Conceptualisation

• child grew up in an environment where emanating sound is forbidden; parents teach child to feign being mute to fit in and as protection
• child grows up and realises the beauty of her own voice; spends time alone to relish in the freedom of singing
• gets caught one day by neighbours as a “vocal”
• dad sacrifices himself in place; turns out the child inherited her vocal abilities from her dad

• society signs and lives in peace and tranquillity
• protagonist’s hearing “kit” breaks down one day and starts to hear distant wailing, gunfires, and explosion
• follows this sound and realises that bulk of sound comes from outside the city walls
• massacre going on outside the walls, govt hiding this

Execution

The film starts off with the protagonist introducing herself by using sign language. Here, the audience would have assumed that the protagonist is mute or would have an inkling of an unusual/dytopian setting. This was further emphasised with the non-diegetic soundtrack playing in the background.

The reason for picking the complimentary colours, orange and blue, was for its high contrast and symbolism. The dark shades of blue represent the oppression and uniformity of the mute community while orange represented the expression and energy.

Soundscape:

Initially, I wanted to narrate the storyline as I was afraid that the illustrations could not convey the storyline well enough. However, after consulting serena, she made a valid point on how the storytelling could be better executed if there was a lack of narration so as submerge the audience in the dytopian world of verbal silence. Thus, I relied more on text to tell the story which was again another folly (expounded further in Final post).

The sounds used in the film were royalty free clips I sourced from the web, mainly youtube.

Backtrack: The first track sounds ephemeral and lighthearted so as to induce a rather peaceful and calm emotion in the audience. The use of asynchronous and non-diegetic sounds is often employed in montages that use slice-of-life storytelling. Juxtaposed against the lack of a backtrack and sole reliance on diegetic sounds later, this creates acute tension in the incident, leading up to the climax.

Soundtrack: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFWLe9_R2Fc&t=988s

Thought-process & Planning

When I first drew “broccoli” as my assigned object, I was pretty bewildered as I could not think of any subversion of the top of my head. After inspecting the brief, it occurred to me that I could manipulate the texture and form of broccoli and subvert it into trees or as a landscape for the natural environment.

I started to brainstorm on concepts and looked into creating images similar to that of Tatsuya Tanaka, in which he warps reality by shrinking human figures while highlighting the features of everyday common items. Below are some examples of his work.

However, I didn’t proceed with this concept as this application of visual subversion seemed to lack depth or thought. Thus, I decided to look up socio-political references to broccoli in an attempt to brainstorm for more ideas. Thankfully, I ended up at Urban Dictionary and had pleasantly arrived at this discovery.

At this point, I was certain that this direction bore potential since it was subversion on a visual and figurative scale.

Since both broccoli and weed are consumed in similar fashions, it would be interesting to draw parallels between the 2 processes and to reflect them accordingly. The following pictures document my planning process. Images are screenshots of works on Pinterest.

Execution

The execution of component 1 was pretty seamless given how straight-forward the brief is.

Now, moving on to component 2. As seen in my planning process above, I wanted to capture the use of marijuana in its stereotypical fashion; being abused by a teenager. Thus I constructed this image that best conveys that in which porn is playing in the background, and the weed is laid on top of the book, The Catcher in the Rye (the hallmark of teenage angst). 

However, I thought back about the class exercises that we did, where we had to decipher the relationship between the text and image; anchorage and relay. And I realised that this direction that exemplified teenage angst, would not grant me space to develop my concept in component 3. Thus, I decided to go back to the drawing board to think of other developments for marijuana.

I recalled watching some documentaries on the use of marijuana as a medicinal treatment for people suffering from anxiety or depression and thought that exploring the health benefits of marijuana could give me some ideas. After researching for a bit, I found out that marijuana “appears to help the body clear out the toxic accumulations…of amyloid beta”. The build-up of  amyloid beta is said to lead to Alzheimer’s Disease. (online article: https://www.sciencealert.com/marijuana-compound-thc-removes-toxic-alzheimer-protein-from-brain)

At this point, I knew that this direction was worth exploring as I could play on the paradox and irony of the perception of health for the elderly.

While editing the poster for Component 3, I felt that I could have gone with a more lighthearted treatment and tone so as to further tinker with the paradoxical relationship between weed and broccoli. The image below is an example of a lighthearted poster, conveying the notion of health at an elderly age, by Dean Bradshaw. However, my shots were taken in a manner that conveys sombre and solemn emotions. Thus, I decided to emulate typical hospital health posters instead.

Just some behind the scenes shots. This is Melissa Mak, the friend whose grandma I borrowed (haha lol). We were trying out different angles as her grandma didn’t know how light the lighter.

This was us teaching her how to light the lighter.

And her struggling. So cute.

Some estranged thoughts: This grandma was really suffering from dementia and while it was pretty comical to have to explain my plans periodically to her, it was also pretty pitiful. Despite having done this project, I still do not believe that smoking marijuana can directly alleviate people suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease as many of the research papers published acknowledge that their findings and derivations are still inconclusive. But of course, I still hope that medicinal marijuana could be legalised in Singapore as a relaxant. This would definitely be helpful in navigating through one’s anxiety amidst an episode of memory loss.