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.

Open on a warmly lit baby’s room. A 12-month-old girl is asleep in a crib.

As the camera zooms in, the room darkens a bit. Sensing something foreboding, the baby’s eyes spring open. Suddenly a windstorm rips her from her crib, her face showing panic as she cries in terror. She tries to hold on for dear life, but the storm tosses her about before dropping her in a vast wasteland of ash and debris.

Surveying her surroundings, the baby gains her composure—determined to overcome the odds. We pull out wider to see a scorched earth of utter devastation, filled with familiar pieces of her world, like the ruins of a broken crib. As an air raid siren blares, pieces of splintered wood fall all around the baby like missiles from the sky. She starts to crawl toward camera, desperate to escape the projectiles.

Next, a huge object plummets toward her, and we see that it’s a letter block with a B on every side. It hits the ground with a thunderous crash and bounces toward the baby, narrowly missing her before tumbling just over her head. We see the fear in the baby’s eyes as she desperately crawls away. She can’t get very far before a giant pot of honey slams to the ground, exploding and sweeping her up in a wave of honey.

The baby struggles, gasping for air as she’s pulled under, finally finding a giant honey dipper to cling to. Focused and undaunted, she fights to climb, slipping as she scrambles for the surface. Just then, the dipper and the baby are pulled up from the honey, where we find a giant, disfigured teddy bear with eerie glowing eyes. The bear brings the dipper to its mouth and, with a deep roar, opens up to reveal rows of razor sharp teeth as it prepares to eat the baby whole. The bear’s mouth snaps shut, just missing the baby and knocking her off the dipper.

Out of nowhere, a menacing-looking bee catches the baby in mid-air. Refusing to yield to a world working against her, the baby struggles in the grasp of the bee’s legs as we follow them through a surreal world lined with enormous baby monitors. We hear an ominous buzz as they emerge from the monitor world into a land armed with jars of baby food. The bee swerves through the sky, trying to avoid globs of food being hurled at them by spoon catapults. As they fly under a bridge, one of the lumps of food strikes it, bringing the bridge tumbling down around them and forcing the bee to drop the baby.

The baby now finds herself alone in a dark, barren valley. She looks to the distance and sees a light that beckons from the sky. The mysterious light is her beacon, her goal. She must reach it. With a renewed sense of hope and determination, she crawls toward the light. We start to notice some movement in the shadows surrounding her. As the camera comes around, we see a throng of moving shadows behind her, all with eerie glowing eyes. The entire valley comes to life with a horde of scary mutant creatures, each representing different euphemisms for “baby”: a sliced sugar pie lurching like a zombie; an evil cupcake ready to brawl; a tattered buttercup blocking her path; a demented sweetheart who is anything but sweet. The scene is truly epic in size, with the odds of escape growing smaller by the second.

Now the baby is more desperate than ever to get to achieve her goal. She crawls feverishly, ducking and dodging as the mutant creatures paw at her and try to hold her back. She kicks some of them away, gaining a small amount of breathing room as the horde closes in and almost swallows her up. She scampers up a hill toward the light in the sky as a sinister sweetheart grabs her leg, and she bites his arm to get free. She’s so close to light she can almost touch it, as the music and sound design grow in intensity. She will not be deterred. In a crescendo of action and effort, with everyone fighting for the last inch, the baby gets there first and reaches her arm into the glint. The screen fills with bright light and the growing sound abruptly ends in a moment of calm silence.

We cut to a tight shot of a woman’s mouth, and we hear a cautious, relieved voice.

MOTHER: (slowly) Buh… buh… ba-by.

Cut to a POV shot of an iPad in the woman’s hand with a picture of a baby in the Constant Therapy speech app. A green check mark over the picture of the baby lets her know she got the word correct. We cut wide to see the same baby nursery from the beginning of the film. The mother is sitting in a chair working on a Constant Therapy exercise.

Supers appear over this final scene.

SUPER: After a brain injury, getting even one word out can seem impossible.

SUPER: We’re here to help with all of them.

Constant Therapy logo fades up.