Evaluation

  My storyboard portrays a surreal uncomfortable visualisation of mental health struggles that I face daily. It consists of one of the main and most overwhelming scenes from my film displaying what it feels like to live with anxiety. A huge influence for the horror/ disturbing genre was The Grandmother by David Lynch. When I first saw this film I particularly idolised his use of non diegetic and diegetic sound in the place of dialogue to alienate the families relationship. I used this technique in my film where there is minimal dialogue except distant talk of children because anxiety feels like the loudest voice is the one in your head. I chose not to do a monologue on her thoughts because I wanted to focus on the physical effects of anxiety. I also wanted to make Robin the only person physically visible in the film to portray how isolated and lonely anxiety can make you feel. Lynch also uses sudden unpredictable cuts to create tension and to frighten the audience. Id use this technique when robin looks up and realises that the students have turned into faceless towering shadow people, or so it seems. 

  My main inspiration was studying various images and letting my imagination do the work. I created a Pinterest board, as seen on the other page, consisting of various artists work and pictures of ideas that sprung to mind. Monica Rohans work was particularly fascinating to me (as seen in the top right corner) because she manages to disguise her daily struggles of anxiety through the spikes and thorns buried below the colourful flowers of lilacs or flowing grass. She often displays figures stranded and suffocating in fields of overwhelming repetititive patterns to represent the endless thinking cycles of anxiety. I wanted to create a similar metaphor through the red lighting that acts as an indication to the audience how frequent and intense the fears of anxiety can be in a day. But also to bring the audience along with the discomfort and internal pain that can strike in any moment. It indicates danger but also because of how ones body goes into flight or fight. In which robin displays both, running from the students but also attempting to tear the mushrooms out. 

  I feel as though hands are the best way to learn about a person. You can tell a persons hygein, habits and  even sometimes their profession just from the colouration and texture of their skin. So I would use quite a few close-ups of hands flowing with the sways of hair or showing discomfort and pain. 

  I used mushrooms as a visual representation for the physical pains but also metaphorical. Mushrooms typically grow in dark damp places and often feast on the dead. Anxiety is like hiding a dirty secret all the time so Robin trying to cover and hide the mushrooms is a representation of trying to hide my constant fear for the unimaginable. I used reverse chronology to create a disoriating yet familiar plot which forshadows the journey of her mind consuming her. The opening shows Robin stranded and alone in a forest, surrounded by spiked twigs laying repetitively as mushrooms pierce through her skin, wounding and destroying her body. I feel like this throws the audience into the horrors that have already become, in the same way that anxiety and panic takes over.