Ashif Alucin
Welcome to my blog
UAL Level 3 Creative Media
Sanchia's expereince with OCD:
Hello. I was diagnosed with severe obsessive compulsive disorder at the age of seventeen. I’m going to talk about my OCD as primary research for our film, as OCD is the subject. I am glad to share my experience if it can benefit our work.
OCD is an anxiety disorder that makes you have obsessions and compulsions. The disorder part means that the illness is creating disorder in your life to the extent that you cannot function mentally in a healthy way. This is how OCD has affected me personally.
I started to get OCD symptoms as a result to a traumatic incident. The disorder grew from there.
I found myself repeatedly locking and unlocking the bathroom door until I was convinced the lock was working and that nobody would come in. I also started to tap a certain lamp until it made a certain noise whenever I went past it. The noise it made would make me feel calm. Without hearing the noise, I would become visibly distressed, It took an hour every time I brushed my teeth because I wanted to feel clean and “right”. My gums would bleed, and I wouldn’t care. Sometimes I would clean my room until it looked “just right”. A common theme with OCD is a saying called “just right.” Everybody has a different view of what is right, and I wanted to do things that made me feel okay again. My compulsions were the actions I carried out, and my obsessions were feeling safe and feeling clean.
I also had intrusive thoughts. These are images or thoughts that come into your head without warning and you cannot control them. I also had intrusive dreams. The intrusive thoughts I personally had was a specific type of person harming me in a violent or sexual manner. They could also be triggered by said person coming next to you, and that would result in images entering your head you didn’t want to see. Another example of an intrusive thought is seeing a fat person and thinking “urgh, she’s fat.” even if you have no prejudice against people bigger than you. The thoughts reflect things that you don’t even think yourself.
I had CBT (Cognitive behaviour therapy) for a whole year. CBT reverses these thoughts and feelings you have until they go away through exercises. Kind of like a cigarette addiction. You slowly reduce the amount of cigarettes you smoke, until you no longer smoke at all. Sometimes you still crave a cigarette, but you know how to control your cravings and you don’t need one anymore. Just like OCD. You still may feel certain things or have the urge to clean, but you know you don't need to anymore. The symptoms gradually fade away until you don’t have the disorder. I’ll always have obsessions and compulsions, but now I know what they are and how to fight them.
Hopefully this will help us implement real conventions into our genre piece instead of portraying the typical clean freak image of OCD.
Sanchia's Secondary Research:
As part as our research of genre for our film project, we are all studying a selective Genre in order to come up with what kind of film trailer we want to make. I chose to study drama, as I watch a lot of dramas in my spare time and think it would be a great genre to explore practically.
The history of drama
Drama or Melodramatics were acts that grew popular in theatre's in the Shakespearian era and used conventions we still see in theatres now such as playing with mine en scene to evoke emotions and soliloquy's. But as technology advanced and periods changed we have begun to see an influx of dramatic movies being released such as Shawshank Redemption (F. Darabont), Gone with the wind (V. Fleming) and It's a wonderful life (F. Capra). All of these films are very different but hold the similarity of having dramatic customs. I could go into all of the conventions of these movies, but for the sake of getting my point across clearly, let's focus on one of these films - Shawshank Redemption.
Mise en scène plays an essential role in this film because in order to set a depressing prison atmosphere, you need to have very specific elements in terms of lighting, props, location and costume. Andy Dufrense is a clean cut, professional looking business man before he gets sent to prison, and after he gets sentenced, he looks sluggish and duller in appearance. This has to do with the stage makeup he is wearing, the way his hair is styled, to the clothes on this back. The way you present your characters is very important for the audience to be able to gage with
them in a serious manner.
Another thing this film does excellently which is a common convention in Dramatic film is the Director uses a mass amount of close-up shots to accurately portray the emotion of each character. I could even show an example from the shots above. These both are close-up shots. On the left the main character, Andy, is slouched and has an amused expression painted onto his features. The lighting in this scene is dim and makes us feel like he is relaxed in this scene. The photo on the right shows Andy with the same expression, but his posture is very straight and stiff, making him look unnerved. The setting is very bright, which makes us as viewers feel as if he is very alert in this situation. Conveying the characters emotions is important in Drama, as Drama is all about pulling the emotions of the audience.
Darabont also plays with the way we perceive things in Shawshank Prison. Low angles, birds eye and high angles are used in the film to show a clear hierarchy in the prison as prisoners are looked down upon and guards and staff are seen as inferior.
Notice the colours in these prison shots. Whether the lighting is bright or dim, the colour scheme is dull and suffocating, giving the viewer a subconsciously similar view of the prison itself.
Even the prisoner uniforms are very bland looking, it's almost as if the prisoners blend in with the things that surround them, as do the guards (a metaphor regarding the prison system). A system has been put in place and the viewer is very aware of this. Dramatic film is also very exaggerated in this way. The reason for this is explained by how our brains perceive information that is fed to us. Directors of dramatic films tend to emphasise the key points in order to make their points blatantly obvious to the audience.
I've talked about how dramatic film has the intention to evoke emotion from the viewer, and now I want to talk about how the scenes actually convey such strong feelings. A good example of this is the 'Brooks was here' scene where Red hangs himself.
This scene shows Red walking around after his release from prison, buying groceries, feeding pigeons. Doing everyday activities, yet he is alone and seems sad. The lighting throughout this whole scene is very dim. You'd usually see bright colours and sunlight in a typical release scene from prison, but the world stays dim. It's like the outside world is his prison, and the viewer can interpret this without any narration because of the directors choice of lighting and editing. The imagery of boots hanging in mid air and the mirror in the back of the shot showing that he is alone even in his final moments makes the audience feel sad. The scratched remains of his name in the cracked brown wall creates a cold chilling feeling as we know somebody else has committed suicide in the same room before him, for the same reason.
Shawshank Redemption - Library scene, Randall Stephens to had to be in prison to be a crook
Library scene, Randall Stephens to had to be in prison to be a crook
The last scene I want to talk about is the Library scene. The director shows back-and-forth shots between the two men in a closed space. This is usually used in films in the genre of romance between crushes or couples, but this intimate humorous exchange shows the audience that these two characters are very close. Also, without this scene, the plot would've made perfect sense, so in this case the director wanted to make it known they have a strong friendship. This is a running theme in dramas as they are usually based on human relationships.
In conclusion, dramatic film is still a very popular choice of genre and rightly so. This genre is used to tell stories, share perspectives and bring viewers together through a mutual reciprocation of emotions. I really hope that my group like the idea of exploring dramatic film as I have a idea in mind already. I want to create a film about obsessive compulsive disorder and use drama conventions in order to depict the struggle people with the disorder have. I will pitch this idea to my group today.
Sanchia's OCD Research:
Our group has come to the decision that dramatic film is the best choice for our genre trailer. Preaya came up with the idea to centre the film around mental illness and our group agreed to take on my idea about the struggles of somebody who has obsessive compulsive disorder. I chose OCD because I am diagnosed with the disorder so I think we will be able to get an authentic take which will help make it an authentic film which may evoke emotions from other people who have the disorder or onlookers who emphasise with our story.
My information:
Obsessive complusive disorder is made up of three factors. Obsession, complusion and a disorder. Anybody may have a mild obsession over something, or feel complusive at times, but having a disorder means these thoughts and actions take over your life and leave you with no control over your thoughts. In other words, with ocd, you have permanent cognitive dysfunction.