About Project
Happy and soft music plays as 5 pink balloons float into a living room. The room is decorated with decorations, ribbons, etc. The window in the back right of the room is shut, and curtains are drawn. in preparation for a party to celebrate a baby girl soon to be born.
A large family photo is in the centre of the scene with the words ‘My Family’ above the four characters in the film in the colours they wear throughout it. Noah (the protagonist), His Mother, His father and his nephew’.
The camera pans in on the balloons and we hear them pop one by one.
The title of the film, ‘Cause and Effect;’ is displayed on the centre balloon.
The final balloon pops revealing a cut to an external woodland scene including a house in the distance. At the front right of the scene is a large tree, a rope and a tyre. The music transitions to a minor key.
The title fades out and the camera pans to the rope, shortly after Noah, the protagonist walks in front of the tree. He has a piece of paper in his hand.
Noah raises the piece of paper, and as he does the scene behind him distorts and warps unsettlingly. As he takes back his hood revealing more of his head, the sound of hooves is heard quietly.
He raises the paper and the camera angle cuts to his POV, the paper is an ultrasound.
It is revealed that the expected baby girl has died, as the baby fades from the ultrasound. A tear drops onto the picture. All music stops.
The music starts again, still in a minor key as the baby’s father, Noah lifts his hand and is shown wiping a tear from his eye. He then notices the tree and looks up.
The camera pans up the tree as he contemplates suicide.
The music takes on a staccato rhythm as a zoetrope fades in a cold blue colour, representing his mental health and suicidal thoughts going around and around. The zoetrope morphs into the day the ’25/01/2022’, spins and stops on the ‘26/01/2022’, Then fades into a man pushing a swing on the zoetrope.
The music transitions to a smoother rhythm as the scene merges into a different style of animation representative of his thoughts as Noah contemplates how the world will be without him the day after commits suicide.
Noah fades out of the scene and his nephew has no one to push him.
‘Grief’ – is conveyed as a purple light, leaves the nephew and flies off. It emerges again and enters a house.
Noah’s mother is rocking in her chair. The Grief disappears into the back of the television. There is an explosion from the TV as his mother hears the news, it blows her out of her chair and blows a hole in her. Metaphorically representing the part of her that is now missing. The scene darkens as the curtains close.
She enters the hallway where Noah’s father is fixing something to the wall. An ominous base note is played in time with the father’s hammering.
As the grief reaches him he falls to his knees, the decoration he was fixing to the wall smashes on the floor and the camera pans in on his mind, the zoetrope starts to turn implying the start of the father’s mental health struggles. The horse’s hooves are heard again.
The zoetrope spins again, only now in a warm orange colour, the horses fade out and the 26/01/2022 date, before returning to the 25/01/22 illustrating that the mind returns to thoughts of the present day. The hooves stop as Noah gains clarity.
As the film returns to reality, a down shot of Noah looking up at the tree is shown, the wind is howling and it has started thundering and lightning. The music fades out, creating suspense. 5 seconds of black screen.
a rope has been fastened on a branch it raises and drops.
5 seconds of black is shown.
The camera pans down the house, the music is now in a major key.
5 seconds of black screen once again.
Noah approaches the house and opens the door, though it is only his shoulder, clothing and hand shown.
He walks down the Hallway which is decorated with pictures of people and stops at a mirror, which is the same colour as the decoration his father was fixing to the wall in the thought sequence, before looking at himself in it. He adjusts it, metaphorically representing that the only thing he can change is himself and the way he looks at things.
He walks into an undecorated living room, his mother is rocking away in her rocking chair, and the window is now open. As he touches his mother’s hand to comfort her, the shot transitions to the outside once again.
Revealing the twist that Noah chose to fix the rope swing to the tree rather than kill himself.
The storm has passed and his nephew is swinging on the tyre as the music returns to the mood at the beginning of the film, representing the beginning of a new, happy chapter.
A quote from Paddy Pimblett is shown, about getting help rather than committing suicide.
Fade to black.
Director : Tommy McGician
