Portfolio PM7000

k1642433 Karoline Marka

Portfolio Graduate Diploma in Creative Practice

PM7000

Table of Contents Subject

Core

I. Capstone project

II. Creative futures

Unsaid

to kill a mocking bird

III. essay

What the GDCP has done for me

I. Capstone project unsaid

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I. Starting point revival This project is something I have been wanting to do for a long time. The details about the plot and the characters changed massively throughout the years, especially within the last three months, but the basic idea always stayed the same.

When the capstone project first was mentioned towards me and my peers, I immediately thought about doing a graphic novel with this story. Although I knew that this was exactly what I wanted to do most, it rather seemed like an unrealistic dream to me at first.

I already tried to do a graphic novel or a comic several times before in my life. But neither did I ever really finished one, nor did I show my work to anybody. I was absolutely insecure about my stories. Doing a graphic novel for Uni would mean to force myself to overcome that fear, which was actually what I wanted. But I still had doubts in my capabilities. Before I eventually decided to do it, I told two of my housemates about my idea and asked them for their opinion. Both of them are KU students as well, one of them, Theresa, does the GDCP as well, the other one, Johanna, does the MA in Filmmaking. So I knew that they could give me relevant feedback regarding to my story.

That awareness made it even harder for me to share it with them. I do not know if I would have had enough courage to go for this idea if they had given me bad feedback. But against my fears, they encouraged me to stick with my story. That was the first step in gaining confidence in it, and so I decided to do it as my capstone project.

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II. Plot summary

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As the portfolio is supposed to be mainly about the creative process and the learning achievements I tried to keep the summary of the actual story as short as possible. But I think it might be good to know the basic plot for understanding some of my following explanations about the process.

Jason gets persuaded to take part in an abduction to extort ransom. Their target is Roseanne Blackwood who‘s father is a rich businessman. Jason gets the part of the keeper, so he and Rose are forced to spend in all about 4 months together in a small forest hut. Throughout the time Jason and Rose get used to each other. Slowly they develop some kind of friendship and eventually secretly fall in love with each other. One evening Jason‘s accomplices show up, they got the ransom money.

As Jason‘s feelings towards Rose have changed, he has mixed feelings about setting her free. But it comes differently. Jason‘s accomplices want him to kill Rose because they consider it as too much of a risk to actually let her go. They get into a fight. In the end they threaten to kill Jason as well if he does not kill Rose himself. Jason reluctantly promises them that he will do it when she is asleep. Jason‘s accomplices agree and leave again. But of course Jason does not kill Rose. Neither does he tell her what happened.

He fears that she would want to leave him and starts to hate him again when she finds out that he is the only one left who withholds her her freedom.

The next few days Jason racks his brain on what to do, but does not come to a conclusion.

One day when Jason leaves the hut to get groceries he does not lock Rose‘s room properly. After some time Rose realizes that. Now she has to decide between her freedom and Jason, who she has fallen in love with. She decides for freedom and escapes. In the final scene Jason and Rose meet each other on the road in the forest. Jason sits in his car. They stare at each other for some seconds. Then Jason makes a decision. He drives past her and lets her go.

One reason for my insecurity was that I feared people could judge me as a person for doing that kind of story. I thought they would see me as some kind of weirdo because I was doing a story which was basically about an abduction. Although the Stockholm syndrome fascinated me, the love story character and the philosophical part of letting each other go was always more important to me than the abduction. But I was, and to be honest, I still am afraid that people could perceive that differently. Of course the context in which my story takes place is a little darker than those of the average love story, but I think this makes it more interesting. „If we cannot acknowledge and embrace the fact that we all have a certain degree of darkness within us, perhaps some more than others, and bring it into the light and examine it and talk about this part of the human condition, then I think we will be living in quite a dangerous climate.“ (Rowling, 2013)

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III. SEcondary Research Story At the beginning of this teaching block the basic plot was already fixed, but I had to formulate the details, to solve some logic problems and to fill some gaps in between the main events of the story.

The book Story by Robert McKee helped me a lot. For the first time in my life I actually informed myself of how to create a story. In my earlier attempts to think of a story I never did that at all.

After I had read some parts of the book, I started to realize what amount of effort the creation of a story actually requires. But this did not put me off.

Quite the contrary, I was looking forward to apply my newly gained knowledge in the elaboration of my story.The only thing that damped my mood a little bit, was that I knew that I never would be able to take all of the things the book suggested into account. There was just too little time to do that. So looked at the table of content and tried to assess which were the most important parts, read them and took notes to be able to review them quickly. Researching about how to create stories changed my way of working in a rather subconscious way. I hardly remember making adjustments by consciously considering one of the points in the book. Reading it just generally changed my point of view and my way of looking at the plot, a single scene or a dialogue.

What I have learned through this book was extremely valuable. But nevertheless I think I could have gotten more out of it if I have had more time.

There still might be things that should be formulated in closer detail or mistakes or inconsistencies in my story, which I do not even realize as such and which I could have prevented by reading the whole book. Additionally, McKee‘s book is only one of hundreds of books about storytelling.

Reading books from different authors would definitely have given me a broader understanding of the field. But there was just too little time. I knew that doing a graphic novel with a story like mine was a huge project and that I would have to make compromises to at least finish it to some extend.

I am trying to comfort myself by telling me that this is the very first story I am doing in an almost professional way, and that I should not worry too much if it turns out not to be 100% perfect.

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Stockholm syndrome

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Stockholm syndrome http://www.counseling4less.com/blog/-love-and-stockholm-syndrome-the-mystery-ofloving-an-abuser The Stockholm syndrome can be considered as a survival strategy of the victim.

It develops subconsciously and involuntary. So it‘s rather a instinct than a strategy.

Common symptoms: „ - Victim having positive feelings toward the abuser - Victim having negative feelings toward family, friends, or authorities - Abuser having positive feelings toward the victim - Inability to engage in behaviors that may assist in victims release/detachment from abuser - Victim supporting or helping the abuser “

2. Small kindnesses from abuser - small gestures (such as allowing bathroom visit, providing food, water, etc.)

- a gift (often provided after a period of abuse) to make the victim think the abuser isn‘t „all bad“ 3. Isolation from other perspectives - victim begins to take abusers perspective, it can get so intense that victims develops anger toward those trying to help - in servere cases: victim considers abusive situation as their own fault 4. Perceived or real inability to escape the situation - financial obligations, debt, etc.

- abuser may use threats (such as suicide, harming loved ones, public exposure, etc.) https://psychopathyawareness.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/when-you-love-your-abuserstockholm-syndrome-and-trauma-bonds/ Social isolation

Stages of progression:

http://www.amnesty.de/2012/11/16/fuer-jahrzehnte-eingesperrt-isolationshaft-kalifornien

1. Seeing through abusers eyes/identification The victim subconsciously starts to see situation/world through abusers eyes and dissociates from his/her own pain, helplessness, terror and starts to agree with the abuser.

Certain aspects of the victims personality, opinions, views fade into the background.

Einer von ihnen war Alex Machado, der sich am 24. Oktober 2011 das Leben nahm. Alex wurde im Februar 2010 in das Pelican Bay-Gefängnis überstellt, nachdem er als Gangmitglied eingestuft worden war. Ihm wurde gesagt, dass er auf unbestimmte Zeit in Isolationshaft sitzen würde.

Seiner Familie zufolge hatte er in den vorangegangenen 11 Haftjahren keine bemerkenswerten psychischen Probleme. Er konnte lesen und sich gut ausdrücken, und half anderen Häftlingen dabei, ihre juristischen Beschwerden zu formulieren.

2. Appease and please By doing this victim begins to learn how to appease and please the abuser to prevent getting hurt. It‘s a tactic to manipulate the abuser into being less dangerous.

3. Compassion After a while victim starts to see the abuser as normal human being and less of a threat.

Some abuser may also share personal information to bond with the victim and promote pity.

4. Illogical concern This bonding leads to conflicting feelings and illogical concern for the abuser. The victim may even ignore his/her needs.

5. Getting back to normal If the victim gets released he/she must again learn not to dissociate from his/her own emotions and not focus on the abuser. This can be very difficult.

The Stockholm syndrome doesn‘t occur in every hostage/abusive situation Situations/Conditions for the development of Stockholm syndrome: 1. Perceived or real threat on one‘s physical or psychological survival - only cooperation prevents abuser from harming victim - subtile threats - history of violence

Doch nach einem Jahr der Isolationshaft im Pelican Bay-Gefängnis begann sich seine geistige Gesundheit signifikant zu verschlechtern. Zwischen Januar und Juni 2011 vermerkten die Gesundheitsakten im Gefängnis eine Zunahme an Angstgefühlen sowie Paranoia. In den Akten stand, dass er an Angstzuständen, Schlaflosigkeit und Panikattacken litt. Er fühlte sich beobachtet, erlebte visuelle Halluzinationen und dachte, er höre Stimmen sowie Klopfgeräusche an seiner Zellenwand.

Als er am 12. Juni 2012 androhte, sich umzubringen, wurde er in eine Zelle für "Krisenfälle" verlegt. Doch er blieb weiterhin im Isolationstrakt, obwohl er akute psychotische Symptome zeigte.

Aus dem Obduktionsbericht geht hervor, dass Alex am Tag seines Todes zum letzten Mal um ungefähr 12.15 Uhr lebend gesehen wurde, "als er wegen Herzrasens untersucht wurde." 30 Minuten nachdem er zurück in die Zelle geschickt worden war, wurde er dort von einem Wärter gefunden. Er hatte sich erhängt. http://www.beobachter.ch/justiz-behoerde/gesetze-recht/artikel/isolationshaft_einzelhaftist-folter/ Beobachter: Ein Delinquent wird für ein paar Tage allein in eine Zelle gesteckt, damit er dort «zur Besinnung kommt». Wo liegt das Problem?

Reto Volkart: Einzelhaft bedeutet, rund um die Uhr in einem wenige Quadratmeter grossen Raum eingesperrt zu sein - der Gefangene nimmt also immer dieselben Reize wahr. Durch die Einschränkung der Bewegung wird auch die körperliche Wahrnehmung reduziert.

Beobachter: Das trifft aber nur bei einer länger dauernden Einzelhaft zu.

Volkart: Nein. Vor allem psychische Symptome können jederzeit einsetzen. Einige treten schon nach Stunden auf, andere entwickeln sich schleichend.

Beobachter: Welche Auswirkungen meinen Sie? Volkart: Zu den körperlichen Symptomen gehören Schwindel, Schlaf- und Verdauungsstörungen, niedriger Blutdruck und erhöhte Pulsfrequenz. Die psychischen Auswirkungen reichen von Depression, Apathie, Ohnmacht, Angst über unkontrollierbare emotionale Ausbrüche, Halluzinationen bis zu Sprachfindungsstörungen. Auch die Selbstverstümmelungs- und Selbstmordrate ist in Einzelhaft erschreckend hoch.

Panic attacks

Welche Symptome sind typisch für eine Panikattacke?

Eine Panikattacke ist eine Phase intensiver Angst, die innerhalb von höchstens zehn Minuten ihr Maximum erreicht. Nach einer gewissen Zeit – meist dauert eine Panikattacke einige Minuten, es sind aber auch stundenlange Verläufe möglich – klingt sie von selbst ab. Sie wird von mindestens vier der folgenden Symptome, die gleichzeitig und plötzlich auftreten, begleitet: • Herzrasen • intensives, unangenehmes Wahrnehmen des Herzschlags • Zittern • Atemnot • Erstickungsgefühl • Gefühlsstörungen • Hitzewallungen • Kälteschauer • Schwitzen • Schmerzen oder Engegefühl in der Brust • Übelkeit und andere Magen-Darm-Beschwerden • Derealisation: das Gefühl, dass die Situation und die Umgebung nicht real sind • Depersonalisation: das Gefühl, nicht man selbst zu sein bzw. dass sich der Geist vom Körper trennt • Todesangst • Angst vor Kontrollverlust http://www.panikattacken.at/panikattacken/panik.htm „Mir wird plötzlich ganz schwindlig und übel. Meine Hände werden taub, im linken Arm entsteht ein eigenartiges Kribbelgefühl, meine Knie werden ganz weich. Ich habe Angst, umzufallen und ohnmächtig zu werden, dann dazuliegen, und niemand kommt mir zu Hilfe. Mein Herz beginnt zu rasen, ich spüre einen Druck auf der Brust und fürchte, dass ich einen Herzinfarkt bekomme und sterben muss. Mir wird ganz heiß, ich bekomme Hitzewallungen, das Blut steigt von unten nach oben. Ich beginne zu schwitzen, auf

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I found out that the Stockholm syndrome is basically a survival strategy. According to Watson (2014) it develops subconsciously and involuntary and does not only occur in hostage situations, but in a lot of victim and abuser situations. I read about the common symptoms, the stages of progression and about the conditions under which it develops. Considering this information in relation to my story I realized that the feelings Rose develops for Jason might not be entirely Stockholm syndrome based. One of the conditions is „perceived or real threat to one‘s physical or psychological survival“(Watson, 2014), but Jason is not violent at all. He even feels uncomfortab-

schlimmer wurde es. Darum habe ich gelernt, wie wichtig es ist, nicht auf vollen Magen zu schlafen.

Wichtig: außerdem kann viel zu warme Luft die Angstzustände nachts sehr bemerkbar verstärken. Darum ist es wichtig darauf zu achten, dass das Schlafzimmer 1-2 h vor dem Schlafen gut gelüftet und dann gewärmt ist, sodass man nicht mit voll aufgedrehter Heizung schlafen muss.

Ohnmacht sehr, sehr unwahrscheinlich/selten

http://anqstfrei.com/panikattacken/ Das Gefühl, dass alles etwas unwirklich ist

http://www.netdoktor.at/krankheit/panikattacken-7527

Topic As I already knew before, the Stockholm syndrome was a relevant topic of my story. I found a web page which gave me a lot of essential information about it.

einmal überfällt mich ein Kälteschauer am ganzen Körper. Ich beginne zu zittern, am liebsten würde ich davonlaufen, aber ich fühle mich wie gelähmt. Meine Kehle schnürt sich zusammen, dass ich keine Luft mehr bekomme. Ich ringe um Luft, aber es reicht nicht, ich atme noch mehr und spüre, wie der Druck in meinem Brustkorb ansteigt. Ich bin dann gar nicht mehr richtig da und glaube, gleich überzuschnappen und verrückt zu werden. Alles erscheint so unwirklich. Wenn ich das Ganze überlebe, glaube ich, dass ich in die Psychiatrie komme. Die Panikattacke dauert etwa eine Viertelstunde. Wenn ich in dieser Zeit auf meine beiden kleinen Kinder aufpassen muss, denke ich, wer wird sich um die Kinder kümmern, wenn mir etwas passiert. Wenn mein Mann in der Nähe ist, beruhige ich mich schneller, als wenn ich allein bin. Das Erlebnis einer Panikattacke ist so belastend, dass ich manchmal noch immer nicht sicher bin, ob ich nicht doch eine körperliche Erkrankung habe, deren Ursache die Ärzte bisher nicht gefunden haben.“

Du kommst Dir vielleicht so vor, als würdest Du „neben Dir stehen“, als ob Du alles von außen betrachtest. Oder es kommt Dir so vor, als ob andere Menschen lauter als üblich sprechen und dass Farben heller sind – so wie durch ein Fischaugenobjektiv. Es kann Dir eventuell auch so vorkommen, als ob Gegenstände weiter entfernt oder näher bei Dir sind als sie logischerweise sein sollten.

Nächtliche Panikattacken – Herzrasen, Aufwachen, Angst Wer Panikattacken in der Nacht erlebt, weiß, wie schrecklich es sein kann und dass man nicht so schnell dagegen etwas machen kann. Weil man schon alles ausprobiert hat. Man wacht nachts auf, ist Angst erfüllt, das Herz klopft wie verrückt, man schläft nicht mehr ein und denkt man wird sterben oder es wird definitiv jeden Moment etwas schreckliches passieren.

Vor allem wenn man allein ist, ist es unbeschreiblich schrecklich dann eine Panikattacke zu erleben.

Oder man schläft gar nicht erst ein und wartet jeden Moment auf die nächste Panikattacke und füllt sich absolut hilfslos und ängstlich.

Man hat Angst, die Kontrolle zu verlieren, wenn man einschläft. Der Schlaft kommt einem wie ein kleiner Tod vor, darum erfordert es Mut, solche Situationen zu meistern und einzuschlafen.

Meine 3 schnelle Tipps gegen Panikattacken nachts: 1) Erstens die Schnellhilfe. Anstatt auf das Schreckliche zu warten, kann man schnell aktiv werden und sich schnell etwas gutes tun: großzügig Licht anmachen, angenehme Musik anmachen (am besten schon vorbereitet!), beruhigenden schönen Tee trinken, Lieblingszeitschrift durchblättern, und geduldig abwarten bis die Panikattacke abklingt.

Auch Lasea kann hier sehr nützlich sein, um schnell ruhiger zu werden.

2) Ich habe eher durch Zufall herausgefunden, dass in meinem Falle der volle Magen das Problem sehr stark verstärken konnte. Je voller und je später ich gegessen habe, desto

le in his power position. He is actually a rather cautious and shy guy. So he personally would never really be a danger. But on the other hand, Rose does not really know that. On the website they often stress that the Stockholm syndrome is a result of mostly physical abuse, which there is none in my story. So I am still not sure if it is Stockholm syndrome or not. But I am not too worried about that, because I wanted to leave this question open for interpretation anyway. „Connection to the Stockholm syndrome it is also about the question what love is and if there are ‚wrong‘ forms of love. In the example of my story, if the hostage and the hostage taker fall in love with each other, are their feelings real or are they just a product of special circumstances and as a result of that not relevant or honest?“ (Marka, n.d.)

Drug scene research

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I had different drafts for the plot throughout the process. I did research about some topics which turned out not to be essential in the final version itself, but for its development instead. These topics were drug dealing, tracing methods of the police, undercover investigations, the consequences of isolation and panic attacks.

For example, in an earlier version of the story, Jason was supposed to be a drug dealer. As he is a person who hates taking risks he obviously does not like dealing with drugs either, but he is forced to do it because of his financial problems.

That was supposed to be the reason for him to take part in the abduction. He wants to have enough money to start a new life and to stop dealing. But by researching about the drug scene, it turned out that most of the drug dealers are quite the opposite of poor. In an article from the vice magazine (2015) read that the monthly income of a lot of them goes beyond 10.000. So this concept for Jason‘s motivations did not quite fit. What I found out in this case was not important for what was in the story, but for what to exclude from it.

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movies After I first told my story to my housemates, Johanna, the filmmaking student, sent me a link to an online list of movies which had something to do with the Stockholm syndrome. Before I watched any of the movies I read the descriptions and watched the trailers. Some of them seemed completely and utterly different to what I wanted to create so I excluded them from my watch list.

But a few of them seemed to be helpful. In the end, I watched two movies. The first one was called Twisted Seduction the second one was 3096 Days (the movie about Natascha Kampusch).

After watching the movies I felt rather discouraged and doubting. Both of the movies were much more violent and disturbing than I wanted my story to be. I had the impression that my idea was naive, childish, not realistic in any way and totally over romanticized. The kidnappers in both of the movies were rather scary and obviously had serious mental problems. I think that was what made me doubt my story the most. Compared to those psychos, Jason was the nicest guy in the world.

And I was worried that I was about to create a stereotypical good guy villain. The more time passed and the more distance I got from both of the movies, the better I felt about my story again.

I realized that it is just a different kind of story.

It is a love story and thus even a different genre.

Of course it is romanticized, but I actually like that and I dare to say that I managed to prevent it from being kitschy. I still have doubts about my story, but I guess they will never go away entirely.

But apart from putting my enthusiasm for my story to the test, the movies gave me a better understanding of the emotions in abduction cases.

Especially of the way the victim behaves. The acting in both of the movies was really good and the emotions, the hopelessness and the aversion on the part of the victim was very well conveyed.

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IV. Plot It was quite hard to separate the creation of the plot from the creation of the characters. Both parts were influencing each other and changing one part mostly lead to changes in the other one as well. Nevertheless, I had to start with something.

I was not sure of which part to begin with, the characters or the story. I would have liked it better to complete one part and then move on to the next one. But I realized that this was impossible.

So I did both parts more or less alongside, which I did not feel that comfortable with because it gave me the feeling of treading water. I was concerned because I had not finished anything jet.

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In addition, I had two different concepts for the circumstances under which the story takes place and I could not decide for one. When I asked my tutor about, it she advised me to roughly summarize both plots and to show it to other people. At the best to my target audience (young adults) and to decide by taking their feedback into consideration. So I tried it and the outcome of this „market research“ was extremely helpful.

The two main concepts for the story differed in the details of the plot as well as of the characters.

The most significant differences were the motive for the abduction and the ending. I tried to keep the description of the two versions as short as possible. I also added small sketches to make it look more attractive to the people I asked about their opinions. I thought the pictures might arise their interest and motivate them to read it.

I mainly asked my friends and family for feedback.

Apart from giving me certainty about the plot, this was another step in gaining confidence. It is very important for me what the people close to me think about my work. I sent the story drafts per Whatsapp and asked which version they preferred. Not having to talk to them in person made it easier for me. Sending and receiving texts and voice messages was something I could deal with.

The feedback I received was extremely valuable and gave me a clear direction. Most of the people told me that they would prefer a combination of both of the stories. The beginning and the motive from version two and the ending from version one. The points they made convinced me, and as this opinion was shared by the clear majority, I decided to go for it and combine the stories.

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Written script Now that I had fixed the basic structure of the plot, I had to plan it in closer detail. Everything was still too vague to start sketching. I had to think of the sequence of events, of scenes, details, dialogues, of the way I wanted to structure the story, etc.

Without thinking or planning I just spontaneously started to write the prologue. I wanted to make a prologue chapter for each character which shows a typical day in their life to draw a picture of who they are. I was not entirely sure about this idea because in the book from McKee (1997) I read that scenes which are only there to depict the characters and have no relevance to the plot itself should be cancelled. But at that point I had already spent so much time on the creation of the characters that I thought it was necessary nevertheless. So I started to write those scenes.

It turned out to be quite hard. By now I think the reason for it being so difficult was that they really were redundant. I could not think of anything the characters should say or do which did not seem boring or somehow staged.

After trying to get it down on paper for a while I started to question its relevance again. I talked about it with Theresa and Johanna and I came to the conclusion that apparently McKee was right. I did not entirely cancel the idea of the two parted prologue, but narrowed both of the parts down until they remained only containing relevant information for the beginning of the story.

How Jason gets persuaded into taking part in the abduction, and the moments before the abduction from Rose‘s perspective. Now that the scenes had an actual purpose to the story, all of a sudden it was easy to write them.

All in all it worked quite well to write down the story like this. The way I wrote it was almost script like. I did not think that much about how to express myself (except from the dialogues), I just tried to outline the scenes and the events as accurately as possible. In that way it was easy to give other people an idea of what happens in a scene and to ask them for their opinion about it. I think I am extremely lucky to have two housemates who were willing to listen to what I had written and who were storytellers themselves and thereby familiar with thinking in these dimensions. The most important feedback I received about the story came from those two.

When there was an idea, a scene or dialogue I was not sure about, discussing it with Theresa or Johanna mostly led to a solution. I realized that sometimes just saying or reading something out loud can show you if it works or not. If it is for example, illogical or stereotypical or if there are details missing for it being understandable. If you are having difficulties to read a scene out loud without feeling uncomfortable or having to explain it to your listener, something must be wrong.

16 906 words First view: city, night, light window Pete:„We are planning an abduction to extort ransom.“ „What??“ - switch to the room (view from above). „And we want you to take part in it.“ Jason: „Wha- You are joking, aren‘t you?“ They just look at him and don‘t answer.

Jason‘s face, unbelieving. Then he laughs. „Have you gone utterly crazy now?“ Jeff: „Everything is planned through.“ Jason is lost for words. He stares at them.

Pete (interrupts him): „You know the Blackwood company, don‘t you?“ Jason: „Yeah..“ Pete: „The owner, Bernhard Blackwood, is literally flushing in money. And he has a daughter.“ Jason: „Are you... What the fuck, guys?“ Jeff: „Jason, you‘re over dramatizing it. Think about it. We won‘t really hurt anybody. We are not going to cause any lasting damage. If everything goes smoothly it could take less than two weeks. The spoiled little brat is back at home and everyone of us is 100.000 coins richer.“ Jason: „Or, what seems way more probable to me, we‘ll screw it and end up behind bars (hinter schwedischen Gardinen).“ Pete: „You‘re a pessimist. We just have to be careful. Jeff and I are going to do all the risky transactions tuff, don‘t worry. You‘d have to take over the part of the watchman.“ Jason: „And where do you want to hold her? In my flat or what??“ Pete: „Noo. For gods sake. You still got that forest hut where you grow your weed, right?“ Jason: „Yeah..“ Pete: “There you go. We‘re gonna hide her there.“ Jason: „In my fathers.. forest hut? So I‘d have to sit around there and play the babysitter?

In that ramshackle hut?“ Pete and Jeff giggle. Pete: „Not for too long. As Jeff said, if we‘re lucky it could take less than two weeks.“ Jason thinks. „Guys...I don‘t think-“ Pete: „We observed her already. Her name is Roseanne Blackwood. She studies marketing and works part time in her fathers company. The perfect daughter who crowns Blackwood‘s whole goddamn perfect life. He‘ll pay any amount we demand to get his little piece o‘gold back.“ Jeff: „Every Thursday night around half past 9 she walks home from her yoga class. She has to walk through the Prince Road to get home. We couldn‘t ask for more. Pete and I already rented a transporter.“ Jason stares at them. Then he leans back. „Well, okay. Sounds like a good plan.“ Short break. „I‘m sure you‘ll find some idiot who is ready to take part in it. But that idiot definitely won‘t be me.“ Silence.

Jeff looks disappointed/worried. Pete just looks at Jason with a neutral face. Then he looks around in the small room. „So... this is your future Jason.“ Jason looks at him, confused and a bit annoyed. „What?“ Pete: „How long have you bee living here now?“ Silence. „Since you were 16, right?“ Nods. „Wow. Eight years. And Since when have you been wanting to move out and leave this cresspool of a flat?“ He looks back at Jason, who stares back at Pete. „Ever since you moved in, right?“ He sighs. „Well, well, well. Too sad.“

Why are we in a forest?? “ He guides her into the bedroom of the hut and takes off the cable ties. Rose removes the blindfold. She looks around in the small room. The door gets closed. Jason locks the door. Black page.

Telephone rings. A hand grabs it and picks up. (Hello?) Switch: Jason tells him (Pete) that everything went smoothly. (Good. You know what you have to do next?) (Yeah.) (Alright.

See ya in two days.)

Switch to Rose. She looks around in the room. She finds some stuff like the sandwich, some T-shirts and women‘s underwear. „What is this?“ She takes it out of the drawer. „Oh god!“ she puts it back. „How long does he want to keep me here?“ She panics. „Oh god.

Please, no! Mom and Dad!) She doesn‘t eat or even touch the sandwich. She sits down on the floor and cries. Eventually she falls asleep leaning against the bed.

Mom calls Cliffhanger Spannung aufbauen So ist es als würde Rose erzählen was passiert ist, und nicht so spanned Nachher zeigen wie sie in diesem Zimmer panisch ist Pete Day 1 (showering) Rose awakes. In the first few moments she is confused where she is. Then the memory comes back and hits her. She sees light coming from the windows and through the gap underneath the door. She looks at her watch. It is 8 in the morning. She thinks about her parents again and starts to cry. „Mom and Dad must be awake by now. What might they be doing right now? They must be on the edge of their nerves.“ When the tears are gone she drinks from the bottle and after some time she eats the sandwich as well.

Suddenly she hears something from behind the door. She steps away from the door as far as possible. The rumble gets louder. The door gets unlocked and opened. Rose stares at Jason who enters the room with her bag in one and another sandwich in the other hand.

He is wearing a mask and a hood. He puts the bag down (you might want to have your book and your ipod) and offers her to go to the bathroom(You can go to the bathroom now, if you want.). It takes her a lot of nerve but she asks him what this is all about (What is this? Why did you take me here?). Jason explains that this is an abduction to extort ransom from her parents and that nothing will happen to her if she doesn‘t make any problems. „To extort ransom. Your parents will receive our demands within the next days. If we are lucky this could be over in less than a month.“ Rose stares at him. „If you try to escape, or make other problems, you‘ll just make it more unpleasant for yourself. We don‘t want to harm you, but we will if you force us.“ ( (So, do you want to go to the bathroom then?) Rose is shocked but she accepts the offer this time. Jason takes her arm when he opens the door. The physical contact makes Rose feel uncomfortable. Rose takes a look at the rest of the hut. Thinks: „Oh god. Is he just next door, all the time?“ Jason pushes her into the bathroom, tells her that she can use everything in there and locks it behind her (Don‘t take ages). In the bathroom Rose finds the basic equipment. She brushes her teeth.

She hesitates before she undresses to take a shower. But in the end she does it.

Day 2 (scissors)

she walks to the door and stands there in front of it. Again it takes some seconds until she overcomes herself and knocks. *Knock knock* Switch to Jason. He winces. (empathize!)

Jason: „What do you want?“ Rose (shyly): „could you give me some more water? The bottle is empty.“ Jason doesn‘t answer. He walks to one corner of the room and takes a new bottle of water.

He walks to the door.

Jason: „Give me the empty bottle.“ Rose hands it over through the gap. Jason takes it and rolls the full one through the gap. Rose whispers. „Thanks.“ Day 9 (question for a book) Jason is watching something on his laptop and rolling a joint. Suddenly he hears a knock coming from Rose‘s door. He turns the volume down. It knocks again. He takes the mask and walks over to the door. He asks what she wants. Rose asks if he has another book because she already finished hers. Jason is a little out of concept. Then he answers with no. Rose shyly asks if he could get her another one or anything else that she could keep herself busy with. He tells her that those aren‘t his problems (That‘s none of my business).

He walks back to the sofa, sits down and stares at the screen of his laptop. Somehow this display of personal vulnerability confuses him and makes him feel uncomfortable in his power position. Rose cries. She feels humiliated because she is so dependent of him. She calms down and then she just listens to the movie Jason is watching.

Mehr kurze interaktionen, ihm ist es unangenehm, sie hat angst vor ihm Day 10 (newspaper) Rose is laying on her bed she somehow plays around with her book and tries to form new stories with the words in it. // She works out / does Yoga on the floor (later). She looks up when Jason pushes over a tablet with her lunch without a word. She gets up, walks over, takes it and puts in on the shelf. Then she hears a rustle. She turns around and sees a crumpled newspaper in front of the door. Her eyes light up. She rushes over to the door and takes it. She browses through the pages. It is an old one. Then she says thank you to the door. She doesn‘t get an answer.

Think about the time that passes between the actions in the storyboard Day 12 (We‘ll be free soon) It‘s evening. Jason hands over dinner to Rose. Rose gets up to take it. (There are already two newspapers and a magazine next to Rose‘s bed.) Just when she bends down to take it Jason suddenly says something. Rose winces. (You might be interested, the ransom exchange will take place in three days or something. Then we finally get rid of each other, for the mercy of god.) Rose is amazed. She doesn‘t manage to say much. (Great.

Thanks.)

Day 15 (Destroyed hope) Rose is just about to go to sleep. She thinks about her approaching freedom. Then she suddenly hears Jason‘s phone ringing through the door. Rose listens. Jason sounds excited. (Pete? Yeah. Do you have the money?.... (unbelieving) what?? ....Fuck! And how did y.... oh god. Yeah sure. Fuck, man. Shit! What are we going to do now!? ...Okay. Yeah, aw fuck! See ya then.) He hangs up. Rose listens closer. Suddenly he yells. (Fantastic!)

Rose hears how something gets smashed on the floor/against the wall. She winces and brings more space between her and the door. He shouts again. (For gods sake! Did you hear that?) Rose doesn‘t answer. (Now we have to stay here for another week or two

right. Come on tell me your name.) Switch to Jason. He asks himself if this is a bad idea.

What could she possibly get from this information? Nothing. (...Jason.) Short pause. false name (Okay.) // Rose starts to laugh. Jason gives the door a surprised and confused look.

(What?) (I‘m sure your name isn‘t Jason.) (Huh? What makes you think that?) (You are wearing a white mask and your name is Jason? Sure. And your last name is Voorhees then, right? But okay. Jason ‘s fair enough.) Jason hesitates. Then he understands it. He has to smile. (I would not have thought that a distinguished girl like you watches that kind of movies.) (You should probably rethink your prejudices.) (Hm.) Jason lights his joint.

(Jason asks for a book) Later in the night when Rose is already asleep Jason walks into the winter garden. He takes his phone and calls somebody. (Hey Pete.. em. Could you tell Jeff to get em...) he feels uncomfortable. He puts his hand into his pocket and pushes something on the floor around with his foot. (Some kind of book? Yeah. She needs something to keep herself busy with. She.. no, she starts to annoy me. Yes. Any kind. I don‘t know. *sigh*. Okay.

Thank you.) He hangs up. Then he walks back into the living room and turns off the light. (view from outside through the winter garden) cornflakes with milk Day 28 (period) Rose wakes up. She turns around in her bed. She looks confused, then shocked. She pulls away the blanked and looks down on her. There is a red stain on her pajamas as well as on the sheet. She mumbles „shit!“ She takes her bag and looks for some tissues. She tries to remove as much as possible from the stain, but is hopeless. „Oh god..“ she looks around in the room. Then she looks down on her again. She needs a sustainable solution.

She takes out another tissue and places it in her underwear. Her fingers are red with blood. She doesn‘t have any more tissues. Rose is at a loss. She looks at the door. Then she gets up. Switch to Jason. Jason is just about to take something out of the fridge, when Rose knocks. (Hello?) Jason takes a can, opens it and takes a sip. (What do you want?)

He continues drinking. (I‘m... on my period.) He swallows the wrong way and has to cough. „Oh..“ Jason is lost for words. Rose(shyly): „Could you maybe.. you know, get me some tampons?“ „Y-yeah, sure.“ Short silence. Jason: „I tell the others to bring them as soon as possible.“ „Thanks.“ Rose hesitates. „And.. could I take a shower?“ Jason (puts his drink away): „Of course.“ He takes his mask and opens the door. Rose doesn‘t look him in the eyes. Jason sees her red fingers. Jason looks away unpleasantly touched. Rose is ashamed. She stares on the ground. Her face is turns red.

(What??) (Yes. (Erdbeerwoche) Jason looks at his drink, strawberry cider. He puts it down. Puts a hand on his eyes. (Seriously?) (Why should I be joking? Get me some tampons.) Jason mumbles (Oh gooood, why...). Rose continues. (Well, I mean, you have to do the laundry. If you rather want to swab the sheets then...) Jason interrupts her.

(Alright! I‘ll get you some.) (Thank you.) Short break. (I need to pee.) Jason sighs.

Sie ist eher beschämt, sie wird erst im verlauf des Gesprächs wütend er reagiert normaler

Day 29 (Jeff‘s delivery, new hope) Jason just washes up dishes (nope weil faul, stellt sie auf die spüle auf riesen berg, weicht sie ein) when he hears a car. He dries his hands and opens the door. It is Jeff. In one hand he holds a bag with groceries with the other one he presents a book. Jason takes it. Jeff burst out into laughter when Jason reads the title of the book and makes a face. The title of the book is „How to please him perfectly“. (Duuude.) Jeff can‘t stop laughing. Jason

have to take risks. Or you can just do yourself and everybody else a favor and kill yourself.“ Switch to Rose. She is chewing on her lower lip. After some time she says: „Okay (silently)... but why did you decide to abduct somebody then? Isn‘t that riskier and a more serious crime than let‘s say a burglary?“ Switch to Jason. He stares around and thinks. After some time: “Yes, but the whole thing wasn‘t my idea. The others kind of recruited me. They had everything planned.

Additionally if you want that amount of money you would have to break into 50 houses or to rob a bank.“ Rose sighs. „Okay... you might be right, maybe I can‘t imagine how it feels to live like you. But I still don‘t understand why you bring yourself in a situation like that. If you feel like committing a crime is the only way, okay, but why this?“ „I already told you, that it was not my idea.“ Short silence. „I know that this is not what nice people do. But having a clear conscience is a luxury I can‘t afford.“ Rose doesn‘t answer.

After some time she says „Well, hopefully it is at least worth it in the end.“ evtl. ausbauen (ihn besser kennenlernen) Sie finden sich darin dass sie eigentlich beide aus der Hütte raus wollen. Das ist die Gemeinsamkeit auf der sie aufbauen.

Rose‘s face looks devastated. She is sitting on her bed and stares on the floor. Jason is in her room. He says „Apparently he police can‘t stay out of it.“. Rose raises her head. Rose: „What exactly goes wrong if it doesn‘t work?“ Jason is unsure if he should tell her. „ Well em.. to make it short: Your parents hired a private investigator but the police interferes all the time. They are still searching for you and for us as well. But one of our requirements is no police at the hand over. And if there are cops at the location my partners don‘t take the risk and leave.“ Rose wakes up. She looks at her watch. Thinks. (If I am lucky and everything worked I might be free at the end of the day.) When she hears Jason in the other room she knocks.

Rose: „Did the exchange work this time?“ No answer. Rose knocks again, alarmed. „Jason?“ Rose holds her breath. Jason: „No.“ The answer hits her like a punch in the face.

(Darkness?)

Jason opens the door to let her go to the bathroom she asks him.

Rose: „Did the money exchange take place?“ Jason hesitates. Rose stares at him and waits in suspense. Then he shakes his head.

Jason: „Problems again.“ Rose‘s face gets a painful expression. „Oh god.“ Jason feels uncomfortable. „Come on.“ He moves his head and points to the bathroom.

Rose: „What happened this time?“ Jason: „Same thing. Apparently he police can‘t stay out of it.“ Rose sighs desperately.

Day 37 Evening *knock knock* „Bathroom?“ „Yes.“ *Sigh* Day 40 (escape)

thought I just... tell you.“ he says. „Sure.“ Rose manages to smile weakly. „Thank you.“ She makes a step towards her door. Jason opens it and lets her in. Then he locks the door behind her. He feels a little out of concept and isn‘t sure if he should add something or not.

Rose quickly puts some of the good cards aside. When she hands the rest of the cards over to Jason their hands touch. Rose freezes for a moment and stares at the gap/Jason‘s hand.

60 (Thunderstorm) They are sitting in the winter garden next to each other. It is raining heavily and from time to time there are lightnings and loud thunderclaps. Jason takes a joint out of his pocket and lights it. Rose looks at him. He looks back at her. She looks away. Jason too.

Rose: „What do you actually get from smoking weed?“ Jason looks at her. „Relaxation.“ He says while he releases the smoke from his lungs.

Rose makes a face and tries to push the smoke away with her hands. Jason offers her the joint. „Wanna try it?“ Rose stares at Jason‘s hand. „N-no thanks.“ Jason giggles. „No drugs for the showcase model of an upper class daughter. How sad.“ Rose looks at him again, slightly angry. „I already tried weed. But I don‘t want to get high now. Also I don‘t know what kind of stuff you put in your joints.“ Jason shrugs. His eyes are closed while he smokes. „Do you take any other drugs except from weed?“ Jason opens his eyes. „From time to time. If I get the opportunity. But not regularly. The sight of my roommates keeps me from it.“ „Your roommates?“ Jason nods. „Why?“ „Most of them are absolute junkies.

They life for the dope. Everything they do aims at getting enough money for the next dose together.“ He makes a short break. „I never want to end up like them.“ he says in a bitter tone. Silence. Rose: „Hey... no offense, but to me it seems like you are smoking weed right through, the whole day. Aren‘t you already like them?“ Jason smirks. „Well, yeah I have to admit that I have been smoking a lot in the latest time. But normally,“ he looks at her. „if I‘m not stuck in a forest hut, I don‘t smoke that much.“ Rose raises an eyebrow. „I see.“ They look at the forest again. Rose looks at the marihuana plants all around her. „Are you growing all of them just for yourself?“ „No.“Jason sighs and gets up a little bit. „I sell most of it.“ „Oh.“ Rose looks at him. „Do you earn your money only by selling drugs?“ „No. I work- I mean I was working part time in a garden center. But the manager fired me after I didn‘t show up for two weeks.“ Jason shrugs. „It was a shit job anyway.“ Silence. Rose wraps her free arm around her legs. She turns her head towards him again. „I‘m curious, what do you want to do when you get the ransom? What exactly do you need it for?“ Jason looks at Rose confusedly. „For everything.“ „Give an example.“ „Well... for instance, I‘ve been wanting to move out of my flat and get away from my junkie roommates ever since I moved in. That will be the first step.“ „And then?“ Jason stares into the forest. „I don‘t know.“ He answers irritated. „Everything will fall into place then.“ „And what if not?“ Rose asks. Jason doesn‘t answer. He takes another puff of his joint. Rose looks a little insecure but she continues. „You told me that you hated your life how it was. Your job, your flat, your friends, everything. You want to change your life, but you have no idea of how you want it to be or what you want to achieve. You just know that what you have is not what you want. So you let yourself get persuaded to take part in an abduction to extort ransom. Have you even got any idea of how to continue after the whole thing is over?“ Jason doesn‘t answer. He just stares into the air. „I might be wrong.“ Rose continues. „But to me it seems like this is your problem. You don‘t plan one step ahead. If you get the ransom it won‘t change your life by itself. You‘d have to do that.“ Silence. Lightning, thunderclap. „Wow.“ Jason says. „Is there anything you want to add or are you finished, Miss hobby psychologist?“ „Pff, tell me it‘s not true.“ Jason giggles. „Whatever.“ He butts out his joint.

Rose sits on her bed. She has a towel on her head. She reads a newspaper. The towel loosens and sinks down. Rose takes it and pulls it off her head entirely. She puts the newspaper away, gets up and walks to the door to hang it up on one of the hooks. When she pushes against the door it silently swings open. Rose is paralyzed. She stares at the lock which hadn‘t snapped in properly. Then she risks a look out of the door. She sees Jason, sleeping on the sofa. Her heart races. She thinks: „Now or never.“ She sneaks out through the door. She takes a closer look on Jason. This is the first time she sees his face.

She looks at him for some seconds. (In his sleep he looks innocent. Rose wouldn‘t admit it, but she is surprised, in her mind he was way less attractive.) Then she looks around, spots the entrance door. She silently walks past Jason. The door is locked. Rose curses silently. She sneaks back into the living room. She looks around. Her eyes fall on the messy couch table. In between some stuff she sees a key ring. She bites her lips. Slowly she reaches out and starts to uncover the key. Her eyes switch from the keys to Jason and back.Then she got it. She grabs the key. It makes a clinging noise. Suddenly Jason‘s eyes open. They stare at each other for a moment. Then Rose rushes to the door. Jason jumps up from the sofa, stumbles over the table and is behind Rose before she can even try out one key. He gabs her and pulls her back into the living room. Rose screams. Jason hauls her trough the living room and pushes her into her room. Rose falls down on the floor. He slams the door and locks it. Rose remains laying on the floor. She covers her face with her hands.

Jason steps away from the door. „Fuck!“ he needs some seconds to grasp what happened and to calm down. He turns to the door again. „How did you open the door??“ He knocks loudly. „Hey!“ He listens. It is silent. Then he hears Rose cry. His anger mixes with other negative feelings. He feels ashamed and uncomfortable in his position. Without saying anything more he steps away from the door and enters the winter garden. „Dammit!“ he screams and kicks against an empty flowerpot which breaks. (I hate everything about this stupid plan! I‘m such an idiot! Why did I let them persuade me? ....This is not me. / I hate doing this.) Then he walks outside, takes a joint out if his jacket and lights it. (+ eher rauchen zum runterkommen, beruhigen, wo dagegen dreschen (Wut) he goes outside and smokes a joint? or he is about to light a joint but then he doesn‘t do it and just stares into the forest? What would that symbolize? He rather wants to think about that sober? Or he blames is lack of attention to lock the door on his marihuana consume?) After that he comes back into the hut. He gives the bedroom door an uncertain glance. Then he sits down on the sofa.

Jason fühlt sich schuldig (verstärkt durch den Ausbruchsversuch und Rose‘ Tränen). Er versucht den Status des Schuldigen loszuwerden indem er fragt was sie essen will, sie frische Luft schnappen lässt und versucht sich zu erklären.

Evening (What do you want for dinner?)

Rose is laying on her bed. She has puffy eyes from crying. Suddenly Jason voice comes through the door.*knock knock* „Hey.“ short silence. Jason sounds insecure. „What do you want to have for dinner? I could make pasta or toast or pizza.“ Silence. Switch to Jason he steps from one foot to the other. He obviously feels a little awkward and shy but tries to cover it by pretending to be annoyed. „So?“ He adds. Silence. „Or do you want something else?“ Rose answers: „Since when does it count what I want?“ Jason is a little perplexed. „I don‘t know.. I just thought I‘d ask you.“ Silence. Rose: „Actually I don‘t care, it‘s all the same anyway.“ Jason: „Then make a suggestion yourself.“ He makes a short break. Then he adds in a silent tone: „I‘m already sick of pizza and pasta as well.“ he doesn‘t manage to cover his shyness entirely. Switch to Rose. She sits up in her bed. „Why do you ask me that all of a sudden?“ „Dunno. I just thought I‘d... do you a favor.“

„Enough about me.“ He turns towards her. „Talking about goals, what amazingly world changing things are you planning to do in your life?“ Jason asks in a mocking tone. „Working in your dad‘s marketing company and achieve the highest sales of shaving cream there ever was?“ Rose stares at him with narrowed eyes. „Idiot.“ Jason laughs

„A favor?“ „Yeah I mean...“ „Wait... is this a sign of compassion or something?“ „What? I...“ Jason is lost for words. „Pff, no, I just asked what you wanted to have for dinner, that‘s not a big deal.“ Silence. Jason gives up. „But okay, if you don‘t care I guess then...“ he steps away from the door. „I‘ll just make pasta again.“ schneller aufgeben „not a big deal“ = good Rose thinks. Then she gets up and walks to the door. „Have you got any herbs?“ „Herbs?“ „Yes, like oregano, rosemary, thyme, or whatever.“ Jason hesitates.“Why?“ Rose rolls her eyes, „Well, what do you think? You could add them to the pasta sauce and then it would taste at least a slight bit different to the million times we had pasta before.“ (she says „we“ for the first time, it was not on purpose, is just came out like that). Silence. Then Rose hears some noise. Then Jason says: „Okay... yeah, I found some ancient spices in one drawer. What is that? Chili and... some Italian mix. God, they must be at least 10 years old.“ Rose: „Doesn‘t matter, put them in.“ Cut. „We“ steht länger im Raum (visuell darstellen) Rose thinks. (Yes it is, he never asked me that before. He definitely feels bad about the situation. Maybe I can take advantage of that. I could try to reinforce his compassion.

Maybe he‘ll give me some more freedom then and I could get another chance to escape.) „Okay. But I can hardly make a suggestion if I don‘t know what Evening Jason opens the door. „Bathroom.“ Rose looks at him with puffy eyes. „You can take off the stupid mask, I know what you look like now.“ Jason hesitates. Then he pulls it off. They stare at each other hostilely. Then Rose gets up and takes her towel.

(It is your fault.) = er weist schon wieder die Schuld von sich (wie immer)!

Evening (admitting to Pete) Night view of the hut Telephone voice (Pete): „What??“ Jason (he stands in the winter garden) hisses: „Calm down. Nothing happened. She is in her room again.“ Pete: „You got the simplest part of all, and you are even too stupid for that! This could have cost us our neck! Has she seen your face?“ Jason abashed but still defensive: „Yes.“ Pete sighs deeply. „Fantastic.“ Silence.

Pete: „Okay. What happened can‘t be changed, but you have to be more careful.“ Hangs up.

Komplizen zu gemein Day 41 (Outside) Rose sits on her bed. She looks at the window. Sun comes through the gaps. She sighs.

Then she raises her head and looks at the door. She doesn‘t take the effort to get up and knock. „Hey.“ After some seconds Jason replies: „What?“

„Remember when you tried to be nice and asked me what I wanted to eat?“ Silence. „I thought of something else that would cheer me up.“ Jason glances at the door suspiciously. „And that is?“ „Fresh air. I‘ve been in this small room for weeks. I need to see something else. And if it is just for some minutes.“ Silence. Jason: „You have seen something else yesterday.“ Rose sighs annoyed. „You can hardly call that weed mist in your room fresh air. Please.“ Her voice gets softer and less harsh. „Let me outside. Just for some minutes.“ Jason: „You almost escaped yesterday and now you ask me to let you outside ,just for some minutes‘?“ he raises his eyebrows. „Sounds very credible.“ Rose sighs. Some minutes pass with neither Rose nor Jason saying anything. Rose longingly looks at the light again. „Please.“ she tries again. „I know the timing is bad. But aren‘t you sick of sitting indoors all day too? As far as I can see it‘s a beautiful, sunny day. Come on.“ No answer.

Switch to Jason. He looks through the window. It is a stunning day. He thinks. Rose adds: „You could as well take one of your cable ties and tie our wrists together, to make sure I won‘t run away.“ Jason doesn‘t answer. After some time he makes a decision. He gets up, takes his mask and takes the cable ties out if his backpack. He puts on the mask. Switch to Rose. She is staring at the window and winces when Jason unlocks and opens the door. „Alright.“ He says.

They are standing in front of the hut with their wrists tied together. Rose blinks and admires the nature. „I didn‘t know we were in a forest.“ „Yeah, you were not supposed to know.“ Jason grumbles. „If the others knew what I am doing here they‘d kill me.“ Rose giggles. „Aw so you‘re the only one of them with a good heart? How touching.“ Jason sighs. „Alright.“ He turns to the hut and tries to pull Rose with him. „What? No! No, wait!“ Rose pulls back. She is still laughing a little bit. „That was a joke! Come on! Really, I‘m sorry.“ Jason stops. „I really appreciate it.“ Rose says in a more serious and grateful tone.

She looks at her feet. „Just wanted to make fun of you a little bit.“ Now she is bashful. „I get so bored alone in that room... and unfortunately you are the only person I can talk to.“ Jason face gets hot under his mask. Rose looks at the forest again. „And actually you could take that mask off, I have seen your face yesterday.“ Jason hesitates. Then he takes the mask off.

Weiß sie nicht das sie im Wald sind? oder hat sies schon wo gesehen?

Day 46 (Evening?) (sign of life) „Your parents want a sign of life from you.“ Rose eyes widen. „O-okay and what does that mean? What do you have in mind?“ „A tape. We‘ll record you, telling your parents that you are fine, send it to them.“ Later Jason sits next to Rose on her bed. „Okay, just read that out loud.“ Jason gives Rose a sheet with some words. „Should be enough.“ Rose nods. She feels very uncomfortable.

Jason: „Okay.“ he starts to record and nods. Rose starts (her voice trembles): „Hi Mom, hi Dad,...“ her voice breaks. „Sorry.“ she looks away and breathes heavily. Jason is shocked.

Rose sniffs and wipes a tear away. Jason doesn‘t know how to react. „Take your time.“ He mumbles. It takes a while till Rose calms down. She takes a deep breath. „Okay, again.“ This time Rose reads the text without an interruption. „ Hi Mom, hi, Dad, I am fine. If you pay the ransom I‘ll be free within the following 72 hours. But you have to make sure that there is no police around. I hope to see you soon. Rose. This tape is recorded on the 5th of March. “ Jason turns off the device. „Good.“ He says and gets up. He looks down at Rose who is wiping her eyes again. He feels the urge to say something comforting. „We‘ll send the tape and a letter with new instructions as soon as possible. Looks like your parents hired a

private investigator now.“ Rose doesn‘t answer. „So chances are good it will work this time.“ Rose nods. Jason sighs.

Rose looks away. With faltering voice: „You don‘t understand.“ Jason: „What do you mean?“ Rose turns away even more and wraps her arms around her. „How can you even be sorry? You knew what you were doing, didn‘t you?“ „I am not sorry... I *sigh* I mean I understand that it must be shitty to get abducted.“ Rose locks at him with a mocking face expression. „I never thought this could take so long. This pisses me off as much as it does you.“ Rose looks up to him. „It doesn‘t ,piss me off‘. It ...devastates me. When I think about my parents.. and what they must go through I could..“ her voice breaks, a tear rolls down her cheek. „If I had a proof that you‘ll really let me go sometime, and if my parents had that proof too and didn‘t have to worry that much, it would all be just half as horrible.“ Silence.

Jason: „We will let you go. When we have the money.“ Rose: „You can say that, but that‘s not a proof.“ Silence. „Well...We are both in a shitty situation. Why can‘t we just.. what I want to say is, I didn‘t intentionally... Jesus, I‘m bad with words. What I thought was, of course it would be unpleasant for you and your family. But it would only last a few days. Your family were a little less wealthy/rich and I had a chance to change my life, you know? My... our intention was not to cause pain. We just need the money.“ Rose shakes her head. „I understand what you want to say. Just a little evil for a greater good.“ Jason: „Yeah, something like that.“ Rose shakes her head. „It might seem like just a little evil from your point of view.“ Silence. Jason sighs. „Well, I can‘t change that now.“ He gets up and leaves. weniger verständnis als akzeptanz mehr längere konversationen Hier versucht Jason sich zu erklären. Seine bösen Absichten abzumildern. Er erfährt mehr oder weniger was genau Rose an der Situation bedrückt. Am ende des Gesprächs hat er allerdings nicht das Gefühl dass Rose ihm „verzeiht“/ die Rolle des Bad Guy losgeworden zu sein. Er versucht es weiter.

Day 48 (Uno cards) Jason walks around in the hut. He is bored. He looks around in the entrance area und rummages in the drawers and shelfs. In one of them he finds an old set of Uno cards. He looks at it. Looks at the door to Rose‘s room. It takes him a while to overcome himself.

Then he walks up to the door and knocks. *knock knock* „Hey em..“ Jason hesitates. He feels insecure. „Are you still bored in there?“ „Sigh.

Always.“ Jason thinks. Then he pushes the card game though the gap under the door. He hears Rose‘s steps towards the door. She picks it up. „Uno?“ Jason: „Found it in one of the drawers.“ He puts his hands in his pockets and looks at his feet. „I‘m quite bored myself.“ Silence. The longer the silence lasts the more uncomfortable Jason feels. „Okay, em.. I already tried to express that yesterday. We are both in a shitty situation. I have no idea how long it is going to take from now on. I thought everything might be done in 2 weeks.

But we‘ve been sitting around here for more than two months now and... it doesn‘t get better if we adhere to our initial despise. We could... well, at least try to make it as little unpleasant as possible.“ Switch to Rose. She looks at the card game. Then she sits down,

Silence. „But what about your job? Okay, your home is a garbage dump, but at least you have that absolutely fulfilling, amazingly well-paid job, right? I mean, what more would you want to achieve in your life than working part time in a garden center and sell weed?

That‘s the dream, isn‘t it?“ Jason stares on the ground. Silence.

Pete gets serious again. „You deserve more, Jason. We deserve more. We have to take a risk to get out of this shitty vicious circle. We are able to achieve more, we just need startup assistance. And if we got it, if we got the money we are finally able to start a life.“ Jason looks up. abfälligere Wörter (ungebildeter rüberkommen)

Yoga class finishes She steps outside the building. Calls her mom, tells her she‘ll come home later. (We see her mom in the pictures as well.) „Hey Mom. Just wanted to say, I‘m going to meet up with Tom and the others in John‘s Cafe. So I‘ll get home a little later.“ „Alright. But just to remind you, your father wants you to come to the office tomorrow at 9.“ (Bernhard talks in the background) „Yeah, I know. That‘s no problem I won‘t stay out too long.“ (Father: who is she going out with?) (Mom: with the alternatives) Rose smirks and sighs. Her mom laughs (rolls her eyes). „He said you shouldn‘t drink too much.“ „I bet if I met the guys from uni he‘d give me a day off tomorrow and push me to get drunk.

Tell him to relax.“ Her mom laughs again. „I already did. Don‘t worry. Enjoy yourself.“ „Thanks.“ She hangs up and enters Prince Road.

Abduction Rose walks down a dark road. In the distance there is a van, but it looks empty. When she approaches it Jason jumps out of it and pulls her inside. He closes the door and presses Rose against the wall of the transporter. He shows her his gun. „This is an abduction. If you cooperate nothing is going to happen to you.“ Rose is so shocked that she can‘t say anything. „If you don‘t want to get hurt, just shut your mouth and do as I say.“ „Turn around.“ Jason blindfolds her and uses cable ties to tie her to the grab handle of the car, then he starts the car.

Jason‘s thoughts „Okay, the most risky part is almost done. Now I have to take the detour to the hut.“ (thinks through what he has to do next, the most risky part is already done, now he has to drive a detour to make Rose think the hiding place is farer away.)

Rose‘s thoughts. „Oh god. This can‘t really have happened. This can‘t be true. Please. Oh god. Who is that? Where is he taking me? And why? What does he want? What if... he‘s going to kill me? Why? Why me? What is going to happen now? How could this happen? I always take this rout, how could this happen? Will he hurt me? Will he kill me? (shocked, this can‘t have happened. Where does he take me? Is he going to kill me? Or to rape me? How soon will people realize that I am missing? Oh god I just told my mom I‘ll be out late! Panic) They arrive two hours later Jason takes her out of the van, Rose is shaking. She fears that he might do something to her, or even kill her. She hears the sounds of the forest. „Sounds like we are in a forest.

Jason is sitting on the sofa and stares into space. Then he sighs. He gets up, walks over to a shelf and opens a drawer. He takes out a scissors. Then he puts on the mask and enters the bedroom. Rose is sitting on the bed with her book still in her hand. He closes the door behind him. Rose stares at him. Then she spots the scissors in his hand and her eyes widen. Jason says. (I need one of your personal belongings and a strand of your hair for the ransom letter. Have you got a necklace, a ring, a watch or anything?) She gives her ring to him. Then he steps towards her and raises his hand with the scissors. Rose moves back. He takes one of her hair strands and cuts it off. Then he leaves her alone again.

Rose sits down on the bed and takes a deep breath to calm down.

Am Anfang nur kurze szenen. Tag1, Tag 2, Tag 3, schnell, szenen aufteilen zigaretten später szenen werden immer länger Ein paar leere Seiten mit Stille, Zeit unterschiedlich schnell vergehen lassen Day 3 (Pete picks up stuff) Picture: A car in the forest, it arrives at the hut.

It is Pete who comes to pick up the necklace and the hair. He knocks and Jason lets him in. Switch to Rose: she hears the two men speaking. That gives her hope that Jason tells the truth and that it really is a ransom abduction. Switch to Jason. Pete drops a snide remark of the weed smell inside of the hut. Jason ignores it. He hands both items over to Pete who puts them into an envelope. Then he hands a bag with groceries over to Jason.

Jason takes a look on the food. „You forgot cornflakes. And frozen pizzas.“ When he leaves the hut Jason calls after him to get him some cigarettes next time (I can‘t smoke only weed all the time!).

Er beschwert sich über irgendwas anderes (Essen?)

Day 4 (how long will it take?)

Rose is sitting on her bed and watches the light appearing at the window. She looks at her watch. She tries to calm herself down (you will survive this, they only want the money).

She keeps thinking about how long it will take. When Jason opens the door to let her in the bathroom she asks him how long all this is going to take. Jason answers harshly (How should I know, depends) and pushes her into the bathroom.

Day 5-7 (passing time) Empty pages with silence. Rose in her room. She walks around. Looks through the gap at her window. Jason is the living room. How he changes his position on the couch. The full ashtray. The messy kitchen. Jason while he rolling a joint and lights it. er ist passiv sie ist aktiv - unterschiedlichkeit hervorheben Day 7 (Rose can‘t sleep) Rose is laying in her bed. It is dark in her room, she tries to sleep. But she hears noises from behind the door. Jason who is washing up, opens the bathroom door, drops something etc. Every time she hears steps towards her door she raises her head or sits up in the bed. (Shows that she can‘t relax because of his presence.)

Day 8 (water) Rose sits on her bed with the empty bottle in her hand. She looks from the bottle to the door and back at the bottle. She gets up and walks around in her room. She stops in front of the window and plays around with the window frame. She looks at the door again. Then

because your parents are to stupid to follow their instructions!) Rose doesn‘t believe what she hears. She walks to the door and asks. (What? What happened?) Jason answers in an angry tone (There were cops at the handover location. God dammit!) Rose gets hit by disappointment. No freedom in the next time. Jason curses again (I‘m so sick of babysitting a rich, spoiled brat!). Suddenly her disappointment turns into anger. She shouts back (And I‘m sick of being locked in with a degenerated junkie and only some ancient newspapers for entertainment!) Her rage takes over. She jumps up and hammers against the door. (Let me go! I can‘t stand it anymore, I need to see something else then this shitty room, I need some fresh air!) Jason is stunned. He didn‘t expect a tantrum like that. Then he makes a mocking face. (Wow. Didn‘t know a well-bred Blackwood daughter could curse like that.) Rose looks angry (Fuck you.). (Shut up.) ihre ansichten zeigen (sie hat kein verständnis für seine Probleme) Day 16 (weed smell) Rose is sitting on her bed and draws something into the magazine Jason gave her. Then she looks up angrily. She smells something. She looks down on her magazine again. She turns over a page, then she looks back up again. She rolls her eyes angrily. (Jesus, could you possibly stop smoking pot for at least 2 minutes? The smell is horrible.) No answer.

(Hello??) (Fuck off.) Rose looks back at her magazine and mumbles (Asshole).

Switch to Jason, his telephone rings. He looks at the display. Mumbles. „Fuck..“ picks up. „Hello, Jason Benson speaking.“ Short break. „Hello Mr. Stan. I- I know. Yeah. I‘m sorry but em.. *cough cough* I‘m still sick. I can‘t come to work this Monday..... I know. I‘m really sorry. Yeah. Okay. Of course. Bye.“ hangs up. „Dammit.“ Day 17 (toilet 1) *knock knock* „I need to go to the bathroom.“ „Argh..! Again??“ „Yeah.“ „Jeez.“ Day 17-21 (pages of boredom) Erster Anknüpfpunkt: this sie spricht ihn nur an weil sie so gelangweilt und fertig ist Zu plötzlich (zu wenig positives davor passiert) Day 25 (first positive approach) Rose is laying on the floor and stares at the ceiling. The magazine is laying next to her, as well as a bunch of newspaper pages. Some of them show drawings, some others are folded into something (Origami). Rose is obviously bored and exhausted. She gets up slowly and looks to the door. She hears Jason cough. She stands up and sits down next to the door and leans against it. She knocks. (Hey.) (What?) (Why is it taking so long this time?) (What?) (The ransom exchange. The firs try didn‘t take that long.) (It‘s more complicated this time. Don‘t ask me why.) Rose sighs. She is silent for a while. Switch to Jason. Then Rose asks something. (What‘s your name anyway?). He freezes while he is finishing a joint. Then he continues. (As if I‘d tell you.) (Pff. Your first name won‘t hurt.)

Silence. Jason finishes the Joint. (Why do you wanna know?) He looks over to the door with the joint in his hand. (I don‘t know. I..) switch to Rose (I just don‘t know what to call you, except of ,you‘.) Short silence. (You forgot ,degenerated Junkie‘.) Rose smirks. (Oh,

hisses (I can‘t give that book to her, you fucking idiot! How does that look like?) (Afraid of sending the wrong signs, casanova?) Jason lowers his hand with the book. (You fucking asshole.) Jeff laughs again. (Here are your groceries and tampons.) Jeff hands over the bag and continues giggling. Jason is still angry. But his curiosity takes over. He lowers his voice. (And? How‘s the transaction plan going?) Jeff‘s face get serious. He lowers his voice as well. (Good. It‘s set for Tuesday next week.) Jason nods. (Okay.) Jeff turns away.

(We‘ll keep you updated.) Jason nods again.

He walks to his car and opens the door. Before he shuts it he calls (See ya, have fun!) and laughs again. Jason slams the door. Inside of the hut he looks at the book again. He mumbles (fucking bastard), throws the book on the sofa. He puts the bag with groceries on the table, takes out the tampons, walks over to the door and pushes them through the gap.

Rose knocks. (What?) (Was that your accomplice?) (Who else?) (What did he say?) (None of your business.) (I have to disagree. Did he say something about when you‘ll finally let me go?) (The transaction is set for the day after tomorrow.) (Really?) Rose sounds excited and positively surprised. (Yes, but don‘t keep your hopes up. Maybe they‘ll screw it up again.) + Kontrast zum Humor (negative gefühle, wir sind in einer fucked up situation) call of garden center (jason hat gsagt er ist krank und wird später gekündigt, beschwert sich bei accomplices) more attempts (1-2x mehr) Day 35 (destroyed hope2 - only Jason) It is in the middle of the night, Jason lays on the sofa and stares at the ceiling. He takes a look on his watch. Then he gets up and starts to walk around in the room. He leans against the kitchen shelf and impatiently ticks on the surface with his fingers. Then his phone rings. He immediately picks up and walks towards the winter garden. (Did it work?)

A long break. (I can‘t believe it. How long is this going to take?) Pause. (How dumb can they be, don‘t they want their daughter back?... I see. Well, fuck. Yeah. Bye.) Hangs up.

Whispers (god dammit).

Day 36 (morning, destroyed hope 2 - Jason‘s desperation) Rose‘s face looks devastated. She is sitting on her bed and stares on the floor. Her eyes are puffy. In her hand she holds a tissue. Around her, on the bed and on the floor are more tissues scattered. Jason‘s voice comes through the door. „I guess it‘s round three now.

Didn‘t think I would be locked in with you that long.“ Rose looks on the door. Her face gets a slight bit angry. Rose: „Well, YOU could always leave, couldn‘t you? You aren‘t locked in, you could go anywhere.“ Jason: „No? Obviously I can‘t. I got the shitty role of the keeper, the babysitter. The others are doing all the ransom transaction stuff. Okay, a bit risky but still better then being stuck in a godforsaken forest hut for weeks.“ Rose: „Nobody forced you to do this. Why did you even take part in it in the first place if it annoys you that much?“ Switch to Jason. He is silent for some seconds. Jason: „Simple answer: I need the money.“ Rose: „Pff. I‘m sure there are plenty of other ways to get to money. But I guess people like you and your accomplices just don‘t like to work for your money.“ Jason looks at the door angrily. Jason: „You really have no idea.“ He looks straight out of the window again. „You live in your rich-girl-fairytale world. You think you are working hard for what you have? Bullshit, you were just lucky enough to get born into a rich family. Everything comes in handy for you. You are the one who does‘t have to work, while people like me...“ he is looking for words. He‘s getting emotional. „We have to become criminals, do shit like this, if we want to.. well to stop living in the dirt and between vermin.“ Rose doesn‘t answer.

After a while Jason adds: „I guess it‘s easy to be optimistic if you have enough money. But if you have to live from day to day your whole life... then...“ He looks on the ground. „You

mixes the cards and starts to deal them out. Switch to Jason. He is still standing there with his hands in his pockets and eyes on the floor. Then he sees how cards get pushed trough the gap. His eyes light up. He sits down on the floor and takes them. mehr Slang Er schafft es die Situation so zu formulieren, dass es klingt als hätten sie beide das gleiche Problem. Er schlägt vor das Beste/am wenigsten schlechte aus der Situation zu machen.

Rose willigt ein. Sie ist von seinen Entscheidungen abhängig und so ist es auch für sie angenehmer.

Day 48-53 Time passes, they play cards, talk through the door. Rose helps cooking?

54 (card game) Rose and Jason are sitting next to the door. One on each side. Rose takes the cards, takes out some of the good ones and then starts to deal out. They play. Rose is somehow always lucky. After some time Jason gets suspicious. „Wait... are you cheating?“ No answer. Rose bites her lip to keep herself from laughing. „You are cheating!“ Rose bursts out laughing. „You... bitch!“ Jason smiles and can‘t stop himself from laughing as well. He puts his hand through the gap. „Alright, from now on I‘m going to mix the cards.“ „Sure, so you‘ll be the one cheating then, right?“ „Would only be fair, wouldn‘t it? But it‘s gonna be boring if you know.“ Rose shrugs. „Well.. we might as well play face to face like normal people.“ Jason hesitates. Is that a trick? „In your room?“ „Yeah, wherever, doesn‘t matter.“ Jason thinks. Actually there‘s hardy any risk if we stay in her room. „Okay.“ he says. He gets up and unlocks the door. They look at each other.

Jason closes the door and locks it behind him. Rose‘s heart races. Jason sits down on the stairs in front of the door. „Give me the cards.“ He puts out his hand for the cards. Rose gives the cards to him and sits down on the floor as well. Jason starts to mix the cards.

Rose looks at his hands and secretly glances at his face from time to time. „What? You don‘t trust me? C‘mon I‘m the embodiment of honesty and justice, aren‘t I?“ „Pff. Idiot.“ „But if you don‘t trust me we can also play face to face like normal people.“ Rose shortly hesitates. „Alright.“ She gets up. Jason unlocks the door and enters. He looks at her. She stares back.

Whole page: Rose and Jason playing cards in Rose‘s room.

57 (Parents received tape) Rose just showered, she dries herself and is just about to get dressed. Jason is leaning against the wall and browses his phone. *knock knock* Rose: „Finished.“ Jason puts away his phone and opens the door. Rose steps out of the bathroom. „I got news.“ Jason says. „Your parents received the tape.“ Rose‘s face freezes. „Oh.“ Jason feels insecure. „I

subject capstone project

Jasons day - Pete and Jeff visit - agreement

21

Prologue

22

subject capstone project

Anyway, Theresa and Johanna did not remain the only people I read my script to. In the middle of February some of my friends from Austria visited me for a week and somehow persuaded me to hold a reading session for all of them. This took me a lot of courage. As already stated above, the opinions of the people close to me were something I was always a little afraid of. But again, I was pleasantly surprised by their reactions.

Including Johanna and Theresa there were seven people giving me feedback, thinking about and discussing my story, which was great. Not only because their feedback was valuable for the story, but also because this was another big step in gaining confidence in what I was doing. Just the simple fact that they did not judge me on what kind of story I was writing was enough to bring me extreme relief.

At the beginning I planned to do my graphic novel in german. It would have been much easier to write the dialogues. For instance the use of slang language for Jason, who comes from the lower class would have been more authentic. But somehow I ended up writing the script in English anyway. I thought like this it would be easier to explain my work to my peers and tutors at Uni. I planned to do it in English first and to translate it in german later on. By now I think maybe it would have been better the other way round. Not because I feel like I have difficulties in writing it in English, but because I think I maybe would have picked my words in a more differentiated way and thereby created more sophisticated meanings and subtexts within the dialogues, which I maybe would have been able to translate in English later on as well. I do not think that the dialogues I wrote in English are missing essential content, but there still might be room for improvement in the details.

Writing the plot was one of the main parts of the project. Which did not bother me at all. Quite the contrary, I rarely had as much fun in working on a project as during that time. Soon I realized that I could not just sit down for 15 minutes and write a scene in between doing other things. I tried that, but in these cases I mostly had to change or entirely rewrite everything afterwards. I had to really think myself into the story and the characters and this required time and concentration. It became really intense when I was writing the dialogues. I wanted the lines and replies to sound as natural as possible. So I had to switch perspectives while writing them. Sometimes, after writing only one line, I laid down on my bed, closed my eyes and tried to think myself into the other character. I asked myself what feelings the preceding words might trigger in him / her. I tried to feel them myself and let them form the answer the character gives, while still considering their inhibitions, flaws and what they want the other person to think of them.

Sometimes I did that several times for only one line until I was happy with it.

There is a scene where Jason and Rose are talking to each other while watching a thunderstorm. To help me think myself into the situation, I looked up videos on YouTube, which were playing the sound of rain in the forest and listened to them while writing. This helped me a lot in imagining the mood of this scene.

I have to admit that I did not put that huge amount of effort in every single scene or dialogue. Some of them of course were more ordinary and commonplace than others and thus easier to write.

But some of the scenes, especially the highly emotional ones really took me effort. I thought about them over and over again. I tried to imagine how it must feel like to be in these situations until I really felt my character‘s feelings myself. I did not rarely cry by doing that.

23

subject capstone project

mood system Sympathy Anger Fear Akwardness

Rose

Jason

Rose

Ransom letter

24

subject capstone project

Rose

Jason

Jason

Jason‘s name

Jason

Rose

Playing cards

final scene

sequence of events The more of the plot I had written down, the harder it became to keep an overview of the script. I could not assess if the sequence of events was logic anymore. Throughout the process of writing, I had made adjustments here and there and sometimes even changed the order of scenes. I was worried that some scenes might not fit to the previous or following one. As I assume, the process of developing a bond in this kind of situation is a rather slow one, therefore it was especially important that the character‘s moods did not change too abruptly from one scene to the next. First, I had to reduce the mutual aversion between Jason and Rose in an adequate pace, and then to slowly build up the friendship and affection. Furthermore, I always had to take care that the characters were acting reasonably according to their personality.

It was hard to assess that by reading over the scenes every time. It took me a lot of time as well.

To help myself getting a better overview and to save time, I tried to depict the plot line in some

kind of chart. It should shortly describe scene after scene and show the mood of the characters in each of them. Later on I added information about the subtext and the specific feelings or issues I wanted to convey with each scene, so that I would not forget to focus on them when doing the layouts for the pages.

To assess the mood of the characters I developed a system. I decided to only consider three different parameters. Otherwise, it would have become too complicated.

I assessed both of the character‘s degree of anger and sympathy towards each other. The third parameter was individual for each character.

Rose‘s third parameter was fear, Jason‘s was awkwardness/uncomfortableness. I did this assessment for every scene. By using that system I could easily tell if, for example, switches from anger to sympathy were going too fast or not.

Pr o l ogue

Relationship to parents, no worries

Jason

DAY 1 Rose

DAY 2 Jason

Abduction Arrival Phone call Rose in her room

Awakening, explanation shower

Abdu c tion Rose: Fear, incredulity, Disbelief, Suddenness Jason: structured actions Arri val Fear, darkness, seclusion, silence/forest sounds ROOM Restlessness, senseless actionism, panic, desperation

Rose: Recognition, desperation, slow acceptance,new shock (he‘s next door all the time) Jason: structured actions, annoyed/ uncomfortble

DAY 5 Rose

Jason

Rose

Jason

Rose

Rose: Fear, inability to assess Jason, shock, unfounded fear Jason: Unwillingness to interact with Rose, Awkwardness

Jason

Jason

Rose

Pete picks up stuff, (hope)

How long will it take?

Jason harsh

Rose: slight relief Jason: somehow sad that Pete leaves again (loneliness)

Rose: failing attempt to deal with the situation, panic comes on again and again, overcoming, rejection, loneliness Jason: uncomfortableness is already there, increases when Rose talks to him emphasize uncomfortbleness on both sides

DAYS 5-7 Rose

DAY 4

Jason

ransom letter, scissors (fear)

DAY 8 Rose

DAY 3

Jason

DAY 9

DAY 10

Jason

Rose

Rose can‘t sleep (fear)

Rose asks for water (Awkwardness)

Passing time Boredom Awkwardness, fear

Question for a book (Awkwardness, shitty situation, humiliation, helplessness)

Rose: Fear, uncertainty

Rose: Fear, dependency, overcoming Jason: Awkwardness (power position)

Boredom, monotony, uneventfulness, hopelessness, surrender to the situation

dependency/humiliation

Jason

Rose

Jason gives Rose a newsaper instead of a book

uncomfortableness Rose: comforting, slightly raises a little empathy Jason: bad conscious

DAY 12 Jason

Rose

DAY 15 Jason

Rose

„We‘ll soon get rid of each other“ (both of them want to get out of the hut)

DAY 16

mutual aversion Rose: decreased fear, rather angry/annoyed Jason: not that awkward but also annoyed

Rose: Hopelessness is gone, there is a goal Jason: shows aversion to signal that he doesn‘t enjoy the situation either

Jason

Rose

Rose complains about weed smell (aversion and mutual ignorance continues)

Destroyed hope (aversion peaks, negative feelings take over)

Passing time (boredom, tristesse, monotony)

DAY 29

DAY 28 Jason

Rose

Rose has her period, has to ask Jason to get her tampons

Jason

Jeff brings book, tells Jason about the next Ransom exchange plan

Jason

DAYS 46

Jason

Sitting in the winter garden and watch a thunderstorm talking about their lifes teasing each other, laugh

Jason

Playing cards, doing stuff

DAYS 49-53

Jason

insight Rose

Rose: very surprised, happy to have a new way of keeping herslef busy Jason: bored, awkward, fearful, sheepish, uncomfortable, hopeful, relieved, happy

Both are getting more relaxed, they try to ignore the reasons for them spending time together

Rose: worries about her parents come back up, sad, wants to arise Jasons compassion?

Jason: uncomfortable, compassioned, guilty conscious, wants to justify himself but gives up (resigned, still guilty conscious)

DAY 57 Jason

Rose

Jason tells Rose that her parents received the tape Rose gets silent.

Jason feels the urge to cheer her up

DAY 75

Jason

Morning, Jason makes coffee, knocks at Rose‘s door, Rose cries (Birthday) Jason feels horrible

DAY 86 Jason

Jason

Rose feels rejected/ ignored from Jason

Jason tries to think of a solution, stays up all night

Jason‘s accomplices show up, they got the money, tell Jason to kill Rose

Rose talks to Jason the missunderstanding gets straightend out Jason tells Rose exchange didn‘t work again

love

Jason

Playing Uno, Rose cheats, they laugh together From that time on Jason comes inside her room to play cards.

Rose wakes up, Jason is still asleep Rose doesn‘t take the risk

DAY 76 Jason

Rose

Rose wakes up, Jason is still asleep, Rose doesn‘t take the risk They wake up together.

Jason is shocked and still confused about his feelings.

confusion about feelings

DAY 85

DAYS 85 (NIGHT) Jason

Rose

Jason

Rose

throughout the day they play cards, sit outside Jason tries to cook something good etc. Still Rose is still rather saddened the whole day

Jason surprises Rose with wine he found.

They get drunk, their feelings take over, they have sex

DAY 86 Jason

Rose

Rose wakes up first Both of them are shocked don‘t know how to react, don‘t talk about it (hardly talk in general)

turning point

DAY 87 Rose

Jason

Rose

Watching a movie together Rose falls asleep Jason confused (feelings) falls asleep in Rose‘s room)

DAY 85 (MORNING) Rose

DAY 54 Rose

DAYS 76

Jason

Rose

guilty conscious

Rose

Jason

Rose

Time passes, the get along better Playing cards, talk through the door

Rose: curious, tries to understand him, a little embarassed, a little angry, empathy

DAY 83

Jason: shyness/awkwardness, tries to hide his motives/to act annoyed Rose: cynical, rejecting

Jason makes another positive approach to Rose (Uno cards)

Jason: somehow knows that Rose is right, but Rose: curious, tries to understand him, a little embarassed, a little angry, empathy pushes it away by mocking about Rose, empathy Jason: somehow knows that Rose is right, but pushes it away by mocking about Rose, empathy

Rose

guilty conscious

DAY 48 Rose

Jason

„What do you want for dinner?“ Jason makes a step towards Rose (doesn‘t admit it)

Recoding of tape Jason gets insight in Rose‘s feelings, tries toexplain imself

DAY 60 Rose

Jason

Rose

DAY 40 (EVENING) Rose

First escape Rose sees Jason‘s face He hears Rose cry, gets a guilty conscience

Rose: excitement, (positive)surprise, empathy, shock, disappointment, hopelessness Jason: shock, anger, awkwardness, guilty conscious (takes over everything, completelyfeels like the bad guy now)

Jason allows Rose to go outside with him (positive approach, he takes off mask)

Rose: big change in what she thinks of Jason, relieved, thankful, good mood Jason: suspicious, empathic, sheepish because of his compassion, a little happy because he could do Rose a favour

Jason

Rose

insight Jason

DAY 41 Rose

DAYS 40

Jason

Another failure, destroyed hope Rose gets a first insight in Jason‘s motives, shows understanding

Rose: Embarrassment, helplessness, fear of his reaction Jason: Awkwardness, compassion, guilty conscious

First positive approach from Rose Jasons Name He asks Pete for book

shyness on both sides Rose: curiosity, relief of talking to somebody and not getting rejected Jason: confusion, a little sympathy Later: compassion

DAY 35 Rose

Jason

Rose

Boredom, Monotony, Loneliness (extreme, enough to make Rose talk to Jason)

Rose: Disappointment, Anger, Hopelessness Jason: Projects anger on Rose, is surprised/ shocked byher talking back

Rose

DAY 25

DAYS 17-21

Jason

Rose

DAY 87 Rose

Jason

Happy in love Jason‘s urge to find a solution gets into the background, he pushes the decision away

DAY 87 Rose

Jason

Jason leaves the hut, he has to get food The door doesn‘t lock, Rose escapes They meet each other on the road Jason lets her go

escape

THE END

subject capstone project

Jason‘s reluctance/Persuasion

Abduction Rose

25

Prologue Jason Jasons unhappiness he gets persuaded

Prologue Rose relationship to her parents friends circles

26

subject capstone project

v. Characters reserach When I started researching about creating characters, I realized that it was a similar huge amount of work like creating a story. Actually a character can be considered as a whole story him/herself.

I read about the importance to arise the reader‘s empathy. As Seger (1990) states, the reader has to be able to identify with the character. If this cannot be achieved the character‘s fate will hardly touch the reader. I read about the influence of cultural and familiar background and that it is important to know all these things about your character, as it essentially shapes him/her. Johanna told me that for a lot of movies they create a whole background story for the main characters, although it is not directly relevant to the movie. They do it to become familiar with the characters and to know their values, personality traits, wishes, fears and how they developed. They need to know all this to be able to assess how the characters would behave, react or answer in certain situations and what pushes them forward.

This absolutely amazed me and I wanted to do all that for my characters as well. At least to some extend, because again, I had to accept compromises to be able to get something done in the prescribed time frame.

Like in the case of Story by Robert McKee I knew I did not have enough time to read through the whole book. I used the same method of reading and summarizing the parts which seemed the most important to me. Besides „Characters“ I also took other sources into account. Theresa showed me a great page on which there is a lot of information about creating characters. On that page I found a list which was called „100 questions to know about your character“. Reading through these questions made me think about some more aspects I had not considered yet. I started to answer them for Jason, but soon I realized that it would take too long to answer all the questions.

So again, I picked the ones which seemed more important to me and let them inspire me for the creation of my characters.

subject capstone project

8

27

7

CHARACTERS Main characters: Jason and Rose

1. Jason Albert Benson Background

Jason‘s parents separated when he was little. He lived with his mom and saw his dad only from time to time (he was an alcoholic).

Although they were poor, Jason had a beautiful childhood living with his mom, but when he was 10 she died in a car accident. From that time on he stayed with his dad and got neglected. Five years later Jason‘s dad was sentenced to 10 years in prison because of manslaughter. In Jason‘s current view his dad is „an embarrassing idiot who chose the wrong drug and had an attention deficit“. But although he keeps telling that to himself and tries to cut all emotional bonds to his father, the neglect and verbal abuse he experienced from him still hurt him, and somewhere inside of him he wants his dad to be proud of him and to apologize for everything.

When Jason‘s father went to jail it was decided that Jason should stay with his aunt (his dads sister), but he didn‘t get along with her at all and left 10 months later when he was 16 to live on his own. His aunt Leslie had three kids herself (they are all younger than Jason). Leslie was afraid that Jason could have a bad influence on them, so she criticized him for every little thing, treated him like a child and didn‘t take him seriously, which drove him mad. During the ten months Jason lived with her they had a lot of huge fights, which often ended up in Jason leaving the house, hide somewhere, cry and smoke a joint to calm down. In that time he felt even more alone than when he lived with his dad. The pain of loosing his mom came back up. He felt completely abandoned.

When Jason goes to jail to visit him, his father either complains and whines, and begs him to visit more often or he reproaches him for being such a failure. So Jason keeps his visits at a minimum (not more than once month).

Later on, when Jason already lives alone, he still visits his aunt and her family on some rare occasions. They are the only relatives he has left, except from his dad. His three cousins (two girls and one boy) are all still at school. The girls aren‘t really interested in Jason. The boy, Jim, secretly looks up to Jason because he seems so „cool“ to him. His aunt disapproves that and gets angry if her sons shows his admiration to openly. Jason likes Jim, but he doesn‘t really care for him. It kicks his ego a slight bit that there is at least one person who looks up to him. Nevertheless he knows that Jim actually has better chances in life, as he still goes to school and has parents who care for him.

Mom stirbt zu früh? Selbstständigkeit

Jason‘s parents (Elizabeth and Richard)

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Jason‘s childhood was the most beautiful time in his life. His mom loved him, they had a strong bond and took care for each other. Jason admires her for her strength to leave his father and to enable him a happy childhood through this. Elizabeth was a strong woman. She did everything for her son and worked hard to be able to provide him a range opportunities for his future. She could be very domineering and patronizing. Jason hardly had to make own decisions, because his mom decided everything for him. She was strict and very thrifty and set high expectations in her son.

She had a hot temper and although she often scolded Jason, she truly loved him and also tried to raise him with love. By the time Jason was six he knew what he had to do to make his mother happy. The following years went past very harmonic.

The car accident changed Jason‘s life. His mom died and he had to live with his dad from that time on. Jason who was used to a regulated day and the care of his mom felt frightened and lonely in the messy flat of his dad. His dad often let him alone during the night when he was out, drinking with his friends. From one day to the next Jason had to learn to take care of himself.

Still Jason tried to connect with his dad. He tried to make him proud, but his dad was a very unstable person. One day he loved Jason, his only son, more than everything, the next day he called him an annoying little brat who takes away all of his time and isn‘t worth the air he breathes.

Jason tried to please his father by keeping the flat tidy and clean or by learning for school to get

good grades. But soon Jason realized that there was nothing he could do to impress his father or to make him change.

When Jason looks back now he never wants to become like his dad.

After the loss of his mom Jason never felt loved or save again. This feeling of loneliness and defenselessness is still in his heart. Jason mistakes it as weakness and suppresses it in his everyday life. Only when he takes drugs, a tiny amount of the security he felt when he lived with his mom comes back. But he isn‘t entirely aware of that connection.

In his early childhood Jason only learned how to please his mother, but not how to make own decisions and to think by himself. His dad didn‘t teach him anything either, so Jason ended up quite clueless of how to deal with life.

Current life

Jason is 24 years old, he lives in poor conditions and earns his money by working part time in a gardeners shop and selling small amounts of weed every now and then. He smokes weed almost right through and takes other drugs from time to time as well, if he gets access to it (from friends).

He doesn‘t want to go to jail under no circumstances. His dad went to jail and Jason saw how it ruined him (even more than alcohol did). He is rather wary and avoids taking risks as good as he can. His job in the gardeners shop doesn‘t give enough money to live. That‘s why Jason sells marihuana from time to time. He considers this as a good compromise. He wouldn‘t want to take the risk of selling harder drugs, because of the possibility to end up in jail, as well as because of his fear of the drug dealer circles he had to connect with.

Jason is not very educated. He dropped out of school when he was 16 and started to do opportunity jobs to earn enough money to be able to live on his own. He moved into a shared flat from one of his friends. He has been living there since he moved out at the age of 16 and his flatmates changed throughout that time. Some of them moved out, some got arrested by the police and others died even of an overdose. He sees the results of poverty and drug addiction everyday and it depresses him. Another thing that puts pressure on him is his dead mom. He knows that she wouldn‘t be proud of him if she knew how he lived. He regrets to have quitted school, because of the possibilities he misses now. But still he doesn‘t want to go back. He believes that it must be possible to achieve something without having a great education beforehand. He thinks of examples like Bill Gates who just had a great idea and became a millionaire. He dreams of something similar happening to him. But he doesn‘t really work for it in any way. He is too busy with his everyday life. With working, selling and smoking weed, etc. So he stays in the shared flat because it is the only place to live he can afford. He desperately wants to start a new and regulated life, but his fear of taking risks and his pessimistic and anxious attitude makes it impossible for him to change anything. He hates himself for that but he doesn‘t admit it in front of himself. Instead he blames everyone else for his problems. His flatmates, his friends, his boss, society and the government.

Subconsciously he wishes for somebody he can love. But every time he meets a girl he considers her as either to annoying and dumb, to arrogant and superficial, or to boring. Although he already had some short lasting relationships, he was always the first one to take a step back and break up for hardly any reason because he was afraid of being left or rejected.

Flatmates

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Jason does not especially like his flatmates, who take harder drugs, and are even more wasted than him. But he puts up with them anyway because they are some of the few people he has at least some kind of friendship with. But still they are rather a warning example for him. Sometimes he feels ashamed to be considered as one of them. He refuses to take any harder drug they offer him, because in his eyes this would be the first step in actually becoming one of them.

His flatmates often curse about the rich society and how unfair the world is. The longer Jason lives a life he finds aimless and poor he develops a strong aversion towards the upper class as well. It seems like everything comes in difficult for him, and he despises people who have everything they need without having to work for it.

Finally, I had a rough idea of what to take care of.

Really creating the characters was a process of pure thinking and imagining. I had a lot of different drafts and ideas for both Jason and Rose. I already had a vague idea about how Jason had to be. His character and connecting to that his decision to take part in the abduction and his reasons for this decision were essential for the story. It was quite hard to decide what kind of character Rose should be. I did not want to make her a weak little

100 questions to Jason

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What is your full name?

Jason Albert Benson Where and when were you born?

In the city of the story, 1992 Who are/were your parents? (Know their names, occupations, personalities, etc.)

Mother: Elizabeth Benson, died at the age of 38 in a car accident, worked as a saleswoman in a shop Father: Richard Benson, is currently in jail because of manslaughter, before that he was unemployed Do you have any siblings? What are/were they like?

No Where do you live now, and with whom? Describe the place and the person/people.

Alone in a flat in one the poorer districts of the city. It has a living room, a small kitchen, a bedroom and a bathroom. It is very sparsely furnished, only the most necessary items are there. A bed, a couch, the basics in the kitchen and bathroom, and a big cupboard in the bedroom in which Jason grows weed and keeps his other drugs. It is not untidy, but that is just because there is not enough stuff which could mess u the place. untidy!

What is your occupation?

Drug dealer, works in a garden center where he got a job as temporary employee at the age of 17. But because he was such a good worker his chef decided to let him stay.

Write a full physical description of yourself. You might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye color, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks.

Jason is about 1,87m tall. He is muscular, but rather wiry-looking and has broad shoulders. He is white, has strawberry blonde hair and light brown eyes. He hardly ever buys new clothes. Everything he wears is quite old. So the style could be considered as rather wasted. He appreciates practical more than stylish clothing.

Broken nose? Scar when father beat him? Scar as a acceptance ritual? Tattoo?

What kind of tattoo?

To which social class do you belong?

Lower class. He sells drugs in clubs and in railway stations. Unreasonable: Drug dealer mostly have a lot of money (do they? Research!) What if he only sells weed?

And grows it himself?

Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses?

No Are you right- or left-handed?

Right What does your voice sound like?

Kim Hasper? Sebastian Schulz? Marcel Colle?

What words and/or phrases do you use very frequently?

14. What do you have in your pockets?

Cell phone, tobacco, weed, papes, filters, cigarettes, wallet 15. Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics?

victim, neither did I want her to be super tough and emotionless. Both of these extremes seemed rather stereotypical and thus boring to me. I had to find a way to make her character „normal“ and authentic, but also interesting at the same time. It was a process of thinking and writing, of rethinking and rewriting and of course, of discussing it with Theresa and Johanna.

Is 21 years old, lives with her parents, studies (marketing and advertisement), is well educated.

She works part time in her fathers company. Rose is an optimist. She doesn‘t have a lot of experience with the shadow sides of life and as a result of that she might be a little naive. She thinks that every problem can be solved somehow, but there are just so many problems that people don‘t know where to start.

Does she believe in the good and evil? Does she believe that there bad people who can‘t be saved anymore? Is she religious?

She despises judging people who are rude to others and embarrass them on purpose. If she dislikes a person she normally doesn‘t take the effort to try to understand that person, but to avoid them. Her reason for that is that she does not want to have negative energy in her life. She avoids any kind of conflict with her friends and family as well by stepping back and rather keeping her thoughts for herself than starting an argument. When she has to deal with Jason the situation is completely new for her. = optimistic, naive, friendly, afraid of conflicts, doesn‘t want to do anything bad to anyone (so she is shocked that Jason hates her so much, because in her view she has done nothing wrong in her life) Throughout the story she comes to the conclusion that people who do bad things are doing this because they have problems with themselves.

Work/Uni

Rose studies marketing and advertisement. She is supposed to take over her fathers company one day. She already works there part time. She loves the creative part of her job. The creation of brand identity and TV spots. But she isn‘t sure about the economic marketing part. She knows that it is important and necessary, but sometimes she feels bad for persuading people to buy something they actually don‘t need. She cares about the moral question of her future job.

Rose can also be quite spontaneous sometimes. When her friends text her that they just decided to meet up Rose often just drops everything and joins them. Rose likes the subject she is studying, as well as her work. But sometimes things get a little messed up. Her leisure and her friends are very important to her so it can happen that she gets stressed and works a night trough to finish a hand in or an essay. In those cases her dad recommends her to organize herself better and to sometimes sacrifice a little more of her free time. Her mom tells her that it is unhealthy to stay up all night. = Rose has a conscious, moral Mother: Moral role model Father: Career role model

Family

Mother Rose‘s mother. Jennifer is more liberal thinking than her husband. Rose feels like she can talk to her more openly than to her father (not least because she wants to avoid conflicts). Unlike Bernhard, Jennifer has no problems with Rose‘s separated circles of friend. She also would like to see her daughter succeed in taking over her husbands company, but for her Rose‘s happiness is the first priority. For her it would be easier to accept it if Rose would choose a different path in life, than it would be for Bernhard.

Jennifer works as a teacher and is not easily irritated. She loves children and would have loved to have more than only one child. But it never happened.

She enjoys yoga and various kinds of indian tea (alternative, liberal). She and her husband are different in many ways but maybe those differences are the reason why they find each other so

When he hears that Rose is missing he immediately interrupts his meeting and drives home.

So in the end there is one good thing, Rose‘s relationship to her father gets cleared?

Friends and Leisure

One side of her is the perfect daughter of the rich family. She is perfectly presentable at fancy dinners, parties or any other social event. She is polite and affable and if there is something she doesn‘t agree on with her interlocutor she knows how to politely and diplomatically disagree and keep some of her thoughts for herself.

In her leisure she listens to electronic music and goes to underground clubs with her friends.

Rose has two different circles of friends. The first one are her friends from the university. They are the kind of people her father likes to see her with. Hard working students who have their life under control. Rose enjoys to talk to them about her studies or work. To go for a coffee or to an exhibition with them.

But there is also a rebellious and wild part in her. When she is not working or at the university she meets up with a group of young adults which is very different to her uni squad. Most of them aren‘t studying or that well educated. They see life as a little bit less of a race. Some of them are freelancers, some of them are working in a cafe or in a shop. Some of them are teaching yoga.

Some of them also smoke weed. They are really relaxed friendly people. On the weekends they hang out in Johns Cafe or in other pubs or electronic clubs. They don‘t judge people by the amount of money and success they have, but by how nice and funny they are. The conversations in this squad are mostly led by jokes than by serious discussions. Rose enjoys that. She knows that her uni friends wouldn‘t necessarily feel comfortable in that group. But she enjoys both. The playful and fun evenings, as well as the discussions and conversations about future, job and the world with her uni friends. She switches between those two worlds and is happy for the moment. But inside of her there is a wish to combine those two worlds in her future life. Not necessarily the people, but the lifestyles. She feels like she will have to decide one day, which she doesn‘t want to do. = adaptable, open minded, open to conservative ways of thinking, as well as to liberal minded thoughts

Eventually I had written a solid draft of around 1000 words each, Jason and Rose. Similar to my written script of the plot, it was hard to keep an overview about all this information. Drawing a mind map for both of the character‘s personality helped me a lot. By connecting certain personality traits which caused or required each other I realized and understood things about them which I seemed to only have subconsciously sensed before. I felt like through this Jason and Rose became more concrete and real for me.

100 questions to Rose Part 1: The Basics 1.

What is your full name?

Roseanne Emily Blackwood Where and when were you born?

In the city of the story, 1995 3. Who are/were your parents? (Know their names, occupations, personalities, etc.)

Jennifer Blackwood, Bernhard Blackwood ! !

Her mother works as a teacher/psychiatrist? ! !

Her father owns a marketing company which he invented when he was young. By now it is ! ! very successful.

4. Do you have any siblings? What are/were they like?

No. Rose‘s mom wanted more children but she didn‘t get pregnant again after she got Rose.

5. Where do you live now, and with whom? Describe the place and the person/people.

In a nobel district of the city, with her parents. In a house 6. What is your occupation?

Rose studies, and works in a cafe to earn money, but mostly to gain experience 7. Write a full physical description of yourself. You might want to consider factors such as: height, weight, race, hair and eye color, style of dress, and any tattoos, scars, or distinguishing marks.

Rose is about average height. She has dark brown hair and blue eyes. She is quite athletic so she is muscular. She dresses very tastefully, but still with an individual touch. She likes to combine elegant and decent clothes with some rather extravagant pieces. Sometimes her day just shakes his head about her style of clothing, but on other times he has to admit that Rose‘s experiments can look really good. She has the money to buy expensive clothes. She isn‘t as addicted to fashion as some other girls in her age/class are. She doesn‘t have any tattoos, scars, or piercings. But she has earrings.

8. To which social class do you belong?

Upper middle class/upper class (not extremely rich, but definitely a good amount more money than the average) 9. Do you have any allergies, diseases, or other physical weaknesses?

Claustrophobia?

10. Are you right- or left-handed?

Left 11. What does your voice sound like?

Alexandra Wilke 12. What words and/or phrases do you use very frequently?

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13. What do you have in your pockets?

Mobile phone, Wallet, Ipod, Lipstick, mirror, brush, water, book 14. Do you have any quirks, strange mannerisms, annoying habits, or other defining characteristics?

Part 2: Growing Up 15. How would you describe your childhood in general?

Very happy.

Apart from their personality, I summarized their past and current living situation as well, to be able to review it quickly whenever I needed to. So I created a character sheet for each of them, on which the most important information is gathered in keywords.

Actually, I wanted to create character sheets like this for Jason‘s and Rose‘s parents as well. They have great influence on them and knowing them better would have helped me to define Jason and Rose in closer detail, but unfortunately I did not have enough time.

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2. Roseanne Emily Blackwood Current life

Father Bernhard is a career guy. He loves his wife and he also wanted a child, but the center of his life is still his company/career. Nevertheless, Bernhard loves to show off with his perfect life, his stunning career, his beautiful and intelligent wife and last but not least with his charming daughter. He is a society winner and most people look up to him. But of course there are also a lot of enviers. He teaches Rose everything he knows and is extremely proud of everything she achieves. He wants her to take over his company when he goes to retirement. He loves her as his daughter, as well as the future of his business. He is so enthusiastic that he doesn‘t really listen to Rose‘s concerns about the morality of their business.

He doesn‘t really see or wants to see the other side of the coin. He his proud of his company and if it gets bigger, it is good no matter what. He is not really understanding when Rose mentions her pangs of conscience. He tries to talk her out of her moral dilemma by telling her that this is just how economy works. This is how the world works and neither he nor Rose will be able to change it.

Rose knows that her father loves her. But she often feels like he just sees the parts of her he wants to see and ignores the rest. If the things that move her and keep her ponder don‘t fit into Bernhard‘s view of her, he just doesn‘t really take them seriously.

Additionally, Bernhard is rather conservative thinking. He doesn‘t really like it if Rose meets up with that hipster gang of hers. He does not try to forbid her to see them, but still he often hints that, in his opinion, they are not in her league. Secretly he is afraid that she could fall in love with a guy from the hipster group. He would rather want her focus on her friend circle from university.

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attractive. Jennifer is always perfectly styled and dressed. She enjoys to be able to buy expensive designer clothes and make up.

CHARACTER SHEET

JASON ALBERT BENSON CURRENT LIFE – 24 years old – single – lives in a shared flat he hates – works part time in a garden center – smokes and sells weed – wants to move out of the shared flat – works during the week – goes out on the weekend

FAMILY BACKGROUND parents separated lived with his mom dad was alcoholic happy childhood

mother died in a car accident when Jason was 12

Jason had to stay with his father unhappy/lonely from that time on

Jason had to stay with his aunt, they didn‘t get along

Jason moves into a shared flat at the age of 16

has one part time job after another, he lives from day to day and hardly ever has enough money

three years later his father got pronounced for 12 years in prison

PERSONALITY passive/ likes to keep himself out of other‘s problems covers his insecurities by mockery

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Basic attitude: pessimistic suspiciously doesn‘t like to take risks, hardly dares anything doesn‘t admit any flaws or mistakes, blames others for his misery

lost his mom is disappointed by /angry at his dad is afraid of ending up like him (addicted to drugs, in prison) subconsiously wishes for love and is afraid of getting rejected or abandoned leaves before he gets left

the abduction is a risk he normally wouldn‘t take

feels miserable and angry about his living conditions wants to change his life smokes a lot of weed sells weed as well

CHARACTER SHEET

ROSEANNE BLACKWOOD CURRENT LIFE – 20 years old – single – has no siblings – lives with her parents – studies graphic design and marketing – works part time in her dads company, is supposed to lead it one day

MOTHER – JENNIFER BLACKWOOD

FATHER – BERNHARD BLACKWOOD – career guy – established a successful business – society winner – likes to show off with his fortune and family – for him Rose represents the future of his company and is the center of his familial bliss – extremely proud of Rose – he tends to see her how he wants her to be and to ignore or talk away the rest

PERSONALITY

– family guy – works as a teacher (loves children) – always wanted a big family – she puts all her love and attention on Rose because she is her only child – Rose‘s wellbeing is her priority number one – would love to see her daughter succeed in taking over her husbands company, but she would get over it more easily than her husband if Rose chose a different path in life – enjoys wealth, wears expensive clolthes, etc.

confident extravagant style

has loving parents who are proud of her

open minded, adaptive (can keep her thoughs for herself)

parents are rather conservative (father more than mother)

adventurous

has a very good realtionship to her moher

ambitious moral sense

two circles of friends friends from uni (elitist)

alternative friends (from former school, other occasions,...)

rationality

passion

conflict comes down in the decison if she should flee or not

father isn‘t too happy about this

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naive, optimistic

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her father doesn‘t always take her seriously

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Sketches I already started to sketch out the characters during the winter holidays. I loved to do this.

It was what I would have done during my free time anyway. I drew a bunch of different faces and changed them until I was satisfied. Then I continued on drawing them again and again from different perspectives and with different expressions. As I had already tried to do comics before, I knew in advance that this would be one of the most difficult parts for me. To draw a face several times and to make the character look the same every time, was something I was always struggling with. I managed to do three drawings of each character in different perspectives which I was happy with. It took me a while to create them.

After I had drawn the first one, the front view, I had to keep comparing the following drawings to it and make adjustments until they looked at least very, very alike. To speed up this process I used transparent paper for the following drawings. By tracing the templates onto it and putting it over the new drawings it was easier to check if I had made some mistakes. By using this technique I was able to draw a lot of faces which at least looked quite similar to the templates. I think unfortunately I still have not jet mastered it entirely.

A question I often asked myself was „When is it close enough?“. Which degree of deviation is acceptable? I still have not made up my mind about that issue.

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Last term, when I was doing the briefing for starting points, I planned to use gouache for the images. After sketching with pencil I thought about changing my plans, as drawing it was really fun and I liked the way it looked. I definitely would go faster too. But nevertheless I tried it out with gouache as well. It turned out that it was just as much fun and that I liked the way it looked even a slight bit more. But of course, this style would take much more time during the implementation.

Additionally, I just recently had tried out gouache for the first time and I knew I would improve throughout the process. I would probably end up doing 20 pages, which extremely differ in quality from the first to the last page. But somehow I did not want to make the possibility of improving my skills a reason not to do the style I wanted.

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VI. Sketches I actually wanted to finish the written script before I started sketching, but as the writing process took (and is still taking) me longer than I thought I had to start doing sketches alongside.

Initially I planned to finish the storyboard until the end of the teaching block, which I unfortunately did not even remotely accomplish. It might have been possible, but only by sacrificing quality for quantity, which I think would have been a bad deal.

Storyboard I started to do a storyboard in which I roughly sketched each scene by using as few pictures as possible. After I had done several pages I asked myself how they were actually helping me. I had the scenes in my mind, I knew how everything was supposed to look like, so how did these sketches take me further in my process?

I realized that I was just doing them to be able to show my imaginations to other people. But for the development of the actual graphic novel these sketches were as good as completely irrelevant.

So I stopped.

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Layout I had to do layouts for the pages anyway, so I decided to start doing them instead. They took a lot more effort than the storyboard sketches. I had to decide of how to arrange the panels, from which perspectives to show the characters and how to define the pace of the scenes.

Unfortunately, I did one of my classic mistakes.

I started off too quickly. After I had sketched around 30 pages, I tried out how it felt to read through them. I realized that they seemed rather boring and quite monotone in a way. The feelings

I wanted to convey were not rightly displayed and somehow got lost. I asked Theresa and Johanna for their opinions, and by discussing the problems we came to the conclusion that the panels I drew might be too steady. They only rarely changed in size or arrangement. Additionally, I went over the strongly emotional moments too fast. I only gave them one or two pictures most of the time, which often was not enough. Realizing that I had to redesign all of the work I had already done was quite tough. At that moment I became aware that I probably would not even get close to sketch out all of the story.

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To get inspiration for the redesign I looked at the way other graphic novel artists had used panels before. In retrospect, I ask myself why I did not do that in the first place. I have no idea why, but I am doing this mistake over and over again. Apparently, it is hard for me to get rid of my impatience.

Nevertheless, I was not as frustrated as I could have been. I was just glad that I identified my mistake and found a way to fix it.

From the graphic novels I looked through, the one I liked best was Outcast by Robert Kirkman and Paul Azaceta. The way the panels were used was very dynamic and always supported the impact of the scenes. Compared to this, my layouts looked extremely static. I realized that this might be the problem. All of the panels had a very similar size, and most of the time the characters were shown from similar perspectives. I reviewed the work I had already done. Considering what I became aware of, I decided that I had to redesign at least 90% of it. It turned out to absolutely pay off. When I had redone the first page I already knew that it was worth it. By only iterating it once, the page had already improved massively. This experience made me really euphoric.

I continued on redesigning the pages. When I browsed through them, I saw that the monotony of the first version was gone. The emotions were more visible and way better conveyed. If I would have done a third iteration I might have achieved an even better outcome, but there was no urgent need to do that, and I had to move on with the implementation.

To be able to focus on the important things in every scene, the mood, the message, the feeling, I read through my script again and tried to distil the essence of each scene. Then I added them to the plot chart, to be able to get the information by one glance. I told myself to always keep that essence in mind when sketching a scene, and to make sure the arrangement of the panels, the content of the pictures and the perspective were chosen according to convey it in the best possible way.

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Version 1

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Version 2

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VIi. Implementation As mentioned in „Characters“ I was still struggling with the decision of which technique to use.

Weighing up all arguments against each other did not take me further, so I decided to try out to do the first page once in each style. Comparing them made me realize that I still tended towards the gouache version. It just looked more artistic and it was easier to paint shadows. Additionally, I liked the gloomy mood it created.

I showed both of the pages to friends and family again and asked which one they liked better.

Most of them tended to the gouache version as well. So my decision was made.

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chapter unfinished

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4 pages missing

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Using black gouache, you have to focus on the shadows of the picture, soon I realized that it was just the other way round by using white gouache.

You must only paint the areas which are lighted.

It is a completely different way of painting, and sometimes I forgot about that during the process.

I unintentionally painted white shadows. The result was that the pictures did not look realistic anymore and lost a lot of their effect. I think I might repaint some of them later on.

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I realized that painting the faces was even more difficult than drawing them. If I look at the finished pages now, I realize that the character‘s faces sometimes differ quite strongly. I think I am going to have to repaint some of them.

The idea to use white gouache on black paper came from a girl in my course, Junghwa Seo. In one of the sessions she showed us a drawing she did with white pencil on black paper, which absolutely amazed me.

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VIIi. Cover style From the very beginning on I thought about doing a cover that depicts the forest and the hut in some way. I tried to find a style I liked, but most of my earlier tries somehow seemed too fairy tale like.

Throughout the process of developing the story I changed the season in which it takes place. In my mind the last scene where Jason and Rose approach each other on the road always took place in the spring. I wanted to depict the forest

bright and beautiful, to create a contrast to the heartache and desperation both of the characters feel in that moment. But later on I decided to change that. Now the final scene takes place during autumn, which also changed my colour palette. The wistful and nostalgic feeling of this season rather supports the mood of the scene instead of creating a contrast.

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drafts I did several sketches before I actually started to implement cover versions. The strongest idea I had, and which I finally sticked with, was to depict Rose‘s view when she walks through the door and decides for freedom and against Jason.

This image, combined with the title „unsaid“ works really well, as the title stands between Rose and the door. Like this it implies that if she leaves, she does it without having spoken out what was important and what could have clarified the situation. That is exactly what the title is supposed to convey, and like this its meaning gets supported by the image as well. So I am really happy with the final cover.

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For the forest outside of the door frame I tried out different stages of abstraction. I did some imagery research first, which inspired me to paint the forest in a very abstract way. But by trying out the different versions I realized that it looked better with a more concrete version. It took me a while and several iterations until I was happy with how it looked.

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lettering I created the lettering for the cover and for the chapter intros with gouache as well. I tried out different ways, iterated the ones I liked best over and over again until I had some versions I particularly liked and gave them the last fine tuning in photoshop.

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Ix. Conclusion

I think people are always the most insecure about the things that mean the most to them. I realized that I am less afraid of people disliking my illustrations than of people disliking my stories. That is why, in contrast to my stories, I never really had problems to show my illustrations to other people. I felt like sharing my stories would make me extremely vulnerable.

The idea of becoming a graphic novel artist always seemed like an unrealistic dream. As an author of any kind you have to establish a reputation to actually earn money from what you are doing. I never was confident that I would be able to do that. And to be honest, I am still worried about that. But doing this project made me so happy that now I am determined to continue on doing stories, in whatever form this might be.

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Earlier in my life when I did not dare to talk about the stories I thought of, I often asked myself if it was even possible that something that truly amazed me ends up being average and mostly disliked by other people? I was always afraid that the answer could be yes. Because if so, what would that say about me as a person? I closely examined the reasons for my passion for stories. I was afraid to recognize that they were superficial. But this did not happen. Instead, I realized that I am driven by a deep fascination about feelings, especially love. By sharing my stories I do not only give other people the opportunity to judge my story, but also to judge what shapes my personality. And that really was quite tough.

I knew that I would love to do that project and that once I had started it I could not change it halfway though the teaching block. So it was the perfect chance to finally do what I wanted and to overcome my fear. In some situations I hated myself for that decision. For example, in the starting point session when I had to present my idea in front of the whole group for the first time. I was extremely nervous and wished I had prepared a different project. But in retrospect, I think it is one of the best decisions I have ever made.

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To summarize everything I have learnt from this project is almost impossible. It was an amazing experience. I rediscovered my passion for stories and I learned so incredibly much. About my field of practice as well as about me as a person.

II. creative futures to kill a mocking bird

I. Research Choice I was lucky to get my first choice for the creative futures project. I strongly considered taking the Hasbro briefing as a first choice as well, because although I am not that much of a game fan, I have always loved it if the game material was nicely illustrated. It would have been something completely new for me to create and design a game.

But I knew that I had a very demanding Capstone Project which was priority number one for me, so I decided to go for the book cover. A medium I am a little more familiar with.

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When I read the description of the books I could choose from, I immediately decided for To Kill a Mocking Bird. No offence to In Cold Blood, which I have not read, but I think spending two months thinking about a murder would have depressed me. I bought the audio book of To Kill a Mocking Bird, because unfortunately, I am quite a slow reader.

The first two to three sessions were about research. When I remember them now they somehow merge in my head. We were supposed to do research about the historical context of our book, about the market place, previous covers, other covers from that time, current cover trends, typography, etc.

secondary research At the beginning I had some problems with secondary research for this project. Last term I have learnt that it is important to approach the research process in a way that is interesting for yourself. Like this, it is more likely that you find something you can and also want to work with. But for some reason I forgot about that and fell back into my old patterns. I did most of the research in the same way I did it within my time at school.

I gathered information just to have something to show in the session. So it was not a big surprise that there were no mind blowing ideas coming up by that time.

This dissatisfaction somehow continued. I do not exactly know why, but I did not really feel happy with most of the work I produced within the first few sessions. Neither with my research results nor with my sketches. The most plausible explanation for this is that taking part in a competition mostly stresses me. I was constantly worried that my ideas were not good enough. Additionally, I kept comparing myself to the other students, which sometimes was quite frustrating. I do not think that my ideas were bad, but what was missing was a punchline or a visual twist. Some of the book covers I saw in the sessions really impressed me. They were not just visually appealing but also very well thought through and kind of triggered an aha-experience in the viewer. I think that this was something my sketches were missing and I was worried that only a strong image alone would not be enough. In addition, I was really busy with my Capstone Project as well and I had to force myself to work on the book cover. Of course, this did not make it easier to develop clever ideas.

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II. Themes As a next step in our process we were asked to identify four themes within our book and to develop ideas, to look for inspiring imagery and to produce sketches. Having read (or listened to) the book was really essential for this part. I already had some initial ideas, but I did some online research about interpretations and symbols within the book as well. In the end I decided for the themes 1. racism, 2. court of justice, 3. childhood/good and evil and 4. Mr. Robinson and Mayella. At first I considered the fourth one as the best. I thought that Mr. Robinsons and Mayellas story was not

given sufficient consideration in the huge range of the covers that already existed. The conflict between those two was what actually caused the whole plot. But in the end, I decided against it. I realized that although their conflict might be a key event in the story, depicting it does not really give an idea of the book itself, which is mainly about Scout‘s life and the influences that these events have on her. Considering that I eventually decided to focus on my third theme, Childhood/ Good and Evil.

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Process It really is quite hard for me to report my process in detail because everything that happened during the research phase is rather blurry in my mind. I never felt that there was a clear direction in which I wanted to go. I tried out a lot of things, produced sketches and continued on doing secondary research, but somehow most of this did not lead anywhere. In the end, I decided to focus on the execution of two of my best drafts. That was the point from which on I started to relax and to actually enjoy working on the project. I think I am better in the execution of illustrations that in conceptual thinking. At least it seemed like that for this project. When I was doing my Capstone project I did not have these problems at all. It is hard to tell where it comes from. Of course, my Capstone project is personally more important to me.

I am aware that I am walking on thin ice by saying that, but maybe another reason why it was hard for me to get into the topic was that To kill a mocking bird did not amaze me that much. Of course it is a good book. It is nicely written and interesting to listen to it. But it did not blow my mind, the way most of the descriptions I read beforehand promised it would. I hope I am not being ignorant right now, but I did not really feel like the book gave me any new realizations. I assume that the statements made in the book were quite revolutionary in the 1960ies, but for me to hear that black and white people have to be treated equally was nothing new.

By stating things like that I am always a little bit afraid of saying something stupid. Especially when it is about such a successful book. My opinion might as well come from a lack of knowledge on my behalf. But anyway, that is how I felt about it. I am talking about is only a matter of personal taste. In addition, what was no less important, there were already so unbelievably many covers for it. It was very hard to come up with something new.

to continue on elaborating both of them to some extend and to then decide which one has more potential.

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Those two were the ideas I decided to focus on.

Actually, we were supposed to decide for only one idea to keep working on. But I could not choose between them. My tutor recommended

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Typo bird and childrens eyes

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III. Iteration

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Typo bird The first draft was just a trial to see if the concept works. The text I used for the wings is from the scene in the book where the most famous quote from Atticus occurs. „Shoot all the bluejays you want if you can hit ‚em. But remember it‘s a sin to kill a mockingbird.“ (Lee, 1960)

As the quote contains the actual title of the book I tried to highlight it in blue and thereby make the title a part of the cover image. But I discarded the idea after the following session, because it seemed to be too hard to recognize. Instead, I added the title and the author‘s name separately.

I do not know why I did not try it out another time.

Maybe I just wanted to carry on more quickly and to follow the feedback I received, but by now I think it would have been worth to examine the reasons for it being hard to recognize and to try it at least one more time.

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There already was a visible improvement by doing only one iteration. When I first tried to put the image and the given text together in InDesign I immediately realized that I had to leave some

space for the text on the back side. Putting a white box over the illustration and fill it with text, did not look nice at all. The third version in which I left free space for the text, it looked 10 times better.

To Kill A MocKing Bird

A lawyer‘s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee‘s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl.

Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties. The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man‘s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

Harper Lee

‚Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‚em, but remember it‘s a sin to kill a mockingbird.‘

‚Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable.‘

Truman Capote

To Kill a MocKing Bird

arrow books

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90000

‚Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentichumour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable.‘

Truman Capote

To Kill a Mocking Bird

arrow books I S B N 978-0-099-46673-4

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780099 466734

To kill a mocking bird

A lawyer‘s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee‘s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.

The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man‘s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

Harper Lee

‚Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‚em, but remember it‘s a sin to kill a mockingbird.‘

£7.99

Harper Lee

ebook available

780099 466734

90000

ebook available

Harper Lee

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I S B N 978-0-099-46673-4

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Paper cut The iterative process for this version was immense.

By the end of it, I could barely stand to look at the scalpel anymore.

Throughout the process of sketching and looking for imagery, I came across the technique of paper cut. It immediately aroused my interest. Firstly, because it just looked amazing. and I never had done a paper cut before and I wanted to take the opportunity to extend my skills. Secondly, becau-

se there are a lot of possibilities to create catchy images with the combination of black and white and thirdly, because the conflict of the book is based on racial segregation between mainly black and white people. So it was not far-fetched to use these colours symbolically.

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After that session I bought two scalpels of different size. Now that I had the right tools, the quality remained a matter of iteration. To get familiar with my new tools I did dome test cuts. By doing that I had the idea of trying to do an inverted version of the image as well.

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For my first attempt I used a nail scissors. It looked quite rough and not really sophisticated, if I compare them to my later versions, but still most of my fellow students seemed to like and even prefer them over the typo bird. That and my enthusiasm for the new technique were the reasons I decided for it.

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I bought coloured paper and took photos of different combinations. First, I tried to scan it, but through that the whole shadow effect was lost.

When I was editing the photos in photoshop I started to play around with it and combined the paper cut image with photos of different textures. I did that just for fun and did not expect much. But I was absolutely amazed of how it looked. I did loads of versions because it was so much fun.

The feather version was my absolute favourite.

But when I showed the different drafts in the session, most of my peers liked the single-coloured versions better. The feathers weakened the shadow effect of the paper cut. That frustrated me a little bit. I was determined to find a way to stick with the feathers but still keep that depth of field at the same time.

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instead, but somehow I did not like this idea that much either. I felt like this would limit me. I would be unable to not make adjustments myself and had to entirely rely on the photo. Additionally, I still would have had the problem with the missing shadow. So I reluctantly discarded the idea of the feather image.

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I wanted to buy feathers and to try to photograph them myself. Maybe I would be able to find a way to somehow solve the problem through this. To find suitable feathers online was easy. But all of them were real feathers from geese or peacocks etc. I did not feel well buying them, considering that I did not know how they treated the animals. I looked for synthetic feathers, but the only feathers, which were explicitly synthetic were too fussy and thus unsuitable to create an image like I imagined it. I also thought about buying a stock photo of feathers

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Final versions I did all of the previous paper cuts in original size, but for the final version I used A3 paper. This way it was easier to work out the details and to cut in clean lines.

To find a font that matched the images was a real fight. The title was built into the image anyway, but I needed a suitable font for the spine and the back. My tutor advised me to try to find a font that kind of blended into the image and had the same, or at least a similar energy. Although I tried dozens of fonts I just did not find one which matched the images 100%. I thought about creating the typography for the spine by cutting out the letter as well, but I only had some days left until the hand in and I was afraid that I would not manage to finish it within that time. In the end I decided for a font which I in my opinion at least worked. It was not perfect but, it worked.

I know that does not sound very ambitious, but at that moment I was already quite desperate and needed to get finished. I had very much to do for my capstone project as well and I rather wanted to spend more time on that than on the book cover.

Retrospectively spoken I can not really say that I regret that decision, but I think, considering how much effort I already had put into the book cover, I could have done that last bit as well to improve the final version.

A lawyer‘s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee‘s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.

The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man‘s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

Truman CapoTe

To KiLL a moCKing Bird

‚Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable.‘

Harper Lee

‚Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it‘s a sin to kill a mockingbird.‘

Harper Lee

core creative futures

Truman Capote

TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD

‚Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable.‘

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A lawyer‘s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee‘s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.

The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man‘s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

Harper Lee

‚Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it‘s a sin to kill a mockingbird.‘

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iV. Final Cover hand in In the end, I had a problem to decide which one of the final covers to hand in. First, I asked my tutor about it, who recommended to go for the outline version, but to try out how it looks to make the outlines yellow and the background paper black.

So I tried it out, but the result did not really convince me. In my opinion the shadows lost their effect on the dark paper. I asked more people which version they preferred, the yellow and black one or the inverted one. Unfortunately, this survey did not really help me decide, because both of the versions had the same amounts of votes. So although I asked around 10 people about it, in the end, I had to decide myself which one to hand

in. Which really was quite hard. Finally, I decided for inverted one, because I thought it looked more balanced than the other one and I liked the cut out typography as well.

I felt horrible after I handed it in. I was extremely worried that I had made the wrong decision. I am just bad with competitions. I cannot stand the pressure I put on myself in these situations.

A lawyer‘s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee‘s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.

The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man‘s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

Truman CapoTe

To KiLL a moCKing Bird

‚Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable.‘

Harper Lee

‚Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it‘s a sin to kill a mockingbird.‘

Harper Lee

Harper Lee

core creative futures

Truman CapoTe

To KiLL a moCKing Bird

‚Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable.‘

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A lawyer‘s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee‘s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.

The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man‘s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

Harper Lee

‚Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it‘s a sin to kill a mockingbird.‘

A lawyer‘s advice to his children as he defends the real mockingbird of Harper Lee‘s classic novel – a black man charged with the rape of a white girl. Through the young eyes of Scout and Jem Finch, Harper Lee explores with exuberant humour the irrationality of adult attitudes to race and class in the Deep South of the thirties.

The conscience of a town steeped in prejudice, violence and hypocrisy is pricked by the stamina of one man‘s struggle for justice. But the weight of history will only tolerate so much.

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Truman CapoTe

To KiLL a moCKing Bird

‚Someone rare has written this very fine novel, a writer with the liveliest sense of life and the warmest, most authentic humour. A touching book; and so funny, so likeable.‘

Harper Lee

‚Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ’em, but remember it‘s a sin to kill a mockingbird.‘

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Harper Lee

Apparently, my capstone project occupied me that much that it was hard for me to concentrate on something else alongside. On one hand that shows that I am really committed to my passion, which is good. But on the other hand, I should be able to handle at least two projects at the same time. I thought about this and came to the conclusion that handling two projects at a time was not the problem. It was a matter of priorities. Maybe I could have achieved an even better outcome for this project, but I had set my priorities for this term. And considering that I think I did my best.

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Despite all the problems I had, I am quite happy with my final outcome. It was quite difficult for me to identify what went wrong during the process.

I guess I was just thinking about my Capstone project most of the time. It is not like I was not motivated or ambitious for the book cover, I worked hard for it as well, but while I was doing that I constantly had my Capstone project somewhere in my mind. Maybe that was why it was so hard for me to fully focus on the book cover. Additionally, because of the competition I had even higher expectations to myself, which I could not entirely fulfill due to my missing concentration.

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v. Conclusion

III. Essay What the GDCP has done for me

I. Manifesto

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Session In one of the core sessions we talked about design manifestos. That was something I never really consciously thought about before. To get into the topic we were put together in small groups to develop a design manifesto as a team.

At first I was a little sceptical. Teamwork has always been rather difficult for me. On one hand, I have difficulties to accept it if something does not go the way I would prefer it, on the other hand, I feel bad if I start to take over the leading part because I am afraid of seeming like a knowit-all. Whenever I have to work in a team I am struggling with those two issues, and I am hardly ever satisfied with the work that gets produced. I already discovered this when we were doing the exhibition project last term.

This time the collaboration worked surprisingly well. I cannot tell exactly what it was. Maybe me and my team members just had similar ideas. It was easy to communicate and negotiate our ideas, despite the occasional language barrier.

In the end we agreed on four main points with subcategories for our design manifesto.

By comparing the way we worked together in this group to the way we did in the group I was in last term, I realized that last time we were just communicating too less. We were not actually working together, instead we did our parts separately and put them together in a presentation at the end. But this time we did. It might also be because we had similar ideas and it was a smaller project and thus easier to make compromises. I realized that compromises are an essential part of collaboration. Maybe that is why I was not that keen on working together with my team members last term. I did not want to make compromises and apparently I thought I could avoid it by doing my part alone. I think this is something I will have to continue to work on. Although I am starting to identify the reasons for my problems in group projects, it will take a while to put that awareness into practice.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcqZf5CG_3s&t=6s 46 Sound by www.orangefreesounds.com

Manifesto Before I started to do my manifesto I looked for inspiration online and reviewed the notes I had taken during the session. I found some helpful pages, and manifestos that included points I agreed on and which I added to the ones I already had.

I did not agree to all of them. For example, in my opinion „good design is as little design as possible“ (Rams, n.d.) sounds a little too inflexible for my opinion. I only agree to some extend. Simplicity and reasonability always have to be considered, but I think to say using as little design as possible is an essential rule, goes too far. I would say „good design is as little design as necessary“.

This way it suggests to leave out everything that is redundant rather than to reduce as much as possible just for the sake of reducing. But it is also possible that I just took that point too literally.

I decided to make my manifesto a second part to the animation I had done last term for „my creative process“. I used the same technique, but different music and pink instead of turquoise.

Additionally, I though about the technique more closely and looked for ways to make the best out of the medium I was working in. For example, I used different brushes and used other photoshop tools to make the animation more interesting.

It was interesting to actually ask myself about what the most important design rules are for me. Some things were obvious, like trying to use mainly sustainable materials and not to buy any products which animals have suffered for. I included some of the things I learned throughout the GDCP as well, like for example, challenge yourself. And some of the statements were inspired by my peers, like „know the rules to break the rules.

I could have added more points than which there are in my animation, but I wanted to keep it rather short and concise.

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II. Essay

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I discovered a lot new things throughout the GDCP, but what fundamentally fascinates me stayed the same. As I started to do a graphic novel in the second teaching block, my passion for stories got reinforced. My future ambition is to create and tell my own stories.

OLD MINDSET If I look back at the way I have used to work before I entered the GDCP it occurs to me as if I have had a lot of blockades. Which of course I did not perceive as such at that time.

Research was something I did because my teachers expected it from me, not because I honestly believed that it would change or improve my projects. When I was about to start a project I wanted to start doing the visual implementation straight away as soon as I had the first idea. I hated the thought of „holding myself back“ by doing research on the topic first. Additionally, I subconsciously was afraid that I would have to change or rethink my plans because of what was revealed during the research process. I was too consumed by my initial ideas to even consider that they could gain from feedback or research.

By now I realize that through this behaviour, which resulted from a mixture of ignorance, laziness and a lack of confidence, I unintentionally prevented my work to improve.

RETHINKING The first project I did on GDCP was „target audience“. We were instructed to come up with three ideas for this project. At the beginning, this really annoyed me. When I had the first idea I automatically thought that it was the best idea I could possibly come up with for this brief. I did not want to „waste“ time on thinking of two more concepts. But in the end it turned out that my last ideas were always my best ones. I chose my third idea for every project I did during the first module.

The simple fact that I had to challenge myself and to think about the task longer made me come up with two other ideas which both were better than my first one. That was the first step in improving my approach to creative practice and extending my possibilities.

After this „awakening“, I got more and more ambitious. I stopped excluding things. I discovered that simply trying out ideas can take your further.

Sometimes failing lead me to other ideas which I would not have had without trying out the other one before. This did not only improve my way of working, it also made it much more fun.

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PM6000 Target audience

APPLYING Stories are what moves my heart. I never had enough courage to show my attempts of creating stories to other people. The fear of getting judged or ridiculed always kept me from it. Not rarely I even postponed to start writing or drawing and let the story remain an idea. If I do not start there is no way to mess it up. Additionally, this way I was save from the feedback I was so afraid of.

But of course, this was not satisfying at all.

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„It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.“ (Rowling, 2008) By deciding to make a graphic novel as my capstone project, I forced myself to overcome that fear. It took me a lot of self-conquest at the beginning, but it absolutely paid off.

During the second teaching block, I realized that feedback can be just as valuable as a solid base of research. The story I created gained so much from the different opinions of the people I asked about it. I think without the feedback I received, my story would not be half as good as it is now.

Nevertheless, it sometimes was hard to actually take the feedback I got into consideration. Firstly, because it sometimes was against an idea I personally liked. Secondly, because reconsidering something could mean a lot of additional work.

Apparently this is something a lot of writers are struggling with.

„The author clings to his favorite scenes, twisting a new telling through them in hopes of finding a story that works.“ McKee (1997) But that is exactly the problem I had before I entered the GDCP. A lack of distance to my initial imaginations and the unwillingness to take the effort to make changes. But of course not everything somebody else suggests must be the right way to do it. Through the process of writing the plot for my graphic novel I learned to examine the reasons for my occasional reluctance to make modifications. Sometimes it came from a rather unreasonable unwillingness to change what I already compiled, sometimes this reluctance told me that certain changes would be too much and would make my story something different but what I wanted it to be. And by being able to distinguish between these cases I was able to make reasonable adjustments.

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FUTURE AMBITIONS I am a person who is mostly led by feelings. As I already stated in my submission for the PM6000 Module:

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„Feelings and the way they make people act and think have always fascinated me. The more experiences and different feelings I go through in my life the more I am fascinated by them.“ (Marka, n.d) I want to put my personal experience into stories.

I want to make people feel with and hope for the characters I create. I want them to identify with them and to love, understand and forgive them.

For being able to achieve this I am keen to learn more about stories and how to tell them as well as about psychology. I want to improve my skills in writing dialogues and creating fascinating characters. I am planning to look for inspiration by reading more graphic novels and to think of new ways of depicting a story in a visually appealing way. And last but not least, I want to inform myself about how other graphic novel artists became known and what makes them successful.

CONCLUSION As already stated in the intro paragraph, my passion did not change throughout the GDCP, but my attitude towards it did, immensely. During the first term I discovered new ways of approaching a project. In the second term I applied this knowledge to the process of creating and elaborating the story for my graphic novel. Additionally, I forced myself to overcome my fear of showing my story to other people and to stand their feedback.

These things did not only change me as a designer, but as a person as well. Before I entered the GDCP I did not expect that there was so much more to learn. About myself and about creative practice in general. Just as little as I knew what I still had to learn before the GDCP do I know now about what I am going to learn in the future. But the difference between then and now is that now I know that there is going to be more.

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