Introduction
The Visual Narrative Project was a broad unit that we worked on throughout this whole year. In English, we wrote a story. In Digital Media, we made creations on Illustrator and produced Music and in Film we made Narrative Films. This unit sparked a lot of creativity in me and made me realize how work goes into the media I consume everyday.
I loved the Visual Narrative unit. I would describe myself as a visual person, I have always been drawn to aesthetics and like things that look good so this unit was very fun for me. In Digital Media I loved doing our Illustrator Project because I got to make it about something that I was very passionate about and I love drawing so combining those two things was very fun for me and I ended up really liking my results. In film, we made a whole Narrative Film and that was really fun because I had never made a Narrative Film before and during this unit we dug deep into all the rules and tactics for making a Film but it seemed like we were also simulating what it was like in Hollywood which was very cool. For example we made a storyboard and showed it to the class which many studios like Disney do. In English, we got to write our own story and I really loved how we had a lot of freedom to write about anything we wanted but Mr. Greco also showed us how to develop our characters and gave us limitations that helped us grow as writers. Overall, I had a really great time with this unit and gained a lot of skills that I can use in the future.
Story
In English, we were supposed to write a flash fiction and we were given a lot of freedom in the story we wanted to tell and the character we wanted to develop. I have always loved a good, rising from the ashes, story and self-care so I wrote my story about a girl who realizes her own self worth in a mysterious way. During this unit Mr. Greco taught us a lot about how to develop our stories and about the fundamentals of storytelling and how we could write a good flash fiction and I am very proud of how my story came out. In Digital Media we recorded our stories on Pro tools and edited them so they were the best quality they could be and finally added sound effects and music. I loved that we turned our story into a audio story because I love reading audiobooks and I know that some people prefer them so I was really glad that we made audio.
Jo
Sam went to go check out. She bought the regulars, sourdough bread, turkey that would go bad in a week, a magazine and three bottles of aspirin, one in which she already opened during her brief time in the store. The magazine, like other magazines, was promoting a touched up, unattainable lifestyle titled “A better you” but Sam still got it, in the hopes that it would inspire her to at least do a workout or two.
“$29.32” the cashier said, she fished 30 dollars out of her pocket and the cashier gave her the change wrapped in a receipt. She grabbed her bags and attempted to put her change in her pocket but missed. Her 68 cents and went all over the floor. As she bent over to get the change, she noticed her stained and torn-up clogs and felt the weight of her gloomy existence crash down on her. “What happened to me?” She thought. The girl behind her must have seen her wince. As Sam stood back up, a kind smile faced her. “Thank you,” Sam said. “No prob,” the girl replied, with a wink.
On Sam’s way home. She thought about that girl. In Sam’s brief encounter with her, Sam felt a surge of energy that she hadn’t felt in a long time. Something about the girl’s presence struck her, it felt cathartic, strangely reminding Sam of a different version of herself. It was unexplainable. For the next week, Sam couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was intrigued. But as time went on, she slowly wrapped herself back up in her problems and her curiosity faded.
One day on her drive home from work she passed by a bookstore she had never seen before called “Mystic books”. She gave it a glance, when something caught her eye. The girl from the grocery store was sitting at the check out desk, all those thoughts came back to her. Sam found herself parking and walking into the bookstore. An invisible string was pulling Sam into the store. The bells wrapped around the door jingled as Sam walked in but she didn’t get anything, not even a glance. The girl was deep into what looked like the Kite Runner, a book that Sam loved back when she read. Sam did a lap around the bookstore, and during that time convinced herself that what she was doing was stupid, what was she even going to say? She turned around to leave when BANG! She crashed into the Penguin Classics display and knocked all the books to the floor. The girl’s head snapped up from her book and she ran to the mess. “What’s going on here?” she asked. “Sorry, I accidentally knocked it over,” Sam said. “That’s alright, why don’t you help me pick up the books.” Sam picked up Little Women and placed it back on the rack. “Ooh” the girl’s face lit up “I love Little Women, whenever I read it I am always inspired by Jo’s drive to overcome the hurdles that women faced in that time, she has always been my hero.” “That’s so funny, me too, but I think I have always been a Meg, I just don’t have it in me” Sam said, and forced out a laugh. “Could there be something you’re overlooking?” the girl asks. “What do you mean?” Sam asks. “I can see a Jo in you” the girl said.
“Really?”
“Of course”
“Thank you!”
“Not a prob…Not a prob at all”
The girl said with a wink. The books were all put back and when Sam got back up, “Thank you for helping” the girl said, “No thank you” Sam responded. When Sam left the store everything seemed clearer. She felt that the girl’s words had lit her up.
That night when Sam got home, she sat down at her computer and started to write, it was what she always wanted to do. In the morning, for the first time in a long time she woke up feeling good about herself.
After work she decided to go back to Mystic books and thank the girl. But when she went into Mystic books, a bald headed man was behind the counter. “Is the girl who worked here yesterday in?” Sam asked. “Who?” the man responded. “The employee here yesterday?”
“I am the only one who has works here” He said, giving her a strange look. The phone rang and he picked up the phone, “Just…” She said but he waved his hand to silence her. “Just tell her, Jo says thank you.”
Illustrations
In Digital Media we were given an Illustrations project, we had a lot of freedom with it and we could really create anything we wanted. I go to a camp and it is one of my passions and I decided that the logo was not up to snuff, so I decided to make a new one and put it on a sticker. This project combined my love for my camp and my love for just sitting and doodling so I had a very good time with this project.
I loved this project. I have always really enjoyed drawing even though I’m not great at it. When Mr. Florendo gave us this assignment. It was very broad, we could do it about anything. So naturally I decided to do it about something I loved and I chose to make a sticker about my camp. I wanted to try and make a new fake logo and I think I did a good job capturing the natural acceptance of camp. I definitely had a lot of ideas for this and I needed to make sure all of my ideas worked for the assignment I did have some things that I needed to cut out, I wanted to include a picture of one of the iconic mountains at my camp but I realized to do that I would of had to sacrifice the pleasing symmetry of my sticker and decided to not. Overall, I am happy with how my project turned out and am very proud of myself for sticking on schedule and for the effort I put into it.
Music Production
In Digital Media, we were given an assignment to write a parody song. I love music and every week I find a song that I am obsessed with, listen to it everyday, and then get tired of it and find a new song. On this particular week I was obsessed with the song Animal by Neon Trees. To give you so context I wrote this song on a Thursday night, knee deep in hours of homework and was just very mentally done with doing homework. So I decided to write my song about being over junior year. We first wrote the lyrics to our songs, then we recorded our songs and lastly we edited it on Pro Tools. On Pro Tools we needed to make the lyrics in the actual song not super audible and then put ourselves singing over it. To do this we rendered and normalized the original song to make the lyrics super quiet. Here it is:
Junioritis by Annie Schwartz
A parody on Animal by Neon Trees
Here we go again, Another school year were starting fresh
So take it easy on me, school is not ever on my side
Here we go again, math, english and lots of tests
Junior year has got me scared that I will not get out alive
Lots of SAT practice tonight
Oh, oh, more homework and more
Oh, oh, what are you studying for?
Is it common core ?
Say goodbye to my free time tonight
Film
In Film, we did a series of lessons preparing us for our Narrative Film. We did a chase scene, Griffith Pattern lesson, a story board lesson and a suspense scene lesson. The suspense scene lesson helped me a lot with my Narrative because my Narrative was a suspense film. I really enjoyed all these lessons and are very grateful that I got to learn a new set of skills. Because of all these lessons I got to come out with a Narrative I am proud of which is very cool!
This was our storyboard. Storyboards are like the illustration version of your film. In class we were taught a lesson on how to do this and then we had to present our Storyboard to the class. Storyboards are there to make sure that your film makes sense, you could think of something in your head and you think it makes sense but then get it onto paper and it doesn’t work out exactly how you thought it would. We use these to make sure that we go into filming the most prepared that we can. Many major studios like Pixar and Disney use these.
Annie, Milo, and Isaac’s Murder Mystery Spoof Synopsis
Our film is going to be a murder mystery spoof. Our protagonist is going to be a stupid detective who is constantly getting distracted and missing the crucial and obvious clues to solving the case. The first think that the audience is going to see is the murder, the murder will most likely be accidental and a stupid murder. One of our ideas is that the murderer is a bad murderer and the person who the murderer is murdering gets the upper hand at one point and then accidentally shoots himself. We do this to add a joking manner to our film. After this we will have a scene where our detective gets the case. That will conclude the first act. The second act will start when the detective arrives at the crime scene. At the crime scene will have a couple crime scene workers (extras) be at the scene and when the detective is investigating the scene there is going to be an obvious clue but he is always going to get distracted, possibly by a girl or a dog and during this scene I think we want to really play into the fact that he is missing this huge clue so we will have a couple moments of dramatic irony. We were thinking that that the clue could be the murder weapon and maybe when the detective is getting distracted he could accidentally step on it and then possibly kick it under the bed. In this scene we would get a lot of shots of the murder weapon. After this we would have the detective go home and make a crime scene board. In this crime scene board. We are thinking this crime scene board would have security footage and some pictures of the crime scene. I was thinking if we had the detective getting distracted by the girl at the crime scene we would have the girl on the crime scene board as like the major focal point. After he leaves we are not sure yet but we are going to have a couple scenes where he is going to be trying to solve the mystery but he’s doing it completely wrong, we are not sure what we want to do with this yet. After this he is going to have no findings and he is going to get kicked off the case in response he is going to go on a drunk bender and we are going to see him drink a lot and get super drunk. This is going to be the abyss moment. At some point he is going to walk past the security footage and see something he has never seen before, the killer in security footage’s shoes. The killer will be wearing bright pink sketchers which is the same as the chief, this will be the great redemption moment. The detective will race to the station and bring everyone together to expose the police chief. The detective is going to announce that he found the killer and he is going to proceed to pull out photo evidence from the security footage but as a joke he is going to pull out the picture of the dog. When he finally exposes the police chief, we are going to see the police chief getting really nervous and then we are going to see the police chief be taken into custody. We were inspired by the Pink Panther, Johnny English, Austin Powers and other films. We want our detective to be dumb and we want our detective to just happen to solve the case and not really actually be a talented detective. We want our film to be a stupid, funny, satire type film.
This was our Narrative Synopsis. Mr. Taylor requires that we write a synopsis about any film we are going to be making so he knows and what we are envisioning for our film. The Synopsis usually consists of the plot of our film, the characterization and just the overall feel we are going for.
This is the trailer of our Narrative Film. We make this after we are completely done with our Film and we show it to the class before we all watch our narratives.
This is my Narrative Film! This was the big project of the year we started it in mid November and ended in February. This was a really fun to make because it was the first Narrative film that I got to make and we before that we had been learning a lot of the technical and storytelling skills and we had been building up to this project. I had a blast making this film.
This was our Griffith’s Pattern scene. D.W Griffith is cancelled and for good reason, but he did lay down a lot of fundamental filmmaking skills like the establishing shot and other shots that help give viewers context in a scene. We were instructed to create a scene and use the Griffith Pattern and here is what we did.
Here is my Chase Scene. Before we do the chase scene Mr. Taylor teaches us the 180-degree rule, which means that if you are filming the left side of someone you can’t just switch and film on the right side of them. This assignment was basically a test to see if we knew how to film someone being chased without breaking this rule.
This was our Suspense Scene. In class, Mr. Taylor showed us how to make suspense in a film by using shots and by having something in your film to symbolize the suspense like if someone had a key they shouldn’t have you would use the key, maybe do some close ups of the key to show people they shouldn’t have it.