Foundation 4D: Interactive Storytelling (Proposal)

SUFFOCATING SILENCE

DONE BY: TEO JUN MING, YUEN JIA JUN & LUNG NOK WAN

PLOT

The installation follows the story of a little girl name Gwen. Gwen was born without a father and was raised solely by her mother, Jasmine. And when she was 12 years old, her mother re-married to Kevin and both of them moved in with him. Kevin is semi-alcoholic and has violent tendencies and these are shown through his abusive actions towards both Gwen and Jasmine. At the age of 13 years old, her mother passed away due to sickness, leaving Gwen with Kevin became depressed and became more aggressive towards Gwen. He became bipolar and was unpredictable in his beatings and scoldings. He even threatened Gwen that if she tells anyone, he will beat her… Gwen was afraid to seek help, she had no one of authority to help her. Gwen is lonely and helpless, she became a victim, a victim of child abuse… After several months of abuse, Gwen had enough as she plans an escape, an escape out of this nightmare.

PRESENTATION STYLE

The interactive installation follows the experience of a victim of child abuse. Audience put themselves in the perspective of the child and follows her story. The installation will be placed in a dark room. In the dark room, the fort is lit up, hence symbolizing a place of comfort and warmth in the midst of darkness.

Sequence of event:

Projector scene –> Tunnel leading to main fort –> Main fort

Emotions to evoke:

Fear
Trauma
Sympathy
Helplessness
Loneliness

Projector Scene:

At the entrance, the audience will be shown a clip of a portrait shot of Gwen and Kevin through the projector. In the clip, Kevin is constantly abusing Gwen both verbally and physically and also showing’s Gwen’s emotions as she undergoes the abuse. The clip will be played in loop and will be in black and white and in slow motion. Providing audience a preview of what is the installation about.

E.g.

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/chbjc-XDKLw/hqdefault.jpg

E.g. Film for Greg from “Me and Earl and the Dying girl”

Tunnel leading to fort:

The tunnel helps to provide a sense of time and help us to sequence the experience as a whole from happy to sad – the unfolding of the child’s life and story. (A brief background of her life)

The audience will first enter the tunnel that leads to the main fort.
As the audience enters the fort, they enter the personal space of Gwen.
In the tunnel, the first thing the audience will see is the pictures of Gwen and her mother, Jasmine. (To establish the understanding that Gwen is raised by a single parent, Jasmine)
Single pages of journal will be placed to provide a narration to her story. (The story should flow from a happy mood to a sad mood)
Next thing the audience will see picture of Gwen, Jasmine and Kevin together. (Establish that Gwen and Jasmine moved in with Kevin)
Voices of Kevin’s violent actions and quarrels with Jasmine will be heard. (Bring in Kevin’s violent tendencies)
The audience will then see a black and white picture of Jasmine within a frame with white lilies. / The audience will see a the same picture of Gwen and Jasmine from point 3. However, in the picture, Jasmine’s face is faded and the picture is black and white. (Jasmine passed away)

Main fort:

In the main fort, audience will interact with various objects belonging to Gwen, allowing the audience to empathize with her situation and slowly piece her runaway story together.

Torn family picture of Gwen and Kevin suggesting the dislike she has to Kevin.
Teddy bear with slashes at the back. (A way for Gwen to build up her buildup frustration)
Mp3 player with ear piece (Emphasis on her loneliness, and her way of escape from Kevin’s violent tendencies)
Picture Journal of stickmans depicting the violence at home (Inability of her to put her experience in words)
Sounds of Kevin abusing her can be heard from outside. (To show the trauma she’s facing)
Camcorder story telling of her situation. Similar to using journal. (Further emphasis of loneliness and helplessness). Reference from lonelygirl15.
Changing the perception of a warm and comforting place to a depressing place (Slight Plot Twist) → Evoke sympathy towards Gwen.
Journal entries to document her runaway plan and also her daily abuse.
Vlogs of Gwen talking about her daily abuse through the camcorder → Create an intimacy between Gwen and the audience → Loneliness and helplessness felt by Gwen. The vlogs will also document her runaway plan.
The last vlog of Gwen’s, she revealed her anger and ended off with “I had enough!”.
As the audience leaves and exits the room with the question behind their heads

LOGISTICS

Objects for Projector:

Black and white projection of Kevin abusing Gwen
Black and white projection of Gwen taking the abuse
Projector
Music (The big ship by Brian Eno)

Objects in Tunnel/Fort:

Photographs: Kevin’s face scribbled away
Photoframe: picture of passing of mother
Torn pages of journal: for narration of story
White lilies: symbolises death
Picture Journal: stickman doodles illustrating how Kevin abuse her
Teddy Bear: 1 side in good condition, the other all cut up
Mp3 player with earpiece
Camcorder
Portable Speaker
Lamp: light up the fort
Colour Filter: to be placed at the front of the lamp
Pillows: create a sense of comfort

Room:

Fairy lights: wrapped around the fort
Cardboard boxes: fort/tunnel building
Trash bags: block out light from windows
Projector: vlogs projection
Clothing Pegs, Bedsheets, Chairs, Pins: fort building
Portable Speaker
Trashbags: Cover windows
LOCATION
- Dark Room
- Art 02-23

LAYOUT

PICTURE REFERENCES

https://paulhermes.files.wordpress.com/2016/02/blanket-fort.jpg

http://ak1.picdn.net/shutterstock/videos/14535001/thumb/1.jpg

https://www.dreamstime.com/stock-images-child-s-drawing-abuse-image5771254

https://14171-presscdn-0-65-pagely.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/irish-bear-before.jpg

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/51228514488580457/

ARTIST REFERENCE

Lonelygirl15 – The main character in the vlog series started vlogging in her bedroom about her personal life, her best friend, Daniel and her conflicts with her parents. Eventually revealed that Bree was a member of a secretive religion, recognized as the fictional Hymn of One. Her vlogs also revealed that the Hymn of One is a powerful society who want the Trait positive blood of young girls like Bree, propelled them further into a journey of a dark adventure.

How we tie back closely to our project – whereby the child abuse victim, Jane, started vlogging as well. Day by day slowly revealing her misery life of being a child abuse victim. Her vlogs are mostly on accounts of her unable to reach out to anyone for help.

ReMoved – Follows the emotional story through the eyes of a young girl taken from her home and placed into foster care.

“Trapped in the misery of my life,

Lost in the sorrow of my soul,

Unable to see the light.”

Other reference:

RESEARCH

Child Abuse:

Child Abuse can be physical, emotional, verbal, or sexual.
Children who are abused are often afraid to complain because they are fearful that they will be blamed or that no one will believe them.

Some Reasons for Child Abuse:

Young, single non-biological parents.
Family disorganization, dissolution, and violence, including intimate partner violence.
Poverty and other socioeconomic disadvantages, such as unemployment.
Parental stress and distress, including depression or other mental health conditions.

Child Abuse Killings:

Children going through adolescence need the support of parents, who must give them room to grow and help them confront tough issues. Those who commit parricide have parents who have not been available to help them.
One reason why child abuse killing happened is due to the severely abused child who is pushed beyond his or her limits.
Analysis revealed that the six adolescents who fit the profile of the severely abused child had approached life fairly passively until the homicide.
They kill only when they feel that no one is there to help them.
The youths killed a parent or parents in response to a perception of being trapped.

Child Abuse Run Away:

https://www.1800runaway.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Longitudinal-study.png

Accounts of Child Abuse:

“I’d get thrown against a wall and she would hit and kick me.” (https://www.nspcc.org.uk/what-we-do/childrens-stories-about-abuse/petes-story/)
Abused by personal helper (Personal Account)

– Got hit on the head with severe items phone, cane, belt

– Blasted water straight to the face.

– Caned everywhere

– Did not want to tell his parents as in fear of getting more physical abuse by the helper. (being threatened)

NSPCC: Stories from survivors of child abuse

Fort:

Provides refuge from the outside world
Providing the child his personal space
Promotes imagination and creativity
Small space provides a sense of comfort and security

(https://littlebinsforlittlehands.com/importance-kids-fort-building/)

(https://blog.kinstantly.com/kids-forts/

Assignment 2: Memories and Goodbyes

Memories & Goodbyes

Done by: Jing Yi, Jia Ying and Jun Ming

Brief Description: A piece of memory shared between a boy and a girl.

Plot: A boy falls in love with a girl. Their relationship developed through various pieces of shared memories. However, at the peak of their relationship, the boy has to leave the girl as he travels overseas. Although the boy left the girl, the girl still anticipates for his return. As time passes, the girl eventually moved on with her life and forgot about the boy. One day, the girl received a post paid letter from the boy – a letter of memories and sadness.

Genre: Romance, Drama, Coming of Age

The Process:

Initially, we had a different idea to our story and had already completed Task 1 for this assignment. However, while editing for Task 2 we discovered that we had a lot of missing visual parts for our story and our stories were not flowing well.

Some of the problems we faced initially were the undecided story plots and unclear story boards. Therefore, after our consultation, we re-plot our story and make sure we confirm all the camera shots and angles we are going to use in our story boards so that we will not face the same problems we had previously.

After adding in the missing parts, our story connects better.

Visuals:

Colour: Warm colours were used to represent the happy memories while dull colours were used to represent sad memories. The different colouring of the images can be seen in order as it follows the mood of the story plot. To show that some of the images are memories of the past, I purposely edited these images by adding vignette and highlights to show a dreamy setting/ memories.

Story: Present –> Past –> Past –> Present

Mood: Neutral (Acceptance) –> Happy –> Sad –> Neutral (Acceptance/ Closure)

Colour: Neutral –> Warm –> Dull –> Neutral

Camera Shots Technique:

Similar Shots – The use of similar shots help us to convey the idea of memories. By using similar shots with different costumes and actions it establishes the idea that time has pass which is one of the element of our story.

Wide angle to Closed up shots: Wide angle shots show spaces especially when only 1 or 2 characters are in the frame. The spaces can create the feeling of anticipation and loneliness. Anticipation can be seen scenes when they are meeting each other and loneliness can be seen when the girl is reading the letter the boy left for her after he left.

As mentioned previously we used a lot of closed up shots to create the intimacy between the audience and character. Closed up shots also allow the character to do the story telling which creates more emphasis in emotions.

Black Screen – Black screens were used to help me convey the passing of time as they acted as gaps between certain time periods. By using black screens with sound, it creates a moments of suspense for the audiences.

References:

For this short photo-film, I am going to set it in a very melancholic and emotional style. Therefore, I decided to emulate the style of Spike Jonze in his film, Her (2013).

The film Her is a romantic movie that plays with memories and emotions. In the film, Spike Jonze uses a lot of closed up shots to express a sense of loneliness. Through the closed up shots, it allows us to feel really intimate to the character and allows us to feel what the character is going through. Besides, because most parts of the film is about the main character.

Sounds:

Mood music – As mentioned, I wanted to create an emotional and melancholic feel to the film. To create the mood, I used 2 different music pieces to help me. The first piece is played at the start and at the end. It is a neutral piece of music and helps me to connect time periods together. The second piece is more solemn and it is played when the girl received the letter before the boy left her. Although the both pieces are used for different occasions, n overall both pieces brings a very emotional and melancholic feel.

Sound effects – I tried to experiment with some non-diegetic sound effects to make it more creative in a sense. For instance the sound effect of wind chimes at 00:58 to create the feeling of peacefulness and pleasant memories, the sound effect of increasing heartbeats at 02:01 to create the nervousness and anxiety of the Character when reading the letter and the sound effect of airplane flying across to further enforce the idea of the boy leaving and travelling overseas.

Voice Over/Narration – After editing everything, I discovered that the ending part to show what happened to the boy wasn’t made clear enough. Although there was a few shots of the letters, the idea was still not strong. Hence I decided to do a voice over, a narration of the letter. The narration of the letter is spans across the last part which provides a closure to the film. The narration begins at 03.32 of the film.

Silence – Humans are not used to silence, silence can be used in an interesting way for instance to create certain tensions. In some of the scenes, I intentionally muted all the background sounds and only emphasized one sound to create the tension. For instance the scenes between 01:30 to 02:10, I did add in any environmental sound or any music. This is done so to create a tension and anticipation of the climax (Girl receiving the letters).

Reflection:

I was really excited to do this assignment because I get to experiment with a new way of making film. It was really rewarding for me personally as I love film as this assignment allows me to have a deeper understanding on how visual compositions and sounds can play such a huge emphasis on the whole story telling in a film. Most importantly I was really happy because this assignment was a good refresher for my video and sound editing skills as I get to practice them before it turns rusty.