Name Ideas and Poll

To begin with, on choosing the name for our trailer, we sat down and began a spider diagram of ideas and just brain stormed the kind of thing we wanted and the mood we wanted the name to convey. We wanted to put across a sense of isolation and disengagement from society and reality and so we came up with ideas such as 'Unplugged' 'disconnected and 'forgotten'. However, we also wanted to hint at the unstable mental state of the protagonist, which is one of the main themes of the film, which led us to names like 'Unhinged', 'fractured mind' and 'the broken truth'. We also wanted to include elements of duality, to link in with the idea of the imaginary friend and there being two sides to the protagonist's mind which we thought was nicely portrayed in names like 'Double Vision' and 'Double Demons'. Names such as 'Trapped' also indicated that the character is stuck in her reality and between two consciousnesses, her moral code and what her alter ego is telling her to do.

This is the list of our initial ideas which we came up with when we first began to discuss the name:
1) Unplugged

2) Disconnnected
3) Unhinged
4) The Broken Truth
5) Trapped
6) From the Shadows
7) Between the Shadows
8) Forgotten
9) Fractured Mind
10) Double Vision
11) Double Demons

We cut the list down to a modified five:

1) Unhinged?
This name was in the original list of names and hinted at the unstable state of the protagonist's mind. The word 'unhinged' is often used as a colloquial term for insane and so we thought it could also be indicating towards the theme of discrimination as it could potentially be something which a character may have used to insult the protagonist. We put a question mark at the end of the word to show how the protagonist may question her own mind and not be sure whether she is mentally stable or not.

2) Fractured Mind
This name was also in the original list of names and is quite simple and conveys how the mental state of the protagonist is unstable. We would maybe put the word 'my' in front of the title to show how the words are coming from the voice of the protagonist, which makes it more intimate and as if the film is a story being told. The word fractured shows that she is falling apart which also hints at the idea that she was okay once and is now being taken apart.

3) Trapped
This name shows how the protagonist is suffocated by the discrimination she is facing and how she is trapped between the two versions of herself and is confused by what is happening to her. It hints at her being unable to escape from her own reality and therefore puts across how she is living in a state of hell in her own mind. It also indicates towards the psychological genre as it shows that her terror is in her mind rather than something she can get away from.

4) Petrified
This name is good at representing the state of terror that the protagonist is in, which people would not always expect from a mentally ill person. It conveys how the illness is directly affecting the protagonist as well as the people around her and can also double up to mean the fear of the Victim. The word petrified means that a person has been frightened so much they can't move or think and this can hint at the way that the protagonist loses control of her own actions.

5) Dual Demons
This name includes elements of duality, to link in with the idea of the imaginary friend and there being two sides to the protagonist's mind, through her imaginary 'self'. The word demons also shows how she is plagued by the illness, so much so that it has become a version of hell for her.

6) Innocuous
This name means 'not harmful', which would show how mental illness isn't harmful when dealt with properly, however under the circumstances of discrimination the protagonist is led to things which are unnatural for her. This would be effective as it would avoid the stereotype of all mental illnesses and mentally ill people being dangerous and put across that this is the opposite of the message we are trying to convey.

We asked around in order to work out which name was most popular amongst people:

The outcome obviously showed that the most popular title for the trailer was 'Unhinged?'.