My final opinion on "Coercion" (Narrative)

I am very pleased with how "Coercion" looks now complete (to some degree). I have learned a lot from making it, both filming and editing, and it has motivated me to plan making more films over summer.

When I showed my lecturer my rough draft, he said I only needed to tweak a few things here and there and that he was impressed with my range of shots, which I was really happy about because that's what I was hoping he would say.

I do intend to reshoot some shots with the actors to get the film to a standard that I think is suitable for festivals, and it is because of this that I will not be uploading the film online (yet).

Editing "Coercion" (Narrative)

Editing Scene 4

I had it in my mind all along that I would edit scene 4 first so I had more time to get the kettle sequence as close to perfect as possible.

I was happy with all the different shots I got, and was more than happy with how well they cut together with each other. My however, that being said, nothing is perfect. Halfway through shooting the scene, there was a problem with the shotgun microphone which didn't become apparent until listening to audio later, and it caused the last few lines of dialogue to become very tinny and quiet, and basically, unusable. Thankfully though, the last few lines were spoken very loudly and very near camera, resulting in good quality and usable audio that only needed slight adjustments.

Another problem that only occurred a few times in this scene was the change in white balance. At times, I changed the white balance and recorded different takes, but foolishly I left out the possibility of the better take having the wrong white balance, meaning the clips wouldn't match up. This involved heavy colour grading, including both luma and chroma, brightness and contrast, and saturation, which I thought when edited to a suitable standard looked very grainy. So to fix this, I dynamically linked the clip I wanted to Adobe After Effects and applied the "Reduce Grain" effect.

Regardless of colour and audio issues, I'm very happy with how this scene looks.

One slight change I made after talking with my lecturer was the part where Mike eats his food. My original edit shows Mike taking three bites and then his plate is empty, which has always annoyed me, but I didn't know how I could fix it for fear of running over the time limit. After talking with him, he said I could add more macro shots of him eating and jump cut them together, to suggest he's eating lots quickly. After trying this, I am much happier with how it looks.

Editing Scene 1

After adding what I had reshot from day 2, scene 1 began to take shape. Again, this scene also had white balance errors, making it very difficult to colour grade, but I'm happy I have made it look as good as it can with the footage I had.

There were two shots in particular that stood out for me for things I needed to fix; One was the date and time on Sarah's phone. In scene one, Mike comes home from work to discover no food has been made for him because, as Sarah says, it is Valentine's day, however, rather than being roughly 05:00pm on the 14th of February, the phone read "10:43am 17th April". 

It didn't even enter my mind that it would happen, but even though it is only visible for a matter of frames, I needed to fix it.

To do this, I sent the clip to After Effects, created an adjustment layer and rotoscoped around the blue square on the phone's screen. As Sarah picks the phone up, I had to move the mask layer frame by frame following its movement.

After doing this, I applied a camera blur to the layer so that the time and date were no longer visible.

This is how the phone looks now:

The next shot that I needed to fix was this one below; mine and my sound operator's reflections are clearly in shot, again only for a few frames, but it was still enough to take the viewer out of the film if they noticed it.

Again to fix this, I created another adjustment layer and used the rotobrush tool to select the red back drop. 

As the camera shakes in this shot, the it was very difficult to match the mask layer to its movement. To suppress the shake, I used the warp stabilizer tool, which removed it completely. Finally, I applied Gaussian blur to the mask layer to blur out our reflection, and it worked. Here is the finished shot:

Editing Scene 2

The biggest advantage with scene 2 is that there is no dialogue, only music. Scene 2 is where we meet the real Sarah, in her most fragile and true state. I wanted a sort of dreamy-flashback looking sequence for this scene, even though it is the present day, as I feel it demonstrates how fragile someone's emotions are, which is what I wanted to convey.

To do this, I applied a vignette to each clip, and I also duplicated each clip and placed it directly above it on the timeline, to which I then lowered the opacity to 40% and added lots of blur for a glowing effect. Finally I increased each clip's brightness. This is how it looks before and after this process:

I'm really happy with how this scene looks, the only problem was that I had a song in mind for it ever since I wrote it, but I couldn't use it if I wanted to enter it into festivals as it was copyrighted, and I couldn't find a copyright free song that would do it justice, so I asked my lecturer if when submitting it to him, I could submit the copyrighted song to demonstrate what I mean, to which he said I could.

The song is called "Kaifuku suru Kizu" by Saylu. I originally heard it in Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill Vol. 1" in a scene where the film's protagonist discovers a room filled with Samurai Swords.

Editing Scene 3

Scene 3 is probably my favourite scene, purely because of how much better it looks in term of exposure and aperture. There is minimal noise and very little colour correction needed doing. I do however think due to the 8 minute time pressure (which I was already over at this point), the scene happens too quickly. If I were to extend the film, I could add more to it.

Final Non-Narrative film & Editing examples

My non-narrative, though all footage was recorded by myself using multiple liquids and surfaces, was very heavily edited using two soft-wares; Premiere Pro and After Effects. I clocked a total of 40+ hours of editing on this piece.

As there are over 100 different compositions within the film, I will only explain how I did the ones I found most interesting.

The opening shot of the film shows a ball of light growing from center screen, revealing a moving border that is made up or mirrored eagles:

To do this, I first needed to edit the original footage. Here is the original eagle:

I used a stencil to create the shape and spray pens to apply the ink, after removing the stencil, I blew at it through a straw to make the ink run off in different directions. Then once in Premiere, I cropped around the area I needed and keyed out the remaining white back ground and placed it on a new black background. Then I applied the mirror effect to it and set the reflection point directly center of the tail feathers. Finally, to create the outline, I maxed out the contrast and brightness to get a solid blue colour, which I then keyed out using ultra key, allowing anything underneath its track in the timeline will be visible through the mirrored Eagle-shaped "hole".

To create the growing light in the centre, I first had to record the movement of it. Here is the original:

As you can see, it only expands to one side of the paper, which didn't make mirroring this clip very easy. To do this, I had to manually piece together two copies of the same clip side by side and then nest them together to have simultaneous control of both clips as and when I wished, this is because the perimeters of the original clip would not allow it to simply be mirrored. This time I didn't key out the white, instead, I inverted the image, which resulted in turning the white paper into black, and the purple spray into a light turquoise colour.

Once I had place this clip under the eagles clip, I then centered the images up.

The biggest thing with this film for me was to try and match all compositions with the beat of the music. One of the best examples of this within my film (I feel) is roughly 25 seconds into the film when the coloured streaks shoot from the bottom to the top of screen. This took roughly 3 hours to get right. Here is the original:

I only used an individual streak of colour because they each fell at different speeds, so I picked the one that traveled from to top to bottom the fastest to match the beat. I then placed copies of the clip on different tracks of the timeline in time with the beat and moved them either side of the original for a more interesting look. I also used the HUE tool to change each streak's colour to add variety.

When I showed my final film to my lecturer, he said everything was fine, apart from one transition, which is where a ladder like object starts to pan down screen and get closer and closer to the "camera" until it goes black:

As it gradually gets closer and closer, it fades to black, which originally I found quite nice, but my lecturer pointed out that it became blurry as it wasn't recorded in 4:4:4 picture quality. He asked me to try and think of a different way around it, to which I came back with this:

Now the lines stay the same size, but shoot symmetrically around screen, eventually making it all black.

Overall, I am really happy with how my film looks, I personally think it is unique compared to other films I have seen of the same genre.

A side advantage of this was I managed to implement this into my narrative film briefly, too!

"Coercion" (Narrative) Production Stills

Filming "Coercion" (Narrative) Day 2

Armed with a new list of things to do, it was time for the second and final day of shooting, I knew I needed to keep on top of things if I wanted to get everything I needed.

First off, Claire needed to be home by lunch time, so in order to ensure we weren't under pressure, I chose to film her scene first, I had already set everything up and was ready to shoot as soon as they arrived.

I told Claire what I wanted her to do (see last blog post) and she did it in one take. Straight after that I recorded her voice over for the opening phone call and she had left set within half an hour of being there! Things were off to a flying start.


Scene 1 - Reshoot

As soon as Claire left set, Gwynneth and Alex were ready to do their reshoots, and again, I chose to do it chronologically, not only because of being weary of getting fake blood on clothes, but also to get them back into their character mind sets.

After learning from my mistakes from the first day, I was happy with the footage I got from the reshoot. Everything was much brighter and in focus.


Scene 2 - Reshoot

Next was to reshoot the shots that had issues because of the LED light in the bathroom. This again took less than 20 minutes to shoot, which really motivated everybody on set as they were always on their toes.


Scene 4

This was the scene I was really excited to film, but at the same time, I was dreading, purely because of the last fight scene.

This scene needed to build tension between the characters and put the audience in the middle of it, and the only way I felt that was possible was by getting creative with the shots. Again, Gwynneth and Alex knew their lines which helped keep me on top of everything, but first on the agenda was Mike eating his dinner without so much as looking at Sarah.

For this, I first got cutaways of Sarah preparing the food, including taking the chicken out of the oven, carving it and putting it onto a plate. Next, I wanted to show just how vile Mike truly is, and to do this, I got macro shots of him viciously cutting his food and eating like a pig.

Next I wanted to show Sarah putting the kettle on, for when it starts to boil as the tension rises. As the kettle was as reflective as a mirror, it was difficult to get a close up shot of it, so to conquer this, I used a long 20mm lens from a distance, hidden behind a cupboard.

As the scene goes on, as stated, the tension rises, and what I have seen with many, if not all films, the higher the tension is, the faster the cutting becomes. I wanted to get as many different takes from as many different angles as I could think of so I'd never run out of things to cut to. This especially applies to where she hits him with the kettle, it would never work without fast editing.

I wanted it to look as real as possible, so it would look as though she were actually hitting him, so I had the idea of putting the prop raw chicken to good use by placing it where Mike's head would be, and letting Gwynneth hit it as hard as she could, repeatedly. For the stabbing scene, I had bought two of the same chicken forks and cut the two middle prongs off of one to fit around Alex's neck, and for safety measures, I fitted two caps onto the end of the stubs to stop any sharp edges, like so:

I was very happy with how the shoot went, how professional everybody on set was and the effort everybody put into it.

Filming "Coercion" (Narrative) Day 1

As said in another post, filming for my narrative film, "Coercion", took place on the 17th and 18th of April. As the entire film is based in one location, travelling wasn't an issue allowing for better use of time. The reason for shooting over two days was to film as much content as possible on the first day, if not all of it, and then the second day would be to shoot anything I feel we may have missed or anything that could be done better after having looked at rushes on the first evening.

The actors arrived on set for 9:30 on both days to be briefed on how the day was planned to go. Everything was filmed chronologically to make sure any clothing that may or would be stained by fake blood would be the very last thing we shot, to ensure we had everything we needed from the other scenes before it was too late.


Day 1

Shooting: Scene 1

Scene 1 was the first and slowest scene I filmed, and I think that was mainly because I hadn't been in the director's seat for quite some time, and I was awake early ensuring I had everything I could have possibly needed for the shoot.

This scene is about where we first meet the main character, Sarah (played by Gwynneth Megan Wroe), she is seen holding a pregnancy test that reads positive and she is unsure whether to be overjoyed or terrified. The scene demonstrates how she is quick to dismiss people around her, but why that is is explained throughout the film as we meet her controlling boyfriend, Michael (played by Alexander-James Keen). After the events of scene one have happened, the audience now understands that Sarah believed her baby was conceived out of love but has been proven otherwise.

The pregnancy test was an easy prop to obtain and make read positive. I bought two on eBay in case one went wrong, opened it with a knife and painted the lines on with nail varnish. Everything other than the allotted time went to plan for this scene, everybody on set was comfortable with each other, the actors learned their lines which made the performance part run really smoothly, and I soon became more in charge of the set because of this.


Shooting: Scene 2

Scene 2 was definitely the most straight forward scene to film as it contains no dialogue nor any other audio that would need to be recorded on set, and only has the lead actress in it.

This scene is set a few days after scene one, although the film doesn't state it, the audience is to assume it. It shows the Sarah partially undressed in the bathroom, covering up bruises she was given by her controlling boy friend. The reason for this scene is to demonstrate how fragile her character is. She has been the victim of abuse for some time, and is used to her routine of hiding bruises and scars, the scene depicts that she uses make up and long sleeved clothes to do so.

As I had ran over time filming scene 1, and only myself and Gwynneth were needed to film, this enabled the others to break and have food as well as making Gwynneth feel more comfortable being partially undressed. After filming this scene I was back on schedule.


Shooting: Scene 3

Scene 3 is the most dialogue heavy and emotionally driven scene in the film which I feared I would again lose time when filming it, however, everybody had warmed up at this point and was in the swing of things, everything went smoothly.

This scene tells the audience that the Sarah's best friend, Jess (played by Claire Love) has also been abused by Sarah's boyfriend, and had come to warn her before she was hurt too. The audience knows Sarah is already being abused by him, but they now understand that she doesn't tell anybody, and even now is still afraid to speak up as she kicks Jess out, and then cries to herself.


FIRST NIGHT RUSHES

After finishing filming Scene 3, I decided to call it a day as it was 5 O'Clock and we were losing light, so I decided to film scene 4 on the 18th.

As soon as the actors left, I loaded the footage onto my computer and began briefly editing it together, and I noticed a few things that I wanted to either re-shoot, do differently or add. Here are some things I wanted to redo:

Re-shoots

From scene 1, I didn't notice this until I saw it on a bigger screen than the LED viewfinder on my camera, but this shot is actually slightly out of focus, and I originally intended to use this for a about 5-8 seconds.

Again from scene 1, this is another case of what can and can't be determined on a small screen; this shot I thought was extremely dark, and as this is a follow shot, it needed to look good.

From scene 2, this shot is again slightly out of focus as well as being off center. The off center aspect of this issue can be fixed in post production, however, it is near impossible to fix focus issues.

This was the last camera issue I encountered from the day, this LED light under the mirror caused a problem with the picture. To the human eye, it is a still beam of light, but on camera, it appears as though a fan blade or something of the sorts is slowly passing in front of it. This is not a difficult issue to fix as the light can be turned off.

Additions

The main things I wanted to add were cutaways, and I already had in mind what kind I needed, for example; Sarah getting cooking equipment out of cupboards and drawers at the start of scene 3. To save time in the first shoot, I decided to film those sort of things on day 2.

Changes

There are a few lines in the script that were slightly altered within the actors performance on the day, but one remained the same and I've always been unsure about it since I wrote it, and that is when in Scene 3 Jess tells Sarah that Mike has raped her, and the line is literally "Sarah, he raped me". When I watched it back, I still wasn't happy with it, and the delivery of the line wasn't as sincere as I hoped for it to be. The way I intend to overcome this is by asking Claire to bring her own twist to it by saying what she believes should be said.

Filming Non-Narrative

On the 14th of April, I had hired the TV studio for the whole day purely because A) I had complete control over the lighting, and B) 8 hours was plenty of time to get all the footage I needed.

For the shoot, I bought a variety of different surface materials, including blank canvases, paper, white card and photo paper. All of these caused the liquids to react differently which really gave nice images. I also bought a rang of stencils, which included an Ant, a Space Invader, and Eagle and a Dove.

The liquid I mainly used was food colouring, however, I did also use acrylic paint, glitter paint and air spray pens.

After shooting, I left with roughly 2 hours worth of clips that I then planned to manipulate using Premiere Pro and After effects.

Here are some production stills from the day:

New and Final Non-Narrative Idea

Post by inFAMOUS.

Being a big fan of the inFamous game series, I have seen this style of artwork right the way through the trilogy, and I've always found it really gritty and riveting to look at.

In the video above, we see the artist spraying the liquid with water and air, making the liquid run in different ways and directions. I tried to replicate this test with things I had around the house, replacing the surface with paper and also a chopping board, and for the liquid, I tried to find something with the nearest density to ink, which oddly enough... was Soy Sauce.

I tried blowing on it in bursts, I tried a hair dryer for continuous force, and I also sprayed water on the sauce to see what it would do, and this is an example of what results I got:

Soy Sauce on a chopping board.

Soy Sauce on Paper.

It proved quite difficult on the surfaces I tried as paper absorbed it and the chopping board caused it to grip in place, but both tests had their qualities and flaws. The chopping board divided sauce into droplets, whilst the paper made it drag and not divide so much.

With the footage I had, I put into Adobe Premiere and decided to see what sort of things it could produce if I were to tweak the colour, or something similar. The results proved promising:

The video above shows the original footage I had recorded and how keying out the surface with the "Ultra Key" plugin, and then adjusting the saturation, size and adding a mirror effect could make the (what I find) very boring original footage, into something very interesting to look at.

I have decided that I will pursue this idea as I find it to be the most interesting result I have gotten from any of my tests.

I have booked the TV studio for the 14th of April for 8 hours, where I will be able to have full control of the lighting of the environment and by which time should have more liquids and surfaces to try new things on and plenty of time to gain more interesting results.

Some materials I intend to buy prior to the date include a large, opaque white square of acrylic plastic, white tarpaulin, as well as food colouring and ink. The reason for white is because I will be able to separate the liquid from the back ground more easily and will be able to change the colour of the back ground in post production.

Non Narrative Music

With my non-narrative, I wanted to try my best to find a song that didn't have lyrics for the sake of the film solely focusing on he beat of the music.

A friend of mine who also makes films posted a film on Youtube which had a song in it called "A New Error" by Moderat. I really liked how the song began slowly and kicked in later.





Although I liked this song, I found it quite repetitive and may limit what I could do with the film, so I kept searching. I asked people to recommend songs that they may have thought sounded similar to this track, and I had this song brought to my attention:



I did like the beat in this song, as well as the pulsing bass, however; I again thought it was a bit too repetitive, although this song did give me ideas for visuals.

When writing other essays for other modules, I like to listen to music. I tend to find random YouTube playlists and have them on as background noise, but in one playlist, a particular song stood out to me:

I really liked the build up at the beginning of the song, how it dwindled slowly until it kicked in. I did find some of it repetitive, but it had more variation throughout the song than the others did, so I thought if I could cut some of the repetitive parts out and edit them together seamlessly, it could work.

Actors

Previous experiences when making short films has shown me that using people that don't know how to act in films is never a good move, so for this film; I wanted to get it right.

As a precaution, I decided to put flyers around Coleg Cambria in Wrexham with my university email address on it for performing arts students to contact me if they wanted to act in it.

Here is the flyer:

Along side all of my work in my second year, I have done some extra curricular work with the performing arts students, and have been able to see first hand just what they're capable of. Over the last few weeks, I invited the students that I thought would be able to play the roles of my characters, to an audition.

I managed to audition five male students and five females, all of which prepared a monologue that they read to camera. Here are the reels of the students I finally chose to be in my film:





I thought Gwynneth had a shyness about her personality, but when I have seen her perform, she is capable of really coming out of her shell. She will be playing the lead character, Sarah, who has similar traits to Gwynneth, she's shy, but when she's encouraged or pushed, she becomes confident and strong.



When watching Alex perform, I have seen him play sinister, very serious characters, but when I wrote the character of Michael, I wanted him to be sinister and twisted, but also very lively and loud. When I told Alex to play the character that way, I wasn't quite sure what sort of performance I would get from him, but the result blew me away, and you can see why in his reel.


Claire's character is Jess, Sarah's best friend, and in real life; Claire is one of Gwynneth's close friends. Normally, I would be very hesitant to consider two close friends to act in case of them being nonprofessional, however, I have seen Claire perform alongside Gwynneth previously, as well as on her own, and they are both professional. Jess is almost the comic relief of the film, she has a bubbly personality, but also reveals a dark secret which brings her to tears, and I firmly believe Claire is fully capable of giving this performance, as you may be able to see from her reel.

Final Script

I wrote four drafts of the script, the first was very rough, then I left it for a short while and came back to it and decided there were lots of things I could change to it, for example, Sarah's best friend in the film, Jess, was originally written to be Sarah's mother, but I felt I would have been making things more difficult for myself in the sense of finding an older woman to play her, even though I already knew there was great talent within the younger generation of the performing art students that I have already encountered.

The second draft I had changed things I had found wrong and showed my lecturer, he then told me what he personally thought I could do to it to make it seem more natural, i.e. don't make the characters say the character's name because the audience wouldn't know it otherwise. For example, when Michael arrives home in scene one, originally Sarah said "Hey Mike", which felt unnatural, but when I changed it to "Hey, you" it really felt more realistic.

My third draft of the script was only slightly different from the second, mainly making minor tweaks to the wording, but once I had done that, I sent it to some friends of mine who are either studying how to write scripts, or have already learned how to do so and now write and film their own independent films. They told me to change the location of the final scene to all inside the house, rather than the fight scene being on the drive.

Final Script

“Coercion”­

Written by

Gareth Roberts­

2014

  

EXT. DRIVEWAY - DUSK. Blood stains the floor like a crime scene and trails toward the door. We follow the trail of blood and we start to hear a phone’s dial tone and a woman’s crying gradually getting louder and louder as the camera pans further and further across the floor and eventually going through the door, revealing more blood. Eventually, the camera slowly tilts up, revealing a young woman in her early twenties bloodied and bruised and holding a phone her ear. The dial tone stops, the call has been answered. A man answers saying “999, what’s your emergency?” The young woman gasps, but quickly covers her mouth. CUT TO BLACK.

SCENE 1

INT. LIVING ROOM – AFTERNOON. The camera opens to reveal the same young woman only one week prior to the incident, staring at a pregnancy test that reads “positive” which shakes in her hands, she feels happy, but equally as frightened. She is soon snapped out of her trance by the phone ringing. She answers it quickly.

SARAH

H-Hello? (Closes eyes tightly, grips the test)

SARAH’S FRIEND, JESS, IS THE CALLER

JESS

(Confusedly) Sarah?

SARAH

(Sigh of relief) Oh, hi Jess.

JESS

Everything alright? You sound a bit off

SARAH

(Abruptly) Yeah ye—I’m fine. What do you want? I’m kinda busy right now.

JESS

Well, I’ve just bought a big bottle of red wine, so I thought I’d call my nearest and dearest to join me, say, Satur--

SARAH QUICKLY ANSWERS

SARAH

Maybe! Like I said, I’ve got a lot on this week.

THE FRONT DOOR OPENS AND SHUTS IN THE DISTANCE. SARAH PANICS.

SARAH

Jess, I really need to go, I’ll call you soon.

JESS

Sarah?

SARAH HANGS UP AND HIDES PREGNANCY TEST BY HER SIDE. SHE IS EXCITED TO TELL HIM THE NEWS.

MICHAEL ENTERS IN HIS WORK UNIFORM. HE LOOKS TOWARD THE OVEN AND NOTICES NOTHING IS COOKING. THIS ANGERS HIM.

SARAH

(Giddy) Hey you!

MICHAEL

Where’s dinner?

SARAH LOOKS CONFUSED.

SARAH

What?

MICHAEL

I said… “Where’s dinner?”

SARAH

I thought you said we could go out tonight? Remember? It’s Valentine’s Day! (Timidly smiles)

MICHAEL

What? You know we can barely afford to live here, why the fuck would I say that?!

SARAH

You told me that night you went out with your friends, remember? Just after you came home.

MICHAEL

Oh come on! I was drunk! I’d have said anything to shut you up in that state!

SARAH LOOKS DOWN, AVOIDING EYE CONTACT AND CHOKES UP.

SARAH

(Softly in realization) That was the night we--.

SARAH LOOKS DOWN AT THE PREGNANCY TEST, SLOWLY REACHES FOR IT AND HIDES IT BETWEEN THE CUSHIONS OF THE SOFA. SARAH STARES BACK AT MICHAEL HATEFULLY.

SARAH

I thought you meant it.

MICHAEL

(Rolling his eyes) I’ll say it again, I was drunk! Plus you look a damn sight better after I’ve had a few (Begins to laugh to himself).

SARAH STANDS UP AND MARCHES TOWARD THE DOOR.

SARAH

That’s it, Mike, I’m tired of this!

MICHAEL FOLLOWS HER TO THE DOOR BUT BEFORE SHE CAN LEAVE; HE GRABS HER BY THE HAIR AND PULLS HER TOWARD HIM.

MICHAEL

(Still gripping her hair) Where the fuck do you think you’re going? You haven’t made dinner yet.

HE THROWS HER TO THE FLOOR.

MICHAEL

And make it fucking quick.

Michael leaves the room and slams the door behind him. Sarah begins to weep as she pulls herself up to begin preparing Michael’s meal. She stares on toward the sofa cushions that hide the only proof of her and Michael’s child’s existence, now knowing it was not conceived out of love.

END OF SCENE 1.

SCENE 2

INT. BATHROOM - DAY. Two days after scene one; Sarah is in the bathroom partially dressed, wet hair, alone, getting ready for the day ahead. She is lathering herself in makeup to hide new bruises given to her from the previous night, as flashbacks are shown depicting the events that occurred. After the flashback of how she received the bruise; she is now putting her clothes on which hide scars, old and new. She then stands and looks at herself in the mirror, to check no marks are on display, but she soon stops this as she looks at her stomach and thinks about the new biggest change in her life. She looks side on at herself to see if a bump is visible, and she also cups her bosom to see if it has increased. She stares at her reflection like she wants to swap places with it.

END OF SCENE 2.

SCENE 3

INT. KITCHEN. – EARLY EVENING. Sarah is in the kitchen tidying up ready to prepare dinner, when suddenly the doorbell sounds. Confused, she grabs the keys and goes to the door and opens it to find Jess with a bottle of wine.

SARAH

Jess? What are you doing here?


JESS

(Friendly Sarcasm) Hello to you too! Well since you hung up on me, I thought “She can’t hang up on me in person”, so here I am!… I have wine?


SARAH

I am sorry about that, but I’m in the middle of cooking right now and Mike’s home soon—

JESS

(Persistently) Oh come on, one glass?!

SARAH

Jess, I really don’t have ti—

JESS

(Serious) Please? I really need to talk to you.

SARAH NOTICES JESS’S EXPRESSION CHANGE COMPLETELY, REALIZING SHE REALLY NEEDS TO TALK. THEY RETURN TO THE KITCHEN WHERE JESS IS SAT AT THE KITCHEN BAR. SARAH GETS ONE GLASS OUT AND HANDS IT TO JESS.

JESS

Where’s yours?

SARAH

None for me. I’m gonna carry on making dinner, but I’m listening.

SHE BEGINS CUTTING CARROTS.

JESS

Okay, well, how are things with Michael?

SARAH

(Hesitates) … They’re okay.

JESS

Oh good… No problems lately?

SARAH

(Quickly) Nope, nothing I can think of.

Jess stares at the kitchen surface, shamefully.

JESS

So… Michael hasn’t acted strange or anyth—

SARAH

(Annoyed) No, he’s done nothing. Why?!

JESS

… Sarah… (Begins to choke up) Sarah, he raped me.

JESS BEGINS TO SOB, BUT SARAH REMAINS SILENT. SHE BEGINS TO STARE AIMLESSLY AROUND THE ROOM THINKING TO HERSELF.

JESS

I was so scared coming here in case he was home, but I needed to tell you, to protect you from him. You’re the only person I’ve told.

SARAH

(Speechless) When? Did he…

JESS

About two weeks ago… he was out with his friends and I was drunk, so he took me home. At first I thought he was being nice, but then… he… (Continues to cry)

SARAH LOOKS TO CLOCK TO SEE THAT MICHAEL WILL BE HOME SOON.

SARAH

(Hatefully) Get out. Now.

SARAH USHERS JESS OUT OF THE HOUSE.

JESS

Sarah, you believe me don’t you?!

SARAH

Just get out!

Sarah slams the door behind Jess, after which she turns around and puts her back against the door and begins to weep, sliding down the door until she reaches the floor.

END OF SCENE 3.

SCENE 4

INT. KITCHEN - EARLY EVENING. Michael is just around the corner from home, where Sarah is carving chicken to put on his plate. Michael enters the kitchen, throws his coat down and sits to eat his food, without even saying hello to Sarah.

SARAH

I saw Jess today…

MICHAEL

(Pauses briefly)… So?

SARAH

Oh we were just talking about you… She said she saw you out a few weeks ago.

MICHAEL

Yeah she was there, didn’t talk though.

MICHAEL FINISHES HIS MEAL AND SLIDES THE PLATE TO SARAH. HE LEAVES THE TABLE AND GOES TO WATCH TV.

SARAH

(Smiles to self) Really? She said you did…

MICHAEL

I may have said hello… I can’t remember, I was dru—

JESS

--You were drunk. Yeah you mentioned that.

MICHAEL

(Pauses)… Have you had the remote?

SARAH CLEANS UP.

SARAH

No.

SARAH TURNS HER BACK TO HIM TO PUT THE KETTLE ON. IN THIS TIME, MICHAEL BEGINS TO ROOT THROUGH THE SOFA CUSHIONS, WHERE HE FINDS THE PREGNANCY TEST, AND STARES AT IT.

MICHAEL

What the fuck is this?!

SARAH TURNS BACK TO FACE HIM AND SEES THE TEST. HER EXPRESSION DROPS.

MICHAEL

This better not mean you’re pregnant…

SARAH REMAINS SPEECHLESS, TRYING TO FIND WORDS.

MICHAEL

(Impatiently) Sarah… Tell me!

SARAH

… Mike… I…

HE MARCHES TOWARD HER

MICHAEL

(Throws test) Oh you idiot! We can’t afford a baby! At least say you’re getting rid of it?!

SARAH’S EYES BEGIN TO WELL UP AND SHAKES HER HEAD. MICHAEL SLAPS HER. THE KETTLE BEGINS TO WHISTLE.

MICHAEL

Do you know what this would do to us!? Are you really this stupid?!

SARAH COWERS BACKWARD SLOWLY AS MICHAEL FOLLOWS. MICHAEL CLENCHES HIS FIST AND SARAH SEES IT. THE KETTLE WHISTLES LOUDLY. HE SWINGS FOR HER STOMACH, SHE TURNS HER BACK ON THE BLOW AND GRABS THE KETTLE AND THROWS SCALDING HOT WATER ON HIS FACE. HE HOLDS HIS BURNS AND SCREAMS. SARAH THEN HITS HIM WITH THE KETTLE, KNOCKING HIM TO THE FLOOR. HER ADRENALINE PUMPING; SHE CONTINUES TO BEAT HIM WHILST HE’S DOWN, BLOOD SPATTERS ON HER CLOTHES. JUST BEFORE SHE CAN DELIVER A LAST POWERFUL BLOW; MICHAEL KNOCKS THE KETTLE FROM HER HANDS. HE FLIPS HER OVER AND BEGINS TO STRANGLE HER. WITH THE LAST OF HER MIGHT, SHE REACHES TO A NEARBY KITCHEN SURFACE TO FIND A WEAPON, WHERE SHE FINDS A CHICKEN FORK. SHE GRABS IT AND STABS HIM. MICHAEL’S GRIP LOOSENS FROM HER NECK. BLOOD RUNS DOWN HER KNUCKLES SLOWLY AND DRIPS ON HER FACE. SHE PULLS THE FORK OUT, PUSHES HIM OFF HER AND CRAWLS AWAY OUT THROUGH THE BACK DOOR, TRAILING BLOOD WITH HER. WE RETURN TO THE BEGINNING OF THE FILM TO FIND HER CRYING ON THE PHONE.

POLICE

999, What’s your emergency?

SARAH

(Long Pause)… I’ve just killed my boyfriend.

SARAH PUTS THE PHONE TO HER SIDE AND WE HERE THE POLICE VOICE FAINTLY IN THE BACKGROUND. SARAH CONTINUES TO CRY, BUT SHE LOOKS DOWN TOWARDS HER BABY AND BEGINS TO SMILE. SHE IS HYSTERICAL, BUT IS REASSURED THAT SHE HAS DEFENDED HER CHILD.

CUT TO BLACK.

A TITLE APPEARS AND READS “A MOTHER’S LOVE IS UNCONDITIONAL”.

END OF FILM.