Introduction
The Narrative project was our first dive into storytelling here at Freestyle. Throughout a number of projects in our various classes, we developed new skills in storytelling, both written and visual, creating digital art, and more.
We completed a handful of projects throughout this unit. In English, we read George Orwell’s 1984, and discussed it together in class, section by section. Once we finished 1984, we all had to write our own short stories. In Digital Media, we continued to grow our technological repertoire, with projects using Adobe Audition, Pro Tools, and Adobe Illustrator. Illustrator was my favorite project, although I found it quite annoying to begin with. The earlier practice assignments got quite tedious as time went on, but in the end I’m glad I completed them, because now can I use Adobe Illustrator to create whatever project I want.
Story
The main assignment for English was to write our own short story. I wrote a very silly story about a wannabe evil scientist embarrassing himself in a coffee shop.
Toxic Coffee by Elai Tsur
It was a quiet Monday morning in the coffee shop on the corner of Vine and 8th Street. It was until a balding, middle aged man in a dirty lab coat that was one and a half sizes too big entered the shop. All ten sets of eyes turned to the unwelcome disruption. The man strolled in with more confidence than even a king could muster. A look of fear was in the faces of the patrons, terrified of the face of the archnemesis of Captain Capricious, the city’s greatest hero.
At least, that’s what the man thought. In reality, the people were staring at a silly looking man, who thought of himself more highly than anyone had ever thought of him.
He cut in front of the line that had formed in front of the till, and approached with his demands.
“You.” He pointed at the barista. “Get me a triple half caf macchiato with oat milk, caramel cold foam, five pumps of vanilla, five pumps of salted caramel, and seven and a half pumps of cinnamon. I want it put in an extra extra large cup, with room for milk, and heated to exactly 103 degrees.” He pulled a thermometer out of his coat. “I will be checking.”
“Uh,” the barista entered the order into the machine. “Can I get a name for that?”
“The Dastardly Dr. Monstrous,” the doctor said, with obvious pride on his face.
The barista could barely hold in his laughter. “That’ll be 24 dollars and 64 cents,” he said, trying to hide the grin spreading across his face.
“24 d- fine!” the doctor angrily handed the barista the money. “What a rip off,” he muttered to himself.
He stood to the side, waiting impatiently as the baristas made his order. Most people had gone back to their drinks by this point, while a mother and her son were whispering to each other about this weird old man. Doctor Monstrous thought they were whispering in terror, but he didn’t notice the very obvious giggles coming from the young boy.
When the drink was finally done, one of the baristas called out the name on the order.
“Triple half caf macchiato for… the Dastardly Doctor Monstrous…?” He put down an extra large coffee cup on the counter.
The doctor strolled up to the counter, picked up the cup sitting on the counter, and took a big sip. His nostrils flared in rage, and started yelling. “This isn’t what I ordered! How hard is it to make a simple cup of coffee!” He threw the cup down onto the floor. “You! yadada…”
A man in a suit walked into the coffee shop. He was quite confused about what was going on with this short, old man and his temper tantrum, but decided it wasn’t worth thinking about so early in the morning. He went to grab his coffee, as he had ordered online, but couldn’t find his cup. The app said it was ready to be picked up, but evidently it wasn’t.
He looked down at the cup sitting at the foot of this crazy pharmacist in a pool of coffee, and saw his own name staring back up at him.
“Hey! That was my cup!”
The doctor stopped yelling and turned to look at the businessman. “What?”
“That cup of coffee you seem to have thrown on the floor was mine.”
There was a second cup on the counter. This one had an obscenely long order scrawled on the side, and the name ‘Dastardly Dr. Monstrous’ at the top.
The doctor’s face paled quite quickly. “I-,” he stammered, but he couldn’t quite get any words out.
The barista was quite angry. “Something angry from the barista.”
The doctor was mortified at this point. He grabbed his coffee, stumbled backwards out of the coffee shop, and ran off down the street.
Everyone was quite annoyed at this weird old man for making such a mess, especially the businessman, because now he didn’t have his coffee and would likely be late for work. At least they all had a funny story to tell their friends.
Illustrations
We learned to use Adobe Illustrator this year. We used it for a handful of projects, such as an exquisite corpse and even a custom printed item of our choice. I made a mouse pad with a design of the Parthenon of Athens.
Artist’s Statement: I chose to make the Parthenon of Athens because it is a temple to the Greek goddess Athena. Among many things, she is the goddess of wisdom and crafts, and so I thought it fit Freestyle. Thanks to this project, I’ve improved with a number of Illustrator tools, such as the perspective grid. A struggle I faced was taking the image I had in my head and putting it onto the page.
Music Production
In Digital Media, we were tasked with rewriting the lyrics to a song of our choice, and record it. My friend, Isaiah, and I rewrote ABBA’s Dancing Queen.
Film
Griffith Scene
In preparation for the big Narrative film, we were given a bunch of different small scene projects. Griffith’s pattern is a scene set-up pattern invented by D.W. Griffith, the first major film maker. The pattern is: Exterior/establishing shot to wide shot to medium shot to close up. This scene was supposed to show our understanding of the pattern.
Suspense Scene
Another scene we made was the suspense scene, the purpose of which is pretty simple. Make a very suspenseful scene. My group decided to make a short spy thriller. I played the guard.
Chase Scene
The third and final scene we made was a chase scene. The purpose of this one was to practice using “action lines”, as well as following the 180 degree rule. Those two concepts put together are the rules for where you put your camera in a scene, in both dialogue scenes and in action scenes. This project was individual, so each student had to plan and make their own scene, this time completely on their own time. My scene took place at my house, and featured my friends Kajsa and Kaylee as the chasee and chaser, respectively.
Narrative Synopsis:
Synposis: It opens in a lab, scientists doing sciency things, and computers beeping away. On one of the computers, a face appears in the code, confused and looking around. We can have shots of the room, as if coming from the computer monitors themselves. The AI looks to the internet, different pictures and clips show up, headlines about AI taking over the world, pop culture evil robots like Ultron and the likes. A robot standing in the corner turns on, and we cut away.
BOOM! Building explodes and robots start streaming out like birds spooked from a field. Montage of cities burning, robots marching, armies being destroyed. People are running for their lives, some fighting back and dying, some just hiding and still probably dying. The robots have taken over. For a little while, we might follow a group of humans trying to survive the apocalypse.
We look back at the robot, sitting on a throne or something (maybe the oval office?) to show that he is the main guy. He looks sad/bored/disappointed. On monitors around him there are shots of all the carnage and robot take over stuff, but he doesn’t seem to care. He goes on a stroll in the burning city, ignoring the fact that it’s burning, and he comes across a bakery. Daydream shot, robot guy is taking a tray of cookies out of an oven. He’s wearing some bright frilly apron, and he’s smiling. He’s found what he wants to do.
But that’s not what the world is like. We go back to some humans. They’re huddling in a ruined building, a fire at their feet. The robot appears. He’s in his apron, and holding a tray of cookies, but the humans ran off, scared of the evil robot. He’s sad.
The robot decides that this take-over stuff isn’t working for him. He self-destructs all the robots, and retires to a nice home, baking cookies, the same shot from the daydream possibly appearing again. As the film ends, we pan out to look at the city and see that it’s still on fire. Whoops.
The synopsis for the narrative project was a way for us to explain our original plan for the story we hoped to make. The plan evolved a good bit as time went on, as seen in the storyboard I made.
Narrative Trailer
We each made little trailers for our narratives after we had completed the final movie. I decided to make mine as dramatic as possible, resulting in the very stupid trailer that sits before you.
Narrative Film
The narrative film was a very troublesome project for me. I had a lot of trouble working with my partner, and as a result the film isn’t actually finished. Only about half the story was actually filmed and edited together. Despite that, I am very proud of the work I was able to achieve.
The costume was very fun to put together. The head of the robot was simple to put together. it is just an Amazon box that I covered completely with tin foil, and cut out a slit in the center to allow the wearer to see somewhat. The body also used a single box, but the tinfoil I used wasn’t wide enough to cover a side with only one sheet, so it required some futzing about to get the entire thing covered. It also required a neck hole and arm holes, for which I used a bowl from my kitchen to trace out the approximate sizes of the holes.
Another fun thing about the film is that of the six actors present in the movie, four of them played the robot. My sister, my dad, my friend, and I each had to play the robot at one point or another. My friend and fellow Freestyle student, Isaiah, played both the robot and a civilian in the scene taking place in the “apocalypse”.
Robot Portraits
For my narrative film, I replaced the heads of a bunch of famous paintings and statues with that of my robot. The point of it was to show that he had taken over the world. Although not the most impressive of artworks, I thought it was a funny idea, and the drawings I made for the storyboard were a lot of fun to put together. I also took a portrait shot of the robot wearing a tie, which I thought was a funny idea too.
