How well can you
visually tell a structured story?
The Visual Narrative project was all about learning how to tell a story. From telling a short story on paper to creating a movie without any dialogue, it’s all surrounded one central question: How well can you visually tell a structured story?
I think it went fairly successfully. We had to work our projects through storyboards and plot maps and character quizzes all to get a streamlined version of our ideas. we learned the basic three act structure and the hero’s journey to find ways to tell a basic story in a creative way. I’m proud of the work I did in both Film and English. I’m really proud of both my short story and film. They took a lot of effort but they paid off in the end.
Short Story
The English Story work process was interesting. We were tasked with writing a short story, and to do that we were introduced to tools like the Character Questionnaire and the Plot maps to help us with our story. I had a fairly good idea for a story going into the unit. It was very loosely based on a story and characters I had written with a friend a few years back. Though it didn’t end up happening, the ideas were still there so I wanted to expand on it.
The Docks At Nine
In the grand scheme of brilliant ideas, I’ve never been the one to come upm with them, nor have I been one to follow along with the good ideas of others. I’m more of the type to follow the first thing that pops into my mind, logistics be damned. Life should be about the impulsiveness that makes things interesting, about the choices you make to further your story. If that means running away with a gorgeous redheaded boy I just met, so be it.
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I normally leave the house at around 5:30 so I can get to the 6 o’clock bus down to the high street. Curtain road isn’t all that far away from my house, it’s just that I have a reputation of being comically late to everything. That’s why I have my day planned to the minute (after getting yelled at one too many times by Dave). But still, I was late. I was tumbling out of the house, half asleep and running late, when out of apartment 20 walks Mr. Shipman. Just the man I wanted to see.
“Ah, Mr. Nichols. Might I speak to you?”
“Good morning Mr. Shipman,” I said, reluctantly. “I’m in a bit of a rush right now, can I talk to you tonight?”
“It won’t take long, let’s just talk now.” He’s here about the rent increases.
We continued to talk for another half hour, but to be honest I tuned out everything he said. Eventually he let me go. I started running as fast as I can. I just kept going. Past the courtyard, past the balconies, past the local football club. And I got there at 6, only to be left behind by the goddamn 78.
I sat down at the bus stop, defeated.
I check the schedule. Next bus doesn’t come for an hour.
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20 minutes go by. No bus, no people. I pull out my phone to text Alex and ask her if she’s willing to cover my shift for a bit. Just as I hit send, I notice someone has sat down beside me. From the corner of my eye, I notice that they have these intensely red curls. The type of red that looks box dyed, but would never remain that vibrant. I lean back to check them out again.I lean back on the bus stops back, trying to think of something to say to this person. He looks to be around my age, maybe a year or two younger. “Is your hair box dyed?” I ask, the embarrassing nature of the question hitting me immediately
“It is, in fact. Vampiric red, I believe it’s called.”
“It’s cool”
“Oh, thank you.” he turns to me. “I’m Reggie.” he offers his hand to me.
“Vincent.” I smile and shake his hand.
“Vincent. That’s a nice name. I’m gonna call you Vinny.” he beams. The conversation flows naturally with Reggie. He’s a young Irishman, overflowing with personality. We just kept talking and talking, still waiting for the stupid 78.
“Vinny,” he says. “You don’t seem very happy here.”
“Oh well, y’know?” I look down at the road and I see the bus down the road. “My bus is here, Reg.”
“Before you go, can i ask you something?”
“Sure, man. Just make it quick.” I grab my bag, getting ready to flag the bus.
“You know the docks by the river, a couple of blocks away?” he looks nervous.
“Yeah, why?”
“Can you meet me there at 9 tonight? I have something I want to show you!” he smiles at me. I nod and wave goodbye as I get on the bus. My head is spinning as I sink into my seat.
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I get off the bus at Shoreditch High Street. In about 5 minutes of running, I reach the record store, out of breath and wheezing.
“Where the fuck have been?” Alex walks to my, now shriveled on the floor trying to catch my breath. “Dave is pissed.”
“I missed the bus, so I had to wait for an hour. I went as fast as I could” I manage to say. They don’t look very amused.
“Just get to work before he sees you.” they walk towards a customer who’s been continuously ringing the bell, looking to buy some Dolly Parton CD. I walk around the store, keeping myself busy just to make sure Dave doesn’t see me. The rest of my day is spent doing nothing but odd jobs around the store. My shift ends at 8, so round about 7;15 my eyes are glued to the clock, waiting for the chance to run out to whatever Reggie has planned.
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My mind continues to go a million miles a minute, thinking about tonight. This is crazy, right? I shouldn’t be going down to the docks for a boy I just met. But i keep running. I’m running because as usual, I’m late. When I make it down to the docks, Reggie is standing in a tired, old motorboat.
“Oi oi!” he yells.
“Reggie what is going on?” I ask, smiling at him. He’s wearing an old captains hat that doesn’t quite fit on his head.
Reggie stocked up on supplies for a journey across the channel. He came up with a plan to get to France, even if it’s just for a few days.
“It’s about on hour thataway.” He points to the horizon. “We’re both unhappy here, so what’s stopping you?”
And so we set sail.
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“Maybe we didn’t pick the best day to sail!!” he yells at me from the front of the boat. The wind and rain blowing back into my face make the Channel harder to see. Reggie’s hair is soaking, the straightened red strands dripping all over his coat. He’s standing there, shivering. I can hear the nervousness in his voice. I can tell he’s worried. I’m worried too. I don’t know if we’ll make it.
It isn’t supposed to take this long to get there. I thought it only took 45 minutes. I guess that’s what we get for taking the first boat we found on the dock. We didn’t check for gas, nor for mileage. I hardly know how to work this bloody thing!
It was a rash and frankly foolish decision to make. Did we really think this would work? Neither of us have any connections there. How are we gonna get by? No job, no money. Basic knowledge of the language.
“Well, It’s not like we have a choice now! We just have to keep going!”
A massive wave hits the side of the boat.
He falls.
I watch him slowly disappear into the waves.
Illustrations
Geometric Light Cover
At the beginning of the geometric light cover project, I didn’t really have a set theme. My priority was to figure out how to use Illustrator above everything. Only in trying to figure out how to mess with the lines and use various shape tools did a theme emerge. My light cover pattern is very geometric. One design is a spiral made entirely out of hexagons and the other is an array of circles, triangles and rectangles. I wanted to go with one structured design (the spiral) and one freeform design (the shapes). Though there wasn’t an intended message, somewhere in the process it became a good representation of me. That being somewhat ironic since after printing, the spiral pattern really bothers me (I didn’t realize that the hexagons would be so circular when printed out, so the result was a spiral of small holes close together, which is a thing that minorly bothers me. oops?). There’s a structured aspect that looks and works efficiently, and there’s another that’s let loose and fun, with weird patterns of geometric shapes. Counteracting the very geometric shapes, the wings on my piece are all kinds of weird shapes. I decided that i’d drag them about until I found a pattern that suited me, and that worked. They’re actually my favorite part of my light cover.
Though the spiral was not as neat as I would have liked it, that’s ok. The spiral doesn’t have to be perfect since I learned some valuable things with the project. Namely, sizing various objects, grouping and ungrouping items, and the benefits of the alignment guides on illustrator. (seriously, those things completely saved my project). I learned how to manipulate various shapes into different patterns and, through a trial that didn’t make it to the final product, how to properly use the pen tool. Overall, the skills I learned in this project will definitely carry over to the next projects we do in illustrator and I hope to use the program better from now on.
Illustrator Patch
For my Illustrator project, I wanted to highlight two of my passions: film and writing. As such, I decided to make it an homage to one of my favorite horror films, Brian de Palma’s 1976 movie Carrie. The movie follows the story of a deeply troubled teenage girl named Carrie White as she discovers her telekinetic powers. Though done in a very abstract way, Carrie explores themes that have appeared through my life, like dealing with parental relationships, the hardships of being a teenager and grappling with your own religion. The movie is an adaptation of Stephen King’s novella by the same name. Stephen King has never been one of my favored writers, so to have an adaptation of his work (and specifically a depiction of his character) resonate with me so much felt like something I’d want to pay homage to. For the project itself, I drew the titular Carrie in the most iconic moment from the movie that to me cements her as a pop culture icon. When people think of Carrie, they think of the Carrie at the school prom drenched in pigs’ blood. It’s an image that sticks with you and that’s why I wanted it for my project.
The image, though, was a bit of a challenge to draw. It had a lot of small details that needed to be seen, like the various blood splatters on her dress or arms. I, having very little prior experience with Illustrator, had to learn how to draw them. Being in film, we don’t use it often, if ever, so I didn’t have the experience with it that some of the design students, for example, had. I had to learn how to properly use things like the pen tool (or in my case the curvature pen tool) and the skills I learned from this project are going to be useful going forward. Since finishing this project, I’ve started using illustrator more often on my own for personal projects, which has been a fun experience so far.
Film
In film, I did two different projects before we got to start on the big Narrative film: The DW Griffith scene and the Suspense scene
DW Griffitth scene
Suspense Scene
The DW Grifith scene was about learning how to introduce a basic scene, while the Suspense scene was about how to keep a basic level of tension across one setting. Learning both these things would help us develop our scenes in the Junior Narrative
Junior Narrative
The Narrative Film; The pièce de résistance of the narrative unit. This was one of the most difficult and rewarding projects I’ve ever worked on. It took a lot of effort from the cast and crew, but I really do believe the end result is good. We were all so proud to have our movie screened at exhibition as well, which really showed us that all the work we put in paid off.