“Out Of Mind” By Simon Mulvaney
Having moved on from the tragedy of his mother's death surprisingly quickly; with the help of neuroscientist, Prof. Adam Zeman, artist, Amy Right and a host of others around the globe; Alex Wheeler finds himself journeying into the depths of his mind to uncover the fascinating roots of his emotional detachment from people and events.
I wanted to tell a human-centred story that educated viewers about a complex neurological condition, provided an insight into the unexpected, emotional impacts of the condition, and communicated the nuance of behind whether such a condition could be considered a ‘good or bad’ thing for the individual.
As of November 2020, like most people, I had absolutely no idea what aphantasia was. So when Anna O’Donohue, a producer at WIRED UK, contacted me, to ask if I would be interested in directing a short documentary about it, naturally, I was a little intimidated.
It wasn’t until I began my research, that the fascinating nature of this little-known condition, began to reveal itself to me. The idea I pitched to Anna, was to approach this topic from a human-centred-perspective, rather than focusing too much on the science. Yes, we would inform our audience of the neurological markers of aphantasia and the events that lead to it’s discovery; but in order to make any of that mean anything, it was important that we focused on people, rather than facts.
This approach was a bit of a departure from WIRED’s usual approach to content creation, but nonetheless, they put their trust in my approach and away we went! Our first step was to understand how aphantasia affected people. The best way to do that - to speak to them.
December was a wash of international video calls, with aphants all over the world, who field producer, Lewis Faithful, managed to track down online:
• What do you know about aphantasia?
• What happens when you try to visualise something?
• What is your version of imagination?
• How do you perceive the past, present and future?
• How does it effect your life?
During these conversations (some of which made it into the final film), we spoke to Alex Wheeler, a young man, who’s family were still coming to terms with the tragic loss of their mother.
The introspective journey that Alex had been on, over the past few months, touched upon many of the themes, articulated by the diverse community of aphants, that we were speaking with. Through receiving Alex’s blessing to orientate our narrative around his unique story of self-discovery, we knew we had a film that could bring together a lot of these common themes, through the journey of one individual.
By continuing our research, we ended up speaking to artist, YouTuber and social media influencer, AmyRightMeow; whose long-lasting understanding that they had aphantasia, seemed to contrast Alex’s recent discovery of the condition. In addition to this, producer Anna O’Donohue managed to secure a small slot in renowned neuroscientist, Professor Adam Zeman’s busy schedule, for him to lend his scientific knowledge to the tale. Adam’s inclusion came as a huge win for us, as he headed the team of researchers who coined the term, ‘aphantasia’, in 2015, and is respected internationally, as a pioneer of the subject, within the scientific community.
We had come a long way since first hearing the term ‘aphantasia’, only 7 weeks prior, and with all of this in place, it was now time to shoot. The way in which we approached production circulated around Covid-19 restrictions. We tried not to see these restrictions as ‘problems that had to be overcome’, but rather, just as ‘our new normal’. I hope that these restrictions fade into obscurity, when watching the film and aren’t too distracting or obvious, to the viewer.
We began by shooting our non-scripted interviews and cinéma vérité b-roll, all of which had to be done by myself, in a one-man-band, run-and-gun, natural-light set-up, due to our extremely tight budget. Although this approach can achieve an intimacy that is very difficult to match, any other way, it comes with a number of technical and aesthetic limitations. In order to remedy this, as well as visually articulate the workings of the inner-mind and provide images to some of the more abstract subject matters, expressed during our interviews, we planned a few days in Foundry Film Studios, with a micro-team of specialised HOD’s.
For this, we relied on the skills of cinematographer Dan McPake, gaffer Chris Sarginson and art director Deborah Du Vernay, all of whom brought an inspiring level of passion, creativity, craft and artistry to the project, in order to work around our substantial budget limitations.
Post production was approached in a collaborative way, with myself taking on the selects, offline and online editing and Barcelona based animation due, Run Zebra Run (Luis Vilanova & Gabrial Russo) taking on all of the animation work.
Our music score is a made up of a few pre-composed tracks from libraries, interwoven with an original composition by London-based composing due Bloodmoon (Liam Hennessy and Joe Danher).
We hope that what we have created in this tight, 19 week period, with a small team of 10 people and an extremely tight budget, is an emotionally-driven story that, not only educates audiences to the existence of aphantasia, but to neurodiversity, as a whole. The experience of making this film, of learning of the existence of aphantasia and of coming into contact with a rich, online community of aphants, has taught me not to be so tough on myself, both as a filmmaker and as an individual.
We all have elements of our neurology that may be deemed as strengths, or as weaknesses, by wider society. We may be able to change some of these elements, but we can rarely change all of them. By better understanding how our minds naturally work; the abilities we have and the abilities we do not, we are more easily able to embrace who we truly are, and in so doing, may be better equipped to discover inner-peace, free from anxiety and self-blame.
If this film is able to help a small handful of people in this journey, I know that everybody involved will feel as though they have accomplished something truly special.
Credits
Production: Wired UK
Director: Simon Mulvaney
Producer: Anna O'Donohue
Featuring: Alex Wheeler, Adam Zeman, Amy Right
Line Producer: Lewis Faithfull
Studio Cinematographer: Dan McPake
Gaffer - Chris Sarginson
Studio Art Director: Deborah Du Vernay
Animation & VFX: Run Zebra Run
Original Music Composition: Liam Hennessy and Joe Danher
Studio: Foundry Film Studios
Camera Hire: No Drama
Lighting Hire: Drop City
VHS Digitisation: EachMoment
8mm Processing & Digitisation: On8mil
Special Thanks:
Amanda Jacobs, Amanda Jones, Amy Taylor, Angela Daye, James Newton, Judith Nuertey, Lauren Vevers, Lindford Miller, Niki Christiansen, Nikki Petra, Petra Hentila, Philip Gardner, Ranae Richards, Rhianne Broadway, Shal Mines, Val WIlson, Emily Standford, Nelan Tagra, Ravi Samuel, Tamra Alireza
Additional Thanks:
Emma Halawi, The Gate Films, Megan Lewis, Simon Lewis, Rhiannon Lewis, James Shannon, James Jones, Mark Arrowsmith, Kyle Shephard, Wired US
Hey filmmakers! Have a project of your own you’d like us to check out?