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A short animated documentary that consists of interviews from women and AFAB people with ADHD in regards to their personal experiences with the disorder. It explores the gendered experience, school, struggles surrounding ADHD medications, and the search for a community that understands who you are.
Director's Statement
Director's Statement
where did i go? was created out of a desire to share the ADHD experience outside of the common stereotypes and preconceived appearances that we initially imagine: images of the loud, fidgety boy that will outgrow these behaviours once he reaches adulthood, images that didn’t line up with my own experiences and those of the many ADHD people I’m surrounded by. This film focuses on the gendered experience of ADHD and how it intersects with perceived girlhood that is often neglected in discussions and diagnoses of the disorder, in combination with the transition from an overlooked child to the diagnosed and medicated adult. The audio of the film embodies the internal dialogue of the ADHD mind through chaotic and layered speech that sounds familiar to neurodivergents while communicating the inner world of ADHDers to neurotypicals through its structure. Additionally the image visualizes and supports the interview contents through the form with a multimedia approach that incorporates digital 2D, 3D, and the manipulation of physical paper.
Pre-Production
Pre-Production
Inspiration
Inspiration
Before I had even started the film I already had an idea of what topics I wanted to cover, as I had spent several years passively mulling it over once I found out about the final film in my first year of studies in film animation. A healthy mix of pre-planning and preemptive assignment anxiety led to two soft requirements for my film:
First, I knew I wanted to do something that had to do with ADHD. I was diagnosed in 6th grade with ADD (currently known as ADHD I), and it wasn’t until I was 18 that I started researching ADHD and learned that it was more than “I can’t pay attention in class sometimes” disorder. I felt like I had a sudden explanation as to why I was the way I was: my struggles with things that others found easy, my ‘weirdness’, why I struggled with friendships, my fidgety behaviours, and so on. I suddenly had a reason as to why I felt like I was crazy my entire life, a feeling that many people otherwise experience upon diagnosis. The initial inspiration to make a film about the topic of ADHD was not only to reflect upon my own journey but to potentially help others like me that aren’t aware of just how much ADHD affects our lives, and that we’re not broken people for it.
The second requirement doesn’t come with a sob story, I just wanted to incorporate all the new techniques I learned throughout my education as a sort of amalgamation of the skills that I had learned, including 3D animation, direct animation, and so forth. I learned the medium so therefore I use the medium.
The Initial Proposal
The Initial Proposal
Visual inspirations
For my first test I played with printed images and home video, aspects that I had hoped to include in my final project. My previous film Articulate was made entirely out of cutouts of home video in addition to rotoscope, and despite being incredibly labour intensive, I loved the final outcome and wanted to continue to experiment with similar techniques.
I knew I wanted to interview adults with ADHD, but I didn't have a narrow demographic in mind yet and so I opted for as diverse a group as I possibly could get. I was unsure of the specific visuals as well because I wanted to base the medium on the actual topic of the interviews at hand, inspired directly by ABUDCTEES, directed by Paul Vester. This meant my actual process would be more meandering and experimental since I was dependent entirely upon the interview content which became a bit of a problem later.
Kendall_proposal test_001.movThe Interview and Audio process
The Interview and Audio process
Google Form results
First things first, I’d need interviews to work off of since the structure of my project didn’t support a storyboard or animatic at this phase. I created a Google Form and sent it out wherever I could to try and get as many responses as possible in order to gather a diverse pool of people I could reach out to in order to interview. I sent it to several Discord servers, I sent it to friends, and my mom posted it on her Facebook, which probably gained more traction than anywhere else I posted it. I additionally tried to get permission to post it on the subreddit r/adhdwomen but the moderators left me on read. Ouch.
I quickly started to panic when I didn’t receive as many responses as I had hoped, and was having difficulty in getting people to contact me back, which in hindsight should have been expected considering the demographic. For the in class project exchange it was suggested I try street interviews, and although I enjoyed the idea, I was hesitant due to possible audio quality issues, the logistics of having participants fill out release forms, and also because I was afraid of being That Guy bothering people in public with a microphone. For the final interviews I contacted my sister’s friend Karleen, because she had recently posted on her social media about a self harm attempt caused by her struggles with ADHD, which I felt was an important facet of ADHD that wasn’t typically discussed in the mainstream. The other participants consisted of my friends Finn, Krow, Cody, and later Mira, all of whom were impromptu messaged about doing an interview. I later cut Cody out of the film, as the rest of the participants were AFAB and I decided to focus the film on the gendered experience. Sorry Cody.
Notes on audio, interview structure, and some possible inspirations.
I spent the next weeks and then months refining the interviews over and over and over again, slowly driving myself crazy because I hadn’t ‘found the film’ yet. And because I took way too long to get the audio to a place I felt satisfied with, I couldn’t get a grasp on what visuals I wanted as a result and took a long time to get any images out. Here’s a personal blog entry from November that summarizes the whole debacle:
It's been a hot minute since I've updated, mainly because I've been doing the unsexy part of the project, AKA trying to get interviews and actually editing and going through all of them to try and put together an animatic. I've been struggling a lot so far with the visuals of the film, but part of it I think is because I'm using a more experimental, process-based workflow that's more unrestained than previous projects so it's been a little daunting so far. Going forward I'm going to try to make a lot more rough work so I don't box myself in with things looking perfect or polished yet, and try to allow myself to make mistakes as I continue to find the direction of the film's visuals.
I think part of this pressure too is having other people who are involved with the process as well, since it's not just me alone that's involved in the project but I don't want to let down the interview participants with something that's half-baked or messy even though that's how this film will naturally progress as I continue to refine. My goal for this week is to just put as much to paper as I can and just create content so I have something to sift through and decide what I like and want to keep, without being precious about anything I've made so far.
It took until December for me to get the audio to a place I was mostly satisfied with, but the ending still stumped me. I arranged and rearranged interview clips until my boyfriend suggested I add my own voice to the mix, considering it was my film and I just so happen to have ADHD as well. And with that I finally had the animatic at a point that I didn't hate, and felt I could work off of. I continued working on the rest of the sound as well, attempting to build an ASMR inspired soundscape that blends into the sound effects, hoping to recreate the effect of scratching a mental itch that satisfying audio is capable of.
Attempting to build a visual library through the topics and imagery that were brought up in the interviews. This is also where I found the title of the film
A 'mind map' to try and flesh out animatic ideas. The process is to write anything that comes to mind, and circle the thought to keep your pen moving until the next impulse arrives
Inspiration for the soundscape
Throughout the process I messaged my ADHD friends quite often to ask for opinions on the sound to acheive the effect I was hoping for
Production
Production
My workflow for this project quickly became complicated due to requiring many different programs in order to achieve the look I desired. It began in Premiere Pro for the rough audio animatic, adding TVPaint for the visual animatic and Dragonframe for the undercamera assets. I additionally started using After Effects in order to more precisely construct the final look and imitate the feel of paper on the digital scenes, and later to build together each scene to better visual incorporation of the multimedia elements. Maya was additionally used for several pieces of the film as well. As I continued production the workflow eventually turned into this: animate in TVpaint/Dragonframe/Maya, export the animation into After Effects, export the After Effects sequence, and then bring that into Premiere for a final export to be reviewed in class. However, despite the technical complications, once I had the audio tied down and the animatic mostly fleshed out, I finally felt like I had ‘found the film’ and obtained the motivation that I was sorely missing during the earlier stages because of it.
Shooting individual frames of my hands that I printed and cut out
January/February
January/February
kaleidescope_test_01.mp4First experiment with the kaleidescope in After Effects, using footage of a pharmacist filling pill capsules in
kali test.mp4Secondary kaleidescope test using audio visualizers
Inital 3D scene for the pill pour. I recreated the 2D objects in order for the interaction between them and the pill particles to look more authentic
Model for the office scene in Maya
Model of the pill for the bottle pouring scene. Modeled in Maya and textured in Substance Painter
Final pass of the cabinet transition
March
March
Shooting the pill bottle cutouts...
...which are about the size of my pinkie nail
First pass of the box scene, and testing the new lip sync transition that stayed in the final film
Third pass of the office scene
April
April
First pass of the bed scene, with rough water animation that I unfortunately did not have time to finalize and include in the finished version of the film
I began experimenting with texture and adjustment layers in After Effects to finalize the paper aesthetic
This is the only picture I have of the week I spent working in Pro Tools in preparation for the sound mix. I didn't sleep much
Behind the scenes of the pill pouring scene as I worked on the final texture and blending in the 3D assets
Third pass of the box scene, adding the doodled birds to the transition
Updated and cleaned up the transition into the final scene
Late night wrap up
The full background for the lighthouse scene, using recycled textures from the torn paper sequence
Post-Production
Post-Production
There isn't much to say about the post-production process, as the production and post-production often happened simultaneously throughout the project. My workflow often consisted of working from scene to scene rather than completing a rough pass of the entire film and continuing from there. Of note, however, is the continuous struggles with After Effects. Due to the size of the image files, ranging from 2k to 7k on the large background of the lighthouse scene, the possibly excessive amount of layers, effects, and pre-compositions, and the very limited capabilities of my laptop (yes, laptop), After Effects would slow to the point that it was difficult to even navigate through the menus. Exports were difficult as they would take hours to even render a small preview, and I had to dedicate time to cleaning up the endless compositions and sub-compositions that TVPaint creates when exporting layers into AE. The file sped up considerably, but even then the program was still slow and having continued export problems due to the sheer size of the project.
Evidence of After Effects being difficult. It took longer than 48 minutes to open
The Last Straw, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96WTjLEIc4Y
On a more positive note, one thing I realized as I finalized the papery aesthetic of my film through AE is that it looked quite similar to my first year film. Although I had hoped to break out of my typical film conventions, which I did in some ways, it was nice to have an accidental homage to the more naturalistic look I fell in love with years ago, and a return to the interview format that I also became well acquainted with throughout my studies but with a more experimental approach.
Reflection
Reflection
Honestly, I think it’s somewhat of a miracle that I finished this film to begin with. For the entire first half of the semester I felt like Sisyphus wherein my metaphorical boulder was the recording and editing of audio that was only compounded by additional personal struggles. I’ve been dealing with burnout for longer than I’d like to admit, as well as the usual problems that come with having ADHD and working on a long term project, and in the fall I ended up developing a chronic lung infection as well. On top of all of that, towards the end of the project I encountered many technical problems, fighting with After Effects for weeks in order to even open the file. Regardless I persevered and the result is a film that I’m proud of, and have already received many heartfelt comments from my fellow ADHDers on how they felt seen, heard, and understood, which was the exact outcome I was looking for when I began the film. I also feel that I achieved my initial goal of incorporating the techniques and mediums I learned throughout my schooling. Although I wasn’t able to add every single medium I was hoping to, like rotoscope and direct animation, I still applied the skills I’ve learned and the aspects of filmmaking that I had grown to love, both visually and structurally. I also had the opportunity to practice other skills that I haven’t had a chance to do before through this film. Through trial and error and lots of GPU crashes, I’ve become a lot more familiar with After Effects, and was able to work on more dynamic 2D character animation that had been lacking in my films before this. I finally want to thank my family, friends, classmates, and community of fellow weirdos for supporting me every step of the way, with their constant feedback, support, suggestions, and encouragement that shaped this film into what it is, even when I felt like I couldn’t find my way.
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