Cinematography of emotions

One of the most difficult qualities of storytelling is communicating the unseeable.

Mental health would be an excellent example of an experience that is extremely difficult to communicate on film without romanticising. ‘Sea Side' our 2014 film about suicide, grief and the mental health struggles of families in association, tackled this kind of storytelling.

If you have ever been to on of my lectures on telling stories visually, you will be aware of this case study as it was such a successful one.

‘Sea Side’ was able to communicate complicated internal emotions through its use of visuals. When writing Sea Side, I spent six weeks speaking with people who had attempted suicide, or family members of those that had performed it. These were very often very intimate conversations, full of emotion. After these six weeks, I compiled my notes, ordering the emotions someone committing suicide goes through, leading up to the event.

With an order of emotions listed, I illustrated each one. Worked out how each could be visualised. This a key step in translating unseen qualities to cinema. The skill of visualising emotion is one that can be practiced, and definitely should be if you want to tell visual stories.

With the sequence of illustrations in mind, I went about storyboarding the film, blending the progression of the story with the visualised emotions. By visualising the emotions of suicide, we did not need to mention suicide once in the film. The unseeable becomes felt by the audience.