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Madison Carrillo
Cunningham
English Lit
15 March 2019
BLOG 4
My topic that I chose to center my senior capstone around is body dysphoria and how it
translates into eating disorders; specifically, bulimia. This topic is very personal to me, having
struggled with this mental illness myself, and I wanted to educate people on the reality of what
this disorder can do to someone and how they can go about getting help if they are in need of it.
I was hoping to address the role mental illness plays in eating disorders, as it is often
overlooked. Through research and self-evaluations, I found that there is no cure to the mental
illness, it is something that is a continual struggle, but that asking for help and telling someone
how you’re feeling and what it’s causing you to do - that is the first step to recovery and making
In the beginning I planned on making sure that I had enough factual-based evidence on
the topic before i began writing my script. I wanted to be as accurate as possible, while also
maintaining the truth behind my own story. I encountered many obstacles, the main being able to
remove myself from the project personally - wanting to tell my story but also having to be
sensitive to the truth behind the scenes I was creating. The main step taken was creating the
script itself, which took roughly two days to do. The secondary was the short film. It took me
four days to film the entire thing and after hours of editing it came out to roughly six minutes and
2
thirty seconds of footage. These are really the only two pieces of evidence that I can present
because the rest was more mental preparation - memorizing lines, writing the script out, etc.
Through this process I feel that I accomplished many things. Two of the main
understandings that I’ve gained have been; the strategicness behind film making and how
revisiting past traumas help you grow as a person. I learned a lot in the pre-filming time period
about this topic, the biggest surprise being that body dysphoria and eating disorders are not
always connected. This confirmed my belief on eating disorders of this magnitude being more
psychologically than physically based. During filming, I learned a lot about myself as an actor,
having to dial everything down to much more expressive emotions for the sake of a camera lens,
and also that I’m in a totally different mental headspace now than I was when I struggled with
bulimia, and being able to reconfirm that fact has made me stronger. I’m proud of my short film,
it’s not perfect and it could be better, but for my first ever directed and starred in film - I’m
impressed with the results. I wish I would’ve filmed some scenes differently, so they could be
Yes, I was able to make a difference, more towards myself than anyone else, but a
difference nonetheless. It turns out it was more important for me to learn and grow from this
experience than for others too… it’ll be nice to see people resonating with the film after its
release, but as of now, I’m happy with myself more than anything. If I had more resources and/or
time, I would’ve made the film longer and done promotion on/for it. I would’ve liked to have
Some healthy advice I would give a senior prior to the capstone project, it would be to do
something that you are genuinely passionate about (not just an easy grade) because then it feels
like you’re doing really no work at all and the outcome you’ll get will be a lot more gratifying.