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Madison Carrillo

Cunningham

English Lit

15 March 2019

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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

sure that you allow yourself to get better.

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
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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

edited together more fluidly.

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

shared it on YouTube sooner and gotten it more exposure.

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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.