Narrative
Overview

The narrative project is a compilation of different projects all under one theme, to tell a story. In English, we wrote a story using techniques of dialogue and actions. Utilizing different perspectives to tell a story, I decided to write my story in the first person view of the main protagonist. This allow the readers to only see the progress of the story in the protagonist’s view, which allows me to trick the reader at the end of the story.

For Design class, we created a book jacket for the narrative story we wrote during English class. Using the six basic elements of graphic design and the four basic principles of graphic design I made a book jacket the complements with the theme of the narrative. I used mostly Illustrator to create parts of the book jacket which all gets put together under In Design. Furthermore, we made a surrealism photo using different filters and effects of Photoshop. The surrealist photo also tells a narrative to the readers.

For WebAudio class, we made a website that brings everything we’ve worked together in one showcase. Using Dreamweaver, I created a website that follow the theme of my narrative while showcasing everything I’ve done for the unit. Moreover, I’ve created a book trailer for the narrative story with Sumukh Vaze, a classmate. The trailer helps the readers to visualize the general story of the narrative while making them eager to read the narrative. We used Illustrator to create the components of the trailer and used pro tools to create the background music and sound effects. We put all of it together in After Effects.

Story

For English, we discussed the different ways to creating dialogue and how to make every dialogue significant to the story. We also focused on how the narrative should contain 50 percent dialogue and 50 percent narration. This allowed us to see how the dialogue can drive the story forward without the use of just narration from the narrator. I’ve changed my perspective of narration from 3rd person to 1st person while writing the story because it made me realized a 1st person narration can make plot twists more surprizing.

I opened eyes suddenly to the sound of the fire alarm and the acrid smell of smoke. I jumped out and check the clock, it's 4 A.M. Shuffling through the smoke filled room, I turned on the light. The smoke was growing bigger,and the house was getting hotter. I turn to glance at my wife; She was laying on the bed, motionless. The house started to crack up as the radiating heat seared my face. When I lifted up wife out of the bed, I felt her cold body in the heated room, she’s dead. Stone cold dead. It’s too late to grieve over her as the smoke and heat of the room already made me choke and tear up. I left her behind out of desperation. Below shows my audio read of the story and the text document of the story.

Right before the beach house collapses, I ran outside to the cold sand. I was too tired and weak to stand up. However, I remember seeing a hooded man running away from my beach house very clearly. I knew who he was, but I was too weak to do anything. Instead, my conscious slowly drifts away as the gentle ocean wind blows on the beach house that’s on fire. The warm breeze felt nice and warm was the last thing I remembered. I then fainted as my wife’s corpse burns in the beach house.

Three years later, in this bar next to the hotel, I told my story to the bartender.

“It must have been the hooded man!” I told the bartender. “I mean, there were no other houses around it. He must’ve killed her then set the house on fire!” The two shots of whiskies felt weak.

“Another?” The bartender asked.

“Yeah, two more.”

“This hooded man that you always talk about, do you know him?” The bartender asked while pouring the water downed whiskies.

“I don’t know him, but I'm pretty sure who it is though.” I’m actually absolutely sure.

“Then why are you always here, Aaron?” The bartender jokes.

“What are you talking about?” I gulped down the two shots and left the water-down bar.

It was late; the streets in Seatlle at night was quite. My designer Italian suit didn’t seem to fit my hairstyle and physique. Nevertheless, no one is on the streets to see my awkward statue anyways. How could the killer entered my house and killed my wife without me noticing? Why didn’t the hooded man kill me? It all seemed too complicated and confusing for me. I tripped over some boxes down an alley. I was way too drunk to get up. It feels nice and quiet, I thought to myself as I closed my eyes.

The next day, sounds of footsteps and cars honking woke me up. Sleeping in the streets is almost a norm to me now. Pressing on the temples with my hands, I struggle to get up. After throwing up, a man walked toward me.

“Woah, buddy are you ok?” he asks.

“Better than ever!” Who is this person?

He seemed somewhat familiar, but I just can’t quite recognize the him.

“Man, you need get yourself cleaned up!” He patted me on the back.

“No thanks.” This man seemed crazy. “May I ask, do I know you?”

“What? You don’t remember me? Aaron?” He takes out an old polaroid picture from his coat. “I always keep this with me to remind me of the worst.” He showed me the picture.

“Oh yeah. Back before our life was determined from others.” I handed the photo back to the man. “Kevin, how’s things?”

“Better than you, I think.”

“So, are we still going to find the hooded man?”

“I was, but up to when you didn’t recognize me, I think our friendship is over. “ Kevin is never serious, “Let's get you cleaned up and catch up on things.”

“By the way, how do you know where I am?” I followed him to his car.

“The bartender. You know when you said to look for you in the hotel lobby, I already know to look for you in the nearest bar.” Kevin jokes again.

We arrived at Kevin’s cabin in the woods after a 50 minute ride. I took a quick shower and changed back to my dirty Italian suit.

“So, nice place you got here.” How did Kevin get so much money to buy this place?

“No, actually yours. When the boss died, you inherited the cabin.” He tried to turn on the T.V, but it is just static.

“Hey, can we actually get down to real business before you get high on TV?”

I opened my suitcase and took out two years of pictures and informations of the hooded man. All the information leads to an apartment complex in Seattle.

“That’s the hooded man?” Kevin takes one of the pictures.

“Pretty sure.” I replied, “I mean, who else would want to kill me after what happened at the lab?”

“If you’re sure that is Lucio, then I know how we can get to him.” Kevin leans closer towards the map. “Lucio usually gets out of his apartment at 4 A.M to sell drugs. We could get him then.”

“It is finally the time to get that son-of-a-bitch!”

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Thirteen years ago when, Kevin, Lucio and I took an opportunity to begin researching for a special chemical. We were at a research lab combining different types of compounds in attempt to create the “perfect factor.”

“Yo, Aaron.” Lucio patted me on the back during one of our experiments, “ how much money can we make if we actually find this ‘perfect factor’ blend for the boss?”

“‘The client'” As I type down the data in the computer. “If ‘the boss’ doesn’t rip us off, we could make 30 million.”

“Then we can split the profit 3 ways, and we can live the rest of our lives in a beach house somewhere!” Kevin jokes as he took the next batch of sample.

“Actually though, I always wanted to live in a beach house somewhere like ‘Two and a Half Men’.” Lucio adds the different samples ointo the beakers.

“What, like in California? That’s way too expensive!” Kevin grabs some of the sample mix to a separate beaker. “I say we live in a little island in the Caribbeans.”

“Hey, don’t screw around with the data! “Kevin, you screwed up this batch!” I yelled at him.

“Is ok, man. We just add some of other batches in.” Kevin randomly takes a handful of test sample and drops them in the testing beaker. “Is not like this batch is going to be the ‘perfect factor.’ We already tried 300 different fusion samples! None of them works!”

“What the Hell! You need to chill” Lucio tries to take some of the random samples that Kevin dropped out of the beaker. “That batch could have been actually the ‘perfect factor.’ You never know.”

Then I saw the computer displayed the numbers :.337100.

“Kevin, what the fuck! You actually found the ‘perfect factor!’ Lucio screams. “Beach house!”

The next morning, we stood outside of our research lab. The boss stepped outside of a black Jeep as it stopped by the us.

“The money is already in your bank accounts. Split in three ways.” He puts on his sunglasses as he took out a suitcase. “Here is some money for you guys to get out the hell out of here. Is it in the lab?”

“It’s all in there.” Lucio took the suitcase. “It was nice working with you, boss.”

Two men then walks out of the Jeep and follows the boss in the lab as the we walked in different directions.

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We dragged Lucio’s unconscious body across the woods and into the cabin. Kevin had already set up a chair in the middle of the room with pliers in his hand. We tied Lucio on the chair and splash water on him until he woke up.

“Alright, you have 10 fingers, so I’m only going to ask you 10 times. Why did you burn my house and kill my wife!” I took the pliers from Kevin.

“I didn’t expect we would reunite likes this.” Lucio chuckles and spits the water on me.

CRACK

Kevin stares at Lucio’s snapped pinky.

“Answer my question, Luc.” Blood was dripping on the floor.

“I think you all damn well know why!” Lucio screams in pain and breathes heavily to try to calm himself down. “When we found out that ‘perfect factor’ was what caused the war, we should have fought back and looked for the antidote to the chemical. What did you guys do? Nothing! No one knew the side-effect of the it was mind control. How can we be a weapon for a War? The least you could do was to help, and you all did nothing! We single handedly caused millions of deaths! Burning your beach house down is the least of what you deserved!”

SNAP

“You didn’t finish answering” I said after a long silence. “What about my wife?”

“I didn’t kill your wife! She was already dead. I saw her just lying there with no breath. You damn lucky I didn’t kill you before I set your house on fire.” Lucio replies in an awfully calm manner.

“What?” I know I killed my wife. I choked her to death.

The three of us all started at each other for a long time. I think we all know what really happened. Kevin slowly backs away from me towards the door. Lucio tries to struggle his way out of the chair. However, it is all too late.

I pull out a gun.

BANG. BANG.

I walked out of the cabin and throws a lit joint on the gasoline-covered door. The fire gets bigger and bigger as I walk out into the woods. The red sun is just starting to rise up, and the morning breeze blows on the burning cabin onto my back. It feels nice and warm, I thought to myself. I laughed out loud about the millions plus three people I killed.

Design

The book jacket I made follows the general idea of the narrative I wrote. I used the same font for the title of the web for a sense of unity. The color theme of the story is centralized in a dark red which symbolizes the blood of war and violence. The picture foreshadows when Aaron was going to kill Lucio and Kevin as he holds his gun. Every picture was done in Illustrator and put together using Indesign.

The second project that we worked on for Design class was a photo portrayed in the idea of surrealism. We used photos that we took. Some of the phones are in HDR and others are in black and white. We were to add different aspects of our dreams and supernatural in our photo. We used Photoshop for all of our photos and design. My idea was to use juxtapositions of objects to show the significance of it in my life.

Artist Statement

Aaron Chan is on a revenge hunt to find the man who burned his house and killed his wife. Despite all the adversities, he is determined to find the killer. However, for him to accomplish this mission , he must first reflect and confront to his dark past. What will he find from his past? What are the consequences? Will he revenge his wife? Revenge of Aaron is a thriller about how Aaron finds the culprit. With the help of his friend Kevin, they found out that the culprit of the murder was their old friend, Lucio. Turns out that after the three of them had discovered the secret chemical compound that ultimately started a big war, Lucio felt troubled by the thought and joined the alliance against the war. Lucio gets to see the death and tragedies caused by them; he was furthermore angered by the fact that Aaron didn’t felt any empathy from the consequences of their actions. Aaron in the end was confronted by Lucio when Aaron captured Lucio. However, Aaron learned that Lucio only burned the house and recalls that he killed his own wife. Thus, Aaron kills both Kevin and Lucio to erase all the evidence. The book jacket art foreshadows how Aaron kills Lucio and Kevin with his gun. I set the color theme to be dark red to represent the blood and death involved in the story.

The theme of the surrealist photo I made is about showing the significance of music in my life. The color of the photo is in dark and cold because it symbolizes that although music is important to me, it doesn’t make me happy. My dream of pursuing in music is dark and scary. In the photo, we see a person in black and white headless holding a guitar standing towards a big guitar in color. On the big guitar, there are flames on the strings and another headless person in color sitting on the big guitar. The picture shows how one’s instrument has to be much ‘bigger’ than the person in order to be in ‘color.’ Being in color is to have clarity and a meaning in life. The dreamy selection of a headless man with a guitar in black and white is symbolizing someone lost in the pursuit of his dream. It is hard to see clearly and his hard to see in color. Contrastingly, on the big guitar, there is another headless man sitting on the guitar. He is not blurred as he is someone that has found the passion and dream. He is someone that I inspire to be. The photo tells the struggles of pursuing passions and dreams. It shows what it takes to for someone to walk down the road to success. The background photo is in HDR. I had to cut out one of the electrical posts so the big guitar can take its place. There are also selections of clouds in HDR on top of the existing background to show more depth in the sky. The guitar is big and connected with the electrical wires because it shows how the important music is to me. Furthermore, the electrical wires attached to the guitar is like how my life is connected to the music. I use the photo of my guitar and cut it to a selection.The dreamy selection of a headless man with a guitar in black and white is symbolizing someone lost in the pursuit of his dream. I used the blur filter to show the blurred look. I used transformation and color change to set shadows to every object that I placed in the photo. I added a flame filter on the guitar strings with the pen tool. Lastly, I changed the hue of the final picture to show a dark surreal world.