WEEK 1 - THE HAPPY FILM !!!

For this blog post we were asked to watch and study the documentary 'The Happy Film' by Stefan Sagmeister. I honestly did not know what the film is about except having an idea that it would relate to happiness because of the name of the film.

Stefan Sagmeister had researched on the topic happiness and what would be helpful to make you happy. He also met Jonathan Haidt, who was the author of 'The Happiness Hypothesis' and asked for advise. He was informed that there are three ways to being happy. Using the techniques of 'MEDITATION', 'THERAPY' and 'DRUGS'. Stefan had decided to record his own happiness using each of these methods for three months.

I also find it very interesting of how he rates his happiness emotions everyday and if his happiness was very low that week then it would have been a bad week whereas if most of his mood was very high then it would have been a happy week. He asks himself each day if he fulfilled his goal of the day and that would most probably effect the results.

Stefan Sagmeister tents to use a lot of typography designs, he incorporate everyday elements and materials to create a word using them. He showcases them using items such as sausages, balloons, jelly, milk and more. He also uses different angles to catch on what word he is trying to portray such as 'HAVING', you will need to move in a certain position to see the letters.

Another thing that he often does in the film is writing over the video whilst he is also speaking about another topic, this seems like it is another way of how he expresses his emotions and thoughts more visually and for people to see it clearly rather than him just talking about it.

He rates his happiness using these methods by scaling them with water. This is the final result of all three methods and the drugs were higher than it is shown below because he was feeling a big amount of happiness that the water was overflowing and couldn't be scaled probably. However, after he was over the drugs he did not feel as happy as he did before leading him and his girlfriend into a rocky relationship.

Overall, this film had a lot of emotions going in and out to be honest. In some aspects to me who also looked like someone who was desperate to look for someone to love and be be loved by someone which is why he had fell in love with three women in a year. However, in my opinion he looked most happy and genuine happy without any methods or process of achieving happiness while doing his crafts, designing his art and just focusing on his work because he does them even in his free time. What I learnt from this film is that there are lots of ways how to research and we should expand the way we research and apply it through out own artwork.