Category: Process

Storyline:

This is a still image video is a story that shows how a boy who trains very hard to possess the skills of fighting. It can be seen from his concentration and dedication it takes as he jumps rope, practicing kicks and stretches to the extent that he trains his kicks using a wall.

This boy finally achieved the championship in the taekwondo competition after putting so much effort in training.

As this boy and his sister were walking home in a dark street, a stranger with a cap appears and approached them. Instinctively, the boy who possess great fighting skills moves his younger sister behind him. When confronted with danger, you might expect this fighter to use his skills for self-defence, however, what he did could surprise you.

The stranger pushed the boy to ask for money. The boy wanted to fight back as he clenched his fist hard. When this boy could have resisted or fought back to keep his money, he instead chose to give. He saw that the guy in the cap was acting in desperation. He had compassion. He then relaxed his fist and  reached out to his pocket and gave the stranger money.

His sister was shocked as to how he reacted and questioned him, “why didn’t you beat him up?” given his possessions of skills.

The boy replied, “He looks hungry and needs some money.”

So here is my video:

This short video ends with a phrase “IT’S NOT WHAT YOU POSSESS, IT’S HOW YOU POSSESS” I ended with this phrase as I feel that although you may have some skills that may give you the upper hand to do something, it does not always mean that you have to do it. It is your choice on how you want to use these skills to do the right thing.

Often as humans, I feel that we sometimes make the wrong decisions out of desperation, frustration or because we feel hurt. If we can seek to look at those who lash out at us for no apparent reason, trying to see what is going on underneath the surface, we may be a more compassionate person instead of acting rashly and using violence in the case of this story.

Being too quick to judge often leads us to make poor decisions involving others. Thus, even though the main character possesses the skills to fight and protect himself, he didn’t use it for violence for unnecessary situation and instead chose to take the push from the stranger and even gave him his money.

Process:
I attempted to make use of Wally Wood’s “22 panels that always work” when trying to capture different angle of the scene, such as the close ups on the object and the big head to show the expression of the character. Thus, from this assignment I managed to explore different angles to allow viewers to focus on the important subject and what I want to portray.

Also, I made use of the street lights to capture the scene by playing with the intensity of light in almost every picture. Thus, there is always one or two light at the background in the night scene which is inspired from one of the videos showed in class to show how framing is important thus the source of light allow one to focus on the subject in the dark in my video.

Lastly, to show the routine of the boy practicing hard with intensity, I showed a repetition of the scene where training at the void deck to depict the determination he had to train hard to eventually get the championship in the taekwondo competition.

Feedbacks and things to improve on:
The character makes the audience like him, able to portray the positive note in the video.

Repetition does show that the main character trains very hard.

Improvement mostly on the audio- better to make use of variations such that it does not seem to be intense all the way, by possibly playing with the volume and add more sound effects instead of using only one audio.

All in all, i feel that it was a fun process and i am glad that i am able to make use of what i learnt in class in this video! 🙂