How the art of film can make the unseen seen

One of the great challenges of filmmaking is that some of the most powerful human experiences are completely invisible. Fear, shame, anxiety and isolation can fundamentally change how someone experiences the world without producing anything another person can necessarily see. 

As filmmakers, we’re constantly looking for ways to communicate emotion visually. But when the emotion itself has no obvious physical expression, how do we make an audience experience something rather than simply observe it?

That question became central to Don’t See Me, a British short film I wrote and directed with Victoria Taylor, creative director at Beast Films London. The film was inspired by Victoria’s own experience. At 21, she suffered a severe panic attack in public. In the months that followed, the fear of another attack gradually reduced her world until she became unable to leave the house. 

The absence of visual drama [can] communicate something more unsettling than its presence.

She eventually returned to the outside world and built a successful career in advertising and film, but anxiety and panic attacks remained part of her life. Remarkably, very few people she worked with knew.

That contradiction fascinated me. Someone can be experiencing something overwhelming internally while appearing completely composed to everyone around them.

Above: Actor Sacha Parkinson plays the protagonist whose anxiety-induced withdrawal from the world is depicted by stillness and blocked out windows. 

The camera doesn’t need to feel what the character feels

The conventional cinematic language of anxiety is familiar: handheld cameras, distorted lenses, frantic editing and aggressive sound design. These techniques can be effective, but they can also make the mistake of externalising something that is fundamentally internal.

In Don’t See Me, I wanted to explore the opposite approach. Our protagonist, Maddy, played by Sacha Parkinson, has withdrawn almost completely from the outside world. Yet much of the film is photographed with deliberate stillness and carefully controlled compositions. The camera remains calm even when she isn’t. 

Working with cinematographer Andrew Butler, we frequently positioned Maddy relatively small within the image, surrounded by empty space and rigid architectural lines. I became interested in the idea that the absence of visual drama could communicate something more unsettling than its presence. Sometimes the most revealing thing a camera can do is refuse to react.

Give the emotion a physical form

Cinema becomes particularly powerful when psychological ideas are expressed through the physical world rather than explained through dialogue. In Don’t See Me, Maddy has covered her windows with paper, preventing anyone from looking inside. The paper represents a boundary she can control – beyond it lies a world she cannot. 

Rather than illustrating an emotion, create an environment in which the audience can discover it for themselves.

A bee becomes trapped behind one of those windows. It can sense the daylight just inches away but cannot reach it. Neither image requires an explanation. Their meaning comes from the audience recognising something human within an ordinary physical situation. This is a principle I’ve become increasingly interested in: rather than illustrating an emotion, create an environment in which the audience can discover it for themselves.

Above: The sense of being trapped inside mental distress is symbolised by a bee that cannot escape into the world and the light.

Make the audience experience the restriction

One of our most significant decisions was to present almost the entire film in a narrow 4:5 aspect ratio. Maddy’s withdrawal began after someone recorded her having a panic attack in public and shared the footage online. Her private humiliation became something strangers could watch and judge.

The aspect ratio wasn’t simply suggesting claustrophobia, it became part of the story.

Later, when Maddy watches that recording, the image on her phone expands until it matches the frame of the film itself. The audience realises that it has effectively been watching Maddy’s life through the same frame in which she was publicly humiliated. The aspect ratio isn’t simply suggesting claustrophobia. It has become part of the story.

When Maddy finally steps outside, the frame expands to 16:9. For the first time, the audience physically receives more of the world. It’s a small example of something I believe cinema can do particularly well: communicate psychological change through the experience of watching, rather than through what a character says.