Narrative 1

Introduction

When exploring the realm of visual narrative, we learned how to tell a powerful and well-structured story that portrayed complex emotions and ideas. In our elective class, we created our own narrative films from the ground up, and our learning process carried over from Film into our Digital Media and English classes, where we broadened our storytelling skills by creating flash fictions that laid out the foundation for the big film project.

The narrative project helped teach me how to rely on visual skills when trying to convey complex concepts and emotions to an audience. Not being able to rely on dialogue encourages out-of-the-box thinking. Being able to express myself without the use of words has made me a better filmmaker and writer. I look forward to applying the skills I acquired to future projects where I am able to use dialogue because then the sky’s the limit.

Story

In English, we delved into the narrative unit by making our own flash fiction, where we created unique characters and stories that followed the typical narrative outline with a setting, rising action, climax, abyss moment, and resolution.

After we finished creating our flash fiction in English, we then took them into our Digital Media class and produced an audio version by recording our own vocals in Pro Tools, and mixing them with music and sound effects to create an entertaining audio story. I valued the opportunity to use Pro Tools again and continue to learn my way around audio, as it can be a very critical element in one’s communication skills.

A Final Goodbye

That fateful day repeats in my mind every now and then, like vinyl on a record player that never stops spinning. Looping melancholy melodies that send chills down my spine, I get sent back to the day I lost you. 

It was a time of anxiety, but I made a pledge to keep you in my thoughts, and always kept a picture of us in my pocket, the same one that you always kept in your wallet. An old polaroid of us at an ice cream parlor from when I was just a kid. The photo itself wasn’t too special, I didn’t understand why you even kept it at first, but it served as a reminder of you, the one thing that could keep our connection. I carried it around everywhere, when I went to school when I would go to the studio, and I would even place it under my pillow while I slept.

I was only weeks away from the release of my album, my big debut, and my only chance to make a name for myself in the music industry. I still needed to record my vocals, and time was dwindling by the minute, but how could I create music with such a big mental block?

As time passed, I had made no progress, and I began to feel trapped in the atmosphere of the studio. Finally, on one somber afternoon, I decided to take a stroll to ease the pressure. The cloudy sky seemed to frown down upon me as I walked up the streets of Los Angeles. I walked for hours, and right as I was about to turn back, I noticed an ice cream parlor in the corner of my eye, the same one we used to go to when I was a kid. 

The parlor was just as I’d remembered, the velvety yellow chairs and porcelain tables, the toppings bar filled with every candy imaginable, everything but you. I went for a double chocolate scoop and sat by the window. I took out the photo and set it down on the counter, reminiscing as always. The ice cream was great, and even though you weren’t there, reliving the moment brought me comfort. 

This peaceful moment was abruptly cut off by a phone call- it was the label. Leaving all my belongings, I went outside to take the call.

“Listen,” said a deep echoing voice, it was my manager.

“We’ve been giving you slack with the production of your album but enough is enough. You have until the end of the week to produce your songs, otherwise, we have to cut you from the label.” He hung up the phone violently before I could even respond.

I was shattered by this news, the burden of my responsibilities caught up to me. My manager was right, enough is enough, I was ready to go home and finish the album. I collected myself and after a couple of minutes in the freezing cold, I stepped back into the parlor. I walked back to my table but halted right in my tracks, the table was cleared, the ice cream, and the photo. Bewildered, I ran to the clerk at the front counter to ask what happened.

“We thought you had left so we   cleared it.” Said the young lady at the front

I could begin to hear my own heartbeat, my breathing got heavier, my hands started shaking, my voice began to crack.

“And where does the trash go?” I muttered, “I left something important on the table.”

I couldn’t believe what was happening, through all this intensity, all I can remember is the woman saying is, “The trash got taken out just now, the garbage truck already left so I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.”

My heart sank, and my ears started ringing. I bolted outside and saw the garbage truck, well on its way with our picture. Silence. I couldn’t hear anything other than silence.

That night when I went home, I filled an ocean full of my own tears. The progress I had been making was all gone within an instant, and my connection with you felt like it was gone. I couldn’t leave the house for the next few days. I sat around sulking, hoping that you could somehow come back and tell me that everything was going to be okay. 

Time dwindled, it came down to the night before the album deadline, when I heard a knock on my door. It was Mom, she didn’t say much that night but she dropped off an old box of yours, she said you would’ve wanted me to have it. 

Inside were hundreds of photos of ours, countless moments we spent together, I guess the polaroid wasn’t the only one you held dear to your heart. I stayed up all night, letting the emotions resonate. At the moment, I was overwhelmed with remorse, but seeing all those memories of ours helped me come to a realization. The value of our time together cant be contained by a picture. All the cherished moments, the happiness, the sadness, and even the anger will always resonate within me and within you as well. 

That next morning, I woke up a new man, and went to the studio, with you still there in spirit. That day, we created the entire album right before the label’s deadline and for the next couple of weeks, we waited to see if it succeeded.

That brings me to today. The fateful vinyl is still spinning, but I have grown to adore its melodies. Our album, A Final Goodbye, reached number one on the charts within a month. I can now finally begin a fruitful career in the singing industry, and I couldn’t have done it without you. At first, your absence pained me, but with time, I learned not to be sad that our relationship was over, but to be grateful that it happened. I hope you are proud. I love you, Dad.

Illustration

In Digital Media, we were challenged to use our Adobe Illustrator skills to create a unique piece of artwork that we then brought to life. I decided to create a piece of laser engraved glass that, when mounted to an illuminating base plate, makes for a very beautiful night light.

My inspiration for the illustrator project was my own tendency to sometimes get sidetracked and distracted. When I was in third grade, I was diagnosed with ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), which has played a big part in my life. Growing up, I found that I had difficulty concentrating and would often daydream during class. Nowadays, I have much more self-control, but I wanted to use the illustrator project as an opportunity to reflect on my past self and use my canvas to portray the physiological aspect of daydreaming, and how I would symbolize it. This project helped me better my Adobe Illustrator skills, and learn how to express complex ideas on a visual canvas. When creating this artwork, which I titled, “Head In The Clouds” I had difficulties with creating the silhouette for the character, so to overcome this, I looked at several anime-style drawings and used them as an inspiration for the look of my character, which I think worked very well. I put a lot of effort and time into this project, so I’m very satisfied with how it turned out, the only thing I would change is the material that was used for the engraving. I would like to replace the acrylic with a piece of glass for a cleaner finish that accentuates the artwork. This project helped me appreciate the beauty of art and understand the thought process behind it, and in the future, I plan to continue to use this same cartoon/anime style and try to captivate unique ideas and make them digestible.

Music Production

In digital media, visual imagery wasn’t the only way we communicated our thought and emotions. At the start of the year, we dove straight into Pro Tools, creating our own parodies produced at Freestyles professional music studio. We started by picking partners and finding a song we liked, we then cut the vocals out in Pro Tools and wrote our own creative lyrics. Once we were ready, we recorded our vocals in the studio and mixed them with some effects to create the final song. “Thinking Mode“, a parody of Travis Scott’s “Sicko Mode” made by myself and Milo Rathbun, was a song inspired by the stress that students experience during finals week, which is when it was made.

Lyrics

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Film

In our film class, we explored visual narrative by learning how to use our advanced camera equipment. We learned the basics of film language and how different shot types, angles, and pacing can invoke emotion in your audience. Through lectures and film analysis we learned what makes for a good film, and were able to put our newly acquired knowledge to the test in multiple instances.

In the Griffiths scene video, we demonstrated our camera skills by using establishing shots to immerse the audience in our films. Learning how to play into your audience’s suspension of disbelief is a critical skill that we would later apply to our Narrative Films.

In the suspense scene, we experimented with the skills we learned from analyzing Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock. By changing the pacing of your film, you can invoke suspense in the audience and captivate them, and this is a skill that we still see being used today in many big films.

For our chase scenes, we each had to work on our own to create an interesting film that utilizes the camera skills that we previously learned, while also beginning to establish our storytelling skills. The chase scenes were made in the span of a week and critiqued to the Hollywood standard by our film teacher and senior director, Mr. Taylor.

Narrative Film

After honing our camera and editing skills with these projects, we chose a partner and created our own narrative films over the span of five months. The narrative film challenged us to tell an entertaining story without the use of dialogue, the most common tool for communication. The narrative had to follow the same standard story structure as the flash fiction, and have some form of character growth, all without using words, with proved to be very difficult. This project was the pinnacle of our narrative unit, with hard work and dedication spent on all three steps of the filmmaking process: pre-production, production, and post-production. I partnered with Tai Livnat, and we began to create our story, and after several class discussions where we received feedback, we created the synopsis for the first draft of our film.

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 (The 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. The 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.

Pre-production

After creating our synopsis, we continued to develop our narrative through storyboarding, which is the process of drawing and planning out your shots so you have a more clear visual understanding of what your film looks like, and avoid potential issues in the story. Me and Tai spent two weeks storyboarding for our film and created almost one hundred note cards that helped us prepare, and once Mr. Taylor greenlit the film, we were ready to go for production.

Production

The production phase spanned over the course of a month. Me and Tai found our actors locally and began filming in January. The idea for our film was very ambitious so some of the locations were very challenging to film at and forced us to step out of our comfort zone and take risks.

Filming on the CalTrain proved to be our most difficult challenge by far, as we had to work within the narrow time constraints and still get very good cinematic shots. We ended up getting stranded in Redwood City because we spent so long on the train, but the results were definitely worth it.

With our actor’s conflicting schedules, we struggled to get our dailies in (rounds of filming), and this proved to be the biggest challenge in our production of the film, but after meticulous planning, we were able to meet with our actors and get the shots we needed. Despite this, the actors we chose played their parts perfectly, and we all had passion and enthusiasm to create the film. The vibes on set were unmatched.

Post-production

In the post-production phase of our film, we took all our footage into Adobe Premiere and pieced together our film. This is where the story that we had created months ago started to come to life. This process also took the most revision, as we struggled with finding good pacing for the film, which kept the audience’s attention while telling the story in the way that we envisioned. After fifty hours spent making the rough cut, doing countless revisions, adding sound effects, making custom graphics, and color-correcting, we had finally completed our narrative film, Cope.

Cope – By Yhali Sheba and Tai Livnat

Cope aims to capture the psychological aspect of overcoming a loss, a complex concept that was super ambitious to pursue as a film. I’m super proud of the amount of time and dedication that me and Tai invested into this film, and I think we did a good job on all fronts, as we managed to create a good, nuanced, story without the use of dialogue. Cope has opened my eyes not only to the beauty of filmmaking but to the beauty of life and its complexity.

I value the narrative project as it gave me the biggest opportunity to grow, not only as a filmmaker but as a person. At the end of the film, the Old Man has accepted the loss of his son and is now ready to return to therapy and begin the healing process. I feel as though the journey of growth that he embarks on at the end of the film is very symbolic of my journey as a filmmaker, as there is a limitless realm of opportunity that lies ahead, and we have both only just scratched the surface.