January 2019 – A few words, and some works.

January 29, 2019February 14, 2019

Visual Storytelling: Assignment 1- Preproduction process and graphic novel

PETANQUE

” In Pétanque the objective is to score points by having boules closer to the target than your opponent after all boules have been thrown. This is achieved by projecting boules closer to the target, called a cochonnet, or by hitting the opponents’ boules away from the target, while standing inside a circle with both feet on the ground. “

The origins of this sport can be traced back to La Ciotet, Provence, France. Broadly speaking, the name derives from a regional dialect which means to mean ‘feet fixed’ or ‘planted feet’ in reference to the ground.

As we mill about our lives, this sport is relegated to the peripheries of our vision. Perhaps while making our daily commute, we might notice out of the corner of our eye a handful of older citizens playing a very peculiar game on a sandlot. After a briefest moment of piqued interest, our attention is usually stolen away by the coming bus or a social media notification.

There is something oddly charming about the scene of older citizens gathered around each other watching and playing against each other with an elegance, a determination and competitiveness usually associated with younger folk. Framing the scene with the tungsten glow and the high rise of HDB flats and you have something picturesque, maybe a little magical.

I knew that somewhere in there, there was a story to be told.

It was important that this tale would have to take place from the point of view of an outsider. Given the restraint of time, I would not have the luxury of getting to know the players and their relationship to the game intimately. Thus, I currently find it best to tell the story from the perspective of my impression of the Petanque players.

THE RECCE

In preparation for the final work, we were to scout out the location and begin taking photos.

The Petanque court that caught my eye specifically is one that is remarkably close to NTU. About a stone’s throw away from City Harvest Church. (no affiliation)

The photos were all taken with the objects exactly as i found them and with no additional lighting aside from the street lamps.

Metal hoop- players stand in these and throw the boules from within its confines.

The court is locked aside from specific play times: Tuesday and Thursday evenings.

Membership is shockingly affordable. Price is definitely no obstacle to this sport.

Gravel filled bags for the playing area.

I believe, in all things exist a poetry if you look hard enough.

Spectators for this sport can get pretty rowdy.

Whilst taking our photos, it was also to help us visualise how the storyboard/graphic novel will look like as well as the final short film.

Thus begin our foray into the making of graphic novels.

PETANQUE: PROOF OF CONCEPT

Through my fiddling around, I’ve learnt a few things. To say that the composition of each page is crucial would be a huge understatement.

The positioning of textboxes, pacing of text, font choice and gutter spacings are just a few things which affects the viewing and storytelling experience. While I’ve always enjoyed graphic novels, I now understand better how powerful a storytelling tool they can be. With so many tools at the creator’s disposal, one can truly dig deep and craft a specifically tuned reading experience.

January 28, 2019

Visual Storytelling: Week 1 Class Activity

During class this week, our lecturer Don presented us with a set of useful storytelling exercises.

These exercises were tangent on our ability to create narrative based on uncertain variables. This is a valuable skill to hone as a successful story contains key structural elements. Namely, a start, middle and end. Broadly speaking, the middle should contain a conflict followed by a resolution of the conflict by the end. These exercises serve to sharpen our ability to recognise these potential patterns amidst a seemingly incoherent mess and rearrange them to achieve narrative coherence.

Exercise 1: Post its

I wrote ‘Camera’ and ‘Nostalgia’ while my partner wrote ‘Rocks’ and ‘Hello’.

We arranged it into a sentence:

“Hello Camera, nostalgia rocks!”

This anthropomorphised character of the camera serves as the subject of this fictive conversation. The speaker informs ‘it’ that the concept of nostalgia is a good thing. Immediately, the association between the idea of cameras which contain social subtextual markers for ‘vintage’ or ‘oldness’ and the concept of nostalgia which is reminiscence about things in the past is apparent.

The conversation between the two concepts is further strengthened by cameras’ ability to figuratively capture images of events/things that have passed. In short, the speaker is “informing the preserver of the past that its function is good.”

There is more to unpack here, but this is sufficient for now. Of all our exercise results, this is likely my favourite one.

Exercise 2: Post its II

I wrote ‘Mordor’ and ‘Walk’. My partner wrote ‘Spilling tea’ and ‘lagoon’.

Arranged, we got Mordor, spilling tea, walk and lagoon.

Storified, we came up with:

“There were so many people in Mordor spilling tea, that when I walked in, I stepped into a lagoon.”

This one has a rather complete arc of a story. There is a setup in the outlining of the situation in Mordor and a resolution to the situation by the character’s unfortunate plight in a herbal scented marsh. Fun.

Exercise 3: Story dice

For this one, we used an app which would randomise an assortment of representational images for us in sequence.

From our throw of the die, my partner and I got ‘Fountain’ , ‘Dress/tooth’, and ‘Trophy’. We both thought that the middle image looked ambiguous, especially when inverted in either direction vertically. In the spirit of the activity, either option would have sufficed and we went for the more evocative option which was the tooth with a string tied around it.

“At the Fountain of Wealth at Suntec City, the God of Wealth demanded a tribute. So, I pulled my tooth out. And instead of money, I got a participation trophy.”

As with the previous exercise, there is a complete arc in this one. A setup, conflict followed by a tragic resolution.

Thoughts:

The art of storytelling is ultimately pattern recognition and applying knowledge of that pattern. While there are numerous cognitive and emotive processes involved beyond just that, pattern recognition is a learnable and practicable skill. While drilling these exercises alone may not win anyone a screenwriting Oscar, they serve to refine key fundamental storytelling skills.

January 28, 2019January 28, 2019

Concepts of Digital Imaging Assignment 1- Bad news

Presentation deck+ high res photos access: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HcvyZe1LdlXd1S1O6o1PsVFMHrYlcXPv

The purpose of this assignment was to capture 6 images that express the human emotions of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust.

IDEATION

Initially I wished for a method in which I might portray the chosen emotion without the usage facial expressions and instead, relying on the mise en scene to elicit the response that I am aiming for.

However, during the execution process I realised that a character who communicates using body language is perceived very close in manner to reading the emotionality of facial expressions.

Hence, I chose to simply forgo that restriction and utilise the full spectrum of the tools available to me in order to convey emotion.

I knew from the get go that I wanted to go beyond each photo communicating emotions in isolation from one another. I needed them to be able to stand on their own as well as reinforce each other narratively when arranged in sequence.

Bearing this in mind, I layered upon and additional challenge. I will only allow myself a single character and space to tell a story. While this proves convenient in terms of practical execution for sure, there is the added storytelling challenge of creating a situation where the character is able to emote organically across all 6 emotions.

Hence moving forward; I had specific criteria that I wished to achieve with this assignment:

Tell a story
Use only one character and location
Communicate the emotion with the entirety of the frame, not just facial expressions.

EXECUTION

From a logistical standpoint, this was a simple shoot to execute. The largest challenge would be the story creation process. The story in which exists a compelling and smooth narrative flow.

What I arrived at was as such:

“A man wakes up to a notification on his phone. What he sees, surprises and maybe even shocks him. He moves to the window to have a smoke as he contemplates the news. It hurts, a hit a nicotine might dampen the sadness. Just then, he thinks someone has spotted him through the window. A jolt of fear runs through him, he is not supposed to be smoking indoors.

He has been spotted. Eventually, there is a knock on the door. He gets up to face the angry guardian and the consequences. Filled with disgust, he takes a seat for a moment. The bad news and now this?

Just then, he spots a framed photo of his family sitting in the corner of his desk. And for a moment, a familiar happiness flutters in his heart in spite of things.”

Within this narrative, there is evocative imagery that serve to convey each individual emotion by means of context of how the character responds to the developing reality around him.

The location would be my hall room, it would justify the character’s fear of the consequences and the consequences themselves of smoking in the room.

The photographer will be myself, and so will the character. I see no need to complicate the shooting process beyond the demands of the story.

The chosen aspect ratio will be 2.35:1 as the final images are intended on evoking a sensation of narrative. This aspect ratio is most commonly utilised in widescreen format films shot and screened on 35mm film.

Image result for drive movie still — Drive- Nicholas Wynding Refn

This film-like quality will be reinforced through the colour grade process wherein I lift the blacks and bring down the highlights. This compresses the range of colour within the image to produce a result that is similar visually to traditional film stock.

There is also an added effect of heightening the drama within each individual frame via means of lighting. The overwhelming majority of the emotions to be captured are negative, hence I chose to light each scene with low-key lighting that serves a psychological effect of associating the image with darker emotions.

Finally, the work is titled ‘Bad News’. Aside from the images themselves, titles of each photo and the title of the series, the narrative within is largely up to the viewer’s interpretation.

I have broadly painted the strokes of this story, however the worst news is always subjective to the individual. Hence, by allowing the viewer to fill in the blanks I create a situation in which the audience might live vicariously through the character.

As such, here is the final work:

Bad News

January 21, 2019

Media Today- Frameless Paintings

A tough conundrum- the current state of media.

In a word, I might describe it as disruptive. That word has both negative and positive connotations.

I have a relative who owns a shop in Sim Lim Tower. For years, his business had sustained itself on repeat and loyal customers. However with the advent of e-commerce, he has found himself competing with giants such as Alibaba and Amazon. Traditional businesses are being threatened by new technologies. The industry is being disrupted. Do I apply this analogy to the state of film today? Partially.

With virtual reality and stereoscopic technology being highly accessible to both consumers and professionals alike, the landscape of filmmaking is undergoing not exactly an upheaval, but what I believe to be a time of introspection and change.

Some believe VR to be a passing FAD akin to 3D a lá early 2000s red and blue disposable goggles. I don’t think so. As a form of media from an audiences’ perceptual standpoint, it is different enough from traditional filmmaking to have legs of it’s own. If I use the analogy of Tennis, it might go like this: Traditional film is like a default game of tennis, one player against another with the goal of hitting the ball to the other side such that the opponent may not hit it back.

Early 3D is like tennis doubles. Extra rackets, extra players. Some dynamics have changed but it’s essentially still tennis.

VR isn’t tennis. It’s volleyball. A pretty different game with a handful of similarities. There is a net, there are two sides of the court and an umpire. The end goal is the fundamentally same, making the ball un returnable from the other side. But it is not tennis. All you had to do was add players and take away their rackets.

I believe it’s the same for VR filmmaking and traditional filmmaking. The vital endgame is good storytelling. However, i think it is important to recognise that they are virtually different mediums from an academic, creative and industry standpoint.

I am firmly married to traditional film, but they also say the key to a successful marriage is to cheat.

Looks like film, smells like film even tastes like film. But is it film?

Here’s my take on the matter:

*rotate 180 degrees before playing video

We got carried away improvising off the 1 minute script and we had lost sunlight and battery charge before we could trim the fat. Please take roughly 03:00- 04:00 as the gist of the work. I apologise for overrunning!

January 21, 2019

Foundation 4D Assignment 4: INTER- 19 Parts

19 Parts of Eugene’s soul

INTRODUCTION

This performative work timed well with the culmination of our semester.

I thought it fitting for an examination of the dynamics of the relationships that we have formed as a class. With the understanding that our class is a microcosm of society at large, what sort of things can we learn if some of its organic dynamics are subverted in a controlled setting?

THE CONCEPT

Human intimacy is driven by reciprocity.

Companionship, mentorship, information, status, sex and resources are proffered with expectation of returns.

Information is power. Power over an individual.

To have power over an individual, is to be intimate with him/her.

To be intimate with an individual, is to have power over him/her.

For this work, I will assume that the currency in play is secrets.

Before proceeding, this line of logic begs the question of: what is a secret?

The definitions may vary from person to person. What might be a secret to one person might be trivial to another. A secret can both be shadowy acts in the haze of the past or current thoughts too difficult to admit.

For the sake of this work, a definition of my own.

A secret is:

Information, relative to or regarding an individual that is withheld from larger society and specific social circles by the individual with the intent on protecting said individual’s ego.

So what is this that I am attempting? It is a few things.

A meditation on the nature of secrets, what they are, can be or are not.
An imperfect subversion of the natural sociological processes of the exchanging of secrets.
Class bonding activity. A morbid one at least.

Why imperfect? Because human relationships are not defined by things unsaid but by what is done and said as well. In the context of this work, I am operating under the assumption that the metric for intimacy may be secrets.

Human intimacy is driven by reciprocity.

Companionship, mentorship, information, status, sex and resources are proffered with expectation of returns. Information is power. Power over an individual. To have power over an individual, is to be intimate with him/her. To be intimate with an individual, is to have power over him/her. For this work, I will assume that the currency in play is secrets.

EXECUTION

The secrets

The confessional

Documentation

The Secrets

Any good art requires a degree of vulnerability, but wholesale exposure can easily be misconstrued as exhibitionism. To be very frank I am trying to find the line between “doing what you know” and “too close for comfort” (if there is indeed such a boundary in art-making).

For each classmate, I have produced 19 secrets by the definition I provided above. Some of them came easier, the act of recalling and scribing each of these cathartic for myself. Although the intent of this was not to be an overwrought therapy session for myself, this byproduct was indeed welcome.

As such, the manner of dispensation:

19 separate video recordings of myself
19 separate secrets
To be played from a viewing device (my macbook)

Each of these recordings will be scripted beforehand to ensure a cohesive viewing experience and would allow myself to personally detach to a certain extent during the delivery.

During the video, I will be unkempt and topless. Whether this will disarm or disturb participants during their own sharing process I do not know. It needs to be said that it was intended to symbolise the baring of my soul externally. I rob myself the means to craft or upkeep my own appearance.

But why this discrepancy between the intimacy of my nakedness and the structure of the script?

The threshold I am attempting to navigate is between vulnerability and consistency. I do not know if I will remain consistent in tone and delivery between participants and secrets if I were to do so personally. Here, I can create a default Eugene, one that will appear to the same to his classmates and be unbiased in all interactions.

The Confessional

This process will take place in a secluded stairwell that I chose for it’s popularity as a surreptitious smoking spot.

Smoking as a social activity can be pretty powerful. Two individuals alone and under the influence of a very mild sedative over repeated activity together can be quite a bond. Secrets and whispers sometimes let slip between puffs. This is why social smoking is known as a considerable tool in one’s social toolkit.

I will be seated in a corner as each participant walks in. They will naturally be diverted the most eye-catching object in the room which is a laptop with a lit screen.

This is what they see:

They will see 19 clips and instructions to record themselves as they choose and watch one clip.

Each participant will watch only one and the video will inform them of their option to stay and confess or leave.

“Now you’ve heard my secret, you have 2 options: tell something of your own or take my secret with you.”

This line is said uniformly for all video clips. The way it was written was to be as neutral as possible, I did not want to artificially compel the participants to share.

Documentation

There will be a camera in the corner positioned in the corner to capture the participants’ reactions to my secrets and to record their own if they so choose.

Upon the culmination of the performative aspect of the piece, I will then disseminate the work in 2 parts:

Clips of my confession edited with the individual participant’s own confession. These clips will be then burnt onto a CD and handed to them personally. These clips will be unmuted, hence they will never be uploaded online to preserve the exchange between myself and the participant.
All secrets with their corresponding confessions will be edited into a compiled sequence. This video will be absent of sound and made available to the general viewing public for consumption.The CDs represent the newfound bond between the participant and myself. They could easily choose to share it’s contents, but whether they do or don’t is a risk I willingly undertook and conversely so did they by sharing with me.

Observations

Of my classmates, 9 out of 19 people managed to participate in the work.

There are a few key things to note about their participation process:

Only 3 out of the 9 shared something that I might truly consider a secret; information that only with very close friends will disclose to one another.
4 shared things that were personal but not yet verging on the territory of secrets.
2 people declined to share and opted to walk away.

However, it must be noted that all 9 people viewed the clips of mine that may not be damaging to my own reputation. In fact, in retrospect those particular clips contain things about myself that leave me bare or vulnerable but would not necessarily cause me to bear social damage (at least to them). This is important.

Whilst each of the 19 clips was recorded with the knowledge that I had poured my figurative soul into each one of them, I realise that ‘secrets’ as they are loosely defined are not a perfect quantifier of emotional intimacy between human beings. Fortunately, we are manifold more complicated beings than that.

In fact, looking at the statistics above hardly tell the full story of the interaction between myself and the brave participants. They do not reveal the gears turning behind their eyes as they watch me confess with rapt attention. They do not reveal the hesitant, tortured silences as they wrestle with confessing themselves.

Am I obliged to? Am I doing something wrong by not sharing back? But it’s my secret right? Eugene volunteered his, I don’t owe him a thing.

Some deliver a response that they feel proportionate to the secret they viewed themselves. In fact for all of them, their respective confessions are all topically related to mine. They speak with measured words, carefully revealing nothing scarcely more than empathy for what they witnessed onscreen.

And a few, bravely share thoughts from the hollows of their heart. Not of misdeeds or sins, but of despair and alienation. I felt these the most. I don’t think even I have the courage to share about those thoughts of mine when they come to me as they do to everyone.

And then those who waver and hesitate. These stand out to me the most. As I view their explanations for not sharing, one might imagine their hearts grinding and gnawing like metal within. These are the aches that tend to persist for a long time, undisturbed and avoided.

Of all the responses, I find these the most achingly human. The unadulterated beauty of struggling and surviving.

Pain is subjective. A mountain to someone might indeed be a molehill to another. A dark act to one might be a utilitarian necessity to another. An injustice to one might be an everyday anguish to another.

What are secrets?

The definition, as I have laid out previously, seems to be malleable. Anything worth keeping close and never letting out is probably one.

What about lies?

Did I lie in each of the 19 confessions? Are some of them truths while the others concocted to cater to filling class roster?

Are they embellishments of a partial truth? Perhaps they were designed in delivery to never reveal more than I was comfortable with.

I make no aspersions on the veracity of my secrets. Much like how such an exchange occurs in real life, the truth often occurs somewhere between blatant deceit and honesty. We know this.

Thus, through the dense vegetation that is human interaction what is true?

Truth is one of the few ideals worth pursuing, but where does the truth of this work lay? While the answer is elusive, I believe an old adage applies itself here: it’s about the journey.

Conclusion/ parting thoughts

This work fails as a social experiment. The variables such as the participants and each unique confession they hear are impossible to calibrate to a baseline. Each participant’s relationship to me differs as well which very likely influenced their responses.

However, this work was never designed to test or evaluate some sort of social metric (although some artworks attempt at that function). I believe this work’s most beautiful aspects are the glimpses past the facades that we put up to protect ourselves and get by in life. To gaze into someone’s eyes as they hesitate, stutter and finally let their walls down is a humbling experience. It is the sort of thing only afforded to the most trustworthy or by the pure of heart, either way it is a tremendous gift.

Perhaps this work has imprecisely hacked the social protocol required for that sort of vulnerability to reveal itself. However, that summoning hardly comes free, I had to expose my belly and neck first as a form of trust paid in advance. For some, maybe that was enough, for others perhaps not. That is fine. The world tends not to be kind to those who trust blindly.

There now exists an ethical responsibility of sharing what I have learned and protecting the participants at the same time.

I attempt to toe this line now:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1m_VYSE7sVonH2Uu71BbnOxncVNktE1Km

The words are absent, but hopefully enough remains for us to learn something.

Thank you Yue Han and my dear classmates. It has been a wonderful start to ADM.