Portraying Schizophrenia

Innocence We decided in order to portray the two sides or

‘characters’ of the girl with a mental illness, we would film some of the shoot with her in a white dress, to symbolise the innocent side to her character, supported by soft camera movements and occasionally slowed-down shots to capture her calm behaviour effectively.

Birdcage ConceptWe also included a white bird,

again with white symbolising innocence/purity inside a white birdcage, which represented the inner self being trapped inside, that can’t escape from its inner demons.

We felt it was important to show both calm shots of the bird/birdcage, as well as the ‘dark’ character dominating it, showing its power over the two personalities.

All these shots show the birdcage being dominated by the dark character, and reminds the viewer throughout the video of how ‘white’ has weak connotations.

ErraticAs the video progresses, the use of fast, erratic

shots increases to portray the opposite side of the character and how it can mentally affect a person.

These shots in particular focus in on the black and white bandages on each wrist showing that no matter what current behaviour is occurring there is always a part of the other side of the character remaining within. The rapid shots portray a struggle between the two personalities.

These are further erratic shots of the character struggling mentally showing discomfort and fear, wishing to escape her own inner conflicts.

After a build up throughout the video of increasing anxiety, the last shot is calm and pans towards the now empty birdcage, which symbolises how this ‘inner demon’ has escaped and explains the sudden change of behaviour and sense of relief.This was an important feature in our video and we attempted to put this message across metaphorically through the birdcage concept.