Over the past few years, there have been several adverts on television, radio, and on posters in various locations on the topic of mental health. Some aim to educate, others to support those who are suffering from a mental illness, a few provide answers to questions or places to go for information, and some simply have the message “just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist”.
I began looking through Youtube for the adverts about the topic of mental illness. The first one I found was an entry to HeadsUp, a video campaign for good mental health, called “We All Have Problems“. The film has no sound at all apart from what we assume to be the internal dialogue of the female in the footage. The character appears to be waiting for someone by the side of the road, and while she’s there, various thoughts start running through her head: “Will my parents ever separate? Would I live with my Mum or my Dad?” “I look horrible” “I’m going to fail my resit”. The piece is two minutes long, and the sound (dialogue) begins to build up over the two minutes, getting more and more frantic. I like the idea of just having the dialogue, because very often when your mind is racing like that, you can’t hear anything else – physically or otherwise.
However, the actress who’s voice it is has a fairly strong accent which, when couple with the delay effect, make it very difficult to hear what she is saying. As someone who suffers from anxiety, I also didn’t like many aspects of the script. It makes the problems sound very childish, and most are worries that a lot of people have – not passing exams, not liking their appearance etc etc, so wasn’t believable. It lacked the intensity that those with mental health often feel, especially as this video’s aim was to put the listener in the shoes of the character. Thoughts of the character often drifted randomly between subjects, instead of obsessing over singular details or potential outcomes which is the more common reaction (not in all cases though). I think the delay effect also didn’t come across how the filmmakers wanted it to – to me, it seemed less human, and more difficult to identify with her. It can be difficult to get across just how it feels when someone is having a panic attack, or feeling intensely stressed about something, yet no one can hear an echo in their own head! I think I would just record a lot of dialogue, have it playing one after the other, and interject it with screaming/rapid breathing. Sometimes in a panicked state, you’re not thinking about anything in particular, so you only experience the intense feeling of stress, instead of thinking.
The video “What You See/What You Don’t See” takes a different approach. Instead of putting you in the head of a character, it consists of a selection of people of several races, ages and genders talking to the camera/the viewer/the audience about themselves. Each character begins by introducing themselves as who they are to the person they are address (e.g. father, sister, student) and what they do for a living (e.g. stay-at-home Mum, construction worker, volunteer). This acts as a connection tool, as nearly everyone has one of the family members listed, and or knows someone working in these fields. Additionally, with such a wide variety of people, it further suggests that anyone could be suffering from a mental illness. It follows on to have the characters tell the camera something about themselves (e.g. loving, funny). Mental illness (in the case of this video, depression) is not always in the forefront of people’s lives, and it doesn’t turn them into a horrible person who forgets how to be a normal human being. Each character explains briefly what it feels like to have depression, but the film doesn’t dwell on it. It’s focus is the beginning and end, which consists of each character addressing the person they most want to talk to about it, who they want to understand what it’s like, and then finish by explaining that they’re still normal people, and all they need is a bit of extra support and understanding.
The film I produce will be a mixture of these two.
To be continued…
