Introduction
Narrative! Telling a story, something that deserves to be told – creating something from the heart and seeing it come to life, is one of the amazing opportunities Freestyle has given me. Picturing something in my head and bringing it into the real world, there’s no other feeling close to it. It’s amazing.
What I valued from the Visual Narrative Project in film has been a more unique perspective to me. For the last three years, I’ve been producing documentaries for the MVHS Oracle. I didn’t have anyone to teach me, anyone to tell me what to do, and I learned through trial and error. And trust me, there were a lot of errors, but that also means I learned a lot. In the last couple of months in film, I’ve learned more technically than in my three years at Oracle. So, I am so grateful to be able to learn from a professional and level up my filmmaking skills.
Story
My original story that I wrote in English looks nothing like the final version. I love playing Dungeons and Dragons (D&D) and creating characters with personalities and in-depth backstories. When I heard that’s what we were doing in English class, I got so excited! I created a mythical person made of lava. He had a whole backstory about being a Paladin, and his best friend betraying him… blah blah blah. I am trying to write the story about him, but I realized that I have gone too far into this fantasy land, and I need to ground it a bit more in reality. But I still wanted an aspect of fantasy, and I really wanted a volcano. So I turned the volcano into a mountain and made the character someone not much older than me. What came out of it, I am really proud of.
Illustrations
We did several projects while learning Adobe Illustrator. Its crazy how much can be done and how powerful of a tool it is. Its filled with tools to do almost anything you want. We had 5 assignments just to learn the basics.
I was actually sick while making this, our theme was into the rabbit hole – from Alice in Wonderland – my other teammates did so well, and its a truly creative project. I created the clock on the tail end.
This was my favorite project of all of them. We got to make something in Illustrator and bring it to real life.
My inspiration for the project was my two dogs, Solstice and Blaze. They are the love of my life, and as I’m starting to think more and more about college, I’m starting to realize I’m going to miss them. They’ve been with me every step of the way since freshman year, and they are so incredibly important to me that I wanted to create something to immortalize their features.
Solstice has two eyes, just like a lot of other dogs, but her eyes are beautiful because she has heterochromia, causing discoloration. One of her eyes is bluer and one of her eyes is greyer. It’s the first thing that a lot of people notice about her. On the other hand, Blaze has really big ears. It’s like someone took the ears off of a bigger dog and stuck them on her. They are always perked upwards, hearing everything going on. It’s so adorable. These features are important to me, so I created the images for them, and they’ll go on the back of the hoodie. I hope they will have my back no matter how far apart I am from them.
Music
The Parody project- being able to take a well known song, change the lyrics and then create a new version of it.
As a child, I was a huge fan of Minecraft and spent countless hours building and exploring in the virtual world. One of the things I loved the most about the game was the community of content creators who would make all sorts of creative videos and music inspired by the game. Captain Sparkelz, with “Take back the Night” was one of my favorite parodies. Growing up, I loved listening to Minecraft parodies, such as Captain Sparklez’s “Take Back the Night.” I adored them and always wanted to make my own. And with this project, I finally did. I turned Doja Cat’s “Woman” into “Bedrock” and collaborated with Cat on it. We each came up with a verse, though I have to admit they were better at creating lyrics than I was.
We also used Pro Tools to record, edit, and manipulate the audio. It was overwhelming to see all the things you can do and the options available, and even now, I’m still intimidated by it. However, it is possible to work with the audio from the song to remove the vocals. This blew my mind! It’s all about frequencies and finding the frequency at which the human voice is recorded.
Something did get messed up while recording it, setting our vocals off the beat. We were purposefully making it sound a little off, but it made it really bad, which I think fits, so we kept it.
Bedrock Let me mine to bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Bedrock I can mine to bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Let me mine to bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Bedrock I can mine to bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Bedrock What you need? I have a picaxe and wool and carrot seeds We can grow them with Bonemeal, increase the speed Make a carrot on a stick and ride a pig in the field, you see You made a new chestplate Ive got to activate The portal to fight the end dragon Grab your bow and arrow, shoot straight Win then we’ll celebrate I go on VC and hear you say “Girl, let me mine to bedrock” Bedrock Let me mine to bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Bedrock I can mine to bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Let me mine to bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Bedrock I can mine to bedrock Bedrock Bedrock Bedrock I can be your miner, I'm a crafter I'm a master builder but they got a problem Put some cobble in your life and take away the lava Put that beacons in the game like I'm on Java Gotta face a lot of mobs that have spawned 'Cause the world told me, "You can’t sleep yet" Gotta prove it to myself that they aint no threat And you will never know a End without a Dragon As survival as survival gets And I could be on everything I mean I could be the leader, head of all the stacks I could slay him to steal his inventory I could be the Admin, just look at Jeb Bergensten And I'ma pvp with you, you aint my team, girl Don't ever think you could ever kill me, I’m Dream girl They wanna pit us against each other when we succeedin' for no reasons They wanna see us end up like we Moonbloom on Mob Vote Zombie or Gast, Creeper or Slime (yeah) Stacks of diamonds, you watch me mine (nah) Soul Sand elevators make me rise to the top Divine endermen, I'm builder man (why?)
Before that though, we made a mashup of different songs together. I picked some of my favorite at the time – they aren’t my favorite anymore now, but I still appreciate them.
Film
This was the first short film ive ever made! And the first short film ive ever made with someone else. We needed to follow the full production pipeline in Film. From pre production, creating the storyboards, drafting ideas, calling actors, getting equipment, finding places. To Production, actually on set shooting, dealing with obstacles and over coming them. To Post-Production, actually putting together all the different pieces we shot into one cohesive story.
The synopsis we wrote for the original film idea is vastly different then what we eventually put together. It was about a man and and plant. The movie we made was about a Violinist. Yeah… very big difference. But here’s our original synopsis
Act 1:
The film opens with a shot of an empty house and an empty garden. We see a middle-aged man living alone with only a fork, spoon, and knife, one bed, and half-filled drawers. We learn that he’s missing his partner, and he’s feeling incomplete. He looks over the fence to his neighbor’s house, where a happy family lives. He waves at them, feeling a bit envious. One day, he goes for a walk and sits on a bench in a park. He finds a plant on the ground, picks it up, and takes it home. He starts to care for the plant and begins to feel a bit happy.
Act 2:
We see a montage of the man raising the plant. He has a father-and-son moment with the plant, and we see clips of him shaving and trimming the plant, eating food, going on walks, riding bikes, and trying to fish with the plant. They take pictures of each moment and hang them up on the wall to commemorate each memory. As the plant grows and ages, it eventually graduates high school and leaves the house for college. The man is once again alone, sad, and grey. We see a montage of him trying to do the same things that he did with the plant, but without it. A year passes, and it’s the man’s birthday. He goes to the same park bench to watch the sunset, feeling alone and sad. Suddenly, a leaf falls on the other side of the bench, and he finds it. All the memories flood back, and tears flood his eyes. He goes home, throws away his half-eaten cake, and goes to sleep.
Act 3:
The next day, the man wakes up and finds a leaf with a seed in the cutlery drawer. He plants the seed and watches it grow over time, making a garden and filling the void left by the plant. He buys a whole ton of plants from a plant nursery, and the little plant becomes his prized possession. The time passes through the calendar and garden growth. After time passes, he waters the seed and can’t wait for the day it sprouts. His life gets color back, but once it’s grown, he realizes he doesn’t need it. He is better for the experience he had previously. He goes and returns the plant to where it was, and someone trips over it in the background. The calendar shows a special circled date – the 1st annual garden party. Gardening is now his passion, and he invites neighbors over. Everyone leaves super happy. He is now alone but happy. There’s a knock at the door, and he opens it with a smile. We see only his face, but we imply that the plant is there. The film ends with a shot of him going along all the picture frames of the plant and him, ending up on an empty frame. He replaces the empty picture frame with a diploma and fixes it.
Credits.
The final outcome, like I said, was drastically different.
Below are some projects of worked on, laying the foundations of what makes good visual story telling and cinematography. In order they are: Griffiths pattern, (The process of “Setting the scene”. Slowly going into a place with shots) Suspense scene, giving the audience information that the main character does not have, Chase Scene, my favorite of the bunch, which implemented visual story telling- not breaking the 180 degree rule or the line of action, using Griffiths pattern. The chase scene was my favorite to make. Then the Trailer for the Film I made with my partner Natalie Emerson. It was the culmination of the story telling techniques we had learned.