Synopsis

The synopsis has developed through a number of different version, with original ideas being very different to the final synopsis. For example, our very first idea involved a psychotic young child holding captive an older male within a school. The location of the Verne High Angle Battery, the tunnels, was originally only planned to be included during the titles of the opening, to hint to the audience of the future location.

However, as no members of my group know any young children, we felt it would be difficult to find a suitable actress and have permission from their parents to film them. At this point, our current 17 year old actor, Matt, was considered. He is known by our group and was willing to sacrifice his time for filming. We felt that a different storyline was needed for this character, and decided to focus more heavily on Matt as a victim trapped within the tunnels. During the brainstorm at this point, a range of ideas involving Matt and the tunnels were produced. For instance, Matt has an identical twin and to use this to our advantage, the idea of both twins being trapped in seperate areas of the High Angle Battery was introduced. As a result, proposals of hinting at future fratricide, possibly through letters or the title of the film, were suggested.

We decided against having such an obvious hint at the ending of the film as a key element of horror films is building suspense through making the audience question the outcome of the build up. Therefore, we changed our idea to the final synopsis above, where the opening takes place after the act of fratricide. Matt is suffering the physchological affects at this point, including flashbacks to his time trapped within the tunnel. This sets up an enigma to the audience, as they do not understand Matt's behaviour or the experience he has been through.

FIRST SYNOPSIS: Nathan's vision is blurred as he looks at his counsellor, with muffled sound. Slowly, his vision and hearing become clearer. The counsellor, who has a clipboard ready to take notes, asks “nathan?”. Nathan shows his dejection and unwillingness to be in therapy through his body language and lack of response.

Scene changes to in the tunnels- Nathan is sat down on the floor now in different unclean clothes from those worn in the counsellor's room. There is a carry through sound of a clock ticking from the counsellor's room, signifying this is a flashback within Nathan's mind. The character slowly stands up, with the camera following, and he appears distressed. He gets increasingly confused and agitated, breathing heavily. In the confusion he is banging on the stone walls in a ‘pattern’.

Sudden cut back to the therapy room. Nathan is still unresponsive to the nurses efforts and resorts to an obsessive action, such as tapping or thumping in the same pattern that he banged on the walls in the previous scene. Mid shot of the nurse shows she is leaning forward, alert to the change in Nathan.

Cut back to the tunnels- the banging is increasing in frequency and the whispers start. The whispering grows in speed and volume, with layers of different speech overlapping.

Film begins to cut between action in the tunnels and Nathan's distress in the counsellor's room very quickly. This continues to escalate, along with the diegetic and non-diegetic sound, and a variety of shots and angles in the tunnels create confusion in the audience.

Increase in build up, until the lights blow out.

Black background, phrase shows as spoken (non diegetic sound), title revealed from words.

Unfortunately, we faced major set becks to this idea. For example, the location in the tunnels became closed to the public as a result of vandalism and water damagae, and our actress for the councellor was not available at appropriate times for filming. This means that we were forced to change our idea drastically.

This led to a change in the location, and therefore a change in our idea and synopsis to suit the setting.

FINAL SYNOPSIS:

Nathan awakes in a dark, cold room on a camp bed. He swings his legs over the side, gets up, and looks around the room. He knocks over a tankard with water in over, spilling it. After setting it upright he moves to the door and tries to open it; eventually trying to force it to break. A whisper is heard and he finches and takes a few steps back “hello? is anyone there?”. he goes closer again and leans in so his ear is close to the door there is a few seconds of intent listening but nothing is heard.

There is a sudden noise from the other side of the room of a light bulb shattering. He freezes and slowly turns to see the origin of the noise; seeing that no one is there he goes towards the smashed bulb. Nathan also discovers a candle, unsure if it was there to start with or not.

Time passes as Nathan sits on the floor. The sound of bedsprings is heard and he turns towards the sound, once again seeing no one. Nathan makes his way forward and sees photos strewn across the camp bed, previously not there.

Post production we realised the film felt empty and lacking in plot. When looking back at previous ideas, we liked the contrast of the safe location to the unknown setting seen in the first synposis. Therefore, we used a short amount of footage from the counsellor's room and edited this into the period between Nathan discovering the candle and sitting on the floor. We felt this made the opening more interesting and also emphasised the amount of time passing with Nathan in the same room.