Throughout the process of editing, Jackie and I wanted to really relay back to our audience the meaning of the film by the tone of it. The whole meaning of this film was created by the characters, costumes, and mood. I played the mom of the toddler in the film. I was dressed in a basic mom outfit-a white blouse, simple jeans and sandals. Amzie (Sawyer) was dressed in a simple little outfit that most younger girls wear her age. The stalker was dressed in all black with a baseball cap and sunglasses on. This creates meaning by really emphasizing that the mom and daughter are normal everyday people and the kidnapper was the one who was dressed suspicious. The face reaction of the mom was confused because her daughter was not in sight. She really did not have time for a dramatic reaction because she had just looked up from her phone. She did not even see her daughter walking away with the kidnapper. “The Vanished” title was chosen because the whole purpose of the opening scene was the girl ‘vanishing’ out of plain sight because her mom did not know what happened to her. We wanted to end with a cliffhanger.
As seen in this screenshot from the film, Grace’s face does not show terror, she just looks confused because she just looked up from her phone and did not see her daughter.
During this shot in the film, I made it in slow motion to really emphasize the fact that this man is taking the little girl. The toddler is clueless as to what is going on so that’s why she is not in distress. We wanted to show the audience how easy it is for people to do this in the real world. People need to be so careful and not take their eye off of their children anywhere and everywhere.
The Vanished 