CCR (Creative Critical Reflection)

Well Parasomnia is finally finished. I do want to preface this with saying that this truly was a difficult process to do. I really enjoyed filming this film even though I had so many problems come up. Anyways we can get into that information later let me first explain this films background. When I planned this film, I really wanted to do something scary but have a story that people may be able to relate to. The main character Dean is a young college student who is struggling to sleep, which is a problem that many colleges students face. Now Dean not only has trouble trying to sleep he also keeps himself awake voluntarily as he has nightmares about horrible things. Recently Deans nightmares have felt more and more real until he needs to go to a psychiatrist and see what’s wrong, but he gets nothing out of it as his nightmares were disregarded as nothing important. This then leads to Deans demise as he was right about his dreams, and he knew something was coming for him. Now all this relates to a multitude of things that are true problems in the world.

To begin, the main point that this film is aimed at is showing the disregard of mental health as if it is nothing important although with newer generations such as Dean, mental health problems continue to get worse. I mainly wanted to bring light to the idea that you can never truly see through another person’s eyes. This is shown through how all the characters surrounding Dean never fully understand what he see’s and instead of feeling sympathetic and worrying for him they constantly call him crazy and say that what he is seeing is truly nothing of importance. So, this contributes to my representation of people who are affected by mental illness and have had that issue of never truly being understood. Even then this representation can be viewed and understood by a wide range of viewers as it isn’t too complicated to understand, and we all have the idea that mental health may or may not be important but when it comes to the issues that come with having poor mental health no one truly bats an eye to help or even just to truly understand what someone else may be going through. Another social issue that I wanted to represent was that when people have problems with mental health, they refuse to seek health. Now this is a problem for many reasons one of the reasons is one that I displayed in my film. People who have mental illnesses may not go to therapy in the fear of being judged or seen as insane which is how Dean was treated when he went to the psychiatrist. Now I chose to make Dean go through this because I wanted to show that even with the problems that may arise from his friends or his psychiatrist, he stayed strong. Now I did want to also include that although Dean is a strong character one more thing, I wanted to represent was just how much of a mental toll a mental illness can have on someone and I show that through how Dean is constantly thinking about this monster and this monster is shown throughout the entire movie because Dean cannot stop thinking or worrying about this problem. This shows the harsh toll that a mental issue may take on someone.

 

               Now when it comes to branding, I’ve built my brand in few ways. Primarily I’ve posted updates of my film on my social media specifically Instagram as I am familiar with the application as well as it is easier to reach a larger audience as I have friends who have several hundreds of followers. That takes me to my next part of branding; I made a specific Instagram for my film, yet I promoted it on my main account with roughly 300 followers which helped me reach larger audiences with my film. Now this seems to have been beneficial as my film has already surpassed my film opening from last year within the first 24 hours. I plan to continue to promote my film as well as submit it to film festivals to reach a broader audience. Now this all built a branding as a horror film which is exactly what I was going for. When I would make a poster or a thumbnail for the film, I would set it up to look very eerie in hopes of staying withing that horror genre with my brand. I also posted a trailer for my film which showed my film as a horror film as well as it showed how we are following Dean and his struggle to fight his mental illness. This brings me to my next piece of branding. Now I didn’t do to much branding on mental illness other than the trailer because I wanted to keep that story aspect within the film itself in hopes that when people watch it, they would relate to some of the conventions displayed.

               My film relates to the audience as it may be a representation of what they might be going through. When I say this, I mean that I’m going for a younger audience and this younger audience especially in our generation mental illness is on the rise. As a student who is in classes learning about mental health issues and how to reach out I did a lot of research on this topic not because I need to reach out for help but it is something I want to represent and one thing that I found is that many people are to scared to reach out for help and that’s one thing that I wanted to represent In my film. Although I wanted to represent this, I decided to go with the route that shows the worst ending possible for someone who is slowly going insane as no one truly understands them. I tried to engage with audiences by making it a relatable story with relatable characters. I hope that anyone who watched this film understood how fictional everything was and how even if you think no one can truly help you that you still need to seek help. I also made sure that I used some new styles of horror in my film to make my film have a newer look so that my target audiences would engage with the film more.

               The research that I did on mental illness and horror films greatly impacted the way that my film challenged conventions. To begin with my research on mental illness I realized that the stigma around mental health issues really stop someone from getting some very much needed help and that’s why even if Dean in my film struggled with his mental health and was being disregarded as “insane” by his best friend he was still strong enough to go seek help and that is one thing that I really wanted to convey within my film. My research on analog horror which is the type of horror I was going for showed me that this horror is primarily on a static background, but I wanted to challenge the regular conventions of analog horror and bring it to real life. This challenge of conventions made me take something obviously fake and make it real and I believe with just some makeup and clothing design we brought that type of entity to life in a fairly good way. My main convention that I did challenge though was the mental health one where I showed how going to seek help is at least worth a try as the general convention is that people who suffer from mental illness may not seek help of fear for what might happen.

               Overall, my film has a lot of stories and meaning hidden behind the camera. I am proud of this project and cant wait to continue to promote it and have more and more people see this and I hope that  at least one person seeks help because of this film.