DOOR I SAY HI?
Thought process:
- I want to make this story ‘me’, because I really enjoy social media and content creation.
- How do I create a story with only 6-9 slides?
- How can I tell the story in an impactful way?
- Hm, I want to make it relatable with a splash of my originality to it
- I then got reminded of my neighbour, Poom, and I’s frequent interactions. Her room is between my room and the toilet (which I frequent). As she opens her door when she is inside, I always make look into her room (like an annoying intrusive neighbour), but then by the time she notices me, I would have to stop and backstep to say hello. Thus, our interaction is really just, eye contact, a lot of the times. I got reminded of the beginning, before we got closer. I didn’t know if I should say hi, or if I was overthinking this whole thing. At some point, I thought she was unfriendly because we just never greeted each other during these fleeting interactions. However, after more than a semester, I begin to grow fond of this amusing little interaction. Hence, this story is quite a personal experience for me.
- With that, I aimed to share the internal conflict of mine, and portray an awkward girl deep down.
My take:
- I wanted this to be dramatic, and did so with the help of temporal concepts. First, 1-3 is a linear pace. However, I slowed down time from slide 5-8, in a sense that every micro-expression was close-read and stark. Then, I sped time up in 9 (elaborated more later).
- The time in which I took this was at night, because practically, we are only both in hall at night, and also, to align with my own experience as closely as it can be.
- 1-3:
- I want to show the process of going out of my room, and into the corridor.
- It helps with tension buildup
- This helps with the storyline, as it is part of the core experience that the story is aiming to communicate
- They are on eye-level, to convey a normal and comfortable everyday scenario
- 4-5:
- I needed to capture Poom’s candidness in 4. This meant she is just doing her daily chores without noticing me. The flash enabled me to capture the blurred motion of her hoodie in her hands, showing the directions of her natural movements.
- But in 5, it was crucial for her to look up, as that is the trigger to my inner conflict that will unfold later.
- In 5, her expression was spot on. This was out of my control and I need to thank her for being the best model for this. Her eyes are questioning, almost giving a ‘what are you doing here?’ or ‘what’re you lookin’ at!’ kind of energy.
- I aimed for the two shots to contain the same properties (the shelf, table etc.) and only for her expression to be different. However, it is more zoomed in, in 5, to be more dramatic.
- 5-6:
- The layout is slightly adjusted to have slanted paralleled lines against each other. I wanted to add a ‘VS’ atmosphere. Of course this ‘tension’ is only in my head, because I am a little delusional due to my overthinking (in this story ^u^)
- I took my own picture in 6, from a lower angle to display my socially awkward, and slightly incredulous expression (which just makes me more awkward.)
- 7-9:
- From an almost slow-motion of fist clenching (7-8) to a fast dash (9), the speed up in pace portrays the drama in the whole situation
- In 7, my eyes exert a little more force, and while looking uncertain, I seem to have decided on something. The camera angle has also elevated to eye level again, suggesting a change of mind.
- In 8, my fists clenched, and it is meant to pose a question mark in your mind, as you think: what is she going to do? Punch her?
- But then in 9, you realise, the fist is made to prepare the dash off. You go ‘ah! So that’s what the fist is for’, though no one necessarily clenches their fists before running, it serves as more of a comical effect.
- A consistent perspective is needed. A sudden switch (from first to third person) may be confusing and impede on storytelling.
- Always look at this story with clueless lens to improve the clarity
- Sometimes in critique, comments made are from a belief that there should be a high impact in each square progressively. Whereas for other people, they may lean towards the belief that having a slow progression may add even more drama in the end. So it depends.
- There are many ways to tell stories, i.e. not all stories have to entertain or invoke an emotion. Some of my tutorial mates had really simple stories and it still conveyed the point very clearly and interestingly.
- It is really significant to get critique, because people can always offer a new perspective on my work that I have never thought of.
- Camera angles can make a huge difference in storytelling, which is why it is important to ‘make it make sense’
- I increased the resolution by retaking my neighbour’s shots
- I removed the confusing perspective change in my crit2 submission, from 1 to 2, it is a jump.
- I considered what Kai said about ‘keeping things simple’, and so I made do without all the slanted lines of the layout.
- I also tried improving resolution overall by sending them as files on my telegram saved messages instead of photos.
- I got reminded about content-aware fitting halfway through and increased my efficiency greatly
- I used the direction selection tool a lot when doing slanted angles
- Dropping files after making a rectangle with the ‘rectangle frame tool’ is really a blessing
- Zooming in and out with option and my mouse, has made work easier!!
