A New Diagnosis (Blog 2)

 

After a few weeks of progress with Shadows, I had come to an initial draft for my budget, my shooting schedule, and my treatment, and the fourth draft of my script. Of course, all were subject to change as I had yet to secure my cast and crew. I have two fellow MA students, Lloyd, and Matt, on board to help as sound recordist and boom operator respectively. Having worked with them before, I know I can depend on them reliable and quality work. I will be having a video call with Lindsay Walker, a freelance cinematographer who I have met with a couple times before, including working on a mutual friend’s set. I will hopefully secure her as my camera operator/director of photography. She is also friends with Rhiannon Wyn, who I don’t know personally. But I saw her performance in Lindsay’s short film Bound, which was excellent, and made her my top choice for the role of main character Ivana, so hopefully I can be put in touch with her. If not, I have my friend Beth Harvey as a backup who is interested in the part.

In the interim between prepping for production and this meeting, I put out a post on Facebook, asking for any friends of mine who deal with and experience anxiety themselves to consult my script and check for any issues or problematic representation. As I said last week, it’s far more important to me that anxiety and mental is portrayed accurately rather than at all.

I expected 5-10 responses. I ended up with closer to 35. I’m still waiting on a few of them to get back to me, but the level of feedback was far beyond what I expected and was delighted that the topic meant so much to so many people.

Responses were generally positive, but with points of representation that needed to be re-evaluated or altered entirely. These included moments such as signs of stress or anxiety that are present in the script, such as heavy breathing and shaking, needing more of a build-up to them, the therapist not being shown as so mollycoddling, and most prominently of all, the portrayal of anxiety as a monster. I was told by some that it is an effective portrayal as is, but also had several suggestions on alternate representations. Almost everyone had a personal story or example of how their anxiety presents itself to them, which was helpful in figuring out how to re-approach the monster. The most common alternative was some spin on it being a manifestation of her own thoughts. I’ve gone back to the script to edit it this in, because with all the insight I have now that I didn’t before, I feel her being unable to outrun her out thoughts, spoken in her own voice, would be far more effective anyway than some unseen creature.

Shadows began life as a result of my love of meshing real-world social issues into the settings of genres I love. A monster movie about mental health. Now it will become a film about mental health, focusing entirely on it and what it means for the people who live with it. And it will be stronger for it.

Estimated shoot dates – 8-10^th October 2020