenia or depression, because these are amongst the most well known. We wanted our chraracter to suffer from an illness that made her see things that weren't real and believe them. However, we knew to make our trailer and film realistic that we would have to research into our chosen illness so this is what we did.
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless. They may lose interest in activities that once were pleasurable, experience loss of appetite or overeating, or problems concentrating, remembering details or making decisions; and may contemplate or attempt suicide. Insomnia, excessive sleeping, fatigue, loss of energy, or aches, pains or digestive problems that are resistant to treatment may be present. Depression is often a reaction to:
- ceratin life events (loss of a loved one)
- symptoms of medial conditions
- treatments
- a feature of certain psychiatric syndromes
We would have a lot of features to work on with all the characteristics of depression, which means we could create a interesting chracter with many features to choose from. However, because of the wide variety of depression, it would be hard to incoporate the illness and reflect it in a short trailer.
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social or occupational dysfunction. The illness can be diagonised through certain factors like genetics, environmental factors, prenatal and substance abuse.
From schizopherina, we realised that we wanted our character to have dreams that included delusions, and become someone who has social dysfuntions because of these hallucinations. This lead us to our next disorder that we researched.
Dissociative identity disorder is a psychiatric diagnosis and refers to a person that displays multiple distinct identities or personalities known as "alter egos" each on has its own unique set of memories, behaviors, thoughts and emotion that is related to each specific personality.
Patients of this disorder may experience an extremely broad range of other symptoms that resemble epilepsy, schizophrenia, anxiety, mood disorders, post traumatic stress disorder, personality and eating disorders.
This aspect of multiple personalities and alter egos is what we are going to focus on. From this we created our plot.
Plot
A young woman at the age of 24 has recently lost her husband who fought in Afghanistan in the war. This lead to her being diagnosed with depression, however she is 4 months pregnant with her husbands child when he passes away. With the help and support of her family she struggles through her depression but slowly starts to be better. The baby is delivered and she has a new focus in life which is her child, she takes her healthy baby home and starts to build her life again.
However it soon goes horribly wrong when her baby passes away, and cause is of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, often referred to as "cot death". However the mother does not believe it has died of natural causes and believes her baby was killed by something/someone because of the dreams that she is constantly dreaming of this memory of a 'figure' that suffocated her baby. But the face in her dreams is never shown.
Convinced by this she goes to the help of the police to have a full investigation into the death to put her mind at ease, but they do not find any substantial evidence that anyone was involved and dismiss the case as the original 'died of natural causes'. Not letting this rest, her dreams become more vivid and frequent to the point where she cannot sleep or go about daily things, she seeks the help of a private investigator in the hope of solving this mystery and putting these dreams to rest and she can finally start grieving for the loss of her child.
The private investigator becomes consumed in this story and the only solution due to the woman’s unusual actions and the depression, lead to the conclusion it was her. She will not take this as an answer and becomes violent. She becomes dangerous to the public and other mothers, so she is taken into a psychiatric ward.
We are only seeing one of her alter egos, the one that has lost a child, however the other is the murderer of her child. As the plot progresses, the 'figure' that always appears in her dreams becomes more apparent and clearer to the point when you can see that it is in fact her.
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