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Whilst trying to keep within a Mike Leigh-esque frame, this scene was written to make an audiences head scratch thinking about what the characters are feeling, rather than the events that are taking place. Furthermore, the difference in feelings between Michael and Owen, and their different motives within the scene. Meanwhile, trying to identify the feelings which are similar to one another. "The drama doesn't depend of external conflicts and struggles" (Carney, 2000), especially in the opening scene where Owen has tape over his mouth; as an audience member you can already start to expect what the next words are going to be, before any words are actually said.

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Sam is the (to be) main character. After losing his sister and nieces relatively near the beginning of the outbreak he was set on meeting his cousin Nicholas who rang him up to one, inform him of what was happening and two, what his plan was (to get as many people as possible to the Isle of Skye) to survive. Sam's sister being a martial artist had trained Sam a little but especially in the ways of the Katana. When she passes, before leaving on his maiden voyage he takes her Katana with him so he can always keep her with him and never forget her promise "Never lose faith in humanity, keep hope alive even when it fades in others but most importantly hold on to the world you knew"

Soon after leaving he hears of a refugee camp in which he attends, in which he finds family-friend Ralph with his girlfriend Sarah, while also their he meets Harry who remains quite close to Sam for the remaining time their. He tells Sarah and Ralph of Nicholas' plan and tells them to tell as many people as possible to follow him however that night the swarm moves through and kills Ralph and many others, Sam, Sarah and Harry take off regrettably leaving everything behind. Through advice from Sarah and Harry they decide to remain outside the city and to only enter when is truly necessary. However, on a run to get supplies they raid a petrol station when they find Viktoria fighting for her life after talking to her Sam tells her to join the gang and then a few days later they run into Owen at another refugee camp and then soon tells them about his cousins plan and so they set off to accomplish it.

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Sarah was a young worker at a rural reserve helping people with team work operations, through tree top rope courses and general survival skills in the wild, she was soon set to be engaged to her boyfriend, Ralph, who also happened to be friends with Sam. When trying to get home one night, she could hear Viktoria over the radio telling those in the city to remain calm and instructing them out to get out of the city, this causes Sarah to panic and before she knew it a shock wave blew over her cutting out the radio and the car, in sheer panic about what was happening and what may have happened to her boyfriend, Sarah leaves the car and runs into the city pushing past people in the pitch black until she reaches her apartment to find that Ralph was still alive. From there they make their way to a refugee camp, where they meet up with family-friend Sam. Shortly after being their the camp becomes overrun and the dead plough their way through and Ralph is killed and so Sam, Sarah and new compion Harry hit to the road and through advice from both Harry and Sarah they stay out of the city. Although the death of her boyfriend still stays a heavy burden in Sarah's heart.

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Harry was a farm hand on his girlfriends parents farm, while there one night, they hear booming sounds and think that the RAF are practicing bombing on their land until looking out and down onto the city below and seeing it engulfed in flames and more fighter craft flying over dropping even more bombs. A few days go by and the father finds a man wondering alone on his land but when he approached he was killed and before they knew it the screams of the father drew more in ultimately killing the mother and on escape Harry's girlfriend leaving him travelling alone with nout but a screwdriver in hand. He eventually finds out about a refugee camp and travels there to seek shelter upon arrival he meets Sam and overhears a conversation with his friends about an island which is safe and so decides to stick close to him.

Once the swarm hits and leaves the camp is disarray he, Sam and Sarah leave and he tells Sam it is safer outside the city as it takes the zombies a while to leave the city and when they run out of supplies they make a run to the petrol station where they meet Viktoria a young woman fighting for her life, the three save her and after a discussion with Sam he allows her to join the group yet Harry is not happy with outcome as he is happy with the size of the group and believes with more mouths to feed the more supplies they'll need and so will need to enter the city more often and becomes even more discrumbled when Owen joins as well. It is his intention to get rid of them both somehow until Owen saves his life.

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- Asa Berger, A. (2022). Semiotics and Humor. In Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors: A Psycho-Semiotic Analysis (pp. 15-28). Anthem Press.

- Carney, R. (2000). The films of Mike Leigh: embracing the world. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/2027/heb07619.0001.001.

- FILMMAKER Mike Leigh can't bear [...]. (2020, October 9). Daily Mail [London, England], 21. https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A637854067/GBIB?u=chesterc&sid=summon&xid=b9f54519

-Marsden, S. (2011; 2023). Bertolt Brecht | Techniques and facts. https://www.dramaclasses.biz/bertolt-brecht-techniques-and-factsbertolt-brecht-techniques-and-facts

-Mike Leigh's golden rules; Usual months of improv result in spirited role for star Sally Hawkins in Happy-Go-Lucky. (2008). In Toronto star (p. E07).

-Mike Leigh’s process and techniques. (2014). ACTORhub. https://www.actorhub.co.uk/383/mike-leighs-process-and-techniques.

- Whitehead, T. (2007;2013;2012;). Mike Leigh. Manchester University Press.

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Owen is the character we start the series off seeing and although he is there to help set up the world for the audience we get a bit of an insight into his life before. We first meet him when he has been held captive by Michael who is for the time being a survivor however he has been stabbed and left for dead. While there we learn that Owen lost his family when the outbreak first happened and while at another refugee camp (Lemur 2) he loses his friends and so decides to take the road alone. However upon meeting Michael, Owen is sent on a mission to find a picture for him after finding it and upon arriving back at Michael's house we find Michael dead and so Owen distressed about it decides to go on his own again. Until finding a map with a building circled on it and written upon it it says "The World we knew is gone, but keeping our humanity? That's a choice!" Owen then decides to head to the building only to bump into Sam and the gang after a short discussion after being interrupted by oncoming zombies they leave together. After more discussion Sam refuses to let Owen leave on his own so barters with him to come with them only part of the way hoping that Owen will join indefinitely. Later upon being trapped on a rock Owen learns that none of the gang know anything about the living dead and so tells them and decides to then join them fully as in hope to keep them alive.

Owen before the outbreak was an nerd working at Games Workshop and so knows about strategy and tactics through the tabletop game Warhammer. After the outbreak Owen remained in the city, studying the zombies from afar researching their weaknesses and strengths and so then learning how to best avoid them.

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A lot of the inspiration for this project came from the comic and tv series The Walking Dead created Robert Kirkman and Greg Nicotero. We really wanted a series that was of the same universe but set somewhere a bit more familiar with it's own subtle differences such as with the zombie types that were created. Due to the constraints of time and budget we weren't able to get the walking dead zombie look and yet this was ok as we wanted to bring in our own zombie look and not with the ripped off lips and gnashing teeth that one would see in The Walking Dead.

Yet some of the characters we see were also inspired a bit by some of The Walking Dead characters such as Sam played by Mark- Anthony, his character was heavily inspired by the character Abraham played by Micheal Cudlitz in the mannerism of the way he talks with his one swearing liners such as the line "You must be pulling on my dick". Lines like this were used to create this sort of odd tension between the character and the audience, to make them feel a little bewildered by his language use which we would have found out in later episodes he uses as a coping to hide his pain. I realized this when watching peers and family, when one is usually annoyed or hurt they will increase their use of foul language and will put it randomly into most sentences.

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Black Summer is a series created by Netflix in 2021 which is it's own zombie apocalypse universe. Of course when doing research we took to watching a load of zombie apocalypse series and films such as Shaun of the Dead, Zombieland, The Walking Dead, 28 days later and 28 weeks later, The Last of Us and Z nation. Which of course all have their own takes on the apocalypse but it was Black Summer that really stood out for us in the style of Zombies with their white eyes and blood protruding from their mouths and we came to the decision this was the look we wanted to go for let, the physicality we wanted more from the zombies in The Last of Us with their rigid and gerking like movements. The Zombies from both these shows were what helped me to create our own characteristics for our zombies.

In our series, the zombies are blind and so rely on their hearing and smell which has been heightened due to the loss of their sight and this was to be ultimately the reason Owen joins the gang because they don't know this and while he tries to go places as quietly as he can the others don't. Our zombies biggest trope though was the fact they can't climb due to the lack of function in their arms. We also decided to add in a timeline order for them, so when they first die and turn they are called Bolters because due to being freshly animated they still have all the strength they previously had so can easily chase you down at full sprint, but as they start to decay they turn into phase 2 - Walkers this is when they lose most of their previous strength and they become slowly to the extent they can only walk. As they start to decay even further they fall into phase 3 - Crawlers, this is when mostly all motorive order decays and they are now unable to walk at all but now more pull/push themselves along the ground, these still remain dangerous though and can easily be mistaken for being dead until the last second and last is phase 4 and this is when they become Vegetative and can no longer move at all and just kind of sit their and snap at you until they decay entirely.

This decay timeline creates this underlined theme of hope as we know that they can easily wait this apocalypse out and eventually in time things will slowly start to return to normal.

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Due to casting problems in the end we ended up with only one zombie played by Lauren, who helped out so much, although it was a let down that we had to work with only one zombie it kind of worked in our favour as it gave us a chance to explore a bit into minimalism. Now we know that Bertolt Brecht uses minimalism in the way of props and setting so was interesting to see how to use and overcome the use of minimalism casting.

We knew it would look semi-ridiculous having a whole world fall into a zombie apocalypse yet there only be one zombie shown so we tried to make Lauren look as different as possible each time with change of costume and different make-up and I went through with her a couple of times on how to act so the physicality of the zombie was different each time.

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In this Episode you meet Owen, a young gentleman lost without his family, who finds himself held up by a strange, wounded man in a random house in Lemur 6. Many words are exchanged between the two in this episode which results in Owen going to Lemur 1 in search for photos of Michael's dear wife who sadly passed during the outbreak. Whilst there, Owen runs into a bit of trouble when he encounters zombies roaming the grounds of the camp. These scenes are slighlty inspired by 'Shaun of the Dead' (Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, 2004). Unfortunately, Owen does not find said photos and returns to the house disheartened, only to find his new acquaintance in the bathroom, being mauled by the flesh eating undead.

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'Leigh enforces some strict rules on the set and in the lengthy improvisation and rehearsal stages of his productions. "The actors not only don't know about the other characters, they are not allowed to arbitrarily tell people what they should be doing. In other peoples' films that happens all over the place."

Another rule is, "I won't let the actors talk about their character in the first person. The prevailing convention is to talk about, 'I did this or I did that.'"

Leigh is very clear about the actors taking part in the creation of a character and needs them to be able to stand outside and critique their own work.' (The Toronto Star, 2008)

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One of Mike Leigh's least favourite pieces of work he's created is the infamous 'Abigail's Party' (1977). This is not because he thinks it is rubbish, but because of the reaction from audiences; exclaiming, "It's a technical, visual mess but nobody is concerned about that, what they are concerned about is the resonance of the performances." (Daily Mail, 2020).

This is brought up whilst answering the question given because it really resonates with what the Horror genre is all about; actors need to have spectacular acting to tell the audience that the film is as real as it can be. The actors need to do this to balance out the supernatural occurrences in horror. In relation to Leigh's words quoted, we believe a horror story when given real performances, rather than it being visually impressive.

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In our case, no. No matter how hard we tried to keep within his framework, using improvisation skills in some parts, trying to get real emotion by doing things unexplained; it did not work for us unfortunately. This is due to the zombie apocalypse story. There were too many external factors to focus on, such as habing no cars on the roads, no 'live' people in the shots, actual structure to the script.

Although we aimed for and believe we achieved individuality within our characters, Leigh's characters are more like "caricatures", who have such heightened personalities it would be hard for them to be in the real world. (Whitehead, 2007)

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Leigh differs from many of the Hollywood directors as he believes that the unnatural is not exciting in film, he's excited by seeing the mayhem of normal human life. Most of the problems which characters face in his films do not come with a solution. Such as his masterpiece, 'Bleak Moments' (1971), whereby "flawed" and "imperfect" characters are shown to an audience and they go through life with these so-called flaws without the slight suggestion of a fix for their problems. (Carney, 2000)

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As stated, Episode 2 is all about meeting the main protagonists and exploring what they do and why. This was to not only give the audience perspective, but to try and relate to each individual character, no matter how big or small that relation is. Let the audience ponder the question, "what happens to ordinary people"? (Leigh, no date). As well as showing how the "disorganised and irrational business of living" (Leigh, no date) doesn't diminish when put into such a supernatural situation (in this case, a zombie apocalypse).

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Episode 2 starts with the appearance of Sam and Viktoria, who are seen creeping around camp Lemur 1. Whilst on an exploration of their own, they have multiple run ins with Owen, leading to the pair taking Owen to meet the rest of the group; Harry and Sarah. During this meeting of people you get quite familiar with the personalities of each new character, without much background information. Further on, Owen acknowledges that a party of 5 is much safer than 1 and off they all go. during the majority of this episode you really get to explore everyone's semiotics in the film, such as costume, weapons, and the reason behind it; wether that be with a literal meaning, or if it is something that does "stand for something else" (de Saussure, 1959).

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Viktoria worked as a radio presenter in the city and when the outbreak first happened and she was made aware she took to assisting people, telling them to remain calm, telling them what way out of the city was quickest and safest. She told everyone else in the studio to leave and remained there till the very last second, as long as she could until a bomb set off an EMP causing her to go off the air and everything to shut down. Realising she'd be no more help to anyone she left taking only the bag she had brought to work. After the city had relatively cleared she started stealing clothes and food from stores in order to stay alive, living in the back of an broken down lorry. However, on a run to a gas station for supplies she becomes under attack by three zombies and gets herself stuck until suddenly Sam, Harry and Sarah come in and save her. After a discussion with Sam and him learning she is handy with radios she joins the gang, then a few days later she meets Owen, she feels more sympathetic towards him as he went through something similar and is recently new to the group as well. Unfortunately many weeks later she goes on a run by herself although being told not too, she goes to find something to help expand the radios wavelength however the building becomes overrun and Viktoria is killed.

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Although we ran out of time and were unable to create episode 3, it was our ambition to follow one of Mike Leigh's main techniques and that was the improvised script. It was my hope not to write a script for the 3rd episode and to let the actors, through their own take of their characters create the script from improve. In a way to method act the script, to put them into the characters and let the story unfold as if they are actually living in this world.

"I'll set up an improvisation, i'll analyse and discuss it, we'll do another, and i'll refine and refine until the actions and dialogue are totally integrated. Then we shoot it." (Leigh, 2014)

That was the way i had intended to "write" the last script, so then we could properly follow one of Mike Leigh's techniques and see if it could in fact create an affective horror piece yet alas we were unable to do so due to the time this would actually take to do as "This whole process can take up to six months." and we unfortunately didn't have that time so we had to conduct the answer from what we had already done.