Constant Therapy is an FDA-cleared app-based treatment for aphasia, administered by neurologists and speech language pathologists. It’s seeking full FDA approval as a medical device for traumatic brain injury and stroke. As such, all US FTC and FDA regulations regarding truthfulness, clarity and specificity in medical advertisements apply.

The Constant Therapy app is administered by neurologists and speech pathologists as an FDA-cleared treatment for aphasia, secondary to traumatic brain injury or stroke. The film communicates to healthcare professionals that Constant Therapy understands a brain injury patient’s struggle and is a critical neurological tool to help patients regains speech.

The film depicts the intense struggle of a single word, “baby,” trying to get out after a brain injury. Every scene is based on real input from Mary, an aphasia patient, and Emily Dubas, her speech language pathologist.

We follow the journey of a baby, fighting to get out of a decaying landscape that represents the damaged brain. In the film, the baby has to contend with enemies that reflect the pathology of aphasia. Those obstacles include other words that start with B (letter block, bear, bee, etc.); memories you might associate with the word “baby” (baby food, baby monitor); and convenient synonyms for the word “baby” (honey, sweetheart, cupcake, sugar pie).

Ultimately the baby is able to escape and make her way out. We end the film seeing a woman in the real world successfully saying the word, thanks to her Constant Therapy app.

Brain injury patients report struggling to distinguish related words as they search for the correct one. All of the elements in the mindscape were chosen because they had that type of potentially confusing connection to the word “baby.” For example, using letter recognition to retrieve words is common, so the characters of the Bear and the Bee were specifically chosen because they begin with the letter “B.” Other elements, like honey, sweethearts, etc, were all chosen because they represent affectionate English synonyms for “baby.”

The animation throughout the film is a unique and visually striking combination of 3D objects painted in a 2D style. The flat, painted finish allowed us to give everything in our mindscape a dreamy, ethereal quality, while the 3D let us maintain a vastness of scope and make the danger to the baby feel more threatening and real. There is also a “jitter” in every scene that takes place inside the brain. This effect is toned down when we return to the real world at the end. This emphasizes the chaotic, imperfect nature of a damaged brain in contrast to the more controlled world where the mother is regaining her communication skills.

The vision for the art direction was to create a genuine sense of tension and danger for the baby. We achieved this by making the mindscape feel vast, dark, and ever-shifting. The ground was made of sand or ash, with hills and structures placed haphazardly. Broken bridges symbolized broken connections. The locations spread endlessly for miles. The alien environment represented the fragmented and unclear state of the brain after an injury, and it gave the sensation that language had been lost or misplaced. Every production detail was in service of the neurological journey of word retrieval.

The film was also carried predominantly by a single shot (no cuts) to create a breathless pace, as if the viewer were part of the epic struggle.