Treatment (Updated)

Working title Blue Balloon

Length: 6-7 minutes

Short synopsis (50 - 100 words):

Our film focuses on just one contributor Richard and his journey with depression. We will discuss his childhood, and how his depression started. From there we will get his to discuss his experience with the NHS and the mental health system that is in place, concluding with how Richard copes himself with his depression and how his life is now compared to before.

Mid-Length synopsis/outline (400 - 500 words):

 Our film will revolve around one contributor, Richard Bolter, and his experience with depression. Richard has a very upbeat personality, and has a very interesting view on his depression. In our film we will look deeper into his childhood and Richard growing up. Growing up, Richards father was abusive, and Richard has a rather interesting story to tell about how his father treat him when he was younger. We will explore this issue within our interview and see how Richard feels this has affected his up bringing and his depression.  We will use images both from the interview and images of Richard as a child to get an emotional response out of our audience.

 Richard has had a quite unique experience in terms of counseling. We would like to discuss this further with him, getting his views on what counseling is like and if he found it helpful. We would like to keep this section to be quite humorous as Richard has a few anecdotes on this subject. This will help us argue whether or not there is enough help out there for people with depression. This section will highlight Richards’s personality as his story’s are rather humorous and highlight his view on what he is going through.

 We will discuss events through Richards teen years in which he believes made his depression worse and how bad it got for him during these years. We hope to get quite an emotional response here as we would like the audience to empathise with Richard. We would ideally cut this with imagery of Richard alone, carrying out day to day activity’s, to contrast with the footage of him happy and with friends.

 We will then discuss Richards coping mechanisms. This section will be cut with interview footage and footage of Richard outside of the house, interacting with friends and just being himself. This will help the audience see Richards personality. This section will be some kind of resolution, as we will see Richard dealing in his own way with his depression and over coming his difficulties. We hope this section to be quite uplifting as it will show Richard having a relatively normal life despite suffering with multiple mental health issues.

 Richard is quite open with us, and is very comfortable being filmed and talking to us, we hope this will mean we can make a touching documentary and give people with the same issues as Richard a platform to speak out. We hope that people will understand depression better and have a better idea on what causes depression and what can be done to help people suffering.

Analysis of approach (400- 500 words):

Our film will consist of mainly interview footage, sitting down with Richard as he talks about his past, present and future.  We will conduct the interview in Richards’s room, allowing the viewer a closer look into Richards’s life and how he copes whilst at university.  We will also add in different shots of Richards doing various day to day things such as hanging out with friends and walking about. This will further involve the viewer into Richards life and give them more of a sense of Richard as a person. In terms of the sound for the film, it will mostly be the audio of Richards interview, although we will add some sound effects that fit with the B roll of Richard. Although the main subject of our film is negative, we want our film to portray a positive feel, showing how despite the problems that Richard has faced, he is still a positive, uplifting person.

We looked at a number of films for inspiration for our film. Due to the subject of our film we looked for inspiration in how to convey tone/ mood in a way which is respectful to our contributor. One film we looked at is Louis Theroux’s By Reason Of insanity. Although the subject matter is slightly different to our own, the film still explores mental health and how the system can fail them, a theme that is present in our own film. The film also conveys the contributors stories well and explores mental health issues well. Another film which we too inspiration from is OC87: The Obsessive Compulsive, Major Depression, Bipolar, Asperger’s Movie.  We found this film very moving as it shows someone over coming their mental illness. This is something we tried to portray in our film as we wanted to show that Richard doesn't allow his depression to get in his way and still fulfills his dreams.

Filmmaker biography (50-100 words):

Throughout making the poetic documentary we developed skills and techniques that we’d like to transfer into the 5 to 10 minuets piece. The main theme in our documentary is the theme of change. We are hoping that this will allow audiences to see depression in a new light.