Visual Metaphor
a. Concept & Story
In this story, we aimed to explore the sensation of this special group of people- Multiple Personality Disorder patients who have different states of mind than us. In their mind, there are different “people” who are sharing the same body with him, taking up his time and memory. We wanted to explore how they sense the world: how they sense sound, objects, time, and more.
We break the sensation into three stages and will screen them in the order:
1. The start of the split of minds: The character will undergo extreme mental trauma. As a result, the nominative mind will split an independent mind (or “personality”) to disconnect himself from the trauma.
Keyword: Trauma, Self-protection, Unconsciousness, “Core” and “Alters”
2. We wanted to convey the sense of out of control: Other alters- who have a different name, gender, personality- will take away the main core’s time, and body, causing amnesia. “The person with DID may or may not be aware of the other personality states and memories of the times when an alter is dominant. Stress, or even a reminder of the trauma, can trigger a switch of alters.” Also, the sense of crowdedness and chaos that will cause a change of sensation, as if in the metaphor, a room of mind is too crowded with too many splits of minds. Example of change of sensation: aware of the inconsistency of time and memory.
3. Epilogue: Cannot break the situation of undergoing mental disorders.
Concept of Metaphor:
Candle
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Use it as a clue that connects the three stages to make the structure of video more coherent.
1)Position of the girl indicates entering the next stage. 2)Candle going out from left to right.
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Light is a symbol of hope and warmth, blowing out the candle indicates that the mind of the patient is becoming hopeless, her situation is worsening.
Needle - Trauma
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The needle is a metaphor that implies pain. We aimed to use needle and hand to show a person undergoing physical and mental trauma.
Balloon- Crowdedness of the Room
Red and Blue Balloon
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According to my previous research, red symbolizes blood, danger, and power. It often associates with negative, danger-bearing emotions.
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Oppositely, blue is associated with calmness, rationality, and stability.
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The red balloons squeeze the only blue balloon away, implying that the patient’s negative emotions takes over her calmness.
Bubbles- Crowdedness of the Room
Bubble indicates that all the thoughts are popping up, which overflow from the container. Indicating the chaos, disorder, and crowdedness of the patient’s mind.
Memory, Body and Time
Memory, Body and Time
We filmed one event of the patient to show how her other personalities steal her time and use her body. The patient is applying skin care products, however, suddenly, it turns to the next day where she dressed up as a man who is shaving. She didn’t notice that he in her mind took up her body. All of this is based on real cases.
Eyes- Splitting Personalities
We used makeup to distinguish the personalities. The eyes that is clean and pure with no make-up represents the original personalities. Every time it blinks indicates that one personality is created. We also use different movements of eyes to distinguish personalities. For example, starring eyes, rolling eyes, looking at the left and right.
Shadow- Splitting Personalities
Shadow is used to implicate different personalities. Here we show how the girl interacts with her personality using shadow of hands.
Ideation & Inspiration:
Split, 2020
At the start, we brainstormed that the piece for the voice over will be a person’s telling his own senses and story in a stream of consciousness style. My original aim was to explore these patient's sensations, as a way of trying to understand them. I also want to educate the audience that MSD patients are not crazy like how movies and novels described them. They are just people that have a different sensation than us.
I looked at a very famous case, Billy Milligan. We watched documentaries about him, and movies that talk about Dissociative Identity Disorder to understand them more.
b. Creation Process & Execution
Sound： Splitting Personality
We add the sound of finger-snapping as a clue of changing personality.
We added adjustment layers to adjust the brightness, saturation, and temperature of color. During the filming process in the museum, we cannot bring the lights into it, therefore, in many parts, the lighting is different. We wanted the lighting to be consistent.
We also added filters to indicate meanings.
Storyboard was a visual tool to help us plan out our camera movement in each scene. We made a lot of changes in our storyboard because once we go to the museum, we found that the setting is very different from what we thought. We made a lot of adjustments to camera angles when shooting because we wanted to try out different possibilities and see what we can do with the museum setting.
This filter was to make the change of personality smoother and to create a sense of illusion in this important moment.
This vintage filter was added to every candle scene for two reasons. Firstly, we wanted to distinguish this special scene of clue, to let it be a direction sign, not as a part of the main story. Secondly, we wanted this old filter to give a sense of memory.
We were unable to move stuff in our home to have a white room. Therefore, we went to a museum and borrow their room. We also use the white wall in Jane’s house to film rest of the scenes. We borrow lights from ER to make sure that the lighting is consistent.
Other Planning:
c. Collaboration
In our group, I give what I am good at to my group. In high school, I had worked on many art projects that require strong visual communication. I brainstormed the concept of the metaphor and think of how to convey our idea in an artistic and poetic visual. When filming the clips, although I am the actor, we first decide upon a camera angle together and test it out many times before filming the final version. Sometimes, I film Jane to show her an example of what I think is a beautiful camera angle.
I think Jane and I had a great collaboration. We prepare materials together and pay the same number of efforts throughout the project. She brought what she is good at, for example, writing and recording narration. I took responsibility more in the aesthetic area, for example, editing, finding good angles, color adjustment.
d. Aesthetics & Results
The main metaphor in our project was the room as the mind of patients. We aimed to create an aesthetic where the color represents the following: white- pure, original; color- new thoughts, a new movement in mind. We want the room of the metaphor to be pure white, to reach a clean aesthetic and to contrast with the chaos in other scenes. We studied from the aesthetics of the two experimental films:
视线练习
Artist Pinko, 2020
Totiffany, 2020