Identifying Early Signs of Psychosis in Adolescents & Young Adults is an online continuing medical education (CME) course produced in collaboration with Dr. Kate Hardy. It conveys the importance of communication, empathy, and doctor-patient relationships in helping people with psychosis using short didactic videos and a three-part interactive short film, Allie's Story, about a young adult with early-onset psychosis.
A shot from Allie's Story.
Allie's Story
Our short film follows Allie, a high school student, as she begins to hallucinate and struggle with her schizophrenic psychosis. She doesn't understand what is happening to her mind and, worse yet, is met with unhelpful doctors and therapists who frighten her with the suggestion that she may be beyond help. In denial, she shuts everyone out of her life, until she reaches a breaking point and finds appropriate help for her illness.
Allie's story makes significant use of interactive video. Viewers are able to jump into Allie's perspective and experience a simulation of the auditory and visual hallucinations experienced by Allie as her symptoms worsen. The intention of this presentation is to reinforce a key learning objective of the course: patients' inner experiences can be dramatically different than they seem, and that doctors need to communicate in a way that helps patients disclose their real feelings and experiences.
Perspectives can be switched at key moments in the short film. Allie's perspective sometimes shows audio-visual hallucinations.
Each video is constructed from a series of video clips which "branch" into parallel videos that users can switch between on the fly.
3D Environments & Character Animation
Allie's Story is built using a combination of pre-rendered 3D environments and animated characters. We were motivated by the iterative nature of building and writing an interactive experience, particularly for medical education. As research evolves and facts change, we will be able to update Allie's Story — something we can't easily do with live footage.
After writing and storyboarding the script, we built environments using Maya and Unreal Engine, and captured them using virtual cameras. The characters were then composited on top of these scenes using a combination of After Effects and Character Animator, which uses real-time tracking to track an actor's face as they perform out the scenes.
Art Direction
The look of Allie's Story is characterized by simple geometry, grungy textures, thick lines, and a muted purple, green, and brown palette. In the mismatch between the 3D environments and the 2D characters, along with the simplified animation, is a sense of incompleteness which echoes Allie's mental state as her mind splinters and fragments. The character design was inspired by the simple vector-based art of the 1991 Amiga game, アウターワールド, or, Out of This World in North America.
Didactic Videos
Our didactic videos are 2-3 minute videos on key learning concepts which bookend each part of Allie's Story. They explore key concepts, such as the symptoms of hallucinations, using motion graphics and simple illustrations produced in After Effects and Illustrator.
Long Term Impact of Extended D.U.P. infographic.
Graphic Design
The graphic approach to the videos was meant to be simple and geometric to fit our production schedule, but also to allow the team to invest more time in animation and sound design to bring the videos to life and create moments of surprise. The initial art direction was inspired in part by Memphis-based designer and artist Peter Judson.
Various graphic illustrations for the course.
Motion Graphic Design
The motion graphic work for the didactic videos takes advantage of the simple geometry and flat colors of the graphic design to play with the theme of deconstruction. The graphics construct and deconstruct themselves based on the fundamental properties of the shapes: fill, stroke, and position.
Various examples of motion design for the course.
