Harlow Inman

The visual narrative project for juniors at Freestyle focuses on creating stories with effective plot, narrative perspective, characterization, and stylistic elements. To develop these skills, we were tasked with a variety of engaging projects. In English, we focused on creating visual short stories that were able to show rather than tell. In Digital Media we explored music, audio recording, and applications like Illustrator and their ability to support narrative literature with visual and audio elements. In Film, we were tasked with creating a visual short film which involved pitching, pre-production, production, and post-production. All in all, the assignments in all three classes overlapped in many ways and built towards a common goal which was developing our narrative skills.

I found this unit incredibly valuable towards my growth as a storyteller and visual/audio artist. While most of my literary storytelling abilities grew in English class, I was able to also grow my visual and audio storytelling skills in Film and Digital Media. Working alongside my peers, we challenged each other to push our writing skills during our short story unit and become more visual in our writing approach. I found it difficult initially to “show not tell” but with teacher and peer support I improved a lot. In Digital Media I was able to explore new applications like Audition and Pro Tools and create audio accompaniments to our visual projects, learning along the way how important audio can be in supporting your storytelling. In Film I worked alongside my amazing fellow filmmakers to develop, pitch, and shoot a narrative film. The entire process came with lots of learning and required commitment and dedication, and ultimately was a wonderful learning experience, putting into perspective the time, money, and work demands of narrative filmmaking.

In this unit we started by exploring and analyzing effective flash fiction in English class before transitioning into writing our own. The assignment was to build an original short story that took a visual approach. Because flash fiction is limiting in that it must be short, we placed a big focus on intention with everything we wrote, and combated the urge to simply tell a story rather than show it with visually engaging writing. I was inspired by my experience with ballet and how the lessons and skills you learn oftentimes translate to your entire life outside of the studio. Even though my audience wasn’t necessarily ballerinas or dancers, I knew many people could relate to the theme of my story. Everyone brainstormed, engaged in workshops, and received feedback to get a produce final product.

After we had a completed original flash fiction, we were tasked with creating an audio production of our own voice reading the story. We added audio effects and music to enhance the listening experience, turning our flash fiction into a more engaging visual and audio experience.

My short story is about the pivotal moment in a teenage ballerinas life in which she gets injured, effectively ruining her chances of going professional in ballet. I used this story as a reflection on the dangers of perfectionism and harsh self-discipline and to communicate the message that even if you fail in something, the experience you gained from it will still stay with you for the rest of your life. These themes have all been points of struggle in my own life, especially in my creative pursuits, academics, and work life. Therefore, I was very motivated to construct a story that others can relate to and derive meaning from. In writing this, I struggled with the concept of “show not tell.” Due to the short nature of the final product, I really had to cut it down to the most meaningful parts. By the end of the writing and recording process, I felt very satisfied with the final product.

Sugar Plum Mourning

The early morning air hangs heavy in the translucent curtains that are suspended high up on the tall glass windows, moving and drifting at the top of the stairs she sits on. Everything is still moving, except her. She is stuck on those stairs, her fragile body forcing out grief in the form of cries and wails that pierce her childhood home. Nevertheless, the cars outside keep moving and the neighbors keep getting ready for their day, and, of course, a few blocks away in the city center, her studio begins getting ready to put on their annual production of the Nutcracker later that night. 

Ever since she could remember, the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy had haunted her. Her mom used to joke that even when she was in the womb, she was practicing her pirouettes and attitudes, practicing for the day she would perform the most coveted role in the Nutcracker. This was no overexaggeration, she grew up wearing ballet slippers more than tennis shoes and doing releves while brushing her teeth, waiting for the microwave to finish, or doing her homework. Her home held the memories of her ballet career, you could find snippets of pointe shoe sewing string tangled in the carpet fibers, and bobby pins accumulating in every bathroom. She was dedicated, highly motivated, and ultimately unable to stop. 

She grew up, graduating from slippers to pointe shoes, from solos to pas de deux’s, and within her, this fire that was born with her the day she came out of the womb kicking, only ever grew. Habits of perfectionism developed and became intertwined with her identity. Throughout, she began building this notion that success is a product of grueling work and discipline, a product of sacrifice. By the time she reached middle school, she was staying out later than all her friends, in the studio practicing. Her family allowed her to skip vacations to stay focused on ballet. She cancelled plans with friends, even lost her first potential romance because of a last minute practice during the time they had planned their date. She was blind to her slow descent into what one could call madness, for when she told her friends about her dance habits they would gasp in shock at how much she was taking on, but she still couldn’t seem to comprehend that amount of work wasn’t normal, especially for someone of her age. She would wake up in the night sometimes after sleep walking to her at-home barre and preparing for a combination, her feet in perfect turnout and her arms delicately and gracefully positioned. She laughed it off, others thought it funny as well. Their laughter affirmed the belief so deeply a part of her, that sacrificing health for perfectionism was a peak demonstration of dedication and willpower, their lack of concern complicit in her eventual downfall. As she approached sixteen, this perfectionism grew exponentially. She began showing up to the studio fueled by nothing but this fire for dancing, passing out mid fouette and then getting right back up. She would dance on broken pointe shoes weekly, as she went through them so quickly, sacrificing her ankles for more time on her tip toes. She practiced, and practiced, and practiced, all the while the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy played as a perpetual backing track in her brain.

At sixteen years old, she got it. She opened up her role assignment and there it was, solidified in ink on paper. The role of Sugar Plum Fairy was her responsibility. This was the next step in her career and she was not about to let this opportunity slip away. Her mom offered her a celebratory dinner, she chose to spend the night in the back studio instead. For the next months leading up to the role, she lived in that studio. Anytime she was offered an alternative to dance, she couldn’t bring herself to take it. Her pointe shoes sat on her dresser singing a siren song that would always draw her back to the studio. Hours that were spent in front of the expansive mirrors mastering the angles of her arms, the slight tilt of her head were meant to prepare her. She essentially claimed this back studio. Other dancers knew not to approach it, it was always occupied anyways. Sometimes she even slept in there, curled up in her warm ups, not even bothering to turn off the variation music that was always on loop. The janitor just locked the doors and trusted she could fend for herself. She had always been responsible, showing up to every practice and rehearsal, and helping out with events and fundraising. So the janitor and everyone else trusted that she could keep herself afloat, that she didn’t need help or guidance, giving her yet another confirmation that she was not overworking herself. She was the Sugar Plum Fairy after all, and that role gave her a certain authority and autonomy at the ripe age of 16 that nobody would question. 

With that being said, it comes as little surprise that the day she fell nobody found her. She spun and spun alone in that room day and night until she spun right off her axis and that was the end of her ballet career. One faulty move, one uneven distribution of weight on top of her pointe shoe, and her whole life, everything she had worked so hard for, came toppling down with her. 

The labral tear in her left hip, her working leg, was detrimental. There was simply no coming back from such an injury, not in time for the Nutcracker, not ever, and everybody knew it. She was promptly replaced with pitiful looks from her teachers and peers, because “the show must go on.” She lost her role as Sugar Plum Fairy that day, at least that’s what others saw. What they didn’t see was everything else she lost. She lost her identity, her lust for life, her passion. She lost her aspirations, her community, her future. She lost sixteen years of her life to a dream she would never fulfill. So there she sat, on those stairs, replaying the moment in which she fell, the moment in which she could’ve stopped. The aching in her hip kept her stuck in that moment where her mind told her to keep spinning, even though some repressed part of her felt like she should stop. She sat mourning the loss of her past and future. She had built up her whole life, her whole being, around her success and talent in ballet. While she sat and felt the remnants of what her life was supposed to be, she let out one sharp wail and unknowingly, in a matter of moments, just like how her ballet career ended, commenced the process of starting over. Of building something new, of resilience. She couldn’t see it then, but later she would look back and think that maybe all those years of dedication and perseverance were for something, maybe they were to prepare her for the moment when her life came crashing down, and all the moments that would come after, in which she would feel that hopelessness of losing herself again. 

The day after the show, which she couldn’t bring herself to attend, she woke up to a crisp winter morning. Looking out her window, the fresh snowfall seemed to cover up ever so slightly the pain of the past month, welcoming in a new season of her life. She decided to mount her worn pointe shoes on her wall. She would never wear them again, but they wouldn’t be discarded completely. They still had purpose, and in this chapter they would serve to remind her that change is inevitable, and her perseverance and dedication can get her through that change, even when it feels like everything is collapsing.

I think I told my story quite well. There was no dialogue so I had to make sure my intonation for the whole story was captivating enough, which was definitely aided by the SFXs. Overall, I was happy with how it turned out, especially since I only did one take for the story. I did have to cut some errors out, but I suppose that is a part of the learning process. 

I am most proud of the story itself, because I worked very hard on developing it. I think it is captivating and fun to listen to and the way I put sound effects over it to emphasize it is also something I should be proud of. I looked for a while for the appropriate ones and made sure they aided the story and allowed the listener to better visualize the story, rather than being clutter.

I value how easy it is to use the Pro Tools application and how user friendly is. I also value that now I know how to create a piece of media that is simply audio which is still engaging and exciting to listen to. I think I could apply these skills to many future projects and also personal projects.

In class we’ve used Adobe Illustrator for creating album art, original designs, and projects. The application has a wide range of tools that support our journeys as digital artists. During the Narrative 1 unit as Juniors we worked on building foundational skills. I hadn’t ever used Illustrator before now, so some elements of the app were hard to navigate at the start. With practice, I was able to create some pretty cool stuff.

Exquisite Corps

For this project, we were placed in groups of three to create 1/3 of an image that would later be combined to create a whole illustration. I designed a tree branch with vines of flowers growing around it. One of my group members made a watering can with a character inside. The illustrations connect at a pre-defined point.

Short Story Album Art

My short story album art, previously featured under Story, was also created in illustrator. I chose to illustrate the final scene of my flash fiction, in which the main character hangs up her retired pointe shoes over the window. I wanted to provide a visual representation of one of the most symbolic moments of the story, in which she choses to keep her pointe shoes as decoration to represent her resilience and the permanency of the lessons she learned throughout her ballet experience.

Illustrator Choice Project: Smoke Signals

For this project, everyone was given the opportunity to create a product using Illustrator. While some of my peers designed clothing prints, and others mugs, I made stickers inspired by Phoebe Bridgers discography.

Using Illustrator for image creation as opposed to Photoshop was, for me, much easier. I like the simplicity of Illustrator and how it makes illustrating very accessible. A lot of its features are very intuitive, and I was able to quickly pick up on the ones that are a little trickier, such as the pen tool.

I chose to create stickers as my project because of the range of options it gave me. When making stickers you can really design anything, because you ultimately get to choose where you will put the stickers. My inspiration behind these stickers was one of my favorite musical artists: Phoebe Bridgers. I’ve been deeply impacted by her music over the course of this year and I wanted to put some of her lovely imagery into illustrations. For example, my favorite sticker, the hatchet being surrounded by lavender, is a visual adaptation of one of the lyrics in her song “Smoke Signals.” In it she sings, “I buried a hatchet, it’s coming up lavender.” This lyric deeply resonates with me, the act of burying something in search of peace and from that receiving an imperfect outcome. I love how she uses very visual metaphors to capture such feelings, and I think it makes for really nice illustrations and stickers.

This production is precious to me because of how prevalent music, especially that of Phoebe Bridgers, has been during this school year. I’m always listening to music, any chance I can get, and it really affects my mood and perception of the world, as evident in how much of an influence it has on the art I create. While her music might not be the cheeriest, it has helped me better feel and understand my emotions, and I think that is a wonderful thing. I’m grateful to be able to pay tribute to such a musical genius through this small project.

Overall, using Illustrator instead of other applications for these illustrations was a great experience. It is a very intuitive app and very easy to use. I had to overcome some learning curves at the start, but now I feel much more comfortable. I am very happy with my final products, and very excited to continue using the app in the future.

During the music unit we explored music creation with two main projects. The Music Recording project was the first, in which we were instructed to get into groups and record a cover or an original song with the skills we already have. Some groups played instruments, other used karaoke backings. This was a great project to learn basic music recording skills. The Experimental Music project was our second project, in which we used MIDI and Pro Tools to create our own original instrumental song. We had a lot of freedom to create what we wanted, and everyone ended up with different products.

Music Recording Project

The process of recording a song included planning, recording, and editing. My group and I spent a while looking for a song we all liked before deciding on Bags by Clairo. After finding a karaoke backing, we took it into the Freestyle music studio and recorded it. This was by far my favorite part. Although my group and I are not singers, we all had lots of fun hanging out in the studio and singing. We only took one take each, embracing the mistakes and bad singing. Then we edited it in audition to make it easier on the ears by adding reverb.

Group reflection

Our main takeaways from the music recording project are that music recording takes a lot of work, but is also a lot of fun. It’s important to take risks and put yourself out there, without being afraid of being embarrassed. We had so much fun going into the studio and singing, and we really enjoyed stepping out of our comfort zone to try something new and unique. It was interesting to try to keep the timing with each take, and we had to learn how to collaborate over multiple attempts. We ended up being really excited after listening to our final product, because we had so much fun making it. Fair warning – none of us are the best singers, but we can’t wait to come back and continue to have fun and improve!

Experimental Music

For this project there was little prompt or instruction on the type of music we could make. Everyone had lots of freedom to do what interested them. After exploring the different instruments and sounds available to me, I composed a song to communicate feelings of magic and fantasy. I started by putting together piano sounds that I enjoyed and then layered other instruments on top. I’ve never had an proper musical training, so I was doing it all by ear. I was very happy with my final song.

Reflection

This music piece, created in Pro Tools, has elements of mystery, whimsy, and magic. I was inspired by songs like “Once Upon A Dream” and “White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter.” I wanted listeners to feel curiosity and excitement with some unease and unpredictability. Therefore, I chose a slow tempo with chimes and bells and light piano layered over deep bass and organ. I felt that these combinations were magical and somewhat unsettling.

During production I was most proud of my ability to create a coherent and engaging piece with no previous musical experience. I did it by ear and had to play around with different sounds to get my desired product, and once I did I felt very satisfied and accomplished.

While using MIDI Virtual Instruments I most valued how easy it was to create my desired sounds without having any previous experience. The application is easy to use and very user friendly. In specific, I loved how every instrument plug in had a huge range of different options for how it could sound, giving me a ton of creative freedom.

This music unit allowed me to develop completely new skills I had never used before. From singing, to editing music, to composing music, I was able to get a feel for what music creation is like. I definitely have room to improve and hope to explore these skills more in the future to create more musical projects.

In film we were challenged to produce a short visual narrative film. The process of filming this narrative was demanding, as it required coordination between a large team of people. It was a huge team effort, and without everyone who contributed to the story creation, planning, shooting, and editing, it wouldn’t have happened. I would like to thank my project partners, Chloe Outten and Zakhar Mashkovtsev, for their collaboration and hard work. I’m so grateful for all of the memories we made and how close we became over the course of this project. I would like to thank Mr. Taylor, our film teacher and producer, who offered endless support, time, and advice in the creation of our film. I would like to thank Sakinah Mengerink and Alvin Roquerov for their terrific acting. Finally, a big thanks to the Mountain View Public Library and Freestyle Academy for providing location and equipment, we are eternally grateful.

My partners, Zakhar and Chloe, and I planned, shot, and edited this film over the course of many months. I can say with certainty that this project was the one in which I grew the most as a filmmaker and storyteller in this year. Our final film idea, the one that was greenlit and shot, was very different from our original idea. We spent weeks brainstorming, building up stories and then scrapping them, and working out plot problems. Unlike writing a story, film (especially one with no dialogue), demands you to be completely visual in your storytelling, which can be especially challenging. We encountered this challenge while storyboarding and later on when editing. When we moved into the production stage, it was a matter of coordination between all crew and cast members, as well as being super prepared and on top of our checklist. Shooting sessions typically were long, and we even had to do reshoots of our entire final act. The motivated attitudes of everyone involved kept us going even when the film demanded lots of time. One of our scenes, in which the main character, played by Sakinah, bumps into the love interest, played by Alvin, and gets matcha all over him, was only able to be shot one time. We had to get it right, and this is where everyones collaboration and teamwork really came through. While Chloe, Zakhar, and I directed them and ensured the footage caught the moment, Sakinah and Alvin both listened carefully to instruction and did an amazing job in acting out how we wanted it to look. Overall, production was manageable thanks to everybody’s willingness to make this movie great. After securing all of our footage, we began the long process of editing, which took several months. The edit was ever-changing, even up until the day of the final cut export. We worked on color, trying to tie all of the scenes together with one color palette/theme. The sound was a long process, as we scoured royalty free collections for fitting music and SFX. Mr. Taylor provided us with so much support throughout the process, staying in the film room until as late as midnight in the week before our exhibition to give us advice and lend a professional eye. With all the hard work everybody put into this film, we are so proud to present our final product, Between the Lines, and excited to use the skills we learned during this unit in our future senior narrative.