Act 1

For this assignment, we were tasked with creating a visual narrative film where the only requirement was that there could be no dialogue.

First we had to create a synopsis for our film which had to summarize the film’s overall story arc. Here’s what I wrote: “The setting is a plain old office. This office has rows and rows of cubicles and one break room. Our protagonist is one of the workers. He works and works and works at his computer. He stops and takes a break and sees people socializing in another row. He looks upset. He looks to one side of his row to see that everyone is too busy working. He looks to the other side to see a woman staring right at him. She quickly averts her eyes once he looks at her. He keeps working but this keeps happening for a couple hours where he will look at the girl but she averts her eyes every time. Eventually he gets fed up and leaves to the break room. She follows him into the break room and does weird stuff like eating the same snacks, coughing when he coughs, etc. She continues to stare but looks away every time he notices. He gets anxious and tense so he escapes to the bathroom and stays there until calms down. He feels ready to go back out, and when he does he finds she’s not there, and decides to go to an early lunch. After he gets his lunch he starts heading back to the office, staying alert and paranoid. Once he thinks he’s safe, he sees she’s right in front of him and he drops his lunch and bolts the other way. She chases him and he tries to shake her off. She’s carrying a purse and when she reaches into it as they are running he gets scared that it’s a weapon. He eventually loses her and gets back to his desk and he’s really tired and scared. He turns to see she is right there again. He gets really angry this time and he stands up and slams his hands down on his desk. All the workers around them turn and look to see what’s going on. The woman is startled by this sudden outburst and starts crying. She runs away. Our protagonist gets antagonizing looks from all the workers, who shake their heads and sit back down. He feels bad that he misinterpreted what her motivations were, then she comes back and reveals that in her purse was the lunch he dropped. They smile at each other and shake hands. End.”

While looking back at this synopsis, the funniest thing is that there were a few changes to this story that made it 1000 times better. It just goes to show that it wouldn’t have been better if it weren’t for my classmates and my teacher for giving me good feedback and criticism.

We also had to create storyboards which were drawings of every single shot in our film so that people could visually see our film and notice errors that needed to be fixed. Her is what some of them  looked like:

(((((The best cards were drawn by Katherine Sun)))))

Even before the project began, I had an idea for a narrative film that I was extremely passionate about and I was willing to pursue it even if I had to work alone. I had initially assumed I would work alone for my project, but then Mr. Taylor told us that it was a very bad idea to work alone because not only would we appear conceited (which I totally was), but our film was also very likely to suffer from it. I realized that I had to recruit someone in my class for my film, and I had a week to do it. On the last day, someone from my class finally decided to partner up with me, and together we worked on the synopsis and storyboarding for my idea. Through completing the pre-production process, I learned just how crucial it is to obtain other’s viewpoints and opinions to positively change an existing idea. My partner, Katherine, along with my teacher and other classmates, provided criticism to what I had thought was a perfect idea, and it was something the film desperately needed.

Act 2

We had finished the pre-production and had moved on to the production of our film. The very first shoot we had was disastrous. We didn’t end up using any of the footage we gathered and we made a lot of mistakes. We also didn’t even use shots from our second shoot. Or even our third shoot!! The production process was grueling in that we ran into problems every single week that we had to counter constantly. Sometimes our extras couldn’t show up, sometimes it rained, sometimes we were missing important props for the film, and so on. But as we kept shooting and getting people’s feedback, we felt ourselves slowly improving and becoming much more in tune with the production process. Luckily, we had committed actors who were able to make it to the end, and once we finished we were very relieved. We were also extremely excited for the biggest bulk of our time…

Act 3

The post-production process. Hours upon hours were spent cutting the footage together, adding sound effects and music, and color correcting for our film, all the while Adobe Premiere Pro often lagged, crashed, and lost files. Even when we thought we had finished our film, when we showed it to our class we found that some major changes needed to be made. But thankfully, we had the time to make those changes and dramatically improve our film.

Here is the trailer for me and Katherine Sun’s film, Take a Hint:

And here is the full film. It is six minutes and thirty seconds of one of the best collaborative projects I’ve ever participated in.

There are so many people to thank for helping me make this film. Aiden Stein, our main actor, always met every single deadline we had and was super flexible with the dates on filming. Not to mention the fact that this is the first time he’s ever acted in anything, which is surprising considering how GOOD HE IS AT IT. He’s one of my best friends and I can’t thank him enough for participating in the film. Shannon Mills, the main actress, played an outstanding role in this film. So many people who saw different parts of our film all agreed that she was CREEPY AS HECK. She was the perfect fit for this role and I’m so grateful to her for taking it up. I’d also like to thank my mom and dad for driving me and participating in the film and all the extras who took time out of their day to help us out.

Most importantly, I’d like to thank my partner, Katherine Sun. She is one of the best people I’ve ever worked with on a collaborative project. She had the best ideas that contributed to the film and was quick to check for errors constantly. She was also able to drive me and our actors around if we couldn’t get rides. I know that this is a film that will show that both of us had an equal say in every single aspect. This film would not have been possible if she hadn’t signed on.

Illustrations

The banners you see that go with the titles of these varying sections are illustrations that I made in Adobe Illustrator. We were tasked with creating four separate banners that we could effectively connect to our short story and/or our elective project. The ones I made for this page are directly related to my film and my short story and they are illustrations of the characters in my film. I took screenshots of specific angles of our characters in the film and in Adobe Illustrator traced the images.  With these illustrations (specifically these first two), I mainly wanted to capture the surface qualities of the characters that are introduced in the film. The first is of the main character who is a normal guy working an office internship. In the drawing, he is noticing that his coworker, whom he has never seen, is staring at him. He is a little curious of what’s going on which is why the background is white to suggest that he is subject to any change. The second is of the “antagonist” who is the coworker that is in the cubicle across from him. This is an illustration of her staring at him through the blinds and the background is black to suggest her dark and suspiciously creepy nature. For the Personal Illustration assignment, we were given the freedom to use Adobe Illustrator to create whatever we wanted. There were no limits or restrictions to the illustration other than it had to be made on Adobe Illustrator. For this assignment, I decided to use Adobe Illustrator to create my project for Japanese class, in which we were supposed to diagram a car and label all the parts of the car in Japanese as well as other vocabulary words related to driving and the road.

While a lot of people in my class were drawing diagrams of regular cars on paper, the thought came to my head that I should make a diagram of the Patty Wagon from Spongebob Squarepants: The Movie. I honestly don’t know how I came to this decision but I have to say, I had a lot of fun with it. I got to add really cool colors and highlights to the car and I got to make a really cool font/title for the diagram. I made this by tracing over the original image of the car from the movie, and ultimately I was trying to make it so that my version looked cleaner and cooler than the original. Personally, I think I achieved just that.