T & T (WEEK 2)

The Happy film

Taken from the website.

Austrian graphic designer Stefan Sagmeister is doing well. He lives in New York, the city of his dreams, and he has success in his work, designing album covers for the Rolling Stones, Jay-Z and the Talking Heads. But in the back of his mind he suspects there must be something more. He decides to turn himself into a design project. Can he redesign his personality to become a better person? Is it possible to train his mind to get happier? He pursues 3 controlled experiments of meditation, therapy, and drugs, grading himself along the way. But real life creeps in and confounds the process: art, sex, love, and death prove impossible to disentangle. His unique designs and painfully personal experiences mark a journey that travels closer to himself than ever intended.

" https://www.thehappyfilm.org/about "

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So the movie we watched during week 2. It was abit boring at first? but it just get interesting along the way. I mean the love of his life and breakup from a 11 year relationship lead to depression, then with pills including the passing of his mother. But this is not about that. The activity is more to us seeing the process of his design, how he executes with experimenting, even himself to find out more about what is happiness. And his process he was expected to do was like 1 year, separated into 3 sections. Each section was like 3 months then 1 rest, then repeat for another 2 sections and will calculated into 1 year. But nothing will ever be expected in life, so the whole process in the end took 6-7 years of the whole film.

But before he do his process he went through series of neurological testing and keeps track of his stuff on his notebook. To tell himself that if has he had a bad week or a good week.

So he just started off by doing a mind map about his topic " HAPPINESS " Which leads to everything. Why, what, where, when, who and how about his whole topic. So in the end he narrowed it down into 3 topics.

MEDITATION, THERAPY AND DRUGS

MEDITATION : -

Stephan actually went away to bali to do his meditation and believe me, i tried once and i don't think my body can withstand the process the whole day.

Imagine singing but whole day without resting. But it looks very torturing in the process but he kinda find his way to experiment with the words with dancers. He was in Bali at the time, and he met a young lady(forgotten her name lmao sorry) ( ._.lll ) And he showed the shadow puppet as a way to end his first love story. So from the image of the 3 glasses above, during meditation stage it has increase his happiness but not to half.

THERAPY : -

Halfway in the movie, he went to therapy and met Ms Private?(i think that's her name?). So every time he went there he has develop feelings as the more they spend together. But.. here's the thing, she is a therapist. She questions a lot about him but has never talked about herself. So she is very secretive in a way. And in a relationship and workforce wise, she doesn't see that in him and it has not deemed enough in his category for Therapy.

Drugs

Fuh, i really hate the drug category, i do have friends who have the so called "Happy pill" which increases the serotonin in the brain. To keep you happy. And his journey when he took the pill literally blasted off. He was happy but really careless. He proposed to the girl like after 10..day? Which is a no-no thing to do. Because being too happy has pro's and con's. Which he was under the influence of the pills. And 2-3 weeks after the pills he has been arguing with his fiance. He must has been realized that the pills were making it happen while despite too expensive to begin with. But he has the money tho? And in the end the pills are the reason that make his happiness go up above and beyond.

but overall the whole movie shows alot of messages. Not only about personal but his journey as a great graphic designer. Despite his personal life, up and downs and passing of his colleague he still proceeds his work and executes it very well. This movie shall give a good example of a documentary designer compilation and his process in his design thinking.