Goeblin Animations + Fantasic Fear of Everthing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xp22IYL2uU

Inbetween
Anxiety - crocodile anxiety in subconscious

Inbetween represented anxiety with a blue crocodile. A crocodile, a dangerous, scary and intimidating animal - in the animation the crocodile follows her wherever she goes and is always disturbing her - even blocking her from going on to her balcony to see the new neighbour. I really like that a crocodile has been used to represent anxiety - it makes the animation more playful without playing a stereotypical dark mood for displaying this subject matter.  I also like that there has been this metaphor used to describe 'anxiety.' It lets the viewer see anxiety physically - anxiety is something that people experience and other cannot see, here we are able to understand what anxiety is - and how it effects her. For instance during a work presentation the crocodile distracts her - which could suggest she is nervous and worried about how she is presenting her work. Later on, when she is sitting at lunch, the crocodile continually runs circles around her to emphasise a social anxiety or that the anxiety is still present even when see is sitting alone on a break.  My favourite scene during this short, is when she finally gives up trying to ignore the crocodile and even says that it is cute. Above the last thing she says is 'don't worry' (as we know anxiety is to do with worrying) and this shows she has finally confronted her problem and can move on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0yC2ldpBFI

Petit trois
Post traumatic stress disorder - how is it represented ( a monster)

To the right, is another animation created by the same company (Goeblins) as above. It also its heavily themed with anxiety. In particular 'post traumatic stress disorder'. The animation is about a soldier that returns home from war wounded and hurt. His wife takes care of him and helps to heal his wounds by stitching him back together, she then with him goes out into the world and tries to stitch the world back together (fixes all that breaks) - however we see that her husband is not really fixed at all. Throughout the animation the wife continues to sow the city together yet her husband can only seem to destroy all in his path. The wife fixed him on the outside however he still is wounded psychologically - he has been killing others as a soldier and cannot fit back into his normal routine. He has been trained to kill and destroy hence why he cannot do anything but destroy the work that his wife is doing. This anger and frustration slowly builds up inside of him and he suddenly becomes a large and intimidating monster. In the end we see nothing but a large shadow which wraps the wife and ends. His anxiety destroyed the work of his wife and consumed her with his anger. I really like this animation as it seems really sweet however has this undercurrent of a serious torment. I really like the transformation of the man as it showed how his anxiety changed him into a monster. This anxiety, can change the person he once was from a loving husband to a large scary monster. I like how this change is shown slowly, it lets us understand how it escalates from something small into something huge. Furthermore I like that the animation of this monster grows overtime. This animation also uses a good colour palette that expresses the cycle of anxiety. At he start the animation is incredibly dark until the wife literally pulls her husband into the lighter city (his past is gone and moving into thee future) yet by the end we see the shadow once more (which is actually the husband) turn the entire screen black (we arrive at the beginning once more.)

Fantastic Fear of everything
dream, controlling his life, childhood, worst fear occurs but he survives it, dark, comedy (is anxiety funny?)

www.rte.ie

Fantastic Fear of everything is a comedy starring Simon Pegg. I really like this movie as it shows how a strong anxiety can control a person's life and the effects the way they live: "I'm so sick of these irrational fears, like the bloody launderette, its ruining my life" (Jack)- this film is quite different to the rest that i have looked at because this is a comedy. It uses the irrational worries that the lead character Jack has and uses it in a comic manner. We also are able to see that the way Jack lives with his anxiety, often carrying a long kitchen knife (for protection,) running around his home in a frightened manner - such as running down his corridor to his bathroom incase anyone is lurking in other rooms. (Which reminds me of when I was younger and would also do this, when running up the stairs to the safety of my room incase of monsters and ghosts.) Therefore when we watch this, we (or certainly, I, feel) like I recognize this fear - which makes it funny.  The basic plot of this film, is a man that writes childhood books which help him deal with his childhood - however he really wants to write a book about notorious Victorian serial killers. After researching into this topic he becomes obsessed with the idea of murderers and feels that someone might kill him at anytime. During the film we then see more fears such as the Launderette which are all routed to his childhood and being abandoned by his mother. In the end we see his worse fear occur when a serial killer kidnaps him at the bottom of the launderette. We see him battling his worse fear and fighting his anxiety - learning what made him this way in the first place. And I liked this turning point of the film when he has to face his fears and be brave.

What I took away from this film, and learnt was how irrational fears can be linked to a past trauma - even though this is a comedy it tackles with the serious issue that people are trapped within, a cycle of anxiety. The film uses 'Jack's' voice for narration his thought process and talking about his fears. I really liked this as we were given another window what makes him have these worries and understand how it escalates from him not leaving his house and how it controls him. The voice over let us understand his way of thinking when no one else was there or talking to him. Slow motion shots, audio soundtrack and dream sequences are used to emphasis the fear that he has - and make the audience at the same time equally as scared - but also use comic relief to show that these are really just irrational worries.

"I once treated a girl who had a phobia of bananas, when this girl came to me she was pleased with herself because she was able to overcome her phobia to the extent that she could be in the same room as a closed banana, it has to stay closed, unzipped or else she'd go psychotic; but the point is, open or closed she had not made the connection between her phobia and her fear..."

["of banana?"] 

"No, she had something else, a past trauma something far more frightening than a banana. Its like a movie screen, she projected her fear onto the banana, because looking directly at her trauma was too terrifying. It was a projection..."

["onto a piece of fruit?"]

"Exactly, her banana is not different to your launderette."

(Fantastic fear of Evertything)