Narrative 1

Our narrative unit this year has been a lot of fun. From writing stories in English, all the way to creating our first narrative movie in film, I’ve learned a lot from the past couple months. The focus of this unit has been to learn how to visually tell a well structured story. I learned the most in this unit than any other by far. We spent months talking about and refining any story that we were working on, and it was an overall great time collaborating with the rest of my classmates.

The assignment in English was to create a short flash fiction narrative from scratch. We spent a lot of time learning about what makes an interesting character, and how to create an engaging story. A lot of class was dedicated to solely writing and peer reviewing so our stories would end up being entertaining and interesting. Once we completed writing the flash fiction in English, we moved on to digital media in order to convert it into audio format. We used an array of sound effects and background music to fully immerse the listener into our stories.

Flash Fiction Pro Tools Project

For the short story audio, we also created a thumbnail that we thought represented our story. Since we have been practicing our skills in illustrator all year, we decided it would only make sense to create our thumbnails in that program. Because my story is about a stereotypical frat boy turned artist, I thought it would be fit to make the thumbnail revolve around a red solo cup.

Short Story Album Art Illustrator File

Our final project of the narrative unit was to choose a personal art project that we resonated with. I decided to create my own personal illustration using Adobe Illustrator.

Printed Version

For this project, I didn’t have any direct inspiration. I decided to just let my imagination flow and drew whatever came to mind. I grew in a technical sense through doing this project. I learned how to draw in a more cartoon style, and how to make cool-looking water. One challenge I came across was drawing with the Wacom tablet. It would not let me lower the sensitivity of the pen, so I decided to just draw with my mouse. At first, this was a struggle, but as time went on I became more comfortable with drawing with it. One thing that I would probably change looking back is the amount of detail I put into the bottom part of the floating island. I feel as though I could have made it a bit more complex looking. The thing I have come to be most proud of for this project is how unique it is.

For digital media we made parody songs in the professional grade studio we have available to us on campus. Overall it was a really fun project and also a great way to get more familiar with Pro Tools.

Rohan and I in the studio

We started by creating lyrics, then with the help of Mr. Flo recorded over a beat in the studio. We then took all of the recordings and spliced it together to create a somewhat complete parody version of the song we chose. We used various techniques in order to separate the lyrics from the original song and delete them so we input our own lyrics. The inspiration for our parody lyrics was to rap about freestyle and how much we love Mr. Flo

Flo Bamba – Tai and Rohan

In Film, our entire narrative unit was spent first practicing different scenes, and then putting together all of the thing we learned into one narrative project. This unit really pushed me, and was a level above anything I had done before. One of the biggest challenges for me was to edit the film in a way that would make it both entertaining for the viewer, while still getting our story across. I really value the time that Mr. Taylor took to make sure our stories were something worth watching, and also the things I learned from the post production process. Technically, I improved a lot, especially in learning how to use audio editing in our films.

The first projects we did were mini scenes, just focusing on one skill or aspect of film making. The first one of these that we did was practicing our Griffiths pattern. We were given the task of creating a scene/skit in one class period (about and hour and a half), and the only requirement was to correctly show Griffith’s pattern. All this meant was first introducing a setting, then the characters in a well paced manner.

Griffiths Pattern Final Outcome

The next scene that we worked on was our suspense scene. Mr. Taylor went over what made something suspenseful, and how to use fast cutting and closeups to achieve suspense. For this project, I ended up working with Eric. Overall, it was a lot of fun, and this was also the point where I began to mess around and learn about sound effects and how to make them more realistic.

Suspense Scene Final Outcome

The final mini scene that we worked on was our chase scene. This project was by far my favorite out of all the scenes that we did. I had a lot of fun working with friends, and just being overall creative with it. I decided to use anime sound effects and music because I thought it would make the whole thing a lighter and more unique thing to watch. We worked on this for around a week and a half, and at the end we all got to show them in class.

Chase Scene Final Outcome

My narrative film was by far the biggest thing I worked on this year. We started planning the story all the way back in October, and finished the final cut at the beginning of March. During this unit, I grew a lot with both my technical skills and storytelling skills. For the majority of the film, I was behind the camera, so I learned a lot about what shot types I liked, and sometimes I also pushed myself to get shots that I wouldn’t have normally gotten. The first step in making a narrative film was the pre production process. This is where we pitched ideas to our entire class and refined our stories until they were good enough to be green-lit by Mr. Taylor. Once we new what our movie was going to be about and had written a synopsis of our story, we moved on to making our storyboards. Making our storyboards was by far the most lengthy and monotonous part of the entire unit, but it also paid off the most. We spent around two weeks working on our storyboards, and I think it definitely helped us during the production phase because we had all of our shots already mapped out.

Synopsis:
A dad and his son are getting out of an Uber and walking the city streets. (he left his wallet on the Uber) Realizes his pockets are empty, and freaks out(Audience doesn’t necessarily know what he’s actually looking for). For the entirety of the movie till he finds his wallet, his son isn’t there. This is subtle, and you don’t really realize that the dad is looking for his wallet, not his son.
After this, the dad is taken on a journey through the city to find his wallet. Audience thinks he is looking for his son. Eventually, this leads him to where he left it, and this is where the dad reflects emotionally after finding it. This is where the audience also realizes that the son isn’t there (passed away), and the dad had a picture of his son in his wallet that was his connection to him (or some other artifact that can be traced back to him easily)
The next setting of the movie then happens on another day, showing the dad walking into a therapist’s office by himself. This is where the audience sees character growth, and how he is coming to terms with the loss of his son and is reaching out for help. Once inside and sitting down, the dad is sitting next to his son, and they smile at each other. The therapy can then begin and the movie ends.

All of Our Storyboards

After we finished with the pre production phase we moved onto production. This meant casting all of our actors and filming the movie. This part of the process spanned around two months. This was by far the most enjoyable part for me because I love being behind the camera.

Narrative Trailer
Cope – A film by Tai and Yhali

Finally, the final step of the film making process was post production. This step took us around 30 hours of tedious work, but I can confidently say I grew a lot from this experience. I learned a lot of new things about premiere that I didn’t know, and it was also quite humbling to see how much work and effort goes into narrative films.

Premiere Pro Timeline