For this micro-project, my alter ego is Vivy Yusof. She is a Malyasian entrepreneur and the co-founder of FashionValet and The dUCk Group.
She blogs and vlogs. She’s interested in fashion and her likes to post about her family and business which shows how much she loves them.
Why I chose to be her? Because I have been watching her videos and keeping in track with what she up to. And she is someone I aspire to be (maybe not too cause I am not as rich as her).
All her vlogs has no effects at all, but she uses hashtags and text with a few cut and edit scene. She uses lots of hand gestures and folding of her tudung/hijab. She speaks fluent english because she studied Law in London. And her Malaysia Ringgit shows where she came from.
So in this 1 minute video, I picked up some of the items mention in her vlog.
LV bag
Make-up bag
Sunglasses
Malaysia Ringgit
Iphone
Since I don’t have an office, I switched my location to my house, which is similar to her other vlogs that has this family frame in the background.
How can the video selfie be used to alter identity?
To me, video selfie shows what is needed to be shown and it conceal all the other stuff. So I needed to portray someone who’s likes luxury stuff and is in her comfort zone. So I used a LV bag, which is not mine and I said that is mine (so its like lying), to show luxury and I was in my pyjamas pants, that couldn’t be seen in this video.
How might video be used to conceal identity?
Video can be used to fake oneself, like the way we speaks and our body language can be changed to fit our alter ego. For me, it was difficult to use her tone of voice as she always speaks to the camera and he is used to it, but for me, it is a no no.
How do the objects that surround you contribute to your sense of identity?
Objects around me are able to give hints to the audience about who am I. As a vlogger, I think that objects around them are plays an important role in portraying themselves. Example in my alter ego’s background, she is in her office which shows that she has her own business and her item she carry shows that she is a mum and she’s Malaysian. For my video, the background has family frame to show that family is important to me.
Hello! So previously my teammates (Bala, Syadza & Ying Hui) and I proposed a lesbian love story (image below).
However during our consultation with Ruyi, she said that there were too many things going on in the story, such as Sarah went missing and Denise found out that Sarah died because of an illness. So she suggested that we just focus on a lesbian love story. And one of the reference is a movie titled, ‘Blue is the warmest colour’.
Background story of Blue is the warmest colour
Adèle is a high school student who is beginning to explore herself as a woman. She dates men but finds no satisfaction with them sexually, and is rejected by a female friend who she does desire. She dreams of something more. She meets Emma who is a free spirited girl whom Adèle’s friends reject due to her sexuality, and by association most begin to reject Adèle. Her relationship with Emma grows into more than just friends as she is the only person with whom she can express herself openly. Together, Adèle and Emma explore social acceptance, sexuality, and the emotional spectrum of their maturing relationship.
L1 201
Title of our project because Sarah’s (main character) locker is L1 201.
With the reference from ‘Blue is the warmest colour’, we created a similar storyline to it. However we change the some parts of the movie to fit into a junior collage context.
Character development of Sarah & DeniseStory development
Platform:Blog > Video > Locker
Blog – https://sarahslittlesecrett.tumblr.com
Password: 123
Sarah’s blog has a password to show that she is an introvert that keep her personal stories private. And this blog is something personal to her. In her blog, she will post short stories about her relationship with Denise. One of the post is:
We had a really bad fight today. She told me to relax when I told her that we should finish a tutorial before we go out. She told me I’m too uptight, and I think she’s too lax. We could’ve just argued along the lines of me being too uptight - which to be honest, is true to an extent - I can be pretty uptight - but of course she had to bring up the whole keeping us a secret thing. She doesn’t get how everyone can’t be like her dad - he gives her control over a lot of her life because he feels so bad about her mom passing away. My parents would flip, not just because she’s a girl, but because she’d be a distraction on top of it.
Through this blog, it gives the audience a rough idea about what our story is.
Previously, my teammates and I wanted to have 2 blogs; one for Sarah and the other is for Denise. And through 2 different blogs, we can see the differences in both characters. But we decided to cancel out Denise’s blog, as we wanted to show the story from Sarah’s perspective.
Video and Pictures
Character: Ying Hui as Sarah. Bala as Denise.
Voice narration is Sarah, to show her perspective towards her love to Denise. And the narration is Sarah’s last letter to Denise.
In the video, it only shows the good scenes of both Sarah and Denise being together. We only showed the good scenes or memories of them, it’s because when a person remembers a relationship, she will tend to remember the good bits. That’s what Bala says.
The pictures and video play similar roles. Both of it contains the good memories of their relationship.
Why we choose to project the video at the pillar?
Initial Idea
Initially, our main idea was to project the video on the wall. However it doesn’t have any significant of projecting it at the wall, according to the original idea.
Experimenting the projection of video
So Ying Hui suggested a few places, such projecting it in the locker, opposite the locker, on the floor and more. So we tried and we felt that projecting it at the pillar was the best option. Firstly, it’s like a direction to go to the locker. Secondly, it gives an interesting shape – concave. Lastly, it shows that the 2 characters are splitting ways when the audience stands at the side.
After we confirm on where to project the video, we faced another challenge. When we placed the pictures on the video, it did not turned out like what we expected.
The video couldn’t be seen clearly when it is projected on the pictures. Hence, we kept trying and change the position of the pictures and decided to place the image outside of the video frame.
Process image
Locker
Sarah’s locker
Sarah’s locker is divided into 2 parts: Her belongings and gifts.
Under her belongings, there will be sketchbooks, watercolour palette, brushes, textbooks e.g. math, english etc and pictures. This is to give the audience a hint of Sarah’s characteristic as she is neat, studious, smart and artistic.
Under the gifts, there are Jar of love letters, a box which contains their memories together, museum pamphlet and sketchbook with Denise portrait. On the page with Denise portrait, there’s a dried rose to represent love.
User Experience
Feedback
Here are some feedbacks I gathered from my classmates:
How can the lesbian love story link back to the society?
What is the message of this story?
Honestly my teammates and I did not thought through about how this story can being linked back to the society, or how can this installation can affect the audience through the message that my group wants to bring across. As we too focus on how to execute this lesbian love story. The message of this story is Love is fleeting. But it was a bit unsuccessful in bringing the message across to the audience.
Where is the letter?
In the proposal , my group mention that there will be a letter in the locker. The letter is Sarah’s last letter to Denise. However after discussing among ourselves, we did some changes to the story and decided to have the letter narrate in the video. Hence this is the reason why there is no letter in the locker.
Lesbian is forbidden in my religious. Why did I choose to do a lesbian love story with my group?
I get this question a lot from my classmate. So here how it goes:
At first, my group wanted to do on a love story but we were a group of girls. Hence Bala suggested a lesbian love story. At first I was 50-50 about doing a lesbian story because it is against mine and Syadza’s religion. However I knew that I was going to be the backstage person when doing this, and at that point we could not think of another story as Bala wanted to use locker as our installation space. Hence, it is like having a space and thinking how to fit a story into the space which was not a good idea, because it constraint us and we could not explore other story, platform and space.
Why is Denise not an indian name cause the character played by Bala? Name of character and the visual of character does not suits each other.
My group did not pay much attention to the little detail, as what one of my classmate mention above. But we had a reason behind the choice of character’s name, as we wanted the character’s name to portray their background and characteristic. So Denise is someone who is dominant, aggressive and have the mindset that ‘You only live once’. And her characteristic is based on her childhood, as her mom died when she was young. Sarah is someone who is introvert, shy and gentle. With her name, it shows that she comes from a high standard family where her parents demand a lot of her since she was young, such as high education.
About a girl being transferred to a new school. In the new school, there were no humans in it, except her. Everyone is in an animal face. She feels secure and anxious as she is different from others.
When she first entered the class, there was only an empty chair beside the fox. She feels scared and awkward as normally fox are sly and they have their mysterious side in them. But eventually, the fox was friendly and nice to her.
During lunch, fox offered her a piece of meat. She was not quite sure whether she should try it or not. So she accepted it and ate it. With the feeling of weirdness going in her stomach, she realise she turned into…
“… one of them.”
Feedback
In a short film, I was able to bring out genre to the audience
Good use of colours – Blue fits the setting
There are lines on the video – to remove it, save video as interlaced
Why I did not put in footstep when the girl is walking along the hallway? I wanted to bring out the mood by using the background movie and focus on the fox who was spying the girl.
Can’t* wait for the outcome of it
Reflection
I was relieved and glad that the audience understood the storyline of my film and the genre. As I was not a fan of horror & mystery movies. Another reason was when I showed my sister (she is a huge fan of horror movies) my draft 2, she laughed after the ending. That was not what I wanted my audience to react towards my film. Hence she give me her suggestion to remove the 4 people at the ending and change the text, as both of it are contradict against each other, which simplified the overall story.
My group mates were my inspirations too. In the beginning (my draft 1), I was stuck as I did not have much research and understanding about horror film. Hence by looking at their processes, I understand a bit of how they uses sound effect and colours to show the horror and mysterious.
What I wish to improve on is definitely the experimenting and exploring of sound like how some of my classmates did.
Here are just what I observe and my interpretations in each movie:
Pan’s Labyrinth
It uses different colour scheme to differentiate the scenes
Daylight – abit gloomy
Why most of the scene are blue? Blue represents cold and isolation
Why there is a scene where there is orange? Exotic – where the character its different from human and its in her own world
Orange and blue – is it because its contrast with each other? Conflict between the day and night – real life and fantasy
The strangers Part 2: Breathless
Does not use the literal sound of the animal.
ET
Screenshot of ET trailer
use of blue and purple – to represent fantasy
orange/yellow – daylight
Silhouette – background light & shows the figure
Alice In wonderland – a good example of colour scheme
Real world – pastle blue, light colours to show fairytale and green as the contrast colours so that It wont look flat
Got into a hole – dark with a shades of orange
Sound when the man is walking too – to show his personality/characteristic
Red queen – which explains her setting to be mostly red, her soldier are in shades if red too
Red vs white
Sound effects used – very fantasy
Star Wars: The force awakens
A pinch of sound
When showing the bad character – the sound becomes lower
The background music – fantasy
Lighting and the music syncronize each other – Rain with lighting, did not show the rain sound
There is narration on a blank screen
Maleficent
blue/purple effect
Light from the back – giving shillotte to the character – introducing the character
Light on the character – half side
Sound transition from 1 scene to another with the THUM effect
Shows the eye – slowing revealing her whole face
Thummm then silent, THUMMM louder abit, then THUMMMMMMMMM loudest – same scene different angle
Only her narrations with blank image – to emphasis what she is saying
Reveling sound effect
Sound of the bird
Sound effect between the conflict and narration – like it comes down to silent and the narrations speaks
Colours
Filmmaker David Fincher uses color to create emotion.
Complimentary colour – Opposite colours represent conflict both inside and out
Monochromatic colours – to convey rigid worldview of unbalanced characters. – character are all taking in cafe
Discordant colours – draws attention to out-of-place elements to build anticipation
Colors can
Elicit psychological reactions with the audience
Draw focus to significant details
Set the tone of the movie
Represent character traits and more
Show changes in the story
source: https://www.studiobinder.com/blog/how-to-use-color-in-film-50-examples-of-movie-color-palettes/Test try of editing the images
Before I start editing the images, I really thought deeply on the colours that I want to insert as I wanted to show the contrast of reality and fantasy. Initially, I wanted to make the daylight more yellowish to show the youth of the girl. However, it looks very vintage and old. Hence I decide to keep the natural light for the daylight.
Sound
Sound artist reference – Ben Burtt
I was amazed by how he used the traditional method to create sound. Even a bear sound can be used for a character’s voice. He also used human sound to create character voice by mixing the humans voices (I think this was use in Starwars). A lady with a low voice as ET voice. He explore sounds anywhere he can find which inspires me to go out and listen to the sound around me
In Wall-e, it require a whole new world of original sound such as the background, ambience, robot sound, space. There is no dialog, so it emphasis on the little details like the squek sound. Each sound created by Ben Burtt shows the personality of the character. (Note: Control the sound, loudness and hierarchy of the sound and use sound at the right choice, right moment).
He was inspired from history of sound like Disney, musical sound by using props that they have. Previously, sound were made in studio and it has to match with the scene as there were no technology. Wind sound were made by using wind machine. Thunder sheet metal is used to create thunder sound with echo in it. The even combine sound from different items to create a new sound.
Experimentation
So I went and recorded a few sound. However, I recorded it using my phone and I could not find a way to upload the sounds. ):
Screenshot of the sounds I recordedThe snack I ate while recording the sound of eatingI stood by the side of the road to record the traffic
Based on this video, here are by observations & interpretations:
Focus more on the sound of the small details on the moving image
Able hear the table – fork and spoon – dining ambiance with the glass and stainless steel
Magic sound effect
Vibration phone
jingles – elephant wearing the gold crown
background music
taking pictures, beep phone
Silent – to show that everyone is quite surprise, spoon & fork down, stop eating to hear what she is saying
After researching about the colours and sounds, I input whatever I have observed into my video.
The blue and purple colour to represent fantasy and mystery type of setting. Some images are in natural lighting to show that its is reality. This is to differentiate fantasy & reality. I added a few glitch images and texts to show what was the main character is thinking, like her state of mind was not stable at that time. I tried to keep the sound minimalism and play around with the breathing space to create tension. I tend to focus on the little details such as breathing, walking, opening the door and etc.
