Some Ideas for Voice Overs

Media Advanced Production ‘My Friend Ana.”

Dramatised Reconstructions of Recovering Anorexics Script

[This is will be in the conventional style of a documentary tackling sensitive issues, such as 'Raped' by Johnnymc (FourDocs). Faces will be shaded so as to hide identity and lots of filler shots will be used to prevent the scenes from becoming boring]

“You have no idea what it's like to be me,
There's more pain inside than you'll ever see.
The mask on the outside hides what's really there,
But look deep into my eyes and you'll see my despair,
This thing that gnaws away at me night & day.
But if I told you what would you say?
Would you understand when I look in the mirror I hate what I see?
That thing in the reflection, it's not me.
I want to rip it all out and start again.
What use is a waste of space that has gone insane?”

“I started focusing on food when I was in my early teens. My parents divorced and I felt it was my fault. I felt unworthy and stopped eating. I felt I no longer deserved food and controlling what I ate would help me get control of my life. It became the only positive aspect of my life. I feel I have succeeded at something if I get through the day only eating what I have planned. If I don't succeed I have a voice in my head that tells me how bad and weak I am.”

“Starving to death is NOT beautiful or poetic, it is an UGLY death and a painful one. Starved bodies ache all the time. The skin bruises, the muscles cramp and deteriorate, the brain slows and slurs, the bowels STOP working on their own, the bones splinter and hurt and break, the body is constantly weak but ceases to be able to sleep restfully, the mouth dries, the eyes fog, the heart flutters and beats hard and painfully, and there can be many scary moments prior to actual death where the body feels so sick and like its dying, because it is.”

“Anorexia is consciously committing suicide, taking an agonizing long time, during which you get to suffer from various medical problems that drag on for years and age you faster... only to end up not living out your full life expectancy, never even reaching that blessed age where you supposedly won't care about your looks anymore anyway, and realizing at the last minute that you could have done something else with all your energy...”

“I remember wishing to be anorexic. I remember doing it all, searching for tricks, feeling oh-so-clever when I found them, and feeling like I won something when I first heard about laxatives. Then the person I heard it from almost died. Next it was my turn. It's an endless cycle. And the wish never gets answered, because when you actually are anorexic you don't feel anorexic (in the way you had fantasized anyway). And other things start to disappear besides your weight. Like your sense of humour and your ability to relax. There is this urgency, an unnatural anxiety that starts to take over. It might happen slowly or it might reach up and grab you completely by surprise. But once it reaches you, it pulls you under.”

Just need some willing actresses now..!!