Getting a cancer diagnosis is traumatic both physically and mentally. The use of psilocybin, or psychedelic mushrooms, is being tested in clinical trials to address the depression and anxiety people face. The goal of this project was to recreate the experience of this experimental therapy, and its role in treating mental health. There is so much unknown about this treatment, but it's showing a lot of potential, so we wanted to demystify the experience and educate the audience.
We decided instead of taking the traditional route of seeing the subject speak on camera, to instead only hear their voice as they told their experience. The challenge of needing to find coverage for every second of video, forced us to get creative. We decided to film some scenes, create animations from scratch, and manipulate stock footage, to recreate the psychedelic experience of our subject. Throughout all of this, we wanted to make sure that the story of the subject was the focal point, and we wanted to make sure that even with the flashy and trippy visuals, we always supported his story, and didn't distract from it.
Our subject, Pradeep, has such a powerful voice, and explained his experience in such descriptive words, that the story came together even more beautifully than we imagined. The visuals that the team collaborated on drew the audience into the story, and then left them with profound thoughts to consider. The fact that a middle aged doctor was speaking about psychedelics in this way, opened our audiences mind to the possibilities. This video has since been widely circulated and other publications have begun reporting on this groundbreaking research.
