Narrative Visual Perspective in English

Research Presentation

Surreal Composition Project

In Digital Media, we created surreal Photoshop compositions based on our Worldbuilding project in english. I chose to focus on the character Ani, who has a brain prosthesis, and often feels as though there is another being controlling his mind, which I chose to represent with a snake. He is depicted in the water because he is meant to be stuck, pushed around by other people, without control over his own fate.

I made this surrealist art piece surrounding my worldbuilding project with photoshop by compositing different images into a new, absurd creation. In order to make this image, I had to use photoshop tools like layer masks, adjustment layers, different opacities, and a lot of my own shading and adjusting. In order to make the snake fit in with the man in the water, and look like they are really interacting, I had to adjust the shadows and use multiple layer masks of varying opacities.

In English class, we are working on a worldbuilding project that involves research and imagination, and this surrealist project was related to that in its subject. The prompt for this project was to create a surrealist image focusing on an original character, and taking place in the world that we are building in our groups. My group is building a world where everyone is a cyborg, due to a bomb leaving the entire population deformed. My character’s brain has been replaced, and he has named himself Whataburger, which is why I included it in my composite image. In total, we are exploring the implications of a worldwide disability, and how the caste systems and societies would change because of it. The snake is supposed to be a representation of how he feels like his head is not his, like he isn’t in control, and like there is another being inside of him. I also tried to create a clear cyborg head, but I struggled more with that.

I am much more confident in my ability to composite images on photoshop now, and I am looking forward to using this skill in art projects in the future. I want to continue to improve as well, and learn to get better at creating false lighting and different color environments.

Worldbuilding Pitch video

We spent a long time in our original live pitch, but that also included some interactive elements that wouldn’t happen in a video. However, the time limit being 5 minutes did make us very worried about the amount of time we could spend. We debated cutting down on the plot summary and instead leave the story on a cliffhanger, but it didn’t feel true to the story, which included arcs of major characters that wouldn’t be fully clear until the third act. Because of this, we still kept all 3 acts in our video. We didn’t get too much feedback in our presentation about time, or about cutting out certain aspects of our story. (Maybe we were just too good, hehe) ((that was a joke)) But we did end up shortening the character descriptions as much as we could, and put them in the story when the character shows up, rather than at the beginning, all at once. We also used techniques learned in digital media to tell parts of the story visually and through sound effects, which helped. This all allowed our story to be more entertaining in video form, and more clear, as descriptions weren’t as necessary since information was being expressed visually.

I spent a bit of time revising act 3, because that is where most of my story contributions lie. The character I had most influence over: Ani, has his main arc in this act, so I usually focused on that. For the pitch video, I recorded my lines along with all of the other members of the group, but my biggest contribution was the background music and sounds. I found all of the music and SFX and edited it together with the speaking to try to make the video as entertaining as possible. I also edited the voiceovers in protools to normalize all of the volumes and try to make the different recordings sound more cohesive. I spent my math class changing the music to match each change in tone, and transitioning it between different clips. I also found a lot of royalty free SFX to fit different scenes, like the sand in the wind, or the crackle of the seizure, or the big boom at the beginning.

I would have wanted to contribute more to the visual editing, but part of what made that tricky was that there were too many people with different visual styles and opinions working on the video, and only one person could have the file open at a time, so sticking to music ended up being helpful, but I do feel like I could have done more if I had more time. I think our video is great, It isn’t perfect, and there are things I want to change, but overall I feel like we translated our story well to the screen, and I’m excited to keep working on it, maybe in comic form.

I think that overall, the surreal images helped inform the attitude with which we wanted people to view our story. There is an element of mystery, and the personal growth aims to inspire people to find a place for themselves.

Worldbuilding narrative treatment

Here is the full narrative treatment, which is normally not meant to be read by the public, but I’m providing a sneak peak anyway.

Worldbuilding pitch slide deck

Here is our full slide deck for your viewing pleasure.