I noticed it at home to, for example i would eat a pack of m&m’s alphabetically according to color  

Some people come up to me seeing me perform one of my ‘pointless’ actions and say something like ‘Oh, you’re OCD! and i would reply ‘yes, i am’ and then they would go ‘I’m OCD too’, then ‘ I reply would reply again ‘so you have a voice inside your head telling you what to do’, ‘no’ they would then reply, and I would say to them ‘so you have a habbit not OCD, you have controll over what you do’ 

I never take for granted what things i do control, hobbies for example, i play bass guitar, i write stories and i collect and paint miniatures, these give me a great deal of, pleasure i suppose cause of the fact that i have the control in these circumstances.

it’s something you just get used too i suppose and you just have to live with it and deal with it as each day comes.

my friends sort of reinforced this when they asked why I did these the things I did, like why I would organize my desk in the same way, always put chairs back in the place they were in for example. 

not many people know what OCD is in a way.  Most people I believe have an idea of what it is but don’t fully understand it and that is natural in it’s own right. 

OCD has been portrayed in entertainment as the butt of a joke in some cases but don’t acknowledge it as a what can be in some cases a serious condition. I do tend to make a joke out of it sometimes, but it’s really frustrating when you know you don’t have full control over you’re actions.

you constantly have this hidden voice compelling you to do these actions and as much as you may want to fight it… you cant. 

it does in infuriates me when people say to me that ‘oh we all do that sort of thing!’ or ‘you don’t HAVE to to do those things’ and I’m like yes I do, if you had it you would understand! But in a way everyone is a little OCD, where they will do something they’re compelled to do like me but the major difference is that  they’re many more ‘actions’ I have too which is what OCD is in a sense.

I never take for granted what things I do control, hobbies for example, I play bass guitar, I write stories and I collect and paint miniatures, these give me a great deal of, pleasure I suppose cause of the fact that I have the control in these circumstances.

It’s something you just get used too I suppose and you just have to live with it and deal with it as each day comes.

We wanted to create a documentary that would really appeal to people and give them a better understanding of the condition know as obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. to do this we wanted to make sure we had a good subject, strong character, clear narrative and stylised visual stimuli. To achieve this we all set our selves roles for the course of the production and keep in frequent contact with one another which is essential for a production to work. For the visuals we all pitched in ideas to help convey to the audience what OCD is like for people who have it and it was the job of our director Tom to visualise this on-screen, he really managed to get the best out of what we had developed during the pre-production phase aswell as editing the piece. Chris acted as our cameraman, he worked well with the surroundings getting in where ever tom needed to be and contributing some ideas on the shoot. Josh set up all the lighting for the shot he planned out the lighting plan and set it up for the shoot, working with Chris they both manged to achieve the right look and atmosphere we were working towards. I myself produced the film gathered all essential research and scripted the documentary so we had something to work with. 
After the 1st cut of the film was put together and was viewed by the seminar group we had some constructive feedback to work on for the second cut of the film and eventually the third cut. the 1st cut was very simple to begin with as it mostly composed of the interview it’s self and we noticed that the lighting was a little harsh in some places. One thing stood out after the feedback which was to do with the notion of adding more elements of OCD and pictures of myself.

Through out the production team work in my personal opinion is our biggest strength as we all worked really well together, contributed ideas for the final film, kept well communicated throughout the production via in person, phone and Facebook. this proved essential for the production to work and we found our selves ahead of schedule which gave us time to perfect our film before its first full showing to the rest of the seminar group. I’m very proud at what we managed to accomplish as a group as we accomplished all that we set out to do. 

I think the only real problems we encountered was during the first presentation of the rough first cut of our film as the rest of the seminar group complained about the overall meaning of what the film is trying to say to an audience. they argued that we were more focused on the style than the message that we were trying to convey and that it lacked emotional connection, so with this in mind we set out to give it a more emotional connection between the subject and the audience. I feel that we have managed to achieve this in the final cut of the film. One other matter was the issue of idea development, though we had some idea on what we wanted to do we were a little slow in reaching a final idea to make into a film. after we did reach the final idea we worked hard to make up for lost time. 

Theres not a lot that we could have done better strictly speaking although there was the odd difficultly faced that we couldn’t foresee happen but only to prepare for what ever may occur during the production. I have learnt a number of things along the way such as how to operate the Sony z-1 camera, how to get the most out of lighting a shot, get the most out of an interview. Also I feel that I have learnt more about working in a team contributing more to the ideas process and I aim to keep this level of improvement up and use what i have learnt for near future projects.

Our film will follow a day in the life of someone who as the mental condition obssessive compulsive dissorder . Looking into the habbits of the subject as they take us through their life so far with the condition how it has affetced their lifestyle  and personallity. This documentry will delve into the mental state of OCD, looking into the routine and prehapes over emphasising it to a dregree.

1st part is looking at the morning routine hat sort of actions are performed by the subject looking how it may differ from the more ‘normal’ routine everyone else may be more used to.  Maybe again overenphasising the actions to reflect the condition the subject is controlled by, giving the audiance an idea of what the subject goes through everyday.

2nd part is folowing the subject around for the day what compulsive actions the subject performs during this time and cut with interviews of the subject talking to us about their life with the condition and talking the audinace through what OCD is and how it makes the subject different to evryone else why the subject feels the need to do these actions, how it affects the subject personally and proffestionally.

The end the piece with a question to the subject about whether the subject could see themself living without this condition.

In other words:

Scene 1 – Introduction

A V.O. explaining in brief what O.C.D. is, played over film and images of subject. The audience would see the start to the subject’s day; walking up, eating breakfast, cleaning teeth etc. After cleaning his teeth we see the subject move into the living room, and sit on a chair.

Scene 2 – O.C.D.

An interview with the subject is used to establish how O.C.D. affects his life. The sound will be laid over film and stills of how O.C.D. affects him; e.g. turning a light on and off. The lighting in the interview will be important to create the right mood. The subject’s own personality would influence this to some extent, though I feel that a dark and atmospheric mood will create a good effect.

Scene 3 – If Only…

This could be filmed on location in a place that is familiar and special to the subject. Questions could be asked whilst walking, or sat down on a bench or wall. From this we would try to gauge just how much of a strong-hold O.C.D. has over the subject, and if he could get rid of it, would he?

Our film will ask what O.C.D. is, and how it affects a person who has it in day-to-day life. It will ask what the stigmas attached to it are, and how that affects the subject. How strongly does it affect your mind, and if the affects could be changed or removed, would he want them to be? This is what we will try to answer.

When first generating the idea I had a couple of ideas surrounding what sort of things an audience would be interested in watching. looking at one of two subject areas was ‘The outsiders’ so i listened down things that, what i feel, make me an outsider and build on that and see if i could find a subject that may tick my boxes so to speak. I immediately thought of my friend Phil who, like me, has obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD. 

I pitched this idea to my group and they really took to the idea so i set out to contact my friend phil about making a film about him and the condition. unfortunately for us he was really uncomfortable with the idea of being filmed, so we decided to make the film based around me. this was convenient as the group would have reliable and easy access too any information needed about my self and obsessive compulsive disorder.  Building on the subject of OCD we came up with a number of visual ideas to get across to an audience, the main theme was too over emphasize the ‘actions’ performed because of OCD but at the same time making sure that it’s also respectful and is also factual.

Influences:

The initial idea our group wanted was to create a very stylised and informative artifact to give people an understanding of what obsessive compulsive disorder is to those who don’t know about the condition, aswell as those who may know a bit about what is and/or those who have the condition or think they may have the condition. When we put our ideas together for the production we started to look at different influences which were mainly consisting on streams of conciousness but also films such as: ‘The Thin Blue Line’, ‘Watz with Bashir’ and ’Grizzly man’.

The thin blue line was important in that how using reconstructions can become an integral part of a documentary when it’s appropriate  to give the audience visual effaces on the subject.

Waltz with Bashir for its visual aspect, in its use of style it showed us how giving a documentary a visual style can bring in an audience’s attention from start to finish and again with its use of reenactments. 

Grizzly Man, mainly for how to go about doing interviews. Werner Herzog’s approach was key to getting the interview style right.   

using these influences along with our own stream of  conciousness  we were able to create our own visual style and approach to film making.

Sources:

Research as in any documentary film is very important, with the subject of Obsessive compulsive disorder we really wanted to make sure that the subject matter was the backbone of the film. the group needed to understand what the condition is, so they consulted with myself and I gave links to two useful websites that i used to better understand the condition myself when I was diagnosed with OCD. 

National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) gave us information into why people like myself are compelled to do the things they do in their day-to-day lives as a result of the condition and gave statistical information on the condition too such as how many people on average it affects.

The Royal College of Psychiatrist’s (RSPSYCH) gives insight into what it’s like for people with the condition, this was really important to get the perspective of the film along with my own perspective.

Giving my own insight on OCD was also important so that the final artifact naturally due to the fact that the whole film is based around me and the condition. 

Inspiration and motivation: 

what really motivated and inspired us to make this film is to give people a better insight into obsessive compulsive disorder as, from what we have found out our self’s during a presentation of our idea to the rest of the seminar group when many  claimed that they also had the condition which we felt insulting as we belive that they don’t understand what it actually is and what it’s really like to live with it.    

We really wanted to give the audience a real insight into the life of a OCD sufferer as much of what an audience may have seen mainly comes from entertainment  usually as the butt of a joke. This fulled us through out the rest of the production to give the truth about obsessive compulsive disorder.

After a second presentation with the first cut of the film we received more criticism from the seminar group which some of it wasn’t very constructive but some of what was said about the first cut was. such as that it was on the ‘talkertive side’ and that it needed more visual aid to get across the moments of OCD. With this in mind we decided to use this criticism for the next cut of the film.

Process:

The Production as a whole ran very smoothly only rarely having any difficulties. As a team we worked really well each of us giving our contribution towards the outcome of the final artifact. each of us had great ideas to contribute to the whole visual style of the film in order to emphasize the reality of obsessive compulsive disorder.

My role was to supply the group with the essntial research required to make the production work and organise the times to shoot. as my self being the subject this proved rarther easy as i could directly supply the group with information on the subject matter and notify what filming times were avalible. all these are critical to a production and as the production ran so smoothly I belive I performed a really good job in my role. we had all the information we required and we were able to get all the required footage in one day.

Brief explanation of OCD Soft mellow music Fade from black 

Interview Diagetic interview 

Non-diagetic mellow music Overlay and cut aways of OCD actions See above 

Diagetic sounds from scene Interview continues Diagetic interview 

Non-diagetic mellow music Interview on how OCD has affected life and how other people see it See above

the shooting script for the filming of ‘The OCD’ on the 10th November

The feedback from jonathon was however really constructive as he liked the use of the scenes where i would perform my ‘daily’ actions, which we want to use more of aswell.

I think the aim is now for our group is to add some more visual footage and photos to improve the visual look and make it more interesting for the audiance