Sarah Ballard is a director and UWM lecturer who had her most recent short featurette, “Full Out,” showcased in the 2025 Milwaukee Film Festival.
“Full Out” investigates the Salpêtrière Hospital’s research on mass hysteria and parallels this 19th-century historical case to modern-day cheerleaders experiencing symptoms of shared delirium.
This film is the first in a series where Ballard plans to explore the body and mind connection to instances of mass hysteria.
Ethan Ainley: Can you explain what “Full Out” is about?
Sarah Ballard: “Full Out” is a film centered around two separate nodes of research. The first one is centered around 19th-century hospitals in Paris. Specifically, the Salpêtrière Hospital and its work on hysteria. Patients were being hypnotized on stage to reproduce symptoms of hysteria for public audiences. I made the film to juxtapose that research with more contemporary research surrounding mass hysteria in high school. Particularly, high school cheerleaders who have displayed multiple symptoms, but in this case, fainting spells that were deemed contagious. The thing with hysteria is that it can’t be traced to an organic lesion on the body. It’s a mysterious illness. I’m interested in mystery and made a film to sort of ask these questions about the body and what it’s capable of.
Ainley: What initially drew you to this idea of mass hysteria? How did you make that connection to the cheerleaders?
Ballard: I’ve always found embodiments important in my films and something I appreciate when experiencing other films. I have a history of gymnastics, and muscle memory is something that I’ve always known, thought about, and used. I was drawn to the idea that mass hysteria could operate on a level of the body that we might not understand completely. I was drawn to this idea that hysteria could be a language or a proto-language. Something that exists beyond what we would consider linguistic or verbal.
The connection to the cheerleaders came about later on when making the film. I wasn’t even sure I was going to make a film about this. I was just interested in the research of the patients from the 19th-century hospital. That research reminded me of these instances of high school cheerleaders fainting. It wasn’t an isolated incident, and it occurred in multiple high schools. I was thinking about the performances that were held at this hospital, and the idea of a performance. Cheerleaders, by nature, are performing in sync with one another. That seemed really ripe to explore with the film. The idea that bodies can be tuned or in sync with one another, and how mass hysteria could come into being in that space.
Ainley: You mention the bodies being in tune, and you chose at one point in the film imagery with tuning a piano. What’s the symbolism and intention behind that?
Ballard: That is something that I brought in later and stands in the center of the piece. We start with historical cases of hysteria, then we have the tuning of the piano, and then we move on to the cheerleaders. I was thinking of this as an interstitial third thing that speaks to tuning by connecting a tuned piano to the idea of a body being tuned. The piano tuner is looking for a ‘correct’ way of assembling an instrument. When the body is dealing with hysteria, is it just falling out of tune? Is it resisting flattening or a source of control that a hospital, society, or even a cheerleading coach presents? These social and structural conditions can act like a tuning device.
The tuning of the piano has an asymmetrical relationship. It’s not a perfect metaphor, and I wasn’t interested in a perfect metaphor. Resonance became important, and the way that it’s an invisible force, much like mass hysteria. The way they move from one body to the next is untraceable. The piano felt really important for this idea of the sonic phenomenon known as sympathetic resonance. For example, imagine you have two tuning forks near each other at the same frequency, and you strike one of them. That one makes a sound, and the other one near it will begin to vibrate and make sound, even though there was no physical contact. Perhaps, bodies communicate with each other on a frequency that goes beyond our capacity to control or measure.
Ainley: In the film, we see archival images alongside your footage. How did you decide on some of the locations to shoot at?
Ballard: The first images I had were the archival images because that’s what started the project. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted to use those in the film. The complete photographs are pretty horrific to look at. I knew if I was going to use these photographs, I would be cropping them. I focused on a foot, a hand gesture, or a fragment of the body, as opposed to the complete individual. I never wanted to see a face because that felt like a boundary that I didn’t want to cross to maintain privacy.
While I’m collecting material, there’s often found imagery, footage, or archival material. I’m also constantly filming for it, and so because the site of the research took place at this hospital in Paris, I traveled there to show this hospital. However, there were many restrictions for filming inside the hospital, so I was only able to film the exteriors. I had to get creative and find these locations that could stand in for what was otherwise inaccessible to me. There is a red theater that I shot here in Milwaukee because the Amphitheatre that is described in the film no longer exists in the hospital. So even if I had gotten permission to film, it wouldn’t be there anymore. The Pabst Theater here in Milwaukee fits that description with the red curtains and red floor.
Ainley: How does being an instructor influence you when making films?
Ballard: That’s a good question. There are a lot of perks to working as a film instructor. I’m around students making films, and it feels like a productive space. Ideas are constantly being generated. I think it makes me a better teacher because I’m making films too, so I can relate to the students as far as the logistical side of filmmaking. It can be hard to make films during the semester, and I’m very much involved in my students’ work. Oftentimes, that will take priority over mine. I have summer and winter to do my filming. The ideal situation is that I’d be editing throughout the semester, which makes it easier to squeeze into a schedule.
Ainley: Looking forward, this is the planned first film in a series, so how will “Full Out” relate or differ from the next film?
Ballard: I’m in the early stages of the next film. The heart of the film will be similar, and the research is about embodied knowledge. I am still researching what is referred to as mass psychogenic illness or mass hysteria, as well as the impulses in the body, muscle memory, and sympathetic resonance. I think the ideas will be very similar, but I am interested in experimenting with different approaches. I’m interested in maybe going more towards narrative for one of the films and then maybe something that is more strictly nonfiction for another. I feel like “Full Out” is straddling something between both of those. That’s the only information I have for myself. I’m still figuring this out, too.