In our two minute opening of a film we portrayed a very sensitive and realistic storyline that needed careful consideration to allow it to be dramatic yet also sensitive to the issues faced. The character ‘Lily’ is a representation of a young teenage sufferer of a terminal illness. We decided to use this as our story because a severely distressing amount of young people are diagnosed with terminal illness, yet to non-sufferers this is always just a figure and we wanted to bring out the trials and tribulations faced by the ill, and their surrounding family and friends.
To make sure we represented the character we had to use costume effectively, this meant a headscarf to be worn by ‘Lily’ to express the severe amount of chemotherapy she would have faced and then encountered hair loss. We needed loungewear to be worn to show her fragile state and also pale foundation and dark eye make-up was used to show how she is still not perfectly well.
We did question whether we should bother to represent a young couple in love because we were well aware of how cliche it could come across, yet we thought it would be of a higher effect on the audience if we did let them know of the close relationships ‘Lily’ had and therefore the loss of her would be even greater. Even though ‘Harry’ her boyfriend does not feature in the opening two minutes we are aware of his charatcer due to the scrapbook and dress he buys for her (therefore the audience gather she is preparing to see him) but in the rest of our film the audience would be more aware of his character and the couples trials during their relationship.
