#fimstudent

Thinking about the topic for this documentary for several months, I finally decided to investigate and share information about a medical condition that is close to my heart. For the past seven years I have lived with chronic pain, although it had subsided for a few years. Last year the pain returned with more intensity, and overwhelming my whole body. However, it was only in December 2014 that I was finally diagnosed despite hundred of tests, scans, and examinations. The condition is called fibromyalgia. It wasn't the first time that I had heard of the condition however, as a few family members had suffered mildly from it in the past, and one or two others I know have the condition also. Despite this, I didn't know an awful lot about the condition - what it is, how affects a person, or what causes it. One thing I do know about it though, is that not many people are aware of it despite so many sufferers. Even the people around me, including those who have suffered mildly from it, have no idea the effect it has on a person and how much pain it causes. So to find out more, and to inform people, what better opportunity than to use fibromyalgia as the topic of my documentary?

In the documentary I want to share several things. Firstly, what is fibromyalgia? And how does it affect a person? Secondly I want to share what it is like living fibromyalgia every day. I don’t want the documentary to completely come from a personal POV, it’s about making people aware of the condition and what it is, but this is one point that will be personal as I am one of the many people who suffer from fibromyalgia, and have to deal with it every day. Thirdly, I want to cover treatments, is there a cure, doctors, getting diagnosed, and that side of things. When I initially started having pain the amount of doctors, hospitals, and tests I went through was mental and researching other peoples experience this is pretty common. It’s such a hard diagnosis from a doctor’s POV so discussing the medical process is important, especially as there may be people out there suffering who have no idea what the cause is either.

In order to document all of this information, it will all be told via a scripted voiceover and represented visually through GIFs, mostly found online and some I have created myself. This technique was suggested to me by a tutor as I was struggling with how to film the documentary. Visually it will be rather abstract due to all the GIFs which come from moives, television programmes, animations, vine videos, and many other sources. I was basically told that I was weird enough to pull this kind of visual off (which I’m taking as a compliment, thank you very much!), and scrolling through Tumblr for hours reblogging GIFs has been brilliant. After gathering all the GIFs together, I’m really excited about the final outcome of this documentary as it is really different to all my other work, but really reflects my quirky style and outlook on life.

The target market for this documentary is a wide audience as this is a condition that can affect anyone. However, thinking it through I would say that the primary target market is for those over the age of twelve years old, female, middle class, and from an English speaking country. How did I agree upon this? Well, with the use of graphics from modern, and old, media I think visually this is a documentary that will connect with a younger audience. Also the condition fibromyalgia, is one that can affect all ages. I was 12 years old when the pain first started and I had no support from friends or medics. Now, with social media, young and old alike can be reached out to through online support groups, mini documentaries, and information pages and having support is something that I think is really important whatever age you are. Why primarily target females? My recent research tells me that roughly 75% of fibromyalgia sufferers are female. That’s a huge percentage, and therefore females are the target audience. This is going to be a bit stereotypical but it is a general thought that documentary viewers are usually from a middle class to upper class background. This documentary probably wouldn’t appeal to the upper class visually but I think middle class young people would be interested in the style of the documentary and what it has to say.