The documentary will be about a patient named Ren Grill who has been making Facebook pages and posting YouTube video diaries for his suffering from M.E. /CFS (Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). His psychological path as being a patient and his daily life will be explored. It will represent his suffering and how he sees himself as a distinguished being from others. It will tell audiences his personal situation including issues of his specific symptoms that may set him apart from other patients, what he thinks that causes his suffering( e.g. psychiatric causes, genes from family members, or car accident), how he was confirmed as a patient and life for him since then has been changed (his relationship with friends, family, partners; his school, work and other social activities). The documentary will demonstrate his personal history mainly through interviews with him when he will orally deliver his thoughts about the abovementioned issues and opinions of other relevant social reality such as the absence of cure methods and lack of funding basis for a more advanced, professional research on medicines. We will see him in his house, his engaging himself in activities he is able to do. There will be interviews to be conducted with specialists or medical school students from University of Sussex and we will show their responses to Ren’s personal case and how a full time student may be educated in terms of M.E. in medical-related degrees.
Documentary modes such as participatory, observational, reflexive and expository will be involved. We will use his speech in interviews to be narration in soundtrack, which simulates to voice of god and builds up a better access for audiences to know his voice and identity. Some of his activities we will film may be spontaneous so we are meant to capture him either enjoying or struggling in doing some daily activities easy to a non-patient. In observational mode, this footage will authentically reveal details. We will also use participatory mode to communicate with specialists and students on campus and also communicate with him from off camera while doing interviews.
We will conduct the interviews with him wherever he feels at ease (places such as a café, his room, or just on streets). We will insert some archive footage from his YouTube diary, like we did in the pilot material, and intercut with interviews we are doing when his responses to those videos can be unfolded (e.g. we may ask why were his temper out of control at that certain moment; what was in his mind). This facet about his involvement in social media contains some reflexive elements. Whenever he refers to a piece of memory of the past, still photographs of his personal belongings can be shown on camera as a valid reference.
We will record and keep ambient sounds whenever they embody his unique relation with the environment (e.g. his singing with a guitar; on location recording will be required). The music he performed in gigs can be placed in music track as a representation of his passion towards life and a signifier for hopefulness.
The project will target at young M.E. patients and all the other non-patients to encourage them.
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