I needed to research other short films that dealt with depression in order to understand how to make a short film of my own. One short film that that heavily inspired me with creating my own animation was the above short film that is an official film by ChildLine. It basically chronicles the life of a girl around the age of the character featured in my animation and her day to day struggle with depression.
I really like this short as it doesn't go overboard with it's visual representation of depression. Depression is not often a visible illness so visually representing it is quite difficult but I really like the approach ChildLine took.
Depression in this short film is represented as a big uncomfortable helmet our protagonist has to wear everyday. It is like a prison that shuts the outside world out. There is a narration that runs throughout the short that is the main character describing life with depression. She talks about how life with depression can make even the most mundane of day to day tasks impossible. And how this is represented is with a scene in which our protagonist tries to brush her teeth and ends up just rubbing toothpaste on her glass screen.
It's not a particularly cutting edge way of visually representing depression but the above scene is an example of why this way of representing depression is very successful. Because the video is not all doom and gloom in fact it's actually quite funny, and because it's funny it makes it easier to watch and more relatable, particularly for young people who might have depression. Because this video is so easy to watch and so accessible it might encourage more young people to contact ChildLine if they are feeling depressed.
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