Don't Fall Down The Rabbit Hole
What is Body Dysmorphia?
Body dysmorphia is a mental health condition where a person spends a lot of time worrying about flaws with their appearance. These flaws are often unnoticeable to others.
Treatments
• Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
• Positive self affirmations
• Less screen time on social media
• Re-framing how they view their body (ie focusing on what it allows them to do rather than its appearance)
Valuable Statistics
• Thirty-five percent of teenagers worry about their body image often or every day.
• 4 in 10 teenagers said images on social media had caused them to worry about their body image.
• More than a third of British teenagers had stopped eating at some point or restricted their diets due to worrying about their body image
How can we directly talk to our target audience and retain their attention?
When in just 3 seconds a user decides if they will scroll or watch the video on social media.
Our Charity Young Minds
Young Minds, a UK charity that provides young people with the tools to look after their mental health. They also empower adults to be the best support they can be to the young people in their lives. Young Minds give young people the space and confidence to get their voices heard and change the world we live in. Our goal is to raise awareness surrounding body dysmorphia and provide an outlet for viewers affected.
Audience
Our target audience is young people up to the age of 25, as well as their parents/ carers and professionals working with young people. We will be sponsored by young minds and the animation will be displayed on their social medias such as, TikTok (18.9k), Instagram (188k), and Twitter Advertising our animation on social media platforms allows us to communicate to our demographic directly through platforms where they may be seeing the harmful content contributing to their mental illnesses.
Storyboards
Our initial storyboard featured a rabbit in a lift, where they compared themself to other animals as they got into the lift, with going down a level representing the rabbit’s mental health taking a plummet. The message was that the rabbit should not compare it’s bodily uses to other animals, for example it should not compare it’s short legs with a giraffe’s long legs. The practical issue with this was that different animals have different bodies for different uses, however when linking this back to a human standpoint, we all have the same body parts for the same biological purpose. Our concept had to stay more true to body dysmorphia from a logical standpoint.
We decided to go for a forest setting, where the rabbit both figuratively and literally falls down a rabbit hole as a result of scrolling social media. This idea worked as it was snappy and had a hashtag we could deploy on social media, the place our animation would be shown.
Animatic
We created an animatic to visualise how our scenes would fit with sound effects and music. We timed every scene to the pacing we wanted to make animating in AfterEffects easier when we came round to it.
Character Design
We chose to use a rabbit in our animation when tackling the sensitive subject of body dysmorphia. This is so that we can isolate the message in a playful way without singling out any individual insecurity that a viewer may have.
Setting and Colour Scheme
We used colour psychology and pathetic fallacy to construct our frames and make the viewer feel different ways throughout the animation. We used colder colours like dark blues and purples as well as uneasy sound effects like branches rustling to create a sense of unease. In comparison to the tropical warm colours that transform the forest around the bunny at the end of the animation, demonstrating how the external view of the world is dictated by its own mental health.
Music and Sound Effects
One of my teammates can play the guitar so he created a melody for us to play in the background of the animation. This was great as copyright would not be an issue and could tailor the pace of the song to our animation.
Evaluation
I believe the project was very successful as it had a strong message that spoke to a specific demographic. On top of this it would be on a social media platform that is mostly used by our target audience. Having a snappy hashtag at the end of the animation also meant that it would have a high likelihood of gaining traction on social media. Our film also had a reputable charity that we partnered with. I worked mostly on the audio in the animation, whilst also animating some of the frames.