Research Into Specific Areas

Whilst writing our treatment I have been carrying out a lot of research along the way in order to make sure that what is being written is accurate and to make sure that any symbols which are being included, are being used for the right reasons.

The first thing I researched was names. This is because we wanted our character's names to be a symbol and represent something about the character. I found a baby name site via Google and used this to look at some names, I then found a secone website which had names commonly used by Catholics and then matched up some names. Finally I found a site which gave me the meaning of the name. It was this which helped us to decide whether or not we used the name. The meanings and the names of our characters are:

• Samantha - Listener of God
• Daniel - God Is My Judge
• Anthony - Worthy of Praise
• Ray - Wise Protector

The next thing which I wanted to research was the symbols which can be carried by Catholics in order for them to show their faith. To do this I asked my form tutor because she is an RE teacher; she advised me to make sure that my characters are first of all dressed in a way which would be seen as acceptable as Catholics believe that they should keep theirselves covered to a certain extent. She then told me that rosary beads and a crucifix can be worn as a physical symbol to show their faith. I wanted to know why a crucifix is so important and a cross is not really enough, so I once again went to Google to find this out. I found that a crucifix is worn because it has Jesus on the cross, which reminds Catholics of the suffering that he went through in order to save others.

I also researched what happens when a Catholic goes to confession, to do this I typed my question into Google and found an answer on Yahoo, I found that the answer helped me to better understand what would happen, the bit which I found most useful was the inclusion of the prayer which is said. I have copied and pasted it below:

My God,
I am sorry for my sins with all my heart.
In choosing to do wrong
And failing to do good,
I have sinned against you
whom I should love above all things.
I firmly intend, with your help,
to do penance,
to sin no more,
and to avoid whatever leads me to sin.
Amen.

The prayer helped to come up with a title for our film. 'To Sin No More' felt like a good choice because it has meaning and our film is about a woman who regains her faith.

As pregnancy and abortion feature in our film, I felt that this should be researched, particularly because this part was going to be included in the flashback. I researched 'the history of the pregnancy test' on Google to find out what they were like, or even if they existed during the 1970's because if they didn't, we would need to show this in our film via a different symbol. I found a very useful website, which can be found here: http://history.nih.gov/exhibits/thinblueline/timeline.html.

I also decided to look at when abortion was legalised in the UK, I found on Google that this was 1967, so we were ok to include this in our film if we decided that Daniel, the child conceived as a result of rape, was actually aborted. Next, I looked at whether a Catholic would be forgiven for aborting their child: this is a bit of a grey area as it depends on how religious the person and their family is. However, I feel that in our film, if the young girl, Samantha, who is pregnant is the only one who knows about it then the only person who needs to forgive her, is herself, and of course God, but this could be another reason for her losing her faith.

Finally, the 1970's flashback is something which I have also looked into briefly, for descriptive purposes I have looked at the styles and trends of the 70's. This caused me to come across certain hairstyles such as that of Farrah Fawcett, I think that stereotypical things like this hairstyle and fashion trends will guide the viewer straight into the idea that the film is set in the 1970's.