Project 3_Tameya Jennings

Week 1: Storyboarding

For the final project of this semester, I really wanted to do something that was big and filled with symbolism and metaphors. Unfortunately, I was not able to do this due to the lack of time and equipment that I needed. I original Video idea was to tell a story about a girl who was grieving the loss of her girlfriend. We, the audience were supposed to follow her in her stage of grieving, but because so many events and coincidences came about during my shooting I decided to go for a sporadic plan B.

Because this fallback was something I had to come up with right on the spot, I didn't have a storyboard for it. Much of the scenes came to me as a listened to the newly picked song and I ran with it.

week 2: Rebuilding

This new concept was still about moments of grieving and yearning for the past, the only thing that changed was the story. This story is about two friends who were very close, they were always there for each other until the two got wrapped up in a heated argument that resulted in one of them leaving and never talking to them again. It isn't mentioned in the video but one of them does pass away off-camera, which leads to our protagonist doing drugs. These drugs are supposed to tap into a certain part of your brain that lets you relive certain moments and memories in your life. As we saw in the video, the drugs works but also bring up the bad memories she still holds on to. This is when the drugs are starting to wear off and she ups the dosage without even thinking about what it will cost her in the end.

This video was supposed to be a lot longer until I realized the photogate I planned out was longer than the music and the time limit so I had to deconstruct it and reevaluate.

So within the first steps of creating this video, I really thought about how I wanted to catch various angles that made it seem like we were watching her life as a young child watching her parents. I wanted to audience to feel small as if they were too small or helpless to even help that character out of their stage of grieving. I wanted the audience to feel as if they were watching her from the corner of the room hoping she would make the right choice because they couldn't for her.

week 3: editing

I also wanted the video to be devoid of any bright colors in the beginning and end for the audience to understand that there is nothing happy about this video, no happy ending, and no bright side to what she has done to herself. So I went into aftereffect and toyed around with discoloration. I even experimented with the IOS of the camera to see how much light I could take away from the video. I almost gave the video a twilight-styled filter just less luscious and romantic.

Some of the other graphics I use were the drunk and luminesce effect during the dream phase and the part of the video our character gets a headache from taking too many Dream pills. I didn't want to use a whole lot of effects since I felt as if they would distract the viewers from the story, so I tried to keep them subtle and short.

As for the actors, my roommate and I recorded ourselves to portray these two friends. It was pretty easy to make this video with them since we had been friends since Highschool, but when it came down to faking an argument for the sake of the video, I can't deny it almost felt real. It was exciting because I couldn't believe we were actually getting into the acting so much but it blew my mind to see just how something so scripted can feel real.

Overall I was not super elated about this project since I felt that my original idea had so much more potential than this last-minute put-together video. However, I will say that it was acceptable for the time and recourses I had and the story has potential for more growth.