Crime Drama: Distortion

Develop ideas through research and informed investigations that demonstrate analytical and critical understanding. Explore and select appropriate techniques, media, materials and processes, refining and recording ideas and observations as the visual work develops. The question below was used as a starting point:

8 Detective story
The popularity of detective stories can be seen in television crime dramas such as ‘The Bridge’ and in successful stage plays such as ‘The Mousetrap’. Investigate relevant contextual material and produce graphics for a book or a film or for a stage production of a detective story. You might like to refer to the illustrations of Sidney Paget, John A Coughlin and Paul Hogarth, or examples of theatre posters by Frank ‘Fraver’ Verlizzo, or film title sequences by Saul Bass.
NEA task (A-level): Graphic communication: Component 2 NEA - externally set assignment June 2017

The detective story designed graphics for was base around the disappearance of a young girl. The story would start at with a scene of a body in the woods but the facial features and general appearance of the victim would be unclear and the location unclear as only small sections are shown such as a hand, eye, leg, ect. It will then jump backwards to the discovery of girls initial disappearance. The story line would jump around on the time line until the separate events come together to reveal where, who, and how the girl was abducted and who was murdered. The TV drama will include the girls life over the 17 years from her abduction to the murder as well as the investigation and search for her. The main focus will be on the detective and the girl. The detective searching for the girl, despite everyone's doubts determined is to find her. He is a impulsive, strong willed and unconventional character who is easily perceived as ‘a little crazy’ at times, but he is the key to solving the case. Some of the story will be around the girls experiences and perspective. The girl would have been 3 when she was abducted and 20 by the end of the drama. Her memories, and perception are therefore fragmented and random; they would be seen as irrelevant or insignificant, but come to be very significant to the plot. The fragmented and disorientated story line therefore reflects the personalities of these two characters. At the end of the story it is discovered that the murder victim was the missing girl, but that the murderer was not the person keeping her captive, but the captores half brother who killed the girl and her captor to protect himself and prevent his involvement in her abduction being discovered after the detective got too close to finding them. The girls captor kept the girl captive in a cabin in the woods only 20 miles from her home for 17 years. She died from drowning in a river in the woods which she was pushed into and held under before her body was moved and buried in a part of the woods which had already been searched years before, to try prevent her body from being discovered.

The convoluted nature and confusing story line focuses on many small details coming together to form the series of events leading up to the murder. My designs will therefore need to reflect this complicated and intricate story line, but this does not mean they them selves must be overly complicated and busy. I would like to look at how more simplistic methods can be used to still portray this element of confusion and perplexity. The major issue is that no one knows where she is of if she is still alive so another focus could be location.