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Checking himself into a hotel suite Jack enacts his own form of self help in order to provide respite from his cult past.

Jack suffers from obsessional compulsions which are fuelled by his experience growing up in a religious cult. Now free from this Jack experiences a relatively normal life. Through his experiences have left him struggling to make deep connections from people, often finding himself on the outside. To remedy this Jack decides to take a weekend break in an upmarket hotel and induces his own unique form of self medication. Though at first, a seemingly good idea, Jack soon discovers that isolation is not as easy as he thought it was going to be. Left alone in his hotel suite he has nothing to occupy himself and his obsessional tendencies start to rise to the surface. The situation worsens as Jack's past starts to resurface including the tyrannical leader of the cult who had such a powerful influence over Jack in his earlier years.

Jack armed only with his imagination must now find a way through this night despite his reluctance to face his past and the ever-growing sense of boredom.

The setting for Self Medicating is a place outside of any one time or era. It combines aesthetic elements from the past and from our immediate present. It is a timeless place that shows some of the best characteristic from multiple eras. The sense of the location is classic style contracted by the contemporised classic style of the protagonist. It is non differential and takes place in a world of its own devising.

The film plays with rhythm as an instrument of action, dialogue, thought, transition, and expression. The character has an intricate relationship with numbers and counting. It fascinates him and drives him insane. It is, in essence, its own entity that the character carries around with him. It taunts him, inspires him, and repels him. The music in this film aims to replicate this convection of the rhythm as its own character. One that at times plays the principal role and at other time, the chorus. The music is not an enhancement. It is a living breathing extension of the characters deeply repressed self-expression. It is linked to his psychology and his compulsions. At times, it is the master that controls him. When this happens, his compulsion rush in to add and assist this dominance. But at other times, it is used as a comparative device allowing Jack to regain control of the situation by calming his internal processors. The music will, therefore, play with these dynamic shifts. By using unconventional patterns, it aims to form part of the language landscape replacing dialogue and subtext. It will drop between syncopated and non-syncopated movements to coincide with Jacks emotional shifts. They should be his expression, rather than a representation of his expression.

Film Form - Self Medicating's dominant style is drawn from French and Italian New Wave cinema. This style serves to create a visual scape that serves multiple aesthetic states simultaneously. Namely, naturalistic representation or hash reality, that exposes the inner world of the character. By applying the same aesthetics to the character as to the Meis en scene anchors this inner world by connecting it to its surroundings through repeated representation. This helps scale the emotive qualities of the character into realistic expressions. It suggests that we are as important, and as unimportant, as everything else. Regardless of how we think, feel, and act, the world moves to its own beat and it is up to us whether we engage with this ride, or jump off.

Another aspect of this film form is the inclusion of highly stylised techniques that fall into the Film Noir category. Through the use of visual aids, such as lighting, colour and shadow balancing they are able to emphasis aspects of the image. Usually, this emphasis is focussed on micro details of the characters face. This allows the emotion, or internal though of the character, to be visible to the viewer. The technique is far more subtle than that used in Film Noir, and owing to this subtly it is able to find balance opposite its raw and gritty counterpoint.

Additional film forms that will be used in Self Medicating include German Expressionism, Dogma-style, Super-8, Ukrainian Fantasy, Chinese Temple arc, and Soviet Montage cinema.

Lighting - Lighting in Self Medicating is emotionally driven. Using the film techniques of New Wave cinema it is harsh and exposing, with the express purpose of revealing meaning in the performance. This is countermanded by moments of rich and deep colours.

Movement - Perspective (non-main action - Greek drama). The film utilises theatrical conventions routed in Greek Tragedy, in which most of the actions happens off camera. Instead, the camera focuses on movements of body parts, objects in the room, and the interplay of shadow, light, and character concealment.

The movement and position of the camera represents the point of view of the character's higher self. It changes perspectives often throughout the film, inviting the audience to decide on what perspective has meaning for them.

Camera: Canon

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