Film Narrative

A Nation Divided: Synopsis

We open on a shot of Spooner sitting in her house waiting for Forkie to arrive. She’s looking at pictures of shiny spoons on her phone, having a good time representing her brand. Then Forkie comes over and brings mac n cheese. They have a good time making said mac and cheese. Then all of a sudden… they realize that they use different utensils! A giant rift forms between them as they realise this. They begin to angrily munch on the mac n cheese until Forkie leaves Spooner’s house, dropping her fork onto the table. The rift continues to divide more and more people as this infiltrates a family which results in the family being divorced, and the Spooner’s birthday is ruined by the fork vs spoon divide. Ouch. We see a lot of people at the party choosing sides and ultimately walking away from each other signifying that the fork and spoon divide is tearing apart friendships. A montage breaks out where people are handing out flyers that say YOU’RE ON THE PRONG SIDE (other sayings to be determined), hanging up propaganda posters all around town, wearing fork and spoon shirts, etc. ultimately this rift gets so big and so important to the entire city that there are designated fork and spoon neighborhoods that we see in some sick drone shots. Spooner walks home one day, and sees a picture of Forkie and her hanging out, and we see her getting nostalgic. Poor Spooner, all she wants is her friend back and she sees how all of this got out of control. She suddenly… has a plan. She takes out pens, rulers, paper, and gets to work sketching out a reconciliation gift to win back her friend. Ultimately she comes out with a welded fork-spoon doll thing that looks really weird but should be heartwarming for the audience to see. She sets out to the fork neighborhoods to try and find forkie. As she walks through the fork neighborhood, she’s leered at by Fork Gangs. She sees forkie sitting along on a bench and walks over, extending the reconciliation gift. Forkie sees her efforts, but WHAM! She pelts Spooner with forks. Spooner runs away from the fork neighborhood and goes home, throwing the gift aside and getting ready for battle. The battle has arrived now and we get more sick drone shots of the fight. There’s a lot of people there and it’s looking pretty intense. Forkie and Spooner are really going at it with their utensils when all of a sudden, a small child walks out of a house holding a bowl of mac n cheese and a spork. A spork? Forkie and Spooner look at each other, completely baffled. Everyone freezes mid-battle. The child slowly lifts their spork into the mac n cheese, out, and then into their mouth. Everyone’s frozen watching this revolutionary event. It’s pretty amazing. Cut to a party where people are all mingling together, a SPORK FOREVER! Banner is flying out above everyone’s head to show that the conflict is resolved. There are only sporks here and there’s a ton of food that people are eating with sporks. We see forkie and spooner eating some mac n cheese with a spork, along with the picture of them together and the reconciliation gift side by side. The end.

Below are screenshots from my film.

 

Narrative Design Project

My design project was based off of my character James in my flash fiction story. I decided to use James’s attributes of being a homebody, agile, and a garden lover to represent his character. I also displayed James’s vanity as he cares about his glove and is materialistic by displaying him looking over at M’Lady Inc. My project and artist statement are as follows:

Fenced

My flash fiction story was based around a character named James who was very concerned with his looks. He found himself missing a glove one day and went out of his way to find it, only to discover that the glove was in the neighborhood witch’s backyard! He then snuck into her backyard garden and retrieved his glove. The witch caught him, and cursed him while he was walking back home.

I decided to trace a bee, sloth, and a frog to represent James. I felt like a bee represented James’s ability to flit from place to place within the story, as well as translating the garden themes. The sloth displayed how James is a little slow and how he’s a homebody, and the frog illuminates his agility when he jumps the fence to the witch’s backyard. To combine these elements from the animals I chose, I imported the photos that I wanted to use of the animals into Adobe Illustrator and laid them on top of each other. I then traced only the parts that I wanted to showcase with my creature, then filled them and added details. I chose the background and clothes that the character wears because I imagined James as a classy man who cares about his appearance. I included the fence to represent the fence that James had to hop over into the witch’s house, but put the “M’lady Inc” building over on the other side instead to show that he was trying to maintain and achieve getting his glove back.

 

Narrative Flash Fiction

My flash fiction was influenced by the book I was reading for my English III Honors class, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. My story is about a man who finds himself in a witch’s yard and is cursed to turn into a sunflower.

James, Planted

James didn’t know what to anticipate when the witch cursed him, but he didn’t expect it to be like this.

He had lost his favorite red glove to the wind earlier that day and tracked it down to the witch’s backyard. The witch of the neighborhood spent her days in her backyards staring into her swirling silver pool as if she could read the waves like print in a book. Perhaps she could, but nobody in town knew for sure what really went on behind the jagged picket fence around her hovel and the chipped pink exterior of her house. The most they saw of her in the daylight was a swish of her emerald cloak as she walked to the trade center to buy exactly three pink berries and an ounce of goat’s milk. She had caught James climbing her fence trying to find his glove in the mess of overgrown green vines and roots that wove over one another like thick tentacles, pulsating with the life of the garden.

James knew from the moment he locked eyes with her as he was digging around in the bushes of her breathing garden that the witch was not to be debated with. He thought about telling her that he was lost, or that he didn’t know if she was home or not, but even James knew that was a futile case. He had lost his glove and he had trespassed, and now he must face the consequences. The witch’s eyes shifted from dark burgundy to a light blue when she muttered an incantation under her breath as James closed his eyes and braced for impact. He thought he would lose a thumb, a foot, even his wife as he prepared to open his eyes and see the results of her curse.

Yet when he did, nothing changed. He felt life course through his toes and fingertips as usual. When he looked up to see if the witch had made a mistake, she had disappeared. Only the gentle hum of her garden filled the muggy silence surrounding him. Assuming he was in the clear, James picked up his glove and hastily hopped over the fence into his own garden, his wife waiting on the other side.

He planted his feet in his garden as he brushed off his corduroys, his feet sinking into the soft heart of the earth beneath him. He breathed in the familiar smell of daisies, sunflowers, and daffodils. Despite being separated from the witch by a mere plank of wood, James felt safety in the arms of his own garden bed. He stretched out his arms wide, reaching out to touch the familiar stems of his tall sunflowers, his hands wrapping around the green stalks finger by finger.

As he breathed in the life of his garden, James felt a tugging at the end of his fingertips. His eyes snapped wide open as he watched his fingertips turn green. Then his hand, his wrist, his arm flushed with green. He could feel the coldness of the green carry through his veins and send shivers wracking through his body. When he went to let go of the sunflower stems, his green hands had completely thinned and fused to the stems, fingertips into vines, fingernails into leaves. His racing heart stopped beating out of his chest and fell in time to the breathing of his plants, his head swaying back and forth on top of his green stem neck.

If he could move his feet he didn’t know, because James’s mind was overcome with tendrils of green. His legs blended together into a mess of tangled green and brown, the roots choking his toes until they disappeared completely into the dirt. A calm breeze ripped through his yellow-petaled hair as his body caved to the wind. His wide eyes prickled with brown seeds emerging from the whites of his eyes, pushing their way through the surface like a baby’s teeth. The last thing James ever saw was the red of his glove on the ground in front of him before his sunflower body anchored into the ground, searching for life.

Narrative Introduction

For my narrative project at Freestyle Academy, I made a film titled “A Nation Divided” with Emerson Domke. In this film, we display a war between people who eat macaroni and cheese with a spoon versus those who eat it with a fork. The battle rages on and on until ultimately the two sides reconcile at the creation of the spork.