Name: Amruta Chirasmita
Guide: Prof. Shilpa Ranade
Course: Animation and Film Making
Stigma around Mental Health Issues
Mental illness does not come alone, it carries terrible stigma with it. It is troubling that matters of the mind are not treated the same way as the matters of the body. The myths surrounding mental illnesses further drive people to stigmatise and thus demotivate the affected from seeking help, turning it into a vicious cycle.
Mental health has been a touchy subject for a long time. It is time it was normalised and the stigma removed.
Through my film, Echoes, I am trying to help this forward. If it helps individuals to crush denial and seek help, all the effort will be worth it.
“The basic research for the project involved extensive reading about the topic. I talked to some people who had experienced mental health issues or had seen a loved one do so. The sketches were made at the time of the interviews in place of taking notes.
Based on the data I collected both, secondary and primary, the mind map was created. It gave a bird’s-eye-view of all the data and helped me figure out the core concerns and the direction my film should take.
This helped me decide on my story and I created the storyboard and timed it.”
“The story had a tinge of the unreal so I considered paint-on-glass as a suitable style for animation. For this a setup was made that would support multiple planes to animate on. A LED board served as the under-light.
Initially, oil paint with linseed oil was used to paint the frames but it didn’t stay pliable enough for a whole shot to be animated. After a long list of failed combinations, I found out that a mixture of watercolors and glycerin was what I was looking for. It didn’t dry for weeks.”
“In the process of finding the right visual style I tried a number of techniques like finger painting, painting with brush, sponges and scratching with pins.
Not all techniques were easy to animate. Some were unclear, others were too time-consuming. The final design was simple with only four colors and mostly white spaces.”
“Here are some stills from the film.
Most of the scenes are painted on a single pane of glass. Only the scenes where a distance and the feel of a shallow focus was needed did I animate on multiple panes of glass and animated the focus of the camera.”