Essay Title One: Effective portrayal of depression in film – How Depression is portrayed in film through cinematography
I want to look into this topic because I find it interesting and I am also intending to write my FMP based on a character who is suffering from depression. A specialist study in this will help with my FMP because I want it to be about depression and I believe that an accurate and effective portrayal of depression will be better because it will have more of a realistic and strong effect on the audience and create a better reaction in the audience. I want to make sure that my character is portrayed in a sensitive and educated way and not to cause any offence to the audience. This will also improve my film because it will allow audience members who suffer from depression be able to relate to the character better.Studying this area will help me as a filmmaker because it will help improve my effective use of camerawork to portray emotions and feelings. I think the main difficulty I’ll face while investigating this topic is narrowing down the topic and finding relevant written sources. Although I have found some written sources, I’m not sure how useful they’ll be as they aren’t specific to what my essay will talk about. However, I believe there are a lot of examples of this subject in film, for example the films shown here 14 Movies About Depression That Perfectly Capture the Experience – Talkspace and I will be able to use them to write my investigation. For this topic I could experiment by filming the same scene multiple times, each time using different camera techniques and then exploring how effective each of these are. In order for this to work I would have to keep the lighting, sound and action the same in each scene and only change the camerawork so the experiment is fair. I will explore how effective they are by showing them to my peers and using their feedback to evaluate which was best.
Essay Title Two: Effective portrayal of depression in film – How Depression is portrayed in film through lighting
I want to look into this topic because I want to learn how to portray depression in an effective and realistic way. By doing specialist study into this subject I will be able to improve my FMP because my FMP aims to portray a character with depression and through this research I will be able to do it in a sensitive and realistic way which can be relatable but moving for the audience. This study will help improve me as a filmmaker because it will improve my skills in lighting and using lighting to convey emotion which will be beneficial for my future. In the past I haven’t been able to use coloured lighting to convey emotion, also I have found it hard to use dark lighting without making it too dark to see the action. One difficulty I envisage in writing this essay is being specific to lighting in my research. I believe there will be many sources on conveying depression in film however I think finding sources about lighting showing depression will be harder. Through my research I have found some sources for example Mental Health Conditions in Film and TV: Portrayals that Dehumanize and Trivialize Characters which will help me write about depression but doesn’t help with the lighting part. A practical experiment I would like to carry out for this research would be filming the same scene multiple times using different lighting techniques in each one then comparing and evaluating them to see which is most effective. I would keep the camerawork, action and sound all the same and only change the lighting for this to work. Then I would ask my peers their thoughts on which one is best and why and use their comments to decide and evaluate which is best and why.
Essay Title Three: How a Suicidal character is portrayed in film through camerawork and colours
I want to look into this topic because I believe that an realistic and thoughtful portrayal of a suicidal character would be very effective in my FMP. This is because it would make the suicidal memebers of the audience feel more seen and improve the authenticity of my film.. A specialist study in this subject will help with my FMP because it stars a suicidal person and by having the tools to create this character and show them in the correct way would be beneficial because it would make it more realistic and relatable. This study will improve me as a filmmaker because I will be able to improve my use of camerawork and the use of colours to show emotions effectively. A difficulty I will face in studying this subject is that by looking at camera work and colours it makes it too broad a subject and it would be hard to narrow down to 2000 words. For example, through the research I have already completed I found this on camerawork: How filmmakers manipulate our emotions using camera angles and movement and this on lighting:A Guide on How to Use Light to Communicate Emotion for Film. There were many others on both of these subjects and having to go through them all and find what is relevant would be very difficult. A practical experiment I could do for this subject would be filming the same scene multiple times and using different camera movements and colours each time to see which has the most effective outcome.
Chosen Essay Title: Effective portrayal of depression in film – How Depression is portrayed in film through lighting
I have chosen to write my essay on this subject because I believe it will be the most beneficial towards my FMP as well as being able to do an experiment I will enjoy and will do effectively. I think that by choosing to research this area I will be able to improve my all round skills in filmmaking which will be useful for my future career.
Laura Altman 