Episode 164: Filmmaking about the dyslexic and ADHD experience – with Mads Johan Øgaard

The episode transcript is below.

Carolyn Kiel: Welcome to Beyond 6 Seconds, the podcast that goes beyond the six second first impression to share the extraordinary stories of neurodivergent people. I’m your host, Carolyn Kiel.

Do you find that drawing or doodling helps you focus? Or have you ever had to figure out creative ways to help yourself learn and retain information? Well then, you’re really going to enjoy this episode!

Today’s guest is Mads Johan Øgaard. He’s an artist, filmmaker and special education teacher who lives in Norway. Mads has been drawing all his life. He also has dyslexia and dyscalculia, and he realized early on in his schooling that drawing also helped him learn. We talk about his successes and struggles at school, and how he turned his lifelong passion for drawing into a career as an illustrator and filmmaker.

We also talk about his award-winning animated short film, I AM DYSLEXIC, which he made based on his own experience – and he describes how this film was so healing and emotional for him and the other students who worked on it with him, and how it captured their experiences with their own learning differences. Based on the success of this film, he was asked to make another animated short film, this time about ADHD – we talk about how he did that too.

If you like stories about neurodiversity, well then, good news! I have lots of other episodes just like this one, featuring first-hand stories about the lives and experiences of neurodivergent people. You can find them all on my website at beyond6seconds.net or by following this podcast in your favorite podcast app.

If you enjoyed this episode, then please share it with a friend, and help me get the word out about the important stories being shared here. If you’re listening on your phone, take a screenshot and post it to your social media, and tag me at beyond6seconds. That would be so awesome. I really appreciate your help with getting the word out.

Ok, here’s my interview with Mads!

Today I’m really excited to be here with my guest Mads Johan Øgaard. Mads is an award winning artist and special education teacher from Norway. He’s a public speaker who shares his experiences about how it feels to have dyslexia and dyscalculia while going through the school system, how this affects mental health and how to find personal learning strategies. He’s known for the multi award-winning animated short film, which is called I AM DYSLEXIC. Mads, welcome to the podcast.

Mads Johan Øgaard: Thank you so much for having me.

Carolyn Kiel: I’m so excited to have you here. I really enjoyed your short film and I wanted to learn more about your story. Maybe just start off by telling me kind of how you got your diagnosis for dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Mads Johan Øgaard: I got dyslexia first. So my mom is dyslexic and she understood very quickly when I was in first grade, like, hey, Mads needs help. School didn’t really understand, so she had to push. And then in second grade I actually got a so-called special education teacher. She put me into a room and said, “now I’m gonna test if you’re smart or stupid. Here are some puzzles.” And I concluded that I must’ve been very smart because I never saw that person again. You know, she went to my mom and said “he can rhyme, so he doesn’t have dyslexia.”

Carolyn Kiel: What?

Mads Johan Øgaard: That’s obviously not true. So that was the extent of my special education support that I received in the early primary school.

So nothing really happens for a few years then, as things go, you start to think like, okay, there must be something wrong with me. I’m so strange, and I can’t do all these things that everyone else seems to be able to do. So you start distance yourself and everything.

But long story short, me and my parents, we moved to Gran Canaria, the Spanish islands, and we lived there for three months and I got homeschooled, which was great because now my mom and dad could teach me and my siblings the way that they did things, especially my mom, since again, she’s dyslexic. And that was fantastic. But there was this one other thing as well. My brother, he’s five years younger than me. He was born deaf, so he couldn’t hear anything. But he started to hear for some reason, and that made him get a speech therapist when we moved back to Norway after those three months, By then I was actually ahead of everyone in my class, but then I was told, no, you’re too far ahead now. You have to wait. And then, after a week I was behind again.

But because my brother got a speech therapist, [the speech therapist] was also qualified to diagnose dyslexia. So he diagnosed me with dyslexia. I was one of the first students in that school to be diagnosed with dyslexia. So I got all the support tools that were available in Norway at the time. And I really had to fight my teachers to like, understand that, hey, I can use the computer. I need audio books, et cetera. That’s okay.

But my teacher was afraid of computers. She didn’t like that I used them. And so everyone else was sitting in groups, but I was segregated on my little desk right next to her desk, just so she could look at me at all times. So that was sad.

But to me it was just an amazing awakening, so to say. Because I understood that, okay, I don’t learn the way the school system wants me to learn. What do I need to do? Just asking all these questions and fighting my teachers, I realized I need to draw. I need to draw in order to learn because drawing and listening was my way. And I started developing all these techniques, teaching myself how to use these tools that I got and everything, and just started boost my own self-confidence and realized that I was not in a good place mentally. Right? I started to work on myself with that, looking at myself in the mirror, saying nice things to myself. You know, acknowledging myself.

Long story short, I got to secondary school, or what do you call it in America?

Carolyn Kiel: Maybe like junior high or high school?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Probably something like that. The first year there I had this amazing math teacher that was really interested in dyscalculia and actually wrote math books for individuals with dyscalculia. She went to this professor in Oslo to learn how to do this. And she was like, “hey, do you want to be my test subject, so to say, because you clearly have dyscalculia.” I’m like, “sure! You know, fantastic!” And, um, yeah, I got the diagnosis and with her help, I got top grades in math because she actually understood how it works. And I was able to actually have fun with math for the periods of time that I had her. So that’s how I got both dyslexia and dyscalculia.

Carolyn Kiel: It shows how important the influence of teachers are, from your experiences with that. Yeah.

Mads Johan Øgaard: It’s so important that they see you and actually are interested.

Carolyn Kiel: Absolutely. So, and we were talking about how you got your dyslexia diagnosis. Did you get that from your, your brother’s speech therapist or how did, or how did that come about?

Mads Johan Øgaard: So in Norway, this guy, you could say he was a special education teacher in that sense, but that term works a little bit differently in Norway. He’s also a speech therapist. So it’s a broad spectrum of things. And he is qualified to diagnose. And then he sent the papers into the, the state, or the part of the state that has to do with diagnosis. Then it was confirmed that, you know, all the papers were correct. And I got the green light to get the diagnosis. The same thing happened with dyscalculia.

Carolyn Kiel: Interesting. At certain points, it sounds like you had some teachers who really understood and were able to adapt their teaching methods in order to help you in ways that were different from sort of like the standard way that everybody had to learn in the school curriculum.

What was it like in school overall for you, with these learning disabilities even before they were diagnosed and even once you had diagnosis?

Mads Johan Øgaard: So from very early on, I stopped asking for help because I thought, you know, no one can help me, no one understands me. So why, why should I even ask for help? Even though my parents was really good, they tried their best, you know? But as I’m sure so many can relate to, is that the kid is then just like, I can’t deal with the parents trying to figure out how to do this and then explain to me after sitting six hours in school. Not going to happen.

So I started distancing myself and, uh, was pretty depressed to be honest. I was struggling a lot with my self-confidence and I masked a lot, trying to pretend that I was better than I was. But again, I had all, all right teachers, it’s just that one teacher that I had in fifth grade on once was not so good. She didn’t really have time for herself, definitely not the students.

But at that point I kind of realized I had to do things my own way. So it doesn’t really matter what you think, I’m going to do this. I’m going to educate myself on what this means to me. What do I need? So I kind of looked up my diagnosis as a guide to be like, okay, I struggle with this. What can I use to compensate for this to make it easier for myself? And I just continued doing this all up until now, really. But later years I got better teachers or I was very direct in saying, Hey, my name is Mads. I have dyslexia and dyscalculia. This is what I need from you. And this is what I expect that you give me, you know? And I was very aware from very early on, like if I do that and are responsible for saying my needs from the very, very beginning, I have done my job and now I can hold them accountable for like, Hey, you didn’t do your job. Help me. You know?

That math teacher, she, you know, usually you get, at least in Norway, taken out of the class that you’re bad at to have separate in a separate room. But she didn’t do that. She put me with the best individuals in the class. Because I had a different way of thinking, so I could teach the best quote-unquote in the class to think differently and we can learn from each other. And that’s so much more fun, you know? And she had like maybe four to five different ways of doing the math formula on the blackboard at the time, but whiteboard now. I haven’t had much math teachers doing that in my later years. Usually there’s like one or two ways and that’s, that’s it, you know? But she was very, very good and very good at explaining understanding why individuals with dyscalculia find something difficult when it comes to numbers and math, so pretty good! But overall, very varied.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s a really creative way of, of teaching in terms of, you know, grouping students together and learning. And as you said, you’re helping people to think differently about math. And certainly that helps.

Mads Johan Øgaard: Well, that’s how life should be, right? Like no one thinks the same.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, exactly. And you mentioned before that, I think when you were in secondary school, that you started teaching yourself how to draw or finding a passion for drawing and art and such. So how did you discover and grow that passion?

Mads Johan Øgaard: I’ve always been drawing since I was, since I was born, but it was very natural to me. That’s how I express myself, my emotion, my thoughts, my ideas. I was drawing all the time or I am drawing all the time. So when I, when I got the diagnosis at age 11, I was like, well, obviously I need to use drawings because when I listen to audio books to listen to parents or whatever, I remember it, it works for me. Can I apply this to school? And I did. I had to fight. They took away my pencil. They took away my paper, but I continued to write on other things and draw on other things until, you know, I said, this is how I learn.

And, you know, I also realized, okay, not only do I learn with drawing, but I learn with images. I think in images. So I started using other people’s images to, uh, remember things and, and completely like changed my whole way of learning through art images, visuals in general, and just continued to develop it. They come very natural for me and it, it could be anything, you know. I can listen to history and I can draw Donald Duck. It didn’t need to be any correlation between it. I just liked that image. And I could watch that even today. I’d be like, oh, I remember what clothes I had on when teacher said to us, we’re looking at that image because that’s like captured in time, so to say.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s so interesting! Because sometimes people will, I guess what they call “doodle” while they’re listening, and people sometimes think they’re not paying attention, but it actually helps them focus and learn and they are listening and retaining the information. So were you sort of doing that or were you also using images and drawings to supplement your learning, what you were either reading or hearing from the teacher, or both?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Both, to be fair. Because again, I realized that, okay, I’m not allowed to use, I can’t draw in this class. Or there are situation where like, you can’t draw for whatever reason. I’m like, okay, this is an image. I can use this image to remember whatever I’m going to learn. So for example, I got audio books and I took a long walk and I remembered. I can go the same walk the day after or later that day, and remember the audiobooks from trees and houses and stones or whatever in the environment. And then that path got saved, so to say. So I can go to the class. I’m like, oh yeah, that tree. I remember, Second World War. You’re talking about that specific thing, you know?

But of course it took me a long time to develop it. So it’s not like straight away, but I played around with it. That’s what I teach a lot of people like you, you can’t be like, oh, it didn’t work for me. No, you have to try and see, how is this connected? How can you implement more of yourself? What is your interests? You know? So yes, it came natural to me that I got out of my way to try to modify and learn and evolve it.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Wow. That’s really interesting. Such a holistic way of thinking about things and learning. Oh, that’s so cool.

So how did you discover your passion or evolve that into like animation and filmmaking?

Mads Johan Øgaard: So my whole life, like, I’ve been, the reason why I used Donald Duck earlier, because all through my school, I was known for the guy that draw Donald Duck. I always loved Donald Duck. So from very early on, it was like, oh yeah, you’re gonna make comics. You gonna make comics or do animation or whatever. And after I did military service here in Norway, because it was compulsory. I was like, I need to move to England. I want to move to England and do either illustration or animation. I applied for one that had both, but I didn’t get in. So I got into Falmouth animation, Falmouth University on the animation course, and I got there and I realized, I don’t really know what animation actually means, but let’s see with this, you know?

But I always had, like, this thought of that would be cool to make a movie or something, But I didn’t expect it to be this difficult, so to say. Because I was only into comics really in the beginning. That was like my thing I wanted to draw. I still still do really. But the whole process of animation, I got more and more into it while I went to that course or that bachelor I took.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, there’s so much that goes into it. And I remember you were saying that in school, you were using a computer, it sounds like even before your teacher was even comfortable using computers. That sort of interest in computers, I guess that must have helped you as you moved into animation?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Maybe not through animation, but more like I have access to digital drawing. Well at the time I only had Microsoft Paint and I was very good at drawing in Microsoft Paint. I was one of the first, I don’t know, in the school to actually use the computer in class because I wasn’t , that wasn’t normal at that time. Now it’s, everyone does it.

But I’m watching anime and cartoons all the time. Like I rather do that than watching some sort of Netflix show or whatever. Right? So animation in terms of watching always done, always preferred, always like wanted to do something like that. I think it was Tarzan, I realized, oh, I would love to make something similar or make drawings into life, so to say. I think Tarzan really started that, hmm maybe I should, maybe I could do it. I don’t know how to do it, but I’ll be cool.

Carolyn Kiel: What kind of animated movies or comics or shows sort of influenced your style of drawing, would you say?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Oh, that’s, that’s a really cool question because I feel like none of my, my current style doesn’t match any of the things that actually influenced me. So obviously in the beginning, Donald Duck comics or animated shows for sure. My uncle, he worked at the factory where they published Donald Duck comics in Scandinavia.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow!

Mads Johan Øgaard: So I got those comics, comic books very, very early, weeks before everyone else. I was like, wow, this is so cool, you know?

But my current style? That’s like, I had never thought about that! Like, Roald Dahl? You know Roald Dahl, yeah?

Carolyn Kiel: Yes!

Mads Johan Øgaard: He was a huge inspiration for that film because I liked that sketchy, like childish kind of stylistic style to it. So he, he was a huge inspiration for, for that film and kind of my current style. But I kind of just developed it in myself, technically. I’ve always been a fan of like sketchy styles that look like they are handmade or it looks like they can see the construction lines under, and that’s not something you get from Disney, you know? So it’s completely different from, from anything else.

There are some, you know the 100 Dalmations? They have quite a sketchy style. So, close to that, but I didn’t think about that when I made this film. I just, this is what I like, you know?

Carolyn Kiel: It sounds like you had a lot of interests in different types of styles of animation and comics and drawing, and it all kind of blended together as you came up with your own style.

Mads Johan Øgaard: Exactly. Like Western, Asian, animation and internet art for sure, like Tumblr was huge at the time. So I was like, yeah. Influenced by a lot of people there. So I just mixed and matched it together, really. Yeah.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, very cool. So then what inspired you to make your film, I AM DYSLEXIC, about dyslexia? Was that your first big short film that you made?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Yeah, it’s big, well, technically like big, proper one. Yeah. But we had made other ones throughout the course. But not like, big. So this was like the last year for my bachelor and we were supposed to create a short film. But I actually planned not to make a film because you could choose to work with other people on their film instead, because I was like, eh, I don’t really have a good idea. I don’t even know what to do. I just want to draw, really. But then I was like, hey, I have the opportunity to actually share how I felt throughout my life. It’s a good opportunity. I don’t know if I get this opportunity ever again. So I was like, ok, I’ll talk about my life and how I felt.

Because always there’s talk about what is dyslexia and all these numbers. You know, it doesn’t matter to a child how many percent of people have dyslexia, or what it is. They just care about, “this is how I feel. Do you understand me?” You know, that’s what they care about. So I was like, okay, let’s make a film about how it feels to have dyslexia and other learning, I like to say learning difference, but you can say neurodiverse feeling, so to say.

So I just started the idea and I got, because we started this in the late second year to prepare for third year and we were supposed to write a script for the three months that we had holiday. And I was stuck because I had to write the story. And I was like, I don’t know how, I can’t get it out. So I spent three months trying different styles and trying to get this idea out. And I got back to school and I said, I can’t do this. There’s no way. I’m so tired.

My teachers were like, no, you have to do it because it’s such a good idea, you know? But my friend who helped me for my essay, because I couldn’t really write English that well, even though I studied in England, she said to me, Mads, tell me, 10 minutes, just tell me what you have in your head. And it took me five minutes to explain about this character, climbing up a mountain. It grows pages out of him the further we get up to the mountain. And he is miserable and he falls apart and he eventually reached the top. And everything’s made of books, you know?

And then I’m like, actually I told you the whole thing. I just needed to get it out. That was her point because I was stuck writing it instead of speaking it. So then I wrote it happily and I made this that and the other concept arts and wound up two days afterwards and just presented the film and got the greenlight. And suddenly I’m making a short film. And together with Katie Wyman, we co-directed and co-produced a film and we got over 60 students on it. The majority of them had ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia or any other learning difference because they could relate. We made the safe environment to share how we felt and we put it into the film to make it even more impactful. So, so it was very healing for everyone involved, really.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow. You described the process of not being able to write out a script for it, but then speaking it to someone else helped you write it. But as I recall, I don’t, I don’t think that film has any dialogue. So I’m curious when you actually quote unquote wrote it out, did you storyboard it, like draw out scenes? Or how did you put it together in the beginning?

Mads Johan Øgaard: So the very beginning, I actually wrote a fairly rough script of like the character needs to do this, be there and be there. But I pretty much had in mind the whole way that I don’t want any spoken words or at least a minimum of it. But it was my dyslexic teacher who said, “Mads, forget about the script. Do it visually instead. Do storyboarding.” And I was like, “perfect. Why haven’t we done this before?” So I just did everything visually and it worked perfect. We were stuck with the words.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah, and that works perfectly with this film. So it’s very, the short film, it’s, it’s very emotional, the combination of the animation and then the music, the song in the background is also very emotional and, you know, definitely got emotional, especially towards the end. And I won’t spoil it for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet. I’ll put a link in the show notes so that everyone can watch it. But, yeah, it’s a really extraordinary short film.

When you released the film after it was done, what kind of response did you get from it?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Oh, it was even before releasing it, we knew like, Hey, this has got to be good. Because people in my class, and that also worked on the film, was like, Hey, I have learned so much about myself from working with you and watching this film. My whole perspective of this has changed. And we kept on bringing more and more people in over the whole production of the film. And we could see people got really, really emotional watching this, which is what I wanted.

And I actually put out some concept art for the film. And someone in Dyslexia Norway contacted me and asked me if I wanted to make a illustrated book. I was like, yes, I would love to, but I need to finish my film first. Do you want to see the trailer? And it got like, you need to get to our youth and talk about this and show it to them.

So when the film was done, it was done the 16th of July, 2016, I believe, we tried to put it into as many festivals as possible. It did very, very well. It has been to more countries that I have been to. It has won 12 awards for various different reasons. As I said, I showed it to the whole Dyslexia Norway youth. And just like, everyone was crying. It was beautiful. And I knew then that, okay, they will share this film because they relate to it. It works. And I was right, it just, and it still keeps going, even to this day. It was very popular in France and in Greece for some reason. I don’t know why, but it’s, it’s great. Every now and then I have some Greek friends and I see them repost, Hey Mads, your film is trending in Greece again. It’s like, it’s fun. And I know it’s been used for educational purposes all around the world, which is exactly what I want. I reached my goal, so to say.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s fantastic. What is the conversation or what is the awareness of learning differences like dyslexia and dyscalculia in, I would say Norway or Europe overall? Is it something that’s talked about and there’s a lot of awareness about in your opinion?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Overall it’s pretty much the same, every country. But in certain aspects, like Norway it’s good. People know what dyslexia is. It’s relatively understood. That doesn’t mean that they understand it in an educational setting or they just think it’s, it’s a problem you can’t read or write, but there’s way more to it, you know? And dyscalculia is pretty much like, what is that? No one knows about it. But Dyslexia Norway has done a pretty good job with highlighting this. I’ve traveled around Norway to talk about these things. So like the awareness, at least for next generation should be fairly there. It’s getting there. It’s getting there. Can always be better, but it’s getting there, I would say.

Carolyn Kiel: And it sounds like your film is one of the things that’s really helping, especially with kids and people just feeling less alone who have had that, cause I’m sure so many people have had that experience growing up.

Mads Johan Øgaard: That’s one of the cool things with this film, right? We have, I get comments from all around the world, and this proves one thing. Everyone feels the same, you know? The school system, regardless of if you live in Italy or Mexico, it doesn’t matter. It’s the same feeling because the system doesn’t work and people relate to it. So in that sense, it’s pretty cool. Like there is a universal feeling of what people experience. That is pretty cool.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. And the fact actually that there really aren’t any spoken words makes it pretty universal. There’s no language barrier. It’s literally just visual and all the other senses are engaged. So anyone speaking any language can watch it and immediately relate.

Mads Johan Øgaard: That was my intention, yeah. Though, many people, they’re caught up in the lyrics of the song that has some English spoken words. But like I always say, you don’t need to understand what she says in order to get it. You know? So, so it works. That was the intention. Mari Hajem who made the song did such a good job.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Yeah, that was wonderful. It’s been a couple of years now since the film first came out, right? So, what other projects are you working on now? Whether it’s like filmmaking or animation, education related?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Oh, a lot of things. At 2020 actually, I released a new short film about ADHD.

Carolyn Kiel: Wow!

Mads Johan Øgaard: I don’t have ADHD myself, but, ADHD Norway contacted me and said, we want to make a film similar to what you did with I AM DYSLEXIC. And currently it’s doing very, very well and getting comments every day saying like, you have described it in a way I haven’t seen before. This is amazing. The ADHD community are very happy, as far as I understand. That’s pretty fun.

But I mostly, I do work within special education, in terms of illustrations. We just finished a book called “Hacking the Code: The Ziggety Zaggety Road of a Dyslexic Kid”. It’s about this dyslexic kid, learning about what is dyslexia. He needed to overcome his punishment from his principal and how that works. Absolutely recommended to check out that book.

And really I do a project here and there about mental health, mostly illustrations, because animations is very expensive and takes a lot of time. But there are some talk at the moment about different potential new films. But, I want to make sure that it’s good. I feel like I have big shoes to fill, but, but at the same time, I want to make sure that it’s within that field because that’s what I am passionate about. That’s what I have experienced about. And, I do mentoring, I travel around using my experiences and degree to educate teachers, parents, students. So yeah, I do a lot of things.

Carolyn Kiel: That’s cool. Because yeah, I should’ve mentioned that in addition to all of the work and the bachelors that you have in animation and in drawing and art, that you also, you have a master’s degree in special education and teaching as well. So it’s really interesting combination.

Mads Johan Øgaard: Yes. It was a challenge to get it, but I’m very happy that I did. I did not plan to do this, but after I finished my bachelor, so many people told me Mads, you are very good at helping people understand how they learn or show them different ways of doing things. Maybe you should go that way, you know? I was like, oh, I had a dream once when I was around 10, maybe I would work with dyslexia somehow. So I was like, let’s try. So I applied to here in Norway to get into a course, but it got declined, because I tried to be an art teacher, they didn’t like my animation degree for whatever reason, so I didn’t get in. So I said, okay, screw it. I’ll move back to England and take a master there.

Long story short. I failed pretty much every single class. I understood everything, but I failed because I couldn’t write English. But I learned to write English over that, in England it’s a one-year master, so I learned to write English. I was writing essays like every single day and the more I wrote the better I did. And eventually I made a pretty good, good enough at least, final dissertation about dyslexia that got through. So again, the challenge of writing and reading got in the way, but I proved to myself like, Hey, I can, you know? I learned so much going there and I already knew a lot of this stuff as well, because I had experienced it.

The coolest thing was that the teachers said, “thank you, Mads. You really challenged us.” Because again, I came with a different perspective and I was like, no, I’m going to do it my way. You know? So, so it was really, really fun to prove to myself that I actually can. But I had to dedicate everything to, to do this. It was a full-time 24 7 job, so to say, but I made it.

Carolyn Kiel: Really, really awesome. You mentioned you made a film about ADHD although you don’t have it yourself. So when you make a film like that, do you work with a lot of people who have ADHD or kind of, how do you bring together that community to develop it?

Mads Johan Øgaard: So the way I did it, obviously working with ADHD Norway, I have access to unlimited individuals with ADHD. So what I did, I interviewed a bunch of people. And I was like, okay, but how do you think, how do you feel, what you do in a situation like this? Why do you react in this situation when you do this?

And based on that, and a few other works that I’d made for ADHD Norway prior, and with their supervision, we modeled or created these characters: inattentive and hyperactive, hyperactive, hyperactive type. I really want to show both sides because often the hyperactive one is usually more shown in media, right? But you have this whole group of people that experiences differently. So I really want to balance between the two characters and see, like, this is one way, it doesn’t means that this is the only way. So later in the film, we also show you the opposite between boys and girls and these two different types.

And again, together with Mari, we created the same formula. It’s not as metaphorical as I AM DYSLEXIC. It’s more like, how does this individual cope with being in school, being misunderstood? It’s needs, it’s wants and how they react to the world. So again, I just made a puzzle and pieced as much as possible into this movie. And it seems to be working.

So, and I do have a lot of friends with ADHD as well. That really helped because I could at least have some second-hand experience in how they may come across. And, you know, I asked them so many questions: when you do this and this individual react this why, what do you do? It took one and a half years to make that film. So basically just a half year, we just did interviews with people of all ages.

Carolyn Kiel: Oh, awesome. Yeah. It sounds like you cover a lot of different perspectives and experiences with that film. So yeah, I definitely, I need to see that one. Is that on your website? I have to go check it out.

Mads Johan Øgaard: It’s on my website. It’s on my YouTube. They are like grouped together.

Carolyn Kiel: I’ll put the link in the show notes to that too. So yeah, I mean, what is the best way for people, if they want to get in touch with you to just learn more about the type of filmmaking you do, or the advocacy that you do?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Well, I’m pretty much everywhere, but like the easiest, easiest way is probably to my website, which is my name, MadsJohanOgaard.com. You can send me an email. Most people actually contact me through Instagram, I’m very active there. So the three places I’m most active is actually Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. My Instagram and website is the two best places to contact me.

Carolyn Kiel: All right. I’ll put links to those in the show notes as well, so people can get to that easily. Very cool. Well, Mads, thank you so much for telling your story on my show. Is there anything else that you’d like our listeners to know or anything that they can help or support you with?

Mads Johan Øgaard: Check out my work, that helps me. I would love to hear what people think. You know, that’s always the highlight of the day. What do you think about my work? And, if you have any suggestions, like I make loads of TikTok videos. And when I answer people’s questions, normally in Norwegian, but I’m up for English as well. YouTube is mostly English, so, so, anything is possible, then I will answer. And thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to share my story.

Carolyn Kiel: Yeah. Thank you. The work you’re doing is awesome and I’m happy to share it with my listeners. So thank you for being a guest on my show.

Mads Johan Øgaard: It’s a pleasure.

Carolyn Kiel: Thanks for listening to Beyond 6 Seconds. Please help me spread the word about this podcast. Share it with a friend, give it a shout out on your social media or write a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast player. You can find all of my episodes and sign up for my free newsletter at beyond6seconds.net. Until next time.