In the Narrative unit I learned a lot about how to tell a story through language, movie-making, design, and music making. In this unit I have not only grown as a storyteller, but I feel as though I have evolved. The way stories are spoken have an extremely large impact on the way it is perceived. Every little detail that is added to a story makes it more compelling and captivating for the audience. These new lessons on story telling have made me a much better story teller and I feel as though my writing, my creativity, and my ability to tell stories in many ways has greaty improved.

Arcade Antics – English Narrative

In English our assignment was to create a story that had a clear character arc and told a compelling story. The inspiration for making my story was relating it to problems I have seen with people in my own life. When creating the main character for my story, we were assigned a “Character Questionnaire”. The character questionnaire consisted of many many questions about our character, prompting us to create a very diverse and well thought out character. In terms of creating the audio and album cover, I did them both in the Digital Media room. I recorded myself speaking my audio in the audio recording booth (although I needed some help from Mr. Flo to set it up) and then I edited it and added sound effects and music afterwards. The album cover was created in Adobe Illustrator which is a program that has helped me design multiple projects for Digital Media. Learning how to use Illustrator is very useful because Illustrator is used in much of pop culture and it can do a very wide variety of things involving design.

This is a picture of the way my ProTools application looks with the finished product of my short story audio. As you can see there is more than one track for sound effects. That is because some of the sounds that I added, I actually recorded myself and the others were imported from the sound effects files that Freestyle provides for projects like this..

Geometric Light Cover

The Geometric Light Cover assignment was assigned right after we finished the Illustrator basics. It was assigned to show the things that we learned to do in a simple project. We were supposed to design 12 different sides of a plastic light cover.

These are the first 6 I designed.
These are the last 6 I designed.
This is how the Illustrator interface looks. There are many different tools that we can use and the designs I created were all made with those tools.
This is how my final Geometric Light Cover looks.

My geometric light cover designs were two words, the Star of David, and the logo for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, an alternative rock band from the 90’s. The words I chose were “bug” and “gum,” although I did use bug twice, it just looks like a jumble of B’s U’s and G’s. The reason I chose to use bug and gum was because there was a meme I saw the day that I designed it that was a photoshopped image of a tweet from Lil’ Yachty. There was a lot of white space with the word bug left in the middle. That was the entire image. I was in a creative slump, I had no idea what I wanted to make into my design. The only thing that I did know was that I was listening to some very good music, particularly the Red Hot Chili Peppers at the time. Since I was a child RHCP been my favorite band, having been introduced to them by my older brothers and my mother, the band has a very special place in my heart. Their logo is very simple and recognizable, and it was fun to design and put into my light cover. My other design is the Star of David. Being a Jew, I do not practice the religion, but that is how I identify myself. I believe that staying connected to your roots is a good thing, for me that is acknowledging my Jewish culture and staying connected to the things that bring me back to my childhood. 

This project was important to me because it showed me that I can use Illustrator to create things that have meaning to me, but I am also able to create things that are funny to me. Life doesn’t always have to be so serious, so take a minute to step back and laugh at something completely stupid like the word bug. It’s not inherently funny, but it doesn’t have to be.

Illustration Project Choice – Sticker

After creating the Geometric Cover and having learned a whole lot about Illustrator, we were ready to create our own designs. We had a wide variety of mediums to create our project. We could choose stickers, t-shirts, patches, laser engravings, and many more. I chose to make stickers, but that was not my first choice.

This is how the final PNG design looked.
This is the Illustrator interface with my final design.
This is the physical sheet of stickers.

My Adobe Illustrator design was making stickers. The title of my design is Pengu. Penguins are by far my favorite animal. They’re so cute and their waddle is so funny. I just love them! Originally I was creating a t-shirt but as I was designing it, my opinion of the way it would look on a shirt changed from “wow this is going to be amazing!” To “oh gosh, what am I creating?” I decided to scrap the entire idea for the back of the shirt, and focus more on the design I had for the front. The front was much more interesting and it popped out more to me. I then created many silhouettes of penguins and made them into stickers. The message I am trying to portray is that it’s not the end of the world to scrap one idea for another. I had already finished the design for the shirt, but I hated it by the time I was done. Changing it from a shirt to stickers has made me much more confident about the quality of my work. I also think fewer people will have to look at my artwork if the design was to create stickers.

The things I valued from this project was learning how to navigate better through Adobe Illustrator and learning valuable life lessons. I learned more keyboard shortcuts and I also learned how to use the pen, although most of the work I did with the pen was scrapped with the back of the shirt. Being able to tell myself that I will still have a good project after deciding to start again with the stickers was very important because that allowed me to persevere and finish the project to my liking. I think the design I ended with looks simplistic which is what I am going for. I like that it still looks like a penguin while keeping the minimalist appearance.

Narrative in Film

In film class we learned different ways of conveying emotion without using words. We learned how to create suspense using the Griffith Pattern, screen direction, and important objects. The Griffith Pattern is a series of shots in the movie that tell the audience the setting, the main characters, and the rules of the world of the movie. Screen direction involves the one hundred-eighty degree rule which helps the suspension of disbelief by controlling the direction of characters on screen. If someone is moving to the left, then in the next shot they are moving to the right, that breaks continuity, and therefore breaks the suspension of disbelief.

Griffith Pattern

The Griffith Pattern was the first lesson we had in film for this unit. This lesson taught us how to set up a scene to help understand where things are and who is important. In our scene we set it up with the fence, and we showed who was important by showing close ups. That is the essence of the Griffth Pattern.

This is the Griffith Pattern i made with Callum and Arjun.

Suspense Scene

The next lesson we had was learning how to create suspense without dialogue. We learned from great producers of the past, such as Alfred Hitchcock, to help figure out how to create suspense through cross-cutting, using objects, and music. In our scene we used a pencil as a suspensful object, and cross cutted to class starting while the student was late.

This is the suspense scene Nate, Alex, and I created.

Chase Scene

In the chase scene assignment, we learned about the 180 degree rule which helps us keep screen direction. If something or someone is moving to the left of the screen in one shot, and then moving in the opposite direction in the other shot, it looks as if they turned around in an instant. Screen direction helps maintain the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

Narrative Film Process

After pitching our ideas, the film students had to pair up for the narrative. Sarah and I chose to work together because we both liked the idea I came up with, and we work well together. The first thing we needed to do was be able to tell the story in words. Another word for this is our Narrative Synopsis.

Synopsis

Act 1: The location is established: the house. There is a Superbowl party happening in the house. The main characters are the host and his dog. The dog wants to be a part of the party and he annoyingly squeaks his chew toy and jumps up to greet someone causing them to spill their drink. The host scolds the dog and puts him in his cage. He doesn’t latch the cage properly and the dog escapes out the window. (Important object is a squeaky toy)

Act 2: The party is continuing and everyone is enjoying themselves. The team everyone is rooting for scores a point and everyone is cheering. The host goes and checks on the dog, and sees that the dog is missing. The host sees the party, everyone is having fun, he sees the chew toy that his dog loves and picks it up and walks out the door not saying anything to anyone. Cross-cuts from the owner of the dog to the dog running away, and walking around in the dog park. The dog looks very sad, and lonely. His tail is down and his head is down. The owner looks in his yard first and squeaks the chew toy, looking for the dog. Then looks around the neighborhood. At one point he sees a dog that looks like his, runs over to it but finds that the dog is not his. He goes to the dog park, but doesn’t see his dog there either. He gives up on finding his dog, and heads home. When he gets home, he is sitting in his front yard, looking hopeless.

Act 3: He looks up and sees his dog across the street, the dog looks at him. The two run to each other and hug. They walk back into the house together to enjoy the party. The film ends with the dog, now included in the party’s festivities, and he’s eating chips with the boys. 

Storyboard

The next step was to frame all of our shots before we started filming. This helps because if you don’t know how the shot is going to look before you start filming, there could be a lot of wasted time for your actors while you figure out how to make the shot look good and follow the 180 degree rule. Another thing the storyboard helps with setting up the Griffth pattern, and other tools of suspense.

This is the full story board sperated by act 1, 2, and 3..

Narrative Film Product

The trailer I created for my movie.
The movie!!