In-class exercise, week 6, by Debbie Ng, Lau Yiwen and I.
This week, we explore the use of narratives in film. Narrative in films appear in a range of different styles, but can be categorized into two main types – First-person and Third-person. We were tasked to use some of these strategies to make a video, either based on our previous exercise, or a whole new story. After having much fun exploring our own story, we decided to continue working on it. We chose to employ the use of Third-person Limited POV and Stream of Consciousness to develop our story.
[0:06 – 0:37] We used Third-person Limited POV as an introduction to our story, to tell the story of the protagonist through an unidentified third-person. This narrator talks about the protagonist’s single-parent family after the mother passes away, and hints about his family’s financial status. The scene also serves to hint that the protagonist is an orderly, neat and responsible person through the tidying up of the table, as well as his love for his family through his handphone wallpaper.
[1:36 – 1:55] We then chose to use Stream of Consciousness to bring out the sad theme in our story, to allow the very quiet father to express his feelings. This method would be effective in portraying his guilt and his helplessness. It also shows how he has no courage to voice it out to his son, no courage to face his family for his lack of responsibility and thus, can only speak silently inside. This further brings out the lack of warmth in this family, like how they are unable to communicate properly and nicely like a family should, which is our idea as a conflict for this entire story.
The entire sequence was then merged into one video, drawing the connections within and improving on the previous rendition of the video available here.