Character Research

 Researching Mentality of our Protagonist

When we set out to make a film cented on a mentally unstable individual, we wanted to depict as accurately as possible the behaviour of a depressed/unhinged person.
To do this we looked at several research papers and thesis on the subject of mental illness and depression. A couple of notes stood out to us 'Sadness or downswings in mood are normal reactions to life's struggles, setbacks, and dissapointments. Many people use the word ''depression'' to explain these kinds of feelings, but depression is much more than just sadness.'
http://www.helpguide.org/articles/depression/depression-signs-and-symptoms.htm
http://jenniferkennedy.co.uk/depression/
Some more symptoms are listed below

• you feel hopeless and helpless
• you’ve lost interest in friends, activities, and things you used to enjoy
• you feel tired all the time
• your sleep and appetite has changed
• you can’t concentrate or find that previously easy tasks are now difficult
• you can’t control your negative thoughts, no matter how much you try
• you are much more irritable, short-tempered, or aggressive than usual
• you’re consuming more alcohol than normal or engaging in other reckless behaviour

After reading this we realised that we did not want to make our protagonist too crazy or unrealistically pyschotic. We wanted to accurately show someone who had lost someone close to them and was struggling to make sense of his situation.
In many articles we researched we saw depression of losing a loved one felt like having a feeling of imepnding doom often feeling lifeless and aggressive.
We reflected these symptoms in our characters behaviour and mise en scene by having him sleeping on his sofa with alcohol bottles scattered everywhere and the room darked out.

We also made him act on edge and aggressive by having him pull a knife on his friend and act suspicious of him even though he was the one who called his friend round(paranoia). This reflects the symptoms of someone who is depressed or psychotic as they are always untrustworthy of others and only feel comfortable alone.

An additional aspect of our film which we wanted to mirror our characters mindset was costume. We looked at many different disshelved appearances such as a stained hoodie or ripped t-shirt. But we eventually settled on a bathrobe aswell as disshelved hair.