When it came to choosing poems to inspire some ideas for a short film, I liked the look of one poem and two sonnets. These were: Time does not bring relief (Sonnet II) by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sonnet 1 by Gwendolyn Bennett, and Trespass by John Clare. The ideas I had for these are in a mind map below.
Mind Map - Development of my Ideas
I decided to go with the Trespass poem by John Clare as I really liked the personal spin, I took on this poem as the idea is based on my personal experiences with my intrusive thoughts and my experiences with my anxiety going to a place that I am not familiar with. I wanted to include the voices in the Lucy's head because in the poem itself it reads: "And always feared the owner coming by" (Clare, 1841). So, instead of taking it in a literal sense and having Lucy getting shouted at by the owner of the mansion, I thought about the owner being the negative voice taking over Lucy's head.
When writing my first draft for my script for this project, I am planning to have Lucy's voices to be physical people that only the audience could see to make the story more mysterious and dramatic. I also planned for the ending to be more sad, as the 'Trespass' poem is very sad, and have Lucy break down at the end saying: "Why do I have to be different? I just want to be normal". Normally, with my writing, I like to leave the audience on a cliffhanger to make them ponder what happens next.
However, when writing my second draft, after I casted all the actors for the characters, I decided to save myself the stress with the actors having to drive to the location and for my mental health, I came to a consensus that I want the voices to be voiceovers and that I would record them on a separate day to the filming, as I am planning it to be a very long filming day and the actors playing the voices both agreed and were completely fine with this.
Also, when coming up with an ending to Trespass, I also decided to make it a bit more of a happier ending, with Hope, Lucy's positive voice, triumphing over Jax, Lucy's negative voice, and entering Lucy's head saying that it's all going to be ok and that she is going to get professional help as she gets up and walks out of the shot of the camera. My two drafts of my script are shown in a link below:
I decided this because I wanted the main character to follow the same pathway that I am going through personally to make it more unique to my story of my life. This was also one of the suggested things that I should do by my unit leader. Also, the majority of the poems and sonnets that we had to choose from all had sad endings so I wanted to show a bit of diversity to show some difference to my other peers short films. When it came to storyboarding, I decided to not do a storyboard, but I did a few floor plans to help with staging when it comes to the actual filming day. These are shown in a link below:
These three particular shots were at the start, the first shot of the short film, the shot of teen Lucy panicking with the negative voice in her head and the shot of her running out of the therapist's office. I thought it was important to map out the most important scenes so I at least have a visual plan for the day of filming, along with the shot list which I am planning on making.
In terms of feedback when it came to my feedback for the pre-production paperwork that I produced and the pitch I did to my unit leader, it was fairly positive feedback with the one critique being that I change the ending from being depressing and sad to a more positive ending. I agree with this because as I have stated above, it makes the short film more personal to my story of my life and makes it different to my classmates' short films.
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