At first, we had a lot of conflicting ideas for what we should film. Oliver had the idea of making a psychological thriller centralizing around a character with schizophrenia, Austin had the idea of making a movie about hacking, and I had the idea of making a movie about social class (very different, I know).
After a lot of going back and forth, we settled on making a movie about schizophrenia. However, we want to present it in a different manner than in the usual way Hollywood portrays the lives of people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Taking the things that we learned in our AICE Psychology class, Oliver and I knew that the normal way movies portray people with schizophrenia is not an accurate representation. Hollywood loves to either romanticize or vilify people with schizophrenia.
For our story, we thought it would be a cool idea to portray the life of a teenager living with schizophrenia in a realistic fashion. Rather than our character succumbing to their illness, it'll be about how our character deals with everyday life and the struggles of high school while diagnosed with schizophrenia. We also want it to be more centralized on the character's personality and daily life rather than their illness. One of our main goals is to 'humanize' people with schizophrenia, not isolate them into a mere group.
In order for us to get this right, it is essential we do research and broaden our understanding of schizophrenia. In class this morning, we were able to find a few videos including accounts of people diagnosed with schizophrenia, and trustworthy websites that will help us develop a better understanding. This was one of the first videos we found: which is a Ted Talk where Celia McGough talks about her illness.
The next video is another account of a man named Quentin and his experience of having schizophrenia. The accounts follows his life throughout his teen years, which is the age range we would like our character to be in.
We also found various websites (and a blog) talking about the common stereotypes and exaggerations found in many movies about schizophrenic patients. Although we still need to some more research, we can begin to shell out our main character and create a backstory for them. Hopefully we can finish developing our story the next time we see each other so we can storyboard and then film!
https://hekint.org/2017/01/23/portrayal-of-schizophrenia-in-movies/
http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/1474/exaggerations-and-stereotypes-of-schizophrenia-in-contemporary-films
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22555313
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