Highschool or : I’m not saying I want to kill myself but it sure would be nice to be in the hospital for a month or two
Project details
- Year
- 2023
- Programme
- Bachelor – Animation
- Practices
- Social
- Minor
- Social Practices – New Earth
A 12 minute 2D animated short following a teenage girl through a day filled with boredom, stress and fear.
Written, directed and overall created by Meta Laitko.
Realized with the help of 17 fabulous assistant animators and 3 superb background designers.
Synopsis
My film “Highschool or : I’m not saying I want to kill myself but it sure would be nice to be in the hospital for a month or two” delves into the life of a depressed 15-year-old high school girl, offering a glimpse into her daily encounters and emotions.
The first half of her day passes by in a blur – endless school hours mix with the pressure of her social environment. She is stuck in a group of girls with a socially manipulative leader she is scared of. Though she bends over backwards, lying and pretending in order to fit in, she is actually bored with them and internally takes a sarcastic distance from their conversations.
After her school day is over, the pace of the film slows significantly. As she helps her mother prepare dinner, she does everything to make sure she will be allowed to go out afterwards so as to appease her friends. Again, she lies, but it feels different. Her mother is struggling with issues of her own, and the protagonist feels how her behaviour creates a further disconnect between the two of them. This sobering scene leads into the final part of the film, where she is again submerged in the banality of teenage interaction. With the stress of the school day behind her and a more neutral, distanced mindset, its not long until she makes the decision to leave, acting on her own needs for the first time in the day. As she walks home, alone and with nothing to stress about, she finds a moment of calmth, ending the film on a cautiously hopeful note.
Her emotional reality is depicted through a mix of subtle, grounded character animation, vivid, expressive mimicry and surreal sequences that show the violent intrusive thoughts that enter her mind when she is experiencing extreme emotion.
About the film
This film is an artistic processing of my own experiences in high school. It was a way for me to work through the lingering effects this time had on my mental and physical wellbeing and to put it behind me once and for all. I hope for it to bring some catharsis to people with similar experiences and to allow people who have not experienced high school in this way to empathize with people who do.
With a mix of comedic yet grounded writing, expressive animation and a healthy dose of body horror, I attempt to capture the intensity and drama, the banality and complexity of being a depressed teenager.
I produced this film within the past four months – the animation is a mix of a base of traced reference footage, added details and freely animated sequences. It was finalized with the help of 17 wonderful inbetweeners and 3 talented background artists, all animation students at Willem de Kooning Academie Rotterdam.
About me and my artistic vision
I am a social artist and animated filmmaker, born with the 21st century in Berlin, Germany.
My work focuses on capturing emotional realities – portraying complicated situations and feelings through surreal animation, visual metaphors and honest, vulnerable writing peppered with a good dose of humour.
I believe in the power that narrative storytelling has in shaping what people think and care about – my own mindscape has been greatly influenced by the books, films and series that I love, the nuanced characters portrayed in them and the entertaining, exciting and at times devastating stories they are wrapped up in. I want to make use of this power in my art, combining it with the amazing storytelling potential of animation to create short films that show how the flaws that permeate our societys systems can influence individual peoples lives. I hope to spread empathy and understanding of the social issues I portray in my films, while using whatever platform I gain to advocate for relevant activism.
Between the harrowingly rigid daily existence and social pressure created by the highschool education system and the precarity of growing old in a capitalist society, the difficult relationships with self worth and body image that are bred by the increasingly complicated net of media we exist in and of COURSE how the consumerist, capitalist way in which humans currently occupy this earth is killing our planet and already endangering millions of peoples lives – there are so many issues to think and care about, complex, messy, human affairs.
I would like to create nuanced, humorous, vulnerable and honest stories that resonate with people and make them empathize with characters affected by social issues of our time. I see this artistic practice as a form of activism, using my talents and my voice to push social change in my own small way.
My research project
As I mentioned above, a core aim of mine as an artist, but also as an activist and a human being, is to examine the systems we live in critically – good, thorough research (historical, academic, qualitative interviews and surely many other kinds I have yet to encounter) will be instrumental to building the kind of artistic and activist practice I aspire to have.
In this film, the system that is impacting the protagonists life in direct and indirect ways is the school system – structuring her days, limiting her freedom and fostering toxic social environments. So, I wanted to take a closer look at how this system came to be – specifically, the one that I experienced as a student at a german high school.
In my research project “A curiosity voyage to the roots of the German Education System” I examined the history of the institutionalized, state run German Education System to find out what historical, ideological and political circumstances influenced its creation. In extreme summary, I can say I found that Germanys current education system is still deeply influenced by the Prussian school system which was created in the 19th century by a militarist government that wanted to shape its subjects from childhood onwards to be obedient workers.
Understanding the history and make up of the systems that surround us helps me to see that they are not immutable, but rather fallible creations of the whirlwinds of history. This knowledge emboldens me to criticize them openly. I honed this attitude in my Minor New Earth, which focuses on engaging with the urgency of the eco-social crises, understanding and analyzing the systems around us and envisioning different ways of living as humans on this earth.
What’s next?
I want to get funding for a short film about a family trying to care for an emotionally distant father who is sick with Parkinson’s disease, decaying but far from dying. The child of the family, a young woman in her twenties, is about to finish her higher education and move out of the family home. The viewer gets a glimpse into their lives in this pivotal moment, as the question of whether or not to send the father into an elderly care facility looms over all their interactions.
I want to create this film entirely myself, so that I can get an even better understanding of each step of the process in order to be a more confident director in bigger, more ambitious projects later on.
Overall, I am looking forward to using much of the time given to me in this world to hone these wonderful artistic tools I just started playing with in earnest – animation, cinematic language, writing, sound design, visual design…. – so that I can tell increasingly entertaining, visually stunning, poignant, funny, terribly real stories.