Narrative 1

Introduction

I valued many things in the Visual Narrative Project throughout all my classes, and each of them were very intertwined in this unit. It was a new experience for me to have to come up with a story without a clear prompt. All students had to think about their own experiences and interests to create personal stories. I definitely improved as an overall story teller with media, as I learned many things about visual and audio story telling.

Story

The assignment in English was to write a narrative story about anything. It was supposed to be a few pages of our own creation that was to be used for other assignments in our freestyle classes. Once this story was done, it was time to record the audio version for it. I sat down in a quiet place to read the entire story aloud, which took about six minutes in total. After recording the story, we added audio SFX’s and music to it to make the listening experience more immersive and realistic. I valued this experience because I had never really thought about doing this type of thing with a piece of writing. Adding these audio effects also made me learn many skills that I can apply in my films since I had never known much about sound editing before this project.
Elephant in the Room 
Her vibrant blue eyes and curly red hair were the only thing Oliver could think about when when the new girl walked into the town’s local diner. He had noticed her a few times passing by in the hallway at his high school and overheard countless rumors about her, but she was not the type of person he would typically approach. Him and his other friends were gathered around a table on a Saturday afternoon, sipping chocolate shakes and eating greasy cheeseburgers dripping down their wrists, on a Saturday afternoon when she entered the vibrant, old-fashioned room. The other boys sitting with him began to snicker and talk ruthlessly about her.“I hear she keeps snakes in her room!”, said Tommy. “Well I heard her mom does some kind of witchcraft,” added Samuel.Oliver nearly rolled his eyes back into his head at their babbling, impatiently stirring his chocolate shake around in infinite circles and staring through his friends stand over to the girl’s table. She was dressed a bit strangely, almost as if to say, “judge me, please,” to anyone whose eyes she happened to catch. Her clothes were probably the only thing as colorful as the room they were all sitting in. Ironically, she looked nervous to be in public and didn’t seem to want to be noticed, but had still chosen to go out all by herself. The girl took a seat in a booth across the diner from him, and she picked up her menu to gaze over her options. When the waiter came up to her to ask her what she wanted, she asked for a simple; a strawberry shake and fries, seemingly the opposite of her personality.Oliver continued to scan her up and down from his table. He had never seen anyone quite like her, the way everything about her boldly stood out in a room. It was something that most people would find peculiar, but was beautiful to him in an unordinary way that he would never dare to tell his friends. He also noticed she carried a journal everywhere she went with torn up, well-worn used pages that visibly kept all her secrets and stories. When she pulled it out, the boys back across the diner seized the opportunity to make more jokes.“Hey Tommy, what do you think she writes in that busted- up journal of hers?”“Probably recipes for her magic potions,” Sam smirked, and all the boys laughed. “Guys, quiet down,” Oliver nagged them.
As the girl sat twirling her thick, red locks, of hair Oliver canceled out the noise of the other teenage boys and began wonder if she had been waiting to meet somebody. It was possible she could be feeling just as out of place as he did at the moment. He wondered what she was thinking about, maybe going over song lyrics or thinking about what she was going to add to her jumbled mess of pages next.Something in the strange mess of her appearance and gloomy expression gave Oliver a rush of sympathy for the poor girl. Whenever he caught her gaze she would immediately scurry her eyes away from him in an awkward, uncomfortable fashion. He realized he was going to have to try harder if he really wanted her to notice him, but wasn’t confident enough to actually go up to her. If he had been all alone maybe he would have, but today he wouldn’t be able to stand his friends’ ridicules.Oliver took his chances got up to go to the bathroom, strolling right past by her table in hopes that she would take a second to look up at him even if it meant nothing. Over her shoulder, he could see that she when she flipped through her book it was filled with bizarre and detailed drawings of different creatures. As Oliver seemed to be getting a little too interested, he heard Tommy and Samuel get up from their seats. He could feel their intimidating figures growing closer behind him.
“Hey, whatcha got there?” Sam asked the disheveled girl as Tommy knocked the book out of her dainty hands.
She stared down in silence at her creations falling onto the diner’s marbled floor.
“Look at this, Tom!” he continued to tease mercilessly as he ripped out one singular page she had been working on.
It had a drawing of a fairy with droopy wings, each scale beautifully detailed and sketched in. There was deep sorrow in a simple drawing that gave Oliver a peek into what she may be going through, and how the journal was an outlet for it,Sam held it up where the girl could not reach it and slowly ripped the artwork in half, severing the graceful fairy’s two wings right across the center. He left the girl with one half of her drawing and ran out of the diner carelessly with the other half, followed by Tommy.The girl’s blue eyes were welling up with tears. She tried to speak to Oliver because she could tell that he was unlike his friends but the words she was looking for did not seem to come to her head.  When they finally did, it was too difficult to get them to leave her mouth she only managed to get a tiny sliver of incomprehensible sound to come out. A singular tear drop fell right on the fairy’s wing, leaving a watery trail of ink on the page.“I’m so sorry”, offered Oliver, knowing that those words couldn’t change anything.He took a napkin from the dispenser on the table and gave it to her to wipe her tears. When the girl set the napkin back down on the table, an idea sparked inside of Oliver’s adolescent head.He took the napkin and placed it next to the half drawing that she still had left on the table. Despite the fact he had minimal artistic talent compared to her, he still desired to do something kind for her. Oliver started to draw the other half of the fairy, which for him was unusual and looked more like an rare type of bug.The girl grinned at this thoughtful attempt and let out a joyful giggle, a face he did not know she was capable of. There was a smile and spark of joy in her expression she had clearly not felt in a long while. As a finishing touch, Oliver picked up a straw and dipped it into glass of ice water on the table to his left. He let a drop of ice water fall onto his side of the drawing, so the fairy could be symmetrical. Together, they sat and drew in every last line of their masterpiece, completing the beautiful and weary creature side by side.

Illustrations

For this website, I created custom illustrations to go behind the headers. These were done with the Illustrator program, and I used a variety of brushes and tools to create what I wanted them to look like. I then used Adobe Dreamweaver to code and allow the images to stay put while the text moves over them as you scroll. My inspiration for these illustrations was the overall Narrative project and I tried to make them relate to my story and my film.

Story Media

In my film class, we had to produce a film that could either be related to our english story or be a completely new one. I was paired with Kirsten so we made a few changes to her english story and then created this into a six minute film. This was filmed in the Mountain View Public Library, and then in the streets of downtown Mountain View.
Pre-Production – Synopsis and Storyboard 
The film will take place in a library and move on to being outside in a park when the stakes are raised. It follows the story of a boy who sees a girl and the library, and is trying to talk to her but experiences many obstacles. We will establish the fact that he finds her interesting by showing his facial expressions over his book as he stares at her sitting alone at a table. The girl will get up from her table when she is done studying, and the boy realizes this is his opportunity to speak to her or she will leave before he ever got the chance to do so. There are a few moments where he continues to sit and debate if he should get up before he is finally set on following her out of the library. As soon as he stands up and starts walking, a lady from the library stops him to give him and object and ask if he has lost it, but it was not his. This causes him to be a bit frustrated because it has already cost him a few seconds. He must then go down an elevator to get to the second floor of the library, in which we will have an awkward and slow elevator scene with elevator music intended to make the audience feel impatient. The boy will then race outside to look for her and gets stopped by the crosswalk having the red hand symbol. When he finally reaches the park he believes she has walked to he looks both ways before he sees her across the park. As he chases the girl through the park (who is unaware he has been there the whole time) and gets stopped by various things. Some ideas of what could stop him are someone who bumps into who spills coffee on him or a kid that falls of his bike who he has to help up. She finally decides that she will go to bathroom, and the boy sees this as an opportunity to talk to her because he can wait outside for her. When she comes out, he acts like he has never seen her before and approaches her. The audience knows that he has been creepily watching and following her this whole time, but she thinks he has just noticed her so they begin casually talking which solves the boy’s conflict. 
Narrative Trailer

Narrative Film 
Behind the scenes:

Chase Scene

Suspense Scene

Griffith Scene