In our project, the female character indirectly caused the death of her boyfriend, which became the cause of her future mental illness. This is also a quite common plot in movies and TV series. When a person gets a huge emotional impact that is very hard to endure, it is possible to cause mental illness or a very big reverse of personality.

According to “THE EFFECTS OF TV AND FILM EXPOSURE ON KNOWLEDGE ABOUT AND ATTITUDES TOWARD MENTAL DISORDERS” By Joachim Kimmerle and Ulrike Cress, “On television, the presentation of mentally ill people overemphasizes negative aspects (Signorelli, 1989): Mentally ill characters are shown displaying violent and bizarre behavior. Mentally disordered characters are portrayed as much more violent than they are in reality: In Diefenbach’s (1997) analysis, 2.2% of characters on primetime television were portrayed as mentally disordered, 34% of which were shown committing murder, rape, or violent attacks.” This information all sounds very true and relatable, the first thing comes to my mind is Joker in Batman movies and Hannibal in “Red Dragon”. They both have killed a lot of people and also acting different from other people. Morally, the over exaggerated image of mental illness patients in media might be wrong and can be considered as discrimination against those patients from a political aspect. However, I think the reason why we make media, is to give people a step out of the box, to show them things they can see in their normal life, and sometimes to entertain people.

“Art should be based on reality but also above reality.”

This is a quote I have been hearing since I was a kid. Now I have become a media student myself, I am still following this quote. I am a big fan of abstraction and experiments, and this project is the first time for me to present elements related to mental illness. We will be using details to show how the character’s personality transforms. From the sadness when she lost her boyfriend to slowly losing her sanity, facial expressions will be crucial in this part of the project. I think a little move on the mouth corner will be very nice at the end of the film, to show audience that she has become mentally unstable because she is smiling when her boyfriend just died.

Researching about mental illness and its image in media really helped me to develop a useable plan for our project. Before I took this course I was not a big fan of researching, and I always like to force myself to come up with new ideas, it is quite time-consuming and tiring. Research have made the creative process easier and also helped me to gain more knowledge.

Kimmerle, J., & Cress, U. (2013). THE EFFECTS OF TV AND FILM EXPOSURE ON KNOWLEDGE ABOUT AND ATTITUDES TOWARD MENTAL DISORDERS. Journal of Community Psychology, 41(8), 931-943.