Units 1-4 Pitch

By Caspar Hayes
 Chosen topic

Chosen topic for my short films was Mental

Health, the struggles my younger generation
face with it and educate others on what it's
like for them.

This is chosen due to how more of a general

topic mental health has become for my
generation, schools and parents bringing
awareness about it to children, as well as films
discussing the topic.

Since it's a focal point in my generation

nowadays it was a fitting idea for the subject
of British youth.
 Research was done for both productions using
secondary and primary sources of research, using
websites that focus on the topic as well as focus
Research groups of people's personal experiences, learning
people's personal experiences and symptoms of
certain mental illnesses and disorders.

Going off this data helped create ideas and how to

make the characters and the problems they
themselves face, plus certain scenarios and ideas
that they could encounter plus ideas for interesting
visuals for both productions.
 Stop motion                                                        Short film
Given research such as the traits of Bipolar
patients helped to create the image of
exaggerated and extreme facial emotions
to show extreme shifts in emotion, also
taken from horror stop motions such as
Ideas  1992s The Sandman, with its use of
exaggerated faces to create uneasiness.
Pink Floyd music used in my stop motion
due to a good amount of their songs
focusing on mental illness.
Dark lighting and lack of colour to help
emphasise the sadness felt in bipolar
patients and how troublesome it can be to
live with it.
The idea to make my short film a dark
comedy as well as a drama came from
the want to both entertain and educate
so people would want to watch a film
that educates those about people's
experiences with mental illness. Ideas for
the tone also came from films such as
Trainspotting and Fight Club and shows
such as the peep show, that deal with a
serious subject matter and still make a
consistent comedic tone
Setting of a therapy circle was done to
help facilitate the character's flashbacks
and why they happen.
Chosen actors mostly suffer with the
given disorders or mental illnesses to
help with authenticity.
Examples of • The three boys
both of my • Bi polar
productions
 Both productions were quite troublesome, there was a
stressful time crunch to beat for both with one week for the
animation and two weeks for the short film.
With the short film I found I had to write a character out of the
script entirely as well as change the gender of one character in
order to meet the time crunch and seen in the shown clip
there is a present watermark, which is because in order to
Production meet the deadline I had to edit at home with a very poor
software that came with a watermark unless I paid a large fee.
There was also scheduling conflicts with actors working on
their own films and having personal matters to attend to, plus
voice over needed time slotted for the studio.
The stop motion was troubling due toa poor camera as well as
a lack of space to work in due to others being occupied with
work.
Feedback Short film
The three boys had generally
Stop motion
Feedback for Bipolar was
good feedback, people had few favourable but many felt it
problems with movie outside of could've had more happen
the watermark issue, such as the and it needed more in terms
second boy, Dylan, not having a of visuals and more dramatic
lot of comedy in his section and weight to make it more
being the shortest, as well as impactful but review wise it
some complaints about the
was received okay and
audio, though that aside I had
generally achieved my goal of generally enjoyed.
entertaining and educating
people on mental illness going
off the mostly positive feedback
despite the complaints
 •From my experiences working on these, organization is
the key thing I have learned, be it time, actors, sets and
bookings, make sure to plan everything out properly so
nothing is poorly done in the end.
•Plus, I've learned to not use any software aside from
Moving forward premiere pro.
•I've learned I need to improve my audio work as the
audio of my films aren't the best.
Though I have felt my strengths still lie in direction and
cinematography and in my editing.
Thank you for listening