illness in film

1. PORTRAYING
AN ILLNESS
IN OUR
SHORT FILM
EMILY CAPON

2. THE NURSE
We chose to include a character that would represent not only a nurse (to add to
the mis en scene) of Ellie’s situation but also act as a maternal figure, with the
absence of Ellie’s mother.
In this scene, Ellie is being having a weekly check up with her nurse, who also
gives her an injection. The most crucial part of this scene is seeing the way Ellie
converses with the nurse and how this differs from her father.
Seen here is Ellie wearing a scarf around her head this symbolises that’s she’s
covering her hair for a reason and in fact supporting the representation of her
dealing with cancer, most female cancer patients as I found used scarfs to cover
their hair from the side effects of chemo therapy this is all adding to

3. MEDICAL EQUIPMENT
To add to the mis- en- scene , we took short shots like this one of all
the medical equipment to add a sense of realism to Ellie’s state.
As part of our asset list we ensured we had access to medical
supplies to create this look as it’s important to look further into the
finer details which may not be established by the audience which is
how its successful as Jo Watkinson said that everything in the shot
has to have purpose for example a characters bedroom needs to
show their personality or age this could be done by placing a school
tie in the room to connote that the character is a student. This is
incredibly important during film work even if you cant exactly see
certain objects its what makes the shot dynamic to display a real
world within the production.

4. INJECTION
It was important to Rukayyah and I that we included a shot
showing Ellie having an injection. In many other films this is used
to signify a point of severe illness and therefore it helps us
achieve this portrayal in such a short period of time. We used 2
different injection bodies within this shot a clear empty one
without a needle and a needle attached to the body containing a
brightly coloured liquid, this helps to achieve the shot without
actually having to use the needle. We are then going to cut to a
shot of Ellie’s in-between the 2 shots to show pain on her face but
also to hide the fact that needle isn't actually being used.

5. INTERNET
As one of our first few shots we decided to capture Ellie searching for
ways of ‘dealing with cancer’ this is the first sign the audience
establishes that Ellie is ill as well as her father saying he’ll back for
her injection in half an hour. This also portrays the destination of our
film as it isn’t anything that can be searched or bought , it is simply
the closeness of Sam, which we have decided we shall use bubbles
to display the text on screen rather than having a close up shot of
text messages exchanged between each character. This element is
only recently become popular however we thought it would be

6. MEDICAL RECORDS
Next to Ellie’s dad in the first few establishing shots are medical
forms and other data sheets attached to the fridge. This would not
only show Ellie’s illness to be important to him but also that he
has no other priorities than to help his daughter. This is an easy
way to show representations of the illness without using close up
shots that would not fit right or into the production or look to
obvious helping to portray a real world within our production.

7. FLOWERS
This shot is of Sam after being told to leave Ellie alone by her
father. The significance of this shot is as people in everyday
society will bring flowers to the ill, this portrays the way same is
almost visiting Ellie in what her father thinks is her safe haven. It
is common within film to for the ‘boyfriend/ hero’ figure within film
to give flowers to the ‘princess’ either to remind them how he
feels about her, as an apology, a symbol of gratitude or simply a
get well wish which is what we are portraying within this shot.
Flowers also have a meaning as well which is why we chose light