I am making a partly animated partly filmed video that features someone in a college learning about the struggles the other people in said college are going through, while trying to calm down from his own.
He is sat alone in the college on a sofa, watching people go by as he tries to calm himself down. A metaphorical version of himself, a ghostlike figure goes around an army of real people talking about their problems, and a metaphorical animation takes place of all the things they could potentially be going through.
It is told in a reasonably storybook fashion, and most of the art is a metaphor as the main character goes on a journey to rediscover mindfulness for himself.
I am going to be relying heavily on simple imagery and colour, with only a simple story with a clear meaning.
The end of it is him opening his eyes again, but this time towards the real world. This is important because it implies that these problems do not only exist in his mind but the real world as well, and that you can do things about them.
The Seven Basic plots was a book written by --- to document 7 of the most common storylines in media, that was originally used to describe books, but is also commonly now applied to screenwriting and movies.
Here are the 7 basic plots:
Overcoming the monster- Anticipation, Dream, Frustration, Nightmare, Miraculous Defeat - Heroes Journey
Rags to riches- Someone who has to work hard, and has to be rewarded in the end
Quest- Large goal that has to be finished by the end of the story
Voyage and return- Travelling to a distant land, that teaches them about how to live in the real world
Comedy and tragedy- Series of comical/tragic plot points, divided by their happy or sad ending
Rebirth- Hero is misguided and has to change for better, because they are inspired/taught how to do so
In my Wellbeing project, I am going to mostly refer to it as a Voyage And Return series as I am going to be speaking form an unknown perspective, to a character that will essentially be a version of the viewer.
I have created a Demo for what I wanted the start of my Wellbeing video to be like, with a taster of the animation I wanted to include in it. I have kept in mind the metaphorical aspect I could use in it, as well as using to my advantage the concept of colour, in ways that are not typically human (such as the pink skin in the nose.) I am very proud of the concept I have put together, and I think that if this was made to a full video it would be a very inspiring piece that I could use to my advantage.
My main intention with this is that I can create something that was not typically human, so I could normalise the idea that mental health is sometimes confusing and can not always be 'fixed' in the same way that a physical illness could be.
