Poem Breakdown | Development

I looked through the poem and broke up each line(s) and came up with a few ideas for visuals and audio.

"This is for you dear friend

  trapped in a secret you can't bear to tell

  fighting the darkness for a moment of peace

  sleepless in your troubles

  your drowning depression

  as your insides look for a way out,

  and the sharp horn pressed coldly

  against your hope cries into a silence

  only death understands:"

• There will be several shots of the actresses face in a close up or an extreme close up with her facial expression showing numbness and the eyes looking hollow. In post, I might edit this to make the image look blurry and distorted to keep the theme of mental illness clear. 
• Along with that there will be artistic shots such as rain drops falling on the window and a lit candle in the middle of the shot surrounded by darkness. 
• There will also be some quick cut shots of covers being tossed to show insomnia, and water dropping from a tap to show panic in the drowning.

• Ambience will be shown throughout all of these shots, and it will be echoed and distorted in post. Alongside this I will add a low buzzing noise or a high pitched noise to add tension and to build up the shots. 
• To make the shots come to life, I will add sound effects of raindrops, dripping water and a ticking clock, along with screaming and crying effects to portray the horribleness of the illness. 
• To make the video quite intimate and personal to the character, I will have the actress saying phrases such as "help me" to create a dark tone to the video.

"I know what it's like

 to wash your face and still feel dirty

  I know what it's like

 to be loved and still feel hated

  I know what it's like

 to be alone

 to see the flames within your own

self doubt your own self 

berate your own self"

• There will be shots of the actress in a mirror, before washing her hands which will be cut quickly to create tension.
• To portray the tension within the mental illness there will be a shot of positive messages popping up on the screen while the character isolates herself from that world. 
• Close-ups of the actress will be shot as well, and the scene will be set after she had been crying to show the pain she is going through in her head.
• To create the fire imagery, there will be a shot of flames, but also I want to fade the actresses face into the image either through the layer mode or try and do some double exposure. This is something I will have to test before finalising that idea.

• The ambience will be distorted once again with a dull, buzzing noise in the background.
• Again, to bring the shot to life there will be a sound effect of water running, the fire crackling and notification sound effects will also be used to show the messages coming through. Some of these effects will be distorted through the pace of the cutting.
• The actress will say more phrases like "they hate you" to keep the self hate theme throughout the whole video, and over that we'll hear faint sounds of crying.

"I came close, to the closest part

of an ending but I grew to love

the beginnings that fall at the feet

of every failure

I thought back,

on all the yesterdays I had collapsed

only to see that today was only possible

because I refused to stay down,

I refused to be the mud, that part of the earth
People walk all over"

• To emphasise the self harm and suicidal element of depression, this scene will be exploring the characters body parts. One shot will be of the actresses normal, clean skin and in the other shot the skin will be seen as bloody, cut and bruised. These shots will flash from one to the other quite quickly in order to show what people don't usually see from the outside.
• The body parts that this scene will be focusing on are the hands, wrists, arms, hair, head and face.

• Due to the imagery being quite forceful, I want to keep the sound simple so the ambience will be echoed and distorted. I'm may also add a flash sound effect to clearly show the difference between each shot.

"I let it go, I watched it leave and I kissed

you on the lips because you said

You hadn't felt anything in years,

and we put on a song to dance to

until our bodies were so full of music

that we went to sleep that night in a melody

no instrument could catch,

and you slept in the sky of my arms

dreaming of eagles, infinity and sunshine."

• This will be very similar to the last scene, in the sense that it will be exploring the characters lips, and the clean normal shot will cut to a bloody and bruised shot.
• In order to create the music effect of the poem, there will be a shot where a record player will be seen in the corner and the actress is sitting in front of it, either curled up or looking out of the window. There will be a focus pull from the record player to the actress. 
• In the poem, it talks about the aspect of dreaming, so to show this I will have a shot of the daytime outside and in post I will create a faded, glowing effect.

• The ambience will be echoed and distorted, to keep the sound simple against the heavy imagery.
• In post I will add a song that will be acting as the song played on the record player and this will carry on throughout this scene and the next one. 
• To make the dream shot come to life, there will be bird sound effects but they will be echoed and distorted to show that it't not actually real.

"I will never know what it feels like

to cry like you,

I will never know what it's like

to be Black, to be a woman,

to be poor and told your whole life

things that make you compose a list

of a million ways to kill yourself."

• I wanted to show two sides of the characters emotions, so there will be two shots that show two different emotions. One will be a general, happy emotion and the other will be a sad and drained emotion. These two shots will either be flashed from one to the other, or I will experiment with the layer mode in order to show both emotions either side of the screen. 
• The character will be looking in the mirror, and on the mirror the words "Black", "woman" and "poor" will appear through the flashing shots. 
• At the end of the scene, for the last two lines, the phrase "KILL YOURSELF" will be on the mirror and this will be shown through wide shots, mid shots and close ups.

• The crying sound effect will be used and will be distorted by an echo of some sort in post.
• The ambience will be echoed and distorted.
• We will hear phrases such as "no one liked you" or "please die" and they will be said by the actress. This will emphasise the character talking to herself or reminding herself of the abuse she may have got in her childhood. 

"I won't always be there when the eagle

put's on its boots and comes to seek you out

or when you slam every door or your friends

don't answer the phone and your mum's left you in tears again."

• To involve the letter element of my idea, there will be a shot of a ripped up letter on a table, next to an envelope that says 'For You'. This shot will be quite distorted and this will be done through the focus point of the actual shot.
• There will be a montage of doors slamming, but instead of seeing the whole door you'll only see the bottom edge of the door and this will be seen through either a medium close up or a close up.
• Again, I'm going to distort this shot through the focus point, and it will contain the actress sitting on the bed, in the corner, crying in her hands.

• There will be a faint ripping effect to show that the paper had been ripped previously.
• The doors slamming effect with be distorted and will increase to create tension, and alongside this there will be a ringing or dull sound in the background. 
• To create the phone not being answered, I will add the voice mail sound in post along with a crying sound effect over the top.

"No I can't always be there

when the beauty that is your face

turns into something unrecognisable,

something far from here,

something that spells words in a thin trail

of melting mascara running down your cheeks 

you whisper a goodbye

but when you come close to the closest

part of an ending

Think of yourself smiling - "

• Similar to a previous shot, we will see two sides of the characters emotions. The actress will be covering one side of her face with one hand. The part of the face that is exposed will show the characters normal happy emotion, and on the hand I will layer the actresses face looking sad and glum and maybe crying. Instead of layering the actresses face, I might try and split the screen so there are two faces on either side of the screen. 
• A landscape view will be seen as well, and I'm going to try and make it look like it is melting on screen. This is something I will have to experiment with before finalising the idea.
• To involve the letter more, there will be a handheld shot of the ripped up letter, spread across the bed. When "smiling" is heard, a shot of the letter with a smiley face on it and the actress finger with appear touching the piece of paper.

• Like it is throughout the whole video, the ambience will be distorted.
• To show the contrast of the poem's tone, there will be outside, peaceful noises, and as the image melts, this sound will get increasingly distorted.

" - and see the child

throwing bread to the ducks,

see the child opening her presents on Christmas day,

winning an award, learning to swim, saying the words

I love you and saying them again. 

See the child that has done nothing wrong,

that wants to dance and laugh and sing,

see it all as it once was

pure, still, perfect"

• There will be a few shots of ducks near a lake, and this will be quite faded and blurry to show some sort of a flashback memory.
• In the same sort of effect, there will be a shot of presents that had been opened, and they will be sat either on a table or on the floor. This will be to show the flashback of Christmas, and the youthful memory the poem is mentioning.
• This shot will be blurry as well, but in the shot the actress will be sat in the corner of the bed, reading through the previously not torn up letter.
• After doing some research, a symbol of flowers is youth, so there will be a shot of flowers blowing in the wind and this shot will most probably be in slow motion.

• Again, to bring the shot to life, there will be duck quacking sound effects, along with children playing and laughing sound effects. In order to clearly portray it as a memory, these will be echoed in post.
• To show the Christmas imagery, I'm thinking about putting a Christmas song in the background and distorting it slightly. 
• When hearing "pure...still...perfect" the sound effects will slowly decrease in volume and by the end of the phrase it will be silent.

"and keep whatever calm you find

for me because when I come in crashing

reeking of mud and covered in the earth's shoe prints

I'm going to need your heart."

• To show calm imagery, there will be a handheld shot of a candle or multiple candles being lit.
• There will be another blurred shot of the actress sitting on a bed, reading the letter, similar to a previous shot.

• There will be a crashing sound effect and maybe some shouting to show an army type of message or something similar. Along with this there will be a heart beat in the background and it will increase in volume until the word "heart" is heard. Then the heart beat will be steady and at an average volume.
• There will be a distorted ambience again.

"Can you do that for me?

And all I ask from you

is that you keep it together

because you're harder to pick up"

• There will be a shot of a single letter piece with the words "can you do that for me?" on it. This will be a handheld close up shot.
• Then, I'm going to try and make all of the previous shots look like they have been reversed backwards, almost like a rewind.

• To create an impact on the rewind of the previous shots, there will be a breathing sound effect that will be distorted and I might increase it as the shot gets faster. This will be to create an out of breath effect.

"when you're in pieces."

• I want this shot to be quite strong, but also I want it to end the poem off nicely. The torn up letter pieces will be either lying on the floor on the bed, and the shot will zoom out slowly, starting on a CU.
• That shot will then end on a fade out.
• For the audio, there will be a distorted ambience or dull buzzing noise in the background and as the shot gets increasingly further away from the letters, the audio will decrease in volume.
• Once the shot is dark, there will be a few seconds of the dull noise in the background.