11. Ideas to Incorporate the Definition of the Hanahaki Disease

The Hanahaki Disease trope is quite niche and I feel like the audience will need a bit of context to understand what is happening overall. 

I feel that adding a voice over to the beginning, and throughout the film gives needed context so the audience isn't 100% confused. It wouldn't be like "The Hanahaki Disease is when one person throws up flowers... unrequited love...", that would be too obvious and give away everything, along with trying to keep the audience surprised for the ending. It would be more foreshadowing what will happen to the Victim, rather than a direct definition. 

Another idea to completely confuse the audience would be to have no voice over at all in the beginning, but only at the end. I see it with the Victim leaving a letter for the Love Interest, where it completely goes over what the disease is, how she got it and the reason to why she never admitted. This would tie the entire story together and keep the viewers in the dark for the film. The only downside I see to this idea is that it would have to be relatively long and spoken at a slow pace (to show hesitation and nervousness from the Victim, like she isn't sure she shouldn't admit her feelings) so I'll have to dedicate a lot of time just for that letter; as well as, finding a visual to put for the voice over. At that point the Victim would be dead so it could be of the dead body (although I may lack people for those camera angles) or going through flashbacks of the two characters together. 

As for the voice over idea overall, it came from the movie "Liz and the Blue Bird". Throughout this movie, it alternated from a story book and the actual movie. The story book gave more context about how the characters were feeling in the actual movie. It's not a voice over, but it's similar to what I would attempt to do to give context on the Hanahaki Disease. 

This clip is a direct example of the foreshadowing and how the character feels about her relationship with her friend, connecting the two stories together.

Using the video I researched when I started researching romance short films, it also involved a voice over, similar to what was going to happen to the characters. 

https://youtu.be/PfNBaD4f3WI?si=qnnwEe7yAp4D0Lmq (link to the video)

The two create a connection between the stories and the real movie, bringing foreshadowing and context together all at once.