I went through a couple of ideas for how to plan my film project and ended up using a table format to colour code the three chapters of the film and with the space to write any personal notes about audio or camera techniques.

Numbering the scenes/shots helped a lot with the soundscape part of the film, as I was able to match up specific scenes to parts of the voiceover text easily. Below is a copy of the voiceover text before I printed it out; I printed it because I find it easier to annotate it physically and visualise how it matches up to the film shots one-by-one. Printing it out also made it easier to edit any particular lines of words if I had to.

There is a reoccurring theme of “Alice in Wonderland/Alice Through the Looking Glass”-type imagery and metaphors throughout both the voiceover and in the film itself. This is because, as a child, those books were some of my favourites and I read them again and again, and still sometimes re-read them now. I found that the idea of following a talking white rabbit down into a world where nothing makes sense but is all just accepted as fact and “the way things are”, as well as the idea of going through a “looking-glass” (aka a mirror) into a world where everything is equally as utterly incomprehensible relates a lot to going through an eating disorder. ED’s are often incomprehensible to people who haven’t experienced them, and the little rituals and routines that you fall into when suffering form and ED can feel like complete nonsense once you get healthy again, like restrictions on certain foods and other diet habits. Additionally, the idea of falling down a rabbit hole and not being able to get out is applicable not only to suffering form an eating disorder, but any mental health struggle in general. Often EDs are developed by people suffering from other mental health disorders or those who are in a difficult personal situation, so the metaphor can be applied to many other situations other than simply teenage eating disorders. I made sure to only write enough to make up the allotted 5 minutes of screen time, and although it was quite difficult to write due to the personal and painful nature of the topic, I am happy with the finished outcome.