Preproduction - Research

Inspirational Shorts 
Ruth Lingford - Death and the mother

A short film from 1988, Ruth Lingford animated this piece through a black and white, sketchy style.

Pleasures of War
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xu5d4UsjSkg

Types of Dreams

Lucid Dreams - 


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jhPt4r70kU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC0Gqt8VRKk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xco_IWBfqsQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiQMHokZqr4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkURrBpoHBk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViK2ZYjHf5Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9Uq-yXc7x0


http://www.dreams.co.uk/sleeptalk/2011/stress-and-dreams/
http://www.livescience.com/17290-facts-dreams-nightmares.html
http://www.psychologytoday.com/conditions/nightmares
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

Psychosis

Psychosis is a mental disorder that causes an individual to lose contact with reality, symptoms that are present include disorientation,  paranoia, delusions and hallucinations.  http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/psychosis

 

Through the individuals delusions, they would be developing false ideas about actions taking place around them as well as misunderstanding who certain people may be. Through hallucinations, they begin imagining stuff, seeing and hearing things that aren’t actually there. As well as an invasive side effect of a mental disorder, psychosis and psychotic episodes can be caused by the administration of certain illegal drugs such as methamphetamine and LSD. http://bipolar.about.com/od/definingbipolardisorder/g/gl_psychosis.htm?utm_term=what%20is%20a%20psychosis&utm_content=p1-main-1-title&utm_medium=sem&utm_source=msn&utm_campaign=adid-19a630b9-8ec7-4c66-a4c6-4a7542af1a1d-0-ab_msp_ocode-4349&ad=semD&an=msn_s&am=phrase&q=what%20is%20a%20psychosis&dqi=&o=4349&l=sem&qsrc=999&askid=19a630b9-8ec7-4c66-a4c6-4a7542af1a1d-0-ab_msp

Psychosis and Dreams 

Many different factors can effect the severity of an individuals condition, a difficult life story or a stressful current situation can take a considerable toll on a persons’ sanity. Often, the loss of reality can be understood as a coping mechanism, devised for protection when “contradictions between the inside and outside world can no longer be papered over readily”,  if the individual is having difficulties handling their emotions or feeling, expectations placed upon them concerning personal or work goals can become overbearing and suffocating, important decisions that need to be made become impossible tasks. It is at times like these that one suffering from psychotic episodes may begin to unintentionally invent a new reality for themselves. The mood of the patient greatly differs the type of alternate reality that they fall into, perception and mood influence one another, meaning that they can either be stuck in a vortex where they see nothing but black, or they can end up floating in the sky on pink fluffy clouds.

Psychosis can create ‘an experience comparable with that in a dream’, but fails to offer the protection of sleep. When we dream, our adventures cannot harm us, however when a patient travels to another dimension through their unprotected mind, its another problem altogether.  “In a dream it is not dangerous to feel like a bird, in psychosis it is. Just like there is wishful thinking and there are nightmares, in psychoses as well wishful and anxious components are mixed: in allegorical terms in paranoid psychosis as a mixture of meaning and danger. Sometimes the anxiety functions in the foreground and the wishes remain encrypted. And yet in therapy and in search of the subjective meaning it is helpful to look in both directions: wherefrom and whereto?” this can be summarised by saying “an access to unconscious experience – as in wishful thinking and nightmares, the psychosis also has wish and anxiety components. Comparably, delusion of grandeur or paranoia in psychosis can also signify "something valuable", however at least not insignificant.” http://www.psychosis-bipolar.com/understanding-psychoses-01.html

Schopenhauer 2: ‘A dream is a short-lasting psychosis, and a psychos is is a long-lasting dream.’ http://www.celiagreen.com/charlesmccreery/dreams-and-psychosis.pdf 

 

FMP - Preproduction

It is now the beginning of the final year of my degree. Our first module is based around the preproduction of our final major project film ideas.

Idea Development

1. At the end of last year, my project was as follows:

"I want to create a short 2D animation that focuses on the jumpy, defensive, paranoid state of being we enter when our minds are put under stress in a frightful situation. The short will follow a young girl, who awakens terrified from a nightmare and believes that her room is full of paranormal figures that begin tormenting her.
The short is aiming to demonstrate that our imaginations alone can sometimes be the cause of what we think we see, when reality often has little or no part to play." 

After careful consideration over the summer months, my film is now aiming to focus on the power of dream. I want the audience to question reality throughout my film, for a response similar to 'wait, what the fuck just happened?' to be achieved.
There are several possible avenues that I could progress down, my trouble is deciding what I want the overall outcome of my film to be. Once I make a finalised decision on the message (if there is one) then i will be able to know to what needs to happen in order to convey this.

Talking to one of my tutors on Friday, he raised an interesting point - that if there is no message behind the idea of a film, then it turns into a piece of artwork, rather than a justifiable piece of media being used to raise a point.

This got me thinking (rarely a good thing...) Did I just want to make a film for the sake of making a film - are the aesthetics and the storyline simply a vessel I am using to make a piece of art that I, myself finds en captivating and enjoyable. Or did I want to reach deeper into the possibilities, draw upon experiences, thoughts and science to make a film that carried with it a thought provoking and fact laden message. Did I want to make others to be able to to find connections within my film and their own lives, providing an empathic portrayal of real issues or did I just want to merely entertain them... Who is my audience??

2. One of the main issues with my plot at the moment, is the lack of an ending. As the actions in my film all take place within a 'dream', my task is to write an inventive and somewhat original way of introducing the end of a dream. It was brought to my attention that sometimes when it is revealed to the audience that the sequence they just watched was 'only a dream' they lose any sympathy they might have had for the character - because they hadn't actually being suffering, they had only imagined it, creating an "Oh its fine, it was just a dream!" response.

I want to break away from this way of thinking. I don't want my film to be 'just a dream', I want to be able to portray another way of expressing dreams.

Shall this character be suffering from a recurring nightmare, throughout her entire life?

If so, how can I show this?

Will she grow older throughout the dream?

Should she have a signature feature that shows she's the same person?

Instead, could she be stuck in a never ending nightmare?

Could she be buried within several layers of the same dream?

Does she have to escape from these bindings several times, every night?

If so, how can I show this?

Can the ending of the film be identical to the beginning of the film?

Would that show that she's stuck in a looped nightmare?  

Will the audience understand this?

3.Possible perspective - she is chasing herself throughout the dream, but we don't realise until the end. The message - getting stuck in your own mindset, getting scared and convincing yourself that something is real when it isn't - a literal representation of scaring yourself.