Narrative 1

Introduction

For the narrative unit, it was all about being able to use a bunch of different methods and mediums to create and tell a story. We used our creativity to form an idea for a story, and throughout the unit we used apps like Illustrator and Premiere Pro to tell these stories. We also used lots of equipment in this process, including our audio recorders, Wacom tablets, as well as the many tools in Illustrator like the pen tool and Live Paint.

Something I valued a lot about this unit was the storytelling aspect, and specifically how we could use the things we learned to tell our OWN story. It would have been much less fun if we had to follow a specific structure or write about specific things, but we had pretty much total choice when it came to choosing what to write about and how to write about it. Instead, I got to have a lot of fun making cool creations centered around subjects I cared about and stories that I was interested in.

Story

In English class, we made a Flash Fiction(Short Story) about whatever we wanted. To help form our idea and story structure, we filled out a plot map, and also spent a good amount of time brainstorming who our character was going to be and the kind of world they lived in.

The inspiration for my story was really just ChatGPT. I wanted to incorporate it into my story somehow because we were actually practicing learning how to use it in English. I also was interested in giving my main character a sort of absurd story/personality. Eventually I decided to base it off of a guy who was totally addicted to using ChatGPT, to the point where the AI robot was his only friend. Once I had finished my Flash Fiction for English, we took that same story and applied it to Digital Media class. We were tasked to make an audio recording of the story, including sound effects to immerse the audience in the story. I went into the recording booth and did a pretty dramatic voice. It ended up sounding kind of cheesy in my opinion but I think it fit the assignment. I then took that recording into Pro Tools and inserted audio effects when they made sense. I valued the process because it was super fun to make the story come to life and add fun sound effects just like how you would hear them if it was a movie or something.

“Chat”

Here is my Flash Fiction:

12:18 PM

The worst day of Arthur’s 38 year long life was a Tuesday. He woke up late, sleeping through his 11 AM alarm, and from the moment he woke, things were going uphill. He had barely slept due to the sheer excitement that came from the announcement of a new version of open AI software. He wasted no time getting up and stepping straight to his swivel chair where he flopped down, filling the deep depression he’d spent his life creating. The lights stayed off(he almost never turned them on) and he would spend the next several hours conversing with ChatGPT. In his many years spent interacting with the AI, he’d never felt this engaged. It replied to his questions and comments with responses that were exactly human to Arthur. He felt so important. The next several hours were spent entertaining himself, eyes filled through his blue-light glasses with the glow of his PC. It would pain him to have to close that tab when it was time for his afternoon shower. . . so he didn’t. It was as he trudged down the hall to the full bathroom, computer in hand, that he made the fateful choice. With wits dimmer than his windowless bedroom, Arthur decided he would just bring the computer and his riveting conversation into the shower with him. The walk from his bedroom to the bathroom was especially tedious today, but all his effort would be worth it once he finally felt the warm splash of water on his back, combined with the warmth and happiness of his conversation with ChatGPT. That same warmth had vanished once he found himself hastily stepping out of the shower, snatching a towel to first dry off his computer, and then the tears rolling down his cheeks. A short desperate struggle to fix his mistake ended quickly when he realized it would be impossible to fix himself. He went to bed early that night. 

1:31 PM, The Next Day

The morning was devoid of life. Arthur awoke completely exhausted, and laid in bed for hours before getting up. By around 3, Arthur had made it to the kitchen counter, where he  poured himself some cereal and took a seat. Breakfast felt endless as he sat there, lacking the entertainment which his computer had always provided. As he ate, Arthur couldn’t help but think that he might never be able to solve this problem. I mean, he couldn’t even name the essential parts of a PC, let alone comprehend how they worked or any way to fix them. He hadn’t known the password to his phone for as long as he could remember because he never used it, but man would it have been helpful right now. He didn’t own any books about computers, or any at all for that matter, and even if he could somehow contact them, he would be far too embarrassed to plead to any of his online friends for help seeing as he had never even attempted to talk or type to them before. He was powerless. As the crunch in his Cheerios gave way to soggy mush, a deep, dreadful sense of responsibility took root. He had no other choice but to take the computer into a shop. He finished eating and sat there, stirring his spoon in the thin layer of milk at the bottom of his bowl, thinking. His only source of revenue, coin mining, was online, so he’d need his computer to get fixed, or else he could face bankruptcy in just a few months. He took a while to weigh his options, but ultimately decided that it had to be done. The rest of the daylight was spent planning. 

8:20 PM

The sun had set. Arthur’s plan was finalized and memorized, all down to the route he would take. After a quick dinner, and a warm up consisting of a couple laps back and forth in the hallway, it was about time for Arthur to head out. He stood at the door. His breaths were heavy and drawn, air blowing back in his face as he stood right up to it, squinting through the peephole, and then quickly back at the clock. The hand struck twelve, and he took hold of the doorknob in his right hand. It was cool to the touch, and required a decent bit of force to get open after years of being idle. The door cracked as he opened it, and Arthur shifted around it, peering out into the dim landscape, illuminated only by sequential light posts from the other side of the road. He stepped out onto the raised front walkway of his apartment, looking left and right down the long stretches with dozens of doors, only wasting a second of his time, and then he was off. His curled figure moved through the night as quick and graceful as a decently coordinated turkey. By the time his adrenaline died down and he took in his surroundings, he had already made it to the shop. He scampered towards the neon sign outfront, and took a prolonged breath before quickly pulling the door and stepping in with only a slight hesitation. The lights were mostly dimmed, with a white glow illuminating the back left of the room, where Arthur sensed he needed to go. As he cleared a final shelf of unfamiliar computer parts, the counter came into view, with a large screen faced away concealing the figure behind. He was caught surprisingly off guard by the worker, despite knowing full well that one must be there. He choked down a dry breath, and stepped forward. The young man, clearly occupied with something on the screen, glanced up at Arthur and gave him a friendly closed smile. He greeted him, and immediately asked what he could help with. Arthur remained speechless for an awkwardly long moment, and then coughed up a hello. “Um, I spilled drink, uh, water on my computer. It isn’t really working very much.” 

The worker paused. “Ok, so it short circuited. Normally that repair is going to take one to two weeks. You can come around the counter and take a look at some estimates for our pricing and also some rental rates.” Arthur froze a second, haunted at the thought of not having his PC for a week, and then slid around the counter to view the screen. He scanned it, not comprehending most of what was there. Suddenly, a small logo at the bottom of his screen caught his attention and he couldn’t stop himself from staring at it. Gabe noticed this, and was quick to ask if Arthur played that same game. He admitted he did, and uncharacteristically decided to follow up that inquiry with his own question about Gabe regarding the game. Gabe talked about his favorite quests and mods for a bit, and despite the immense fear in Arthur, he kept in the conversation, quiet and uncomfortable, but there nevertheless. Their conversation was short, as Arthur took the topic back to his computer after a few minutes, and the logistics were quick to work out. He thanked Gabe, and headed for the door. Before he stepped out, Gabe rushed from behind the counter to hand him a piece of paper. “It’s my username, we could play once your computer’s fixed up?”

With barely any hesitation Arthur gave him a nod. “Sure.”  

Gabe smiled, and so did Arthur as he walked back out into the dark.

(Editing the audio and adding SFX in Pro Tools)

(Creating the Soundcloud Album art in Illustrator)

Illustrations

In this unit, we made many different custom illustrations and artsy designs using Adobe Illustrator. One of them is the Album Art above, but there was much more than just that. One of them was the Exquisite Corpse assignment. we had groups of 3, and each person had one third of a long frame. We each had to make our own design for our segment in Illustrator, and the only guidelines was they had to connect so we used little dash marks that overlapped the frames to make sure the final product lined up. I worked with Nate and Alex and this is what we made:

I made the pants on the left. Alex made the ocean in the middle, and Nate made the weird origami fish on the right. I cant imagine the things that go though his head.

The big final project for this unit was the Illustrator project. We had lots of flexibility for what the outcome of this project could look like, but I decided to make a graphic design and put it on a T-shirt. The first step was to create the design. At this time I was listening a lot to Days Before Rodeo by Travis Scott, so I wanted to make some sort of design around that. After a couple weeks working in Illustrator, this is what came out:

This design is a naked Travis Scott who appears to be in another dimension holding the album cover for Days Before Rodeo. This tall design was made for the back of the shirt. I also added a little design which was the cactus jack face that I put on the front of the shirt.

Here is the final product put onto the shirt:

Thats the back, heres the front:

This is what the behind the scenes of using Illustrator to make the design looks like:

Artist Statement:

The Illustrator Project was one of the most fun and creative projects of the year for me. I decided to make a design with Travis Scott and the album Days Before Rodeo mainly because I thought the album cover was cool and wanted to make something involving that. While making the design I learned how to use the image trace tool, and also got a lot better using layers and the live paint tool. If I could change anything I would have put more thought into the front design. It’s pretty basic and that’s what I was going for, but looking back I could have added a bit more to make the front a bit cooler, and I wish I did. This project made me appreciate the people who make clothing themselves without a large company involved since the process of making the design into the clothing item required a lot of precision and attention to detail to make it come out well. – Evan M

Music Production

For the parody project me and my partner Nate wanted to make a parody of the certified hood classic, “Hot Ni**a” by Bobby Shmurda. We decided to base the parody around freestyle academy and the things we did here. To make it, we first took the actual lyrics and then went one bar at a time changing the words to make it a parody. Then we went into the recording studio, and listened to the instrumental of the song, singing our own custom lyrics to it. Then we used Adobe Audition to mix the audio and sync everything up. Here was the final product, which we renamed “Hot Boy”.

Lyrics:

The 2 illest fellas out:

Film

In film for the narrative unit, we had a very large project called the narrative project. We were tasked with creating a film, around 5 minutes long, that would tell a story and use narrative techniques to accomplish this. The production of the film took a lot of time, with the process having many steps. We started by pitching our ideas to the class, and receiving feedback. We then formed partnerships based on the pitches we liked, and started to create a storyboard. Nate and I partnered up for this project and started the process of creating a storyboard. This involved drawing out the different scenes on flashcards. We were supposed to use at least 100, but since our storyboard ended up needing a lot of revisions, we ended up drawing out almost 300 flash cards in total. Once that was finalized, we got to shooting. With out storyboard with us on set, we shot all the different scenes that we had planed out. Our movie involved a lot of characters, and so we gathered a bunch of our friends to play different roles in our movie, and spent a lot of time getting all of the different shots. One issue we ran into was that one of our actors got a haircut midway through, which would be a break in continuity. To fix this, Nates mom drove a long way to get us a wig that looked similar to Harry’s original hair before he got it buzzed. We also ran into a ton of other obstacles when filming, with the main one being rouble finding a time when all of our necessary actors could make it to the set. However, since the project was so large, we had enough time to meet the final cut, just barely though. Nate had to stay up until 5 AM to finish off the post production phase, which was making all the video and audio edits. In the end, the final product turned out great:

While the narrative was the big final project of this. unit in film, we did many more small projects to build our skills and to get equipped to make a narrative film. A lot of the other projects involved practicing specific skills and displaying our understanding of “Film Language”. A film without film language just doesn’t look right, so we had to learn it before making an actual movie. The first thing we practiced was Griffiths pattern. This was a short film we made to practice the best way to introduce a new scene in a film, and the specific pattern of shot types and subjects that make it a good introduction. This is known as following “Griffiths Pattern”, named after some ancient film dude called DW Griffith. Here’s my groups Griffiths Pattern film:

We also learned the techniques that make a scene more suspenseful. We watched some example films, and eventually we shot our own “Suspense Scene”. My group came up with a fun idea, and we decided to make our suspense scene also a bit humorous. Here is the final product:

We also did a Chase Scene. The Chase Scene involved a lot of important rules to make it work, such as the 180 degree rule. We learned a ton of different ways to shoot a chase scene, and watched some example like the chase scene from Back to the Future, which actually inspired my own Chase Scene. To make it, me and my friends got together over the weekend and we filmed all our Chase Scenes together. We did mine first, and ended up spending a lot of time on it, which was bad for my friends Chase Scenes. Anyway, heres mine:

Once we had learned all of these skills, we did our Narrative. However, there was a whole pre-production process that we went through to get the final film you saw earlier. We initially had to submit a Narrative Synopsis that was a summary of our story, the different scenes and shots, etc. This was Nate and I’s Synopsis:

Our final film did have some changes, but this synopsis was the first version of our story. We came up with this at like 11 pm when Nate called me before I was about to go to sleep. He reminded me that our Synopsis was due that night, and so we quickly came up with that story, which was based off of my delinquent dad’s childhood, who had rock fights with his rivals. It was all for a good cause though, because the Creek Lords needed to defend their block.

Anyways, after the synopsis, we got some feedback from Mr. Taylor, and then created a storyboard, which I mentioned earlier. This was what our storyboard looked like:

(insert storyboard)

In the end, in order to advertise our film at exhibition, we created a trailer to go along with it. I ain’t Gordon, but this trailer is somewhat of a culinary masterpiece.