Our guiding questions for our project were around whose perspective we were portraying the narrative and why, whom it benefits, how it respectfully calls upon Evelyn’s story and how the viewers (who could also be seen as voyeurs) will perceive the storytelling modes we chose to engage with.
As a group we decided to create the story based on Evelyn’s perspective as it is the most important to represent. No one has ever seen the story from her point of view as they have only observed her as the subject of the renowend "Most Beautiful Suicide".
Our main concern and consequently our research guiding question was how to represent mental health on screen in the 1940s. Many of us have seen many films that confront this topic in various ways, but we wanted to make sure we expressed it correctly in a 10-minute period piece.
The way we did so was through the lens of voyeurism. We read many articles and completed research on voyeurism and how to represent it in film, furthermore we decided to include the topic in scenes such as the television scene (Evelyn looking at memories from her past), the staircase scene and the dinner party scene, where everyone watches the television apart from Evelyn, who is very much closed off in her own thoughts.
We made sure to include a lot of dramatic tension in the scene at the end of the short film where the mix of music, heavy breathing and fast-paced shots express her feelings and allowed the viewer to be as involved as they could in her feelings and thoughts.
2. Suicides have been represented vastly in cinema, meaning that there is a lot of guidance for us to follow when facing such a difficult topic. We were also focusing on what Evelyn’s wishes were, so to not be seen by anyone and to dispose of her body. After careful reflection, we concluded that Evelyn’s picture is a photography icon worldwide and is being recreated in many ways by modern artists, but the thought of telling her story for the first time from her perspective was an important element of our filmmaking process.
The following books allowed us to shift our perspective on the final suicide film. Originally our aim was to recreate elements of the suicide with close-ups of her body, just as can be seen in the picture, but we then decided that the portrayal of her body is not necessary as goes against her wishes, meaning it consiquently eliminates the meaning around the creation of our short-film.
Our perspective on voyeurism also changed throughout the reading. We originally had the idea to have a personification of death as a character in the elevator scene with Evelyn. After careful thought and many discussions - some with our supervisor, we realised it did not serve the purpose of our film as it would just confuse viewers and take away from her story. We wanted Evelyn to be the main focus of the film.
1. ‘Cultural Scripts: Analysis of Suicide Location in Film, 1900–2013’. 2013. Sociological Focus <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00380237.2017.1312980>
2. Hawthorn, Jeremy. 1960. Morality, voyeurism, and ‘point of view’: Michael Powell’s Peeping Tom (NTNU (Norwegian University of Science and Technology))
3. Saddington, John. 2010. The Representation of Suicide in the Cinema <https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/14223/1/550372.pdf>
4. SuicideCleanup.com. (2022) ‘Evelyn McHale: The Most Beautiful Suicide - SuicideCleanup.com’, SuicideCleanup.com <https://www.suicidecleanup.com/evelyn-mchale-beautiful-suicide/>
3. Some of the films and models of practice we analysed at the beginning of the year were the following:
Phone booth (2002)
Watcher (2022)
One hour photo (2002)
Truman show (1998)
The Conversation (1974)
Disturbia (2007)
Blow Out (1981)
When watching The Truman Show (1998), twe were inspired to create the scene after Evelyn’s suicide, where the public is looking down on her body intently. We subequently follow the photographer - the main representative of the voyeurs, who leans in and takes a picture whilst everyone is around watching.
Although Truman, a character who is being watched and filmed for the entertainment of others, manages to escape from the voyeurs, Evelyn does not have the chance to do so, as the picture is still being circulated against her will.
The money we spent was mostly needed for our main filming location at Clapper's farm in Reading. The location looked like a 1940s house and did not have any electronics in site, making it the perfect location for the house scenes. This meant that we could not film the elevator scene in London as it was too expensive. Thankfully, this motivated us to find areas nearby. We came across the Roseate Hotel in Reading, where the hotel manager allowed us to film there for one hour free of charge. We loved the location and it fit our film's style perfectly.
For the stock footage, after speaking with our supervisor, we decided to download videos that the university provided us with for free. We had very available actors who came to reading to act in our film such as Evelyn's mother's lookalike and Evelyn's younger self (both seen in the full version of the film). As they came from so far away, we decided to offer breakfast at the cafe location we were filming in.
In conclusion, counting the money we spent and keeping everything on track definitely allowed me to develop my organisational skills.
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