Test Shoot/ Rehearsals

Wednesday 10th March and Thursday 11th March was spent rehearsing with our actress Amy Derber, and test shooting. Both day's went very successfully, and we are on our way to being ready for the final Shoot in a week and a half's time!

As we are using the same actress for all three main characters, we had to shoot the scene three separate times, not moving the camera and then composite the clips on top of each other. Here is the first test Shot by Jay Waldon, DOP's by James Chegwyn and edited by Matthew Fuller and Jonnie Conibeer

Composite test

Here are a few stills from the rehearsals:

The Crew

Director/Producer: Kayleigh Rhian Carroll

Co-Producer/ Assistant Director: Thomas Northrop

Assistant Producer: Sofia Lahmann

Director of Photography: James Chegwyn

Camera Operator: (To be confirmed)

Stills Photographer: Manca Gale

Set designer: Francis Fagan

Production Design Team: Emily Broad, Vicky Ralph

Concept Artist: Jack Wood

Make-up Artist: (to be confirmed)

Costumes: Vicky Ralph, Emma Hobson
                  

Script Writer: Kayleigh Rhian Carroll, Richard Larsen

Screenplay Writer: Oliver Lee

Sound Designer: Tom Oswin

Sound Recordist: (to be confirmed)

Boom Operator: (to be confirmed)

        

Casting Director: William Joseph Guppy

Fundraising/ Events Manager: Emma Wood

Editors/ Visual Effects: Matthew Fuller, Jonnie Conibeer

Sound Editor: Tom Oswin

Composer: Edd Keene

The Characters

Alice: Alice is a troubled young girl who has just discovered the anorexic lifestyle, and is struggling with the inner conflict of whether to choose gluttony or starvation


Ana: Ana represents the 'bad' side of Alice, the side that is seduced by the alluring and glamourous anorexic world, the side that strives for the perfect body ideal.


Aveline: Aveline represents the 'good' side of Alice, the sensible side that knows deep down that anorexia is a disease, not a lifestyle choice and starvation is not really the way to happiness.


The three characters will be played by the same actress to reinforce the idea of the inner conflict and troubled mind set.


I have been very lucky to find a fantastic actress Amy Derber who will be playing all three roles. 

You can view her showreel here:


Amy Derber Showreel

Concept Art

Here is some concept art from pre-production:










By Emma Wood

By Emily Broad

By Jack Wood

The Cause

This film is very personal to me as it comes from my younger sister suffering with anorexia. I found out about her disorder after discovering her 'Thinspiration' diary which was full of images of skeletal models to aspire to, hints and tips on how to starve yourself and how to hide it from your family and friends, but worst of all letters from a women named Ana telling my sister what a hideous fat cow she is, how she will never amount to anything and how starving herself to perfection is the only way she will ever be truly happy. After approaching my sister about the diary, she showed me a whole world I never knew existed – the anorexic world. Everything from the diary came from a range of online websites, blogs and forums, a huge percentage of them promoting anorexia as a lifestyle choice not a disease, and 'Ana' (the personification of anorexia) being the leader.

As well as my sister, a good friend of mine has suffered with anorexia to the extreme and has been kind enough to open up to me about her experiences. Seeing a loved one suffer is hard, and through my film I want to speak out to anyone who can relate, and let them know that they aren't alone.

Eating disorders are conditions in which there is a serious disturbance in the way a person deals with food, weight, and body image. Most of the time eating disorders develop because of emotional or psychological problems rather than wanting to be skinny. It becomes a way of dealing with emotions. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness and can lead to a whole range of medical problems including hair loss, low heart rate, loss of periods, tooth erosion and osteoporosis.

With this film I am trying to open people's eyes to the brutal reality of how serious and crippling this disease is. We want to try and give the viewer an insight into what it can be like inside the mind of someone suffering with an eating disorder. The loneliness, confusion and pain that these people suffer with, most often in silence. We often hear about the facts, statistics and horrible stories relating to the subject, but the side of anorexia we are addressing is the inner psychological conflict and the secrecy – the side that sufferers often find too difficult to tell.

The Story

Synopsis

To eat or not to eat? A seemingly simple question but to Alice, a 21 year old girl, suffering at the hands of anorexia, this one small decision changes everything. Living her torment through her own imagined world, Alice finds herself at a mysterious banquet table in the company of two strange but intriguing women who both attempt to seduce her with their ideas of happiness. Gluttony and starvation both have dire repercussions, but with no other options, Alice must decide.

Treatment

The film is set in two different location, Alice’s bedroom and a dark dingy basement with a large gothic banquet table.

As we cut back and forth from both locations we see the contrast of what’s happening in reality, and how Alice is experiencing the struggle in her imagination.

Ana, the image of beauty and perfection represents the ‘devil’ on Alice’s right shoulder, and Aveline a haggard, plain and boring looking young women, represents the Angel on Alice’s left shoulder. The two fight over Alice, Ana trying to convince her that starving her way to perfection is the path to happiness; while Aveline tries to get through to Alice that eating in a healthy manner is the only way.

A feast of delicious looking food appears, and around the table the women are joined by a chorus of faceless anorexics who ‘support’ Alice giving her hints on how to resist the food, seemingly on Ana’s side. Alice’s animalistic instincts take over and Aveline seems to have won the battle as Alice’s hunger briefly becomes the strongest voice and she gorges herself on the banquet.

Alice is racked with guilt, disgust and despair as the realisation of what she has just done hits her, and with the encouragement of the other anorexics, Alice throws up the food, emptying her stomach of the gluttony. Aveline fades away and as Alice deals with the consequences of her actions, Ana has won the battle.