58. Hanahaki Book

There were a few difficulties when trying to make the book look old and tattered. 

Coffee staining the book caused the covers to disintegrate, so I tried to tape them back, but you could see the tape and it didn't look old anymore, but rather broken. 

The book with the tape (red arrow), connecting the covers to the pages.

I decided to completely remove the covers and instead have it only be the pages of the book. 

When trying to burn the pages, it wouldn't burn with the wood burner tool and using fire went too fast for comfort. I didn't burn any pages. The book did lose a bit of its worn out feeling, but it has the definition and that's the most important thing. 

Since I couldn't burn the pages, I had the idea to have the pages be ripped and V slowly finds pages and connects them together. I feel if I had more time/footage to intercut with, this idea would work. The only issue would be how much time I had and I rather the bathroom scene not be stretched so much to the point that's what people most remember, due to how long it was.

The idea of the pages being ripped and V having to connect them back to get the definition.

The cover of the book is a regular flower encircling a pair of lungs, to give a visual on what happens to someone with the disease. If someone doesn't understand what was said in the voiceover, then they should understand the disease a little bit with the visual.

Version one of the cover page.

Version two of the cover page. A branch of flowers creating the silhouette of lungs. 

The third version of the cover. Two large flowers create the silhouette of lungs and the roots grow out of the mouth. 

The cover page (first version)

As for the definition, cures and causes, I tried to give as much information as I could without giving too much away. That gives the audience a relative idea on the disease, but not everything. The film will play out most of the idea.

For the 'font' of the words written, I wanted it to be more old/cursive/hard to read, but I didn't have the time to do it, plus if people wanted to read the book while it was on scene, that gave people a chance to understand what was written. 

After the information is given to the viewers, there is nothing else about the disease in the book; all the pages are blank. There isn't much more information about the disease itself, but V will quickly flip through the pages hoping for more information, which would lead the audience to believe there is more to the disease, but there is nothing more. 

The definition page in book.

The cures page of the page.

The extra information about the disease page. 

I debated on having the disease play out (having it kill V, but nothing was said about it in the book/that information was ripped out). Instead I thought about still being visual on screen for people to read, but not verbally said. If some people aren't paying attention/can't read that fast it would be a surprise to them, however, the information is still there leading to foreshadowing about what will happen to V.