Films, films, films

I watched a series of films relating to my theme and ones I thought had interesting art styles or story lines.

• Fight Club
• Perfect Blue
• Paprika
• Saw
• Girl Interrupted

I also analysed a few of them. Covering the storyline, music and characters and in case if it's animated, I also analysed the art style and such. Two of the films I analysed are animated; Perfect Blue and Paprika. They're both by the same director; Satoshi Kon, so they contain similar art styles and character designs.

However one relates more closely to my theme of mental illness.

Perfect Blue is about an actress and her manager. The story covers mental illnesses such as split personality disorder and folie à deux. Folie à deux is a new illness I learnt about after watching the film, it's a rather interesting disorder which means an illness shared by two.
I found this film to be very beautifully constructed. Although it is based on a book, having it made into an animation naturally brings it to life. The animation style is beautiful along with the character design. I think they fit the genre very much, and although it would come under the genre of Anime, it still has a very distinct visual appearance and style of character.

Films with what you would call a plot twist are my favourite kind, both Perfect Blue and Fight Club contain two amazingly constructed story lines that lead to a huge plot twist. Although it was a little hard to keep up with because of the complex story line.
Fight Club, on the other hand, had a rather simple and on point storyline. A club where people fight. However the plot's turning point and the big revelation of character is breathtaking and dimly amazing. It was almost impossible not to analyse this film after watching it and receiving many recommendations. I just wish no one had given me the spoiler before I watched it so I could have had a better reaction.

Peacock Dreams

The story:
As it seems from first glance, the female peacock lays eyes upon a beautiful, god-like male peacock and they fall in love with each other. As she gathers her courage and leans in, for what looks like, a kiss, we blink and miss a terrible homicide performed by the female followed by her walking away with a new set of feathers that have been ripped right out of the poor, unsuspecting male.



For personal entertainment purpose, we decided that adding existing music would make the animation funnier and create a better response for a handful of friends to watch and enjoy.



DISCLAIMER:
We do not own any of the songs nor do we attempt to take ownership of them. The music belongs to it's rightful owners and they take full credit for it. It is merely used for entertainment purpose in harmless, not non-profited university classwork.

Graphics Collaboration

Right after the Easter Break we began with a  presentation that encourages new and interesting ideas from us. Just because we're animators doesn't mean we only communicate and work with animators during the course. We could possibly want the help of a 3D student to build a set, or get a Fashion student to design some costumes. Therefore we were to join with the Graphics students for a week and design and finish a project within the week.

After being mixed with the other class, we were into sort ourselves in groups of three to five. My group decided to start off by sharing our Final Major Project ideas with each other, hoping we could get something from that. Maybe incorporate them together and create a final project.

Our group of four had four very compatible ideas, such as; mental illness, people's view on beauty, transformation and comics. Two animators and two graphics students mixing ideas together seemed like quite a challenge because one is still image, while the other moves. However, it could also be perceived as animation is simply moving graphics.

We had a talk with a graphics tutor who suggested a few ideas. I found it to be quite interesting because he brought up our presentation. Would we just put it on a laptop screen and show it to everyone, or would we present it differently? He suggested making  a 3D house and have us place little screens like phones behind the windows for people to open and watch. However, having two animators in the group, we knew it isn't easy to just make a few animations. It takes a week to animate 30 seconds at our pace and because it's a only a week long project it would be impossible for us to make more than one.

Therefore, we decided we'd make an animation for week our project. "Just like two or three minutes of animation will be fine, right? Short and snappy" said the graphics students, causing two of us- animators - to laugh.

Okay, that's sorted, but how could comics get into this?

Anime exists and they usually contain many manga effects in them such as a huge sweat drop, angry veiny expression, lines on the face to express depression, anger ect. We could incorporate that in our work, it would match her theme and add some comical effect, which is something that is low in the other three FMP ideas of ours.

We also made a comic strip that shows the different scenes with speech bubbles and the infamous sweat drop and such featuring in it. The only difference is, that it's a slightly different version.

It wasn't very hard coming up with the characters in our animation. We had plenty of water bottles and sketchbooks on the table. Additionally, the Graphics students were told to bring in a list of equipment which turned out to be really hopeful as we constructed our characters.

I was very pleased with how our two peacocks turned out. Once they were groomed and given character and facial features, people seemed to completely look past the fact that these were water bottles and accepted them as two props for our film that were peacocks.

Galleries

Visits:

• National Gallery
• National Portrait Gallery
• ICA

Visiting a gallery is important when it comes to research because although inspiration can be derived from anywhere, it is important to see what's already been done. This helps influence work and generate ideas, and is a good start for gathering information. It also helps to see what's already been done, so you don't repeat something or make something too similar to what's already been done.

Galleries particularly trigger a lot of inspirational portal to open within our minds and teaches us a lot. Not only do they show canvases of art, they also contain contextual information about the paintings or photographs. A simple arch in a photograph or paining can really help inspire a person. Similarly, reading something or doing research on something there could lead to a string of ideas and get the creative juices flowing.

Personally, having gone there so many times, I've come to expect what would be at the galleries and not be too influenced by the work presented. I found myself walking through rooms I had been visiting for the past five years and knowing exactly what was n each of those rooms.

However, every time I visit I am always attracted to the painting An Experiment on a Bird in an Air Pump by Joseph Wright of Derby. I find the focused lighting surrounded by darkness very intriguing and the high contrast in the paining catches my eye immediately every time.

The fact that such a dark and slightly disturbing painting always seems to catch my eye says something about my fancies and possibly my psychological state. Though it is a dark image, is isn't as visually disturbing as some other paintings that have soldiers hold up a decapitated head of a another (Perseus turning Phineas and his followers to stone by Lucas Giordano), because I've seen the brutality in the image, it doesn't phase me too much. However in Wright's painting, what's being done to the bird is a mystery and since I don't know what's happening, my mind is automatically attracted to it so I can learn or solve the painting. The looks of distress on all the peoples face - especially the children - is questionable, because if it is an experiment on a living creature and if it's an experiment that's causing pain to the creature, why are the children being made to watch it?

I see how this could relate to my work through the sub context in the painting, because it is quite dark and almost traumatic, especially for the children who are watching it take place.

The Dark Mind?

I started with an initial mind map of what I gathered from the word psychology since that is generally what my project is about. Rather than starting with research on the state of mind I though having a general idea of what I could possibly do with this topic. A simple mind map is always a good start to a project, in my opinion at least.
I started my sit baling some ideas on my own, accompanied by random drawings that come to my mind when I think of the word psychology, since that's technically the topic of my project.

I followed this by asking people what they thought of the title. What is The Dark Mind? Finding the public's insight on what they thing my title means is very valuable because it could cause confusion in the future is not interpreted correctly.

Getting people's opinions online is also a very useful technique. Because answers may be biased depending on region or surroundings. It can also depend on how comfortable a person is in terms of communication. A person could give a completely different answer online and anonymously than they would in physically in person.

I googled a few words relating to my theme and I saw a pattern; people doing their hand in dramatic manners to express pain.

I also googled a few other words relating to my theme, such as; psychology, depression, mental illness and analysed a few pictures.

A more formal approach was to create a questionnaire which was based on the general idea of my theme The Dark Mind. These also help with further research on my theme such as books and films to look at, or ask opinions from psychology students for my path of research.

FMP Plan

I think this is a very efficient plan and if I manage to keep to it I could go through this project with much ease.

Proposal Pitch

THE DARK MIND


The Theme

The theme of my project will be based on the psychology of the mind; disorders and mental illnesses to be specific. Your brain is a powerful learning machine that absorbs everything given to it, like a sponge. But what happens when it overflows? Similar to the sponge, the brain is soft and fragile and can be easily damaged and manipulated; be it by or against your will.
Yes, it is a powerful and very useful existence, however the brain is not your friend. Technically speaking, the brain is far more knowledgeable than the being carrying it. In most cases we don’t know as much as our brain does, for example; the brain knows exactly how to make the body walk and there is a procedure, we on the other hand…just somehow do it without knowing. In other words: the body is a tool for the brain rather than the other way around.

There are always harsh psychological consequences to everything that happens, some worse than others and this all goes down to how your brains reacts to situations. Anything and nothing can lead to a mental illness or disorders, which is what I mean by The Dark Mind. How the mind can mess up a persons mental state and to what extent it can go to. Every mental illness is a dark hole caused by the brain doing what it deems right.

By The Dark Mind I mean mental disorders. Venturing into the dark side of the mind where you’re not in control. In most cases these are caused by your brain reacting to situations [this does not include natural born or inherited psychological illness’].

___________

Judgement of the Title

I began by asking people what they thought the title The Dark Mind meant. This helped me get an insight on the current psychological states of the respondents and their way of thinking, since these answers will vaguely reflect the individuals way of thinking and personal interests.
Answers given:

• The mind of a criminal
• The personality of a person/character
• World war II
• The reason politics exist
• Gore
• Mental state- depression, fear, isolation
• “It sounds like a book title”
• Negative thoughts, the voice in your head “you’re not good enough

When I searched the title on Google images, I was granted with the following page. The search consists of popular images based on the world wide web users interpretation of The Dark Mind.

I found this to be a very interesting bit of research to begin with as it directly relates to my project and is a good starting point for me to go through with this project.

This deemed very interesting to me because of all the variety of answers given by people of different age, profession and interest. For example; a criminal psychology student assumed it meant a killers mind, and a person who’s a fan of horror and graphic films said gore, the answer reflecting their personal interest.

___________

Theme Research

Examples of mental disorders:

• Schizophrenia

- a psychotic disorder, where the sufferer experiences a break from reality in episodes [non constant, sometimes they’re “normal” sometimes they’re not] different symptoms [feeling they’re more important than others, depression, hearing voices, etc.] it is one of many brain diseases that may include delusions, loss of personality, confusion, agitation, social withdrawal and bizarre behaviour.

• DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder]; formerly know as Multiple Personality disorder

- a dissociative disorder, is where the sufferer is characterized primarily by 2 or more distinct personalities recurrently taking control over them.

• Folie à Deux French

- for “a madness shared my two” or “shared psychotic disorder” a delusional disorder, shared by two or, occasionally, more people with close emotional ties [folie à trois, folie à quatre, folie à famille, and can even involve pets] a delusion develops in an individual in the context of a close relationship with another person who have an already established delusion.

• Hikikomori

- Japanese for "pulling inward" or "being confined." social withdrawal or extreme isolation caused by forms of stress people who refuse to leave their house and, thus, isolate themselves from society in their homes for a period longer than six months, sometimes measured in years.

• Bipolar disorder; formerly know as manic depression

- a mood disorder, is a condition that affects your moods, which can swing from one extreme to another unlike simple mood swings, each extreme episode of bipolar disorder can last for several weeks or longer, and some people may not experience a “normal” mood very often. The list goes on; those are only a small fraction of the numbers of mental disorders. In many cases, a disorder is a coping mechanism. It’s a way of the brain trying to make sense of a traumatic occasion and help you through it by deciding what it thinks is the best option. Therefore, if the brain thinks the best way for you to deal with the death of a loved one is to keep away from everyone else and not get close to anyone to avoid the repetition of pain, it can easily go down the route of developing hikikomori.

___________

Further Research

Films:

• Perfect Blue
• Norwegian Wood
• Shutter Island
• Othello
• Fight Club
• Psycho

TV Shows:

• Wonderland 
• Scrubs
• ER
• Huff United States of Tara

Literature:

• Hamlet, by William Shakespeare
• Othello, by William Shakespeare
• Alice in Wonderland, by Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
• Fight Club1996 novel by Chuck Palahniuk
• All in the Mind, by Alastair Campbell

Websites:

• www.mentalhealth.org.uk/‎
• www.mind.org.uk/
• www.psychcentral.com