Narrative 1

Illustrations – Digital Media

Geometric Light Cover

Artist Statement: Mountain Cycles

 For this project, I was trying to portray nature and many of its great qualities. I took a lot of inspiration from the time I’ve spent on family and boy scout backpacking trips. I was hoping it would convey a sense of wonder for the various aspects of nature during the night and day. A lot of inspiration came from a trip I went on last summer in which some friends and I got to see bears first hand. We also got to see the beauty of the Rae Lakes. I tried to capture some of these ideas with the running stream in the night scene and the animal outlines. Examples of this include the enthusiastic moon and what is intended as an outline of a bear. I tried to waste as little space as possible filling up extra space with plants and additional background elements. There is a small bunny outline in the night scene because I wanted to liven the environment. I also learned a lot during this project. I gained a better understanding of how to use various aspects of Illustrator, which is the software we used to make our designs. I gained a lot of experience with all the ways to make and manipulate lines. I also learned about the limitations of the laser cutter and how it doesn’t take kindly to thin lines near one another.

Illustration Project Choice: Patch

Artist Statement: Rusty the Cinematic Raccoon

I hope to convey how much fun I’ve been having in film class and Freestyle Academy in general with this patch. I also made it look like a boy scout patrol patch so it could hopefully be something people could feel proud wearing. I think it looks entertaining and I plan to put it on my jacket. It references my film teacher’s burning passion for raccoons which will entertain most of my fellow film students.

This project helped me get more experienced and skilled at using Illustrator which is how I designed the patch. I learned the importance of simplicity with this project. For a while, I was trying to use gradient colors and 3D shapes. Not only were these difficult to make correctly, but they also weren’t very compatible with patches. My teacher pointed out that “thread doesn’t come in gradients” which was a very helpful comment for me to hear. After these different phases, I opted for a simpler and more visually appealing approach. I also learned how to use new software that was new to me called Embrilliance. The software was another learning experience. I did various things to make the patch design easier to create with the sewing machine itself. I also experimented to get the lettering the way I wanted, which was a dramatic ‘FILM’ curved along the bottom.

Film

In film class this semester we learned a myriad of visual storytelling techniques. We studied the strategies of many famous filmmakers and learned about the importance of film continuity. We then implemented these ideas into our own films and we strengthened our skills as filmmakers.

Griffith Scene

The first filmmaker we learned about was DW Griffith who introduced the idea of establishing shots and varying how close the camera was to the characters. These types of shots don’t sound very complicated, but Griffith was one of the first filmmakers to use these shots to cleverly tell stories. Below is this Griffith’s pattern sequence I worked on.

Suspense Scene

Next, we learned about Alfred Hitchcock and the importance of building suspense, through parallel editing. The main take away of parallel editing is giving the audience more information about the situation than the characters are aware of, oftentimes by showing two separate events that are happening in different places but that affect one another. Below is the suspense scene that I worked on.

Chase Scene

This project was fun and a bit scary. I was tasked with individually making an engaging chase scene using all of what we have learned so far. I had a great set of actors, my friend Trevor gave a particularly great performance. I don’t want to give anything more away so if you are interested feel free to watch the video below.

Narrative Synopsis

Jeannie Vongfungfoo & Evan Segelke
Act one: -Protagonist is Jane. She wears soft colors so she doesn’t stand out. She has a bulletin board or bedroom wall with ‘how to be confident,’ ‘how to talk to people,’ excerpts from a magazine, cat on a branch poster ‘hang in there,’ papers and such. There is a flyer for a summer art class at mountain view high school. There is a post-it note with a fat question mark that is stuck on the flyer. She looks at the flyer, looks puzzled, then takes post-it off. There is an email to sign-up that was hidden under the post-it. She snatches the summer class flyer off the board, grabs her laptop, and sends an email to register. -Time passes (Jane is in a different outfit). She walks into the art class, scared. Wack teacher walks up enthusiastically to shake her hand. She barely extends her hand. There are supplies (pencils, markers, colored pencils, crayons) for the students to use. She sits far away alone. A different girl, Sophie, walks into the class, looks around, notices that Jane is alone, and sits down next to her. Sophie smiles and shakes Jane’s hand.
Act two: There is a word on the board “exhibition” and a calendar next to it, circling the day. He points at word and calendar, then erases word and begins teaching by writing something vague like ‘step one: draw’ on the board. Jane is confused and a little stressed (biting fingernails). Sophie makes a joke by just writing the word ‘drawing’ on her sketchbook. Jane laughs, so does Sophie. Jane calms down and starts drawing. -Show passage of time, Jane and Sophie showing up to class in different outfits, different lessons from teacher with more jokes. (Evan has ideas that he can’t describe in words). Abyss moment: For summer class, at the end, they have to present their work, but the protagonist gets freaked out because she’s shy and has a panic attack.
Act three: Sophie is encouraging Jane (puts hand on shoulder, thumbs up) and she gains confidence. Jane walks up to the front of the class and very nervously presents her art to the class and people applaud at the end. Cut to Jane sitting down at home, smiling, happy, looks over and the drawing is on the bulletin board or bedroom wall and next to it is a photograph of her and her new friend. The papers about how to gain confidence are gone.

This is what the original narrative synopsis my partner and I wrote but as you will be able to see it changed quite a lot the further along the project got.

Storyboard

The next step was to storyboard the entire movie. This meant drawing out the different shots of the movie on index cards, which was a long and intimidating process. I pushed my drawing ability to its limits while Storyboarding and felt I improved somewhat. My partner and I went through two major drafts of story-boarding but we got the green light and had a good idea of what to do going forward, at least that’s what we thought at the time.

Narrative Trailer

The narrative trailer was a short fun way to end this massive project. I just had fun joking around with how to advertise the film in a short video. Each film student made their own so the trailer is my own wacky sense of humor at it’s fullest and least sensible. Hopefully, it will catch your interest and hype you up to see the full cinematic adventure featured below.

JR Narrative Film

This was by far one of the most challenging projects I’ve ever worked on. I had never done anything of this scale before. The end product may only be about 7 minutes but the planning and care that went into those seven minutes are a bit astounding.

I would like to take a second to thank all the actors and actresses who gave up their time to make this film a reality. We quite literally couldn’t have done it without you. I’d also like to give a special thanks to my partner Jeannie Vongfungfoo who recruited our main actresses for this film. We also employed the help of two animation students from Freestyle to make drawings to add some extra flair to the film. The film shots presented a variety of challenges, such as scheduling and outfits, but thanks to hard work and occasional problem solving we made it through.

Next came the production, making all the raw footage into a real genuine film. Barely any of the original audio from the film set made it into the final product. A lot of the sounds you will hear were the result of sound mixing. The majority of sound effects came from me acting whacky in a room alone. I awkwardly picked up and dropped backpacks, tapped myself on the shoulder and so on. It took a lot of afternoon workdays in the film room to finish polishing up the editing and refining the sound design but I’m proud of the end result. During the editing process, I would occasionally come up with more ideas about new small story arcs or shots that we could add. I’d run them by my partner, and a lot of these spontaneous ideas made it into the final cut. I was always scheming about how the film could be better or how the jokes could be more effective. By the end, I had poured a lot of my own sense of humor and personality into this film and I’m really happy with how it all came together.

Story – English

In our English class, we worked on creating our own original short story. We started by focusing on the aspects of our protagonist with a very thorough character questionnaire and then moved on to the details of the overall plot and story.

My inspiration for this project came from movie characters such as Scott Pilgrim. I wanted to create a man who wasn’t the stereotypical confident macho man, but rather a bit nerdy and whose journey primarily involved overcoming their own insecurity.

When making the audio version of this story I focused on making appropriate sound effects and background music. I primarily focused on the sound effects of the bus as that was an important part of the plot. I also put in subtle background music to take some of the pressure off of my voice since my vocal performance was defiantly not the highlight of the story. Overall I think the result was good, a bit embarrassing probably, but good.

What I really valued from this project was being able to see clear improvements as I worked more and more on this story. I revised this short story several times until it was something I was happy with. I still think it is far from perfect, but seeing how far it has come was a rewarding process. Making the audio version was a bit daunting and nerve-racking but nonetheless, I finished it. It was a good experience in becoming more comfortable with Pro-tools as this project was longer and more intricate than previous work we had done with Pro-tools.

A Graceful Bus Ride

James awoke and groggily slumped out of his bed onto the floor. He gracefully slid into a pair of jeans and threw on a flannel shirt. He then got off the floor and quickly made himself breakfast before heading off to the bus. James attended the local community college and took the bus to school every day since buying a car was out of his budget. When James walked on to the bus he greeted the bus driver and saw the regular crowd. A grouchy old man mumbled to himself in the front seat, a group of men in business suits whined about the stock market, and a woman with an excess of cats was taking up an entire row. This all meant that there weren’t any open seats, but there never had been. The only irregularity was a girl, Anne Grace, standing in the middle of the bus, seatless, just as James was. She wasn’t particularly tall but there was self-assurance in her eyes. She was wearing a pair of jeans and a fuzzy-looking sweater that her brown hair cascaded over. All the color drained from James’ face as he realized her presence. Jame was thoroughly shocked and paralyzed. Anne Grace has never taken the bus to school before, and James was not adequately prepared for such a bold change to his routine.

Anne turned towards James, causing his face to lose ever more color to the point that one might mistake him for a ghost.  His near-translucent body stood swaying with the motion of the bus. After three seconds, which felt like an eternity to James, Anne Grace smiled to herself and turned away from his apparition.

After the bus ride came to an uneventful end, James ran off the bus, looking back only once to see the look of confusion on Anne’s face. James tried to forget the events of the bus ride but quickly discovered he could not. His mind was like a rather stubborn horse always running back to the idea of Ann Grace despite the best efforts of its rider to guide it elsewhere. James decided he should discuss the events of the morning with his best friend Steve. While Steve may not be the best at calculus he is a great consultant for relationships and a loyal friend.

Steve stood by some trees wearing a sports jersey. James sprinted up to him and began to unload the entirety of the story to Steve through rather frantic panting. Steve had a bit of an annoyed look on his face as he crossed his arms. He was familiar with James’ feelings for Anne and understood well what must have happened.

“You didn’t say anything did you” Steve interrupted.

James had a doleful look of defeat on his face as he shook his head ‘no’. This caused the initiation of Steve’s lecture. Steve’s lecture involved exquisite metaphors, grand sweeping hand movements, and impassioned yelling. Steve informed James that he must act on his feelings or he would unleash a series of more intense speeches upon him. Steve told James ‘that he wouldn’t see his friend fall into a cycle of inaction and disappointment’. James was apprehensive about action as he almost always was, so Steve decided to be proactive.

He grabbed James by the wrist and promptly began to pull him along to a group of girls. James would have fought back but he knew Steve was taller and more athletic so all efforts were futile.

“Greetings, would you happen to know one Anne Grace, and who might she be dating?” Steve said. 

“For real Steve? She broke up with andrew like two months ago don’t you know anything,” one girl said.

“Thank you for your assistance,” Steve said with a hint of sarcasm. 

James was experiencing a strange sense of hope and fear blending together to form a convoluted web of possibilities in his mind. Steve noticed this and put his arm firmly around his shoulder.

“James,” he said. “I know you are indecisive, but you can do this. And don’t even try to argue with me because we both know who was on their high school’s debate team”. James was well aware that Steve was a star of his high school’s debate team.

As the school day ended James mounted the steps of the bus and found himself in a state of Deja Vu. Once again Anne Grace was standing in the middle of the walkway although this time looking slightly annoyed. James took a deep breath and opened his mouth.

“Hi, Anne,” James said.

“Hi, are you in a hurry?” she said in a mildly irritated tone.

“Uhh…come again”

“You just seemed in a rush before,” Anne said

Her eyebrows were furrowed and her iconic smile was vacant from her face. A nervous smile departed James’ face as he began to speak.

“Yeah…sorry about that, I had somewhere…to something I think, sorry”, James said.

“Okay” Anne giggled. 

Anne began to open up and her normal friendly persona began to emerge. James and Anne were not strangers, they merely hadn’t spent much time together this year. The conversation seemed to be going fairly smoothly so James began preparing himself for the most challenging part.

His legs began to wobble erratically. He felt like his hands and entire body began to sweat more intensely. His heart began to beat so furiously, that he could have sworn it was colliding with his rib cage. He opened his mouth and no sound escaped it. He tried again only a squeak came out. He tried a third time and said:

“Would you…uh…want to do something this weekend”

To which Anne responded, “sure, sounds fun”.

James felt as though his heart were about to break free from his rib cage. He eventually calmed down enough for his legs to slow to a medium tempo shake. The remainder of the bus ride consisted of a rather charming conversation. 

That night James slept well because he knew that regardless of what happened that weekend, he fulfilled Steve’s ultimatum. He broke the cycle.

Short Story Author Study: Kurt Vonnegut

For Honors English, we were tasked with studying a Short Story Author or Playwright and either write an essay on one of their works or right an emulation piece. I studied Kurt Vonnegut’s short stories and chose the latter option for the project. I wrote an imitation short story inspired by Kurt Vonnegut’s various influences and styles. The result can be found below:

Simply Business

Travel in this modern age has evolved to something so convenient it is almost sinister. The Turbo Jet Liner 77 that businessmen, such as myself, have become accustomed to is more like a home than a vehicle. While these metallic whales of aircraft can travel at lightspeed, we all know they never nor will they ever. The flightnet traffic is always for too terrible to allow for that.

The flightnet is just about the only safe way for us civilized businessmen to travel. The earth down below us is itching for another war at any second, and we need to be ready to supply them with the proper tools! The business of the world is one so unanimously understood. Disagreements are settled with war, war is the economy and war is your life. There simply isn’t a way without war.

I climbed onto my designated turbo jet liner for the next week, “FN-7454”. The smell of fuel and cheap alcohol was abundant as it always had been. I sat down in my dark blue lounge chair and took off my boots as the beast’s engine started to rumble. The automated warning began to play on my personal cabin’s speakers as it always did. “Remember to report any and all 78th resistance activity you witness for your safety and the safety of your journey.”

The 78th resistance – what a disgraceful congregation. That group of bafones believes that the world is broken and that “war isn’t the answer”, can you believe it! Such ignorant children. This is the way the world has always been. The laws are clear and defined. I would be more than happy to crush those slimy insects under my boot.

The jet began it’s lift off sequence, and shook rather unpleasantly before the stabilizers kicked in. The fat metal vessel pulled itself up into the grid of other slow moving metallic blobs. We had gotten to our place in the flightnet traffic and the time had come for my business proposals.

I checked my holo screen projector to find what war had broken out. This time it was division CAN that had declared hostilities on division MEX on the basis of spreading illness. A member of division MEX was visiting CAN and had a cold that spread beyond themself. Of course this is all very standard, business as usual. It had now come time for the bidding.

I began by offering a fleet of my latest model of Rocket Submarine War Vessels, known among commoners as RSWVs. The bidding started at 5 million credits, a modest price as I was feeling generous. Division MEX offered 5.5, and was quickly shown up by Division CAN with it’s 7 million credits. It went back and forth for the next few hours until CAN won the bidding with 556 million credits. A rather acceptable profit.

The next few days were to proceed about the same. I would provide what is needed for the right price and the divisions would settle their argument in our traditional and honorable fashion. The casualties were of course irrelevant, there were always survivors to continue on in the process. After a typical day on “FN-7454” it had come time to sleep in the provided frost pod of my cabin. Of course, there wasn’t any real barbaric ice in this pod. The pod simply lowered our blood pressure, easing the sleep transition. Frost pods are of course rather ordinary. The soldiers carrying on our traditions are not allowed frost pods on the battlefield, as that would be too cumbersome and disrespectful to our traditions.

On my sixth day of “FN-7454” something peculiar awoke me. There were a couple screams of terror coming from some other cabin. 

“Keep it down I have important matters to attend to!” I yelled.

So inconsiderate of them to make such a savage noise on a turbo jet liner. Then a strange man burst through my door and pointed the latest 2187 laser pistol directly at me. 

“Remain calm,” he said softly. He was rather sophisticated for someone with a weapon. Weapons are to be used by soldiers and soldiers alone, doesn’t he know this?

“This ship is officially under the control of 78th resistance. You are to remain under my watch for the time being.”

“HOW DARE…” I began to say as I stood up, before I was rudely forced down into my lounge chair. He lightly restrained me with synthetic rope. ROPE, can you believe it. He truly resembled a soldier, and he was ON a turbo jet liner. It was simply absurd. Hadn’t he any decency?

“I understand that you believe these wars are necessary,” he said.

“Well of course, this is as it has always been and war is our tradition and…”

“That’s enough, I understand your perspective.”

“If you understand it, then why on this glorious earth have you restrained me!”

“Because I simply don’t agree. It simply isn’t right.”

I then heard the jet’s stereo system hum to life. Their signature tune played as the speaker said ‘Turbo airlines worldwide service’.

Then a strange voice boomed, “Hello passengers, my name is Theodore, although you probably don’t even know what a name is.” He was quite right. Everyone merely had a designated identification consisting of 3 numbers and 4 letters strung together. As citizens were reported dead their identification strings were recycled. A name must be some fake new concept created by these rebellious scummy lowlives.

“I am the leader of the 78th resistance,” Theodore said, “and before this aircraft lands you will know far more than what a name is. You will find that the world you ‘businessmen’ believe to be normal is actually an artificial concept designed by your predecessors”

“You see,” he continued, “war wasn’t a normal and repetitive part of our world; it was a last resort to change laws and government systems to better fit the needs of the many. The world didn’t function off of war and violence in order to make money, there were groups called families and communities. There was something called recreation and something called nature. We didn’t all grow up in government regulated orphanages, the majority of children knew their real parents. All of what I am saying probably sounds crazy and outlandish, but there is proof.”

My holo projector flashed to life with an image of a small building with the phrase Library plastered across its entrance. 

“These buildings called libraries, which we were told were disgraceful failed prison centers that should be avoided, are not what they seem,” Theodore declared. “They have mostly been demolished, but the few that remain in fact contain the last physical paper records of what the world was really like”.

What he was saying was absurd, it was treasonous it was…it was…impossible. 

“I know you all would never believe a word I said without real tangible proof, so now I’ll show you the last known video before the United World Order declared censorship mandatory.”

I was shocked by what I saw. Groups of people each with their own name instead of a designation. They all knew each other’s names and personal attributes. They spent time together in what looked like a lounge chair designed for several people and discussed each other’s pastimes. Whatever a pastime was. They didn’t talk about business or war, they talked about something called a holoprojection movie. Everyone knew holo projections were reserved for business purposes, right? What does this all mean.

“I understand this is all unfamiliar to you upperclassmen but I assure you it is real. It is genuine,” Theodore continued. “Now you will witness a video of something called a family dinner”

What I saw next was beyond bizarre. A man, a woman, and a child were all seated at what appeared to be a large desk of sorts. They each had designated chairs at this lengthy desk. Just like the first projection the people talked to each other about what they liked or wanted; there wasn’t any discussion of business or war. This event seemed like such a waste of time and energy.

Theordore showed about 3 more videos and then gave his final statement.

“I hope you have found this hijacking to be educational, I have just shown you all the truth and while I know it seems ludicrous to you, your reaction is simply the result of programming from the world’s censorship initiative. I now offer you two options. The first is to continue your education of the truth and reality as a member of the 78th resistance. We will challenge everything you have ever known but one day it might bring peace. The second option is quick painless execution by one of my associates. I simply offer this as a courtesy since you have learned highly restricted and illegal information. If I were to let you walk of this aircraft you would certainly be executed by whichever government gets a hold of you first, and I guarantee their execution will be less pleasant”.

My options were bleak and my mind thoroughly scrambled as though I had undergone maturity conditioning a second time. Maturity conditioning is a mandatory procedure which occurs on one’s 10th birthday in which the government has their proper values installed into one’s mind through a series of painless injections into one’s brain.

Clearly something was awry with my mind but I eventually decided that I mustn’t sacrifice myself. “I will consider a pursuit of your so called truth,” I said to my captor.

“You have made the right choice, I assure you,” he responded. “We will add windows to the passengers cabins, and one day these airships will be used to view beauty as it was before your wretched business of war.”