Journey from the East to West

Concept:

This tele-stroll is a collaboration between Yue Ling and myself. As Yue Ling lives in the west and I live in the east, this tele-stroll compares and contrast the differences between these 2 sides of Singapore.

 

Process and Development

Ideation:

Possible ideas

• Scavenger hunt
• Adapting the plot of childhood stories like Hansel and Gretel but with a twist
• Hide and seek
• Plot that meets in the middle and we can do reverse timelines
• Meeting at the same place in the end
• Some Sherlock Holmes stuff with one person finding clues and the other person just innocently doing something (juxtapose and incorporate similar actions at the same time)
• Dora the Explorer
• Losing a piece of our project and piecing it back together
• Accidentally swapping our project

 

Possible locations

• Changi Airport – Free WiFi
• NTU – Convenient for both of us
• Our own homes – Juxtapose how differently our homes/neighbourhoods look

 

A storyline that we came up with but scrapped in the end because we decided that synchronising our actions is more important:

Person A and B are hall mates. A forgets to bring an important piece of her work to school but leaves the room unknowingly. (Has to emphasise the importance of it) Maybe she has to leave early to meet someone first before class. B casually says see ya later then proceeds to clean the room or something, then while B is doing that she discovers the missing piece and realises that A has forgotten to take it along with her. While A is on the way to meet her friend at Can 2- 

 

List of actions (indoor/outdoor)

• Eating and receiving apple (indoor)
• Sharing umbrella (cue: rain rain/sun sun go away) (outdoor)
• Show the environment at the same time: feet walking, vehicles passing, trees, sky (outdoor)
• Singing a simple song (indoor/outdoor
• Dancing a simple dance (indoor)
• Debating about questions about psychopath questions  (indoor/outdoor)
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lsGCH23Rfg&t=24s
• Reading some book excerpt/poem (indoor/outdoor)
• Head, shoulder, knees and toes (indoor)
• Pushing each other (indoor/outdoor)
• Meme-ish things (indoor)
• Playing Simon says (indoor/outdoor)
• Play the game where you can’t face where the other person is pointing (outdoor)
• Recite the alphabet backwards (outdoor)
• Pointing towards things at each other’s screens for e.g. A points towards B’s screen and exclaims “oh my look at that bird!” and then person A pans to a bird (outdoor)
• Cooking show where one of us is at the supermarket getting the ingredients then the other at home putting ingredients and can pass the ingredient directly from the supermarket to the person in the kitchen (outdoor)
• We each make a hot drink and cheers each other (indoor)
• Make a kite (outdoor)
• Make origami then we put in the center together (indoor/outdoor)
• Going out for a picnic, so we have both indoor scenes for preparing some food stuff, then going outdoors where we can do the other random actions! (sitting on the bench and eating) , craftwork can be making a small basket of some sort, can do either food/craftwork (indoor/outdoor)
• Sit on sofa and rest

 

Execution:

Timeline

• Saturday night (20/01): Finalise actions (in which order)  and plan out route (indoor and outdoor scenes)
• Sunday morning (21/01): Settle logistics (if any)
• Sunday afternoon (21/01): Execution!

 

Logistics

• Apple
• Paper plane
• Drink
• Keys

 

Game Plan

Location: Home (indoors) → Outdoors

Possible concept: Comparing and contrasting the east and west (since you live in the west and I live in the east!)

 

In order:

• Chilling on sofa (selfie cam) → conversation (selfie cam)

A: Hmmm… such a boring Sunday. There’s nothing to do.

B: Yea ugh…

A: We play scissors paper stone, whoever loses decides what to do. [throw out same thing for 1st 2 rounds, last round different]

B: Ok!

B: What I lost!! *sighs*… Actually, don’t you live in the East/West? I live in the *insert opposite side*! We can show each other around our neighbourhoods!

A: Oh that sounds cool! Ok maybe we should go prepare to go outside.

B: Sounds good, let’s go.

[1min]

 

• Head to kitchen → Open fridge – place in the middle of screen (main cam)

A: What you have no fruits at home?!  No apple ah?

B: Yea siah
A: Here you go! [Grab an apple from fridge (main cam) → pass apple (selfie cam)]

B: Yay!

[1min]

 

• Pour water into cup (main cam) → cheers (selfie cam) and (pretend to) drink -> put the cup aside and head to gate

[2 min]

 

• Grab umbrella → Grab keys (can put keys somewhere near cups) → unlock door (main cam) → Lock door and walk to the lift (main cam)

[1 min]

 

• Take lift/walk down the stairs (show feet walking) can show pressing level 1→

A/B (whoever reaches first): Are you there yet? Hurry leh.

A/B: Wait la.

[3min]

 

• Stroll around void deck (selfie cam) → show bicycles → show void deck signs eg no soccer – put in middle of screen (main cam)

[3 min]

 

• Walk to open area → Open umbrella and share (selfie cam)

A: Wow it’s really hot today.

B: Didn’t we bring umbrellas?

A: Oh right. *both open umbrellas*

[1min]

 

• Show grass, trees and pigeons (main cam)

[3min]

 

• Pointing towards things at each other’s screens for e.g. A points towards B’s screen and exclaims “oh my look at that bird/tree!” and then person A pans to a bird (main cam)

[1min]

 

• Finding a bench and sitting down (selfie cam) → Each of us fold a paper plane → put to center of screens

A: Hey I know this is random but let’s do origami. *takes out paper*

B: Oh! What a coincidence! *takes out paper*

*Commence origami session*

 

• A takes it off the center to their screen and shift it manually across the screen, then the plane can travel from A’s screen over to B’s screen and B continues it. Insert freestyle sound effects while doing this.

B: Okay I think that’s enough flying for a day.

A: Yea.

*Exaggerated panting*  

• Ending conversation (selfie cam)

A: Actually… East and West got not much of a difference ah.

B: Yeah.

A & B: Oh wells

• Comes full circle – we start with us chilling on the sofa indoors, then now we’re chilling on the bench outdoors
• Important to not reveal too much of where we live

 

NGs

Some outtakes!

 

Challenges

• Synchronising with each other was one of the biggest challenges we faced because we had to take cues from one another in order to know when to switch to the next action.
• As we are holding our phones up with one hand, it was difficult to do some actions with the other hand. For example, we initially planned to pour water into a cup before drinking it, but ended up spilling water everywhere while trying to pour water with one hand. Hence, we settled for a cup already filled with water.
• Our conversation was very stiff and unnatural for the first few times, but it eventually got better!
• I would be lying if I say that I wasn’t self-conscious about doing a live broadcast in public. I was afraid that the people around would judge me but I became less self-conscious after a while. I guess it just takes some time to get used to it!
• Running into unforeseen circumstances. Eg, there was another person in the same lift as I was and the lift journey down took longer than we had anticipated.

 

Reflections

The tele-stroll is actually more difficult to execute than I had imagined since Yue Ling and I had decided on some actions that required rather precise synchronisation. Therefore,the tele-stroll took us a few takes before we finally got one that we were satisfied with! My personal favourite parts are passing the apple, taking the lift and  opening the umbrella. These were the most difficult to nail in my opinion!

Technicalities aside, I was genuinely surprised to see how similar our neighbourhoods looked. It seems like there is indeed not much of a difference between the east and west of Singapore.