Narrative 1
Introduction
During the visual narrative projects, we express storytelling through creativity and visual aspects. Throughout the unit we experience brainstorming, planning and developing our stories together. Through films, photos, audio and much more we make stories come alive. Not only is it visually appealing but we learn the aspects of making a good story in many different forms.
Story
In this unit process, we learned how to create and express stories in different ways. One way we did this was through a character questionnaire in English which was a set of questions we answered to help develop a background for the characters. Then after the character was developed we made a plot map which showed helped us create a layout for the story. Such as when what and how we got the like climax and its resolution.
After we created are stories in English we created an audio version in digital media. We used audio recorders at home in a quiet space to read our audio and record them. I think this was valuable because we got to do it in different forms and for me personally hearing it out loud allowed me to make changes to my story if what I said didn’t make sense
Light Bugs
The wagons trailed down the gravel road, tipping side to side,bouncing up and down. Dust picked up behind them, a little dust storm. On the wagon sat a little girl, her hair was a blinding blonde like no one had seen before, the curls on her head fell perfectly and lined her face. Her eyes were a piercing blue. A pink velvet headband in her hair to match the big pink dress she so eagerly tried not to ruin.
She sat straight up, a gloomy look in her eyes, however, it was masked by the smile she put on. By the time they arrived back home, it was dark out. She sat on the edge of the wagon and hopped off. In the distance she noticed something. Lights? They were like lights she had never seen before. They moved. They almost made a path into the forest.
“Lisa,” her mom yelled to her.
Startled, she ran over to her mom. Her little hand grabbed her mother’s hand. They stepped up the many stairs to the house, they were greeted by two massive columns and a set of doors. They were as white as the clouds on a sunny day, the red bricks were intimidating to her, she didn’t know why but they always scared her. When they walked in, they were greeted by the “help” as her mom called them.
When they walked in she sat at the dinner table and was greeted with meatloaf and peas. Every day they had meatloaf and peas. The smell had become sickening to Lisa. She ate a few bites, she was restless.
“Mother, may I be excused from the table please?” Lisa said.
Her mom sighed and waved her off.
She stumbled on up to her room and got into her nightgown, silk, again. She brushed her teeth and washed her face. She sat on her bed and started to read the book on her side table, The tails of the dark. It was her favorite book. The book was full of surprises and didn’t ever stop flowing. At this point, she knew the book by heart because she read it every night. She let out a sigh and walked down the stairs to the living room.
She walked outside the front door and leaned against the massive collum. In the corner of her eye, she spotted the lights again. Glistening and glimmering like they were dancing. Her feet started to dance, she twirled and leaped, her feet took over her body. When she stopped she saw the lights in front of her. It was like magic like she flew over to them. They weren’t lights though, they were bugs.
“Light Bugs” she called them.
She stretched her arm out to touch one but it flew away. The light bugs made a path into the forest. Lisa walked down the path the bugs followed. It went into the forest, the one her mother always told her not to go in. However, she couldn’t stop following the bugs. She was captivated.
As she walked into the forest she didn’t notice that everything in the forest was glowing, and each thing was an unusual color, it wasn’t the same color as other forest plants. The mushrooms were a bright blue, the tree trunks were red. They almost seemed to glow brighter than the sun.
The bugs finally died out and she looked around. Her jaw dropped, she was enthralled. The grass started to glow as she walked on it. She bent down to touch it, it felt as soft as sheep’s wool. It was a mystery, scary even. But she stood up in awe.
“The light bugs brought me here,” she said.
As she walked through the forest she saw a creature, like a dog. It wasn’t the same as a dog. She couldn’t figure out why but its presence was different. Creeping towards it, she heard a noise, it almost sounded like a howl but it was more graceful. Like a beautiful beast. The dog shivered and crawled into a ball. As she continued to creep over the dog, the dog type creature coughed. A stream of fire came out of its mouth.
Startled, she ran backward and tripped over the obscure blue mushroom. When she fell it made a loud sound and the dog type creature snapped its head in her direction. It started to prowl towards her. Lisa slowly backed into the tree and hit her back into it. The piercing pain was distracted by the fact that the dog was getting closer to her.
When it finally approached her, it sniffed her hand and lightly nudged it. It almost felt like it wanted to be pet. Lisa raised her hand slowly and put it on her hand on its head. Its tail started to wag. As it did, she noticed that the tail was turning pink, but when it was scared it was black.
She stood up and walked away from the dog to explore the rest of the forest. As she walked she heard leaves crunching behind her, she snapped her head around to look at the noise didn’t see anything. She continued to walk and heard the noise again when she looked around she saw a pink tail pocking out of the bush. She walked over and looked a the small dog. The dog crawled out and followed her as she walked away.
“You can be my companion,” Lisa said to the dog that was now completely pink.
She chuckled and continued into the forest.
“There it is again… the noise”
The beautiful beast howled again. The dog that Lisa now named Frank, ran in between her legs. She looked up and saw giant wings in the sky, the animal had paws, not like a bird. Its claws were sharp, they glistened in the moonlight. Lisa ran behind a tree to hide.
“What was that?” she whispered under her breath. She looked around the tree and saw the animal fly down to the ground. She gasped.
“It really is a beautiful beast.” She said with a glimmer in her eyes.
The animal was like a tiger but was multicolored and had blue eyes like the ocean. Its wings spread 50 feet across. It was of monstrous proportions.
“Beautiful,” she said.
In fact, she said it too loud and it caught the attention of the beast. And it pounced at the tree. Its big claws cut straight in and left marks on the tree. Lisa jumped behind the bush and Frank ran in the other direction.
Lisa caught the eyes of the beast. It got her sent. But Lisa ran as fast as she could, she jumped over the big rock she was headed to. When she got over it she found and small cave and crawled into it. The beast ran past and didn’t notice where she went.
“Thrilling, scary, I don’t know if this is the adventure I want,” she thought to herself. She smushed further into the cave even with the limited space and crawled into a ball.
After what she thought was an hour, she saw Frank walking outside. Calling him over, Frank wagged his tails and turned pink again. He came into the cave with her and was excited to see her.
They both crawled out of the cave and ran towards the opening in the forest where Lisa came from. Running as fast as she could to leave.
“Mom” Lisa yelled, “I want the gross meatloaf, get me out of here.”
She heard it coming for her again but it was faster than her, she climbed up a tree and hid in the leaves. The Beast circled her tree waiting for her to come down. Terrified she cried silently and saw Frank, who was now back to black, in the bush.
Lisa was tired and just wanted to get back home. The adventure was fun but only to an extent. She liked her book, the book with a simple satin sash around it. Thrilling but safe.
She climbed down the tree and ran for her house. The beast was distracted and didn’t notice until Lisa shouted from Frank to come with her. They both ran for the exit.
Run, run, run.
They finally got out, Frank wagged his tail and didn’t turn pink.
“You’re normal now” she giggled.
The Beast came for the exit and then hit something. An invisible barrier, only for the beast. They both ran back to the house and went inside. Her nightgown was torn. But she was smiling. When Lisa got home she snuck Frank inside and got out her paper and quill. She wrote her own adventure, named The beautiful beast.
In the background, she heard her mom say, “Lisa, you didn’t finish your meatloaf.” Lisa smiled.
Illustrations
Geometric Artist Statement
In Illustrator we learned how to create light covers. They glow and we get the see the beautiful designs we made. I valued this project because I got to learn more about Illustrator and the logistics that go into making projects on the application. Through this project, I wanted to convey my childhood and some of the little things that were memorable.
My childhood was the inspiration for this art piece. As a child, I spent a great deal of my time watching Winnie The Pooh. Personally, the piglet was my favorite, the small but adventurous. In a way I felt like it resembled myself, I’ve always been the short friend who wanted to try new things and have some fun. I took memorable and cute aspects from the show and added them to my piece. These aspects were inspirational and gave me good energy.
In honoring this big piece of my childhood I drew out Winnie the Pooh’s iconic “HUNNY” jar (with the N spelled incorrectly and also a balloon since Winnie the Pooh loved them so much. I spent quite a bit of time perfecting the word “HUNNY” from the jar since it was such an important piece of the show. The way it was spelled made it what it was, this meant that I had to make it as accurate as possible. This show gave me the confidence to be who I am and to move on and not let anyone stand in your way. This is what I wanted to express emotions through the piece.
Junior Narrative Synopsis
The first act opens up with a waiter serving food or a drink to a customer at a table. Behind, standing by the wall, a busboy is staring with envy. The food bell rings for a completed order and the busboy, bored, springs up to serve the food. The waiter returns to the back to get food, notices the busboy, and orders him to clean some dishes instead of serving the food because it isn’t his job. The owner of the restaurant appears to tell the waiter to close the restaurant up.
The second act starts as the closed sign of the restaurant appears on the window. The busboy is putting leftover food away for disposal and notices the waiter stealing cash from the cash register. The busboy hides behind a rack (shelf depending on the location). The waiter puts the cash in his pocket and begins heading towards the busboy. The busboy panics and rushes back to his station in the kitchen. The waiter comes over and motions that he is leaving, he wants the busboy to close up the restaurant. The busboy cleans up and begins closing up the restaurant. He goes over to the cash register and tries to think of what to do. He goes through the money of the cash register and finds a 100 dollar bill. He then gets the idea to tape an “invisible” string (fishing line) to the bill that triggers an alarm or bell to be set off when taken too far from the cash register. He leaves the bill hanging out of the cash register before leaving the restaurant.
Act three begins when the store opens up in the morning. The waiter sees the 100 dollar bill and takes it out. As he puts it in his pocket, the alarm gets triggered, and the owner rushes over to the waiter stealing. The owner fires the waiter, and the movie ends on the busboy becoming a waiter and serving food.
Story Board
The storyboarding portion of creating a narrative film allows us to see it come alive and plan our shots ahead. It allows us to see what works with our films and what doesn’t. It was valuable for me because I got to see my story come to life and make it easier to get feedback on before we even started to film the shots we needed. The process of getting feedback and adjusting was important for us during production.