This website is the final product of my Narrative Project at Freestyle Academy and is used to showcase my work from my English, Design and Digital Media classes during this unit. The focus question of the Narrative Unit is: “How well can you visually tell a structured story?” In my English class, we focused on this question when creating the center of this project, the flash fiction. The goal of the flash fiction was to write a short 750 word story with no dialogue. In my Design class, I used Adobe Illustrator to create a hybrid creature using the characteristics of three different animals that represent my main character, and placed it into a scene from my flash fiction. In my Digital Media class, I not only developed this website using Adobe Dreamweaver, but I also used Pro Tools to create an audiobook which includes original music created to help tell the story with different musical themes for the character, climax and main theme. Additionally, this audiobook includes a recording of me reading the flash fiction, and sound effects to truly immerse the listener into the story.

Looking back into this unit, I realize how much I have been able to learn throughout each of my classes. Not only have I been able to improve in my technical skills using Pro Tools, Adobe Dreamweaver and Illustrator, but I have also been able to step outside of my comfort zone in my writing and music. When writing my flash fiction, I had to focus more on telling a story without dialogue, while still keeping it under 750 words. On top of this challenge, I also ventured into writing a genre I have never written before, horror/thriller. When producing my music, I studied the common themes in many horror/thriller movie soundtracks, and after many days of trial and error, I was able to create music that helped tell the story. Though stepping outside of my comfort zone was a challenge, working to create this finished project was a very fulfilling process.

This is a screenshot of Adobe Dreamweaver while I was in the process of creating this website.

This is a screenshot of my header images in production in Adobe Illustrator

The first assignment I needed to complete at the beginning of the Narrative Unit was the Flash Fiction. In my English class, we were instructed to create a short story without dialogue, and no longer than 750 words. This assignment was extremely challenging for me at first, because I have never written a story with a word limit. When creating my first draft, I wrote a very complicated story, and eventually found that it could not be told in under 750 words. In my second attempt, I decided to truly challenge myself by exploring the thriller/horror genre. After making this decision, my sister helped me brainstorm new ideas, and eventually came up with an initial prompt: a story surrounding a pair of headphones that allow a person to hear the thoughts of other people, and the main character can hear someone plotting to kill them. This was an intriguing idea, however one major setback was that the story could not include dialogue. This meant that if a person was plotting to kill the main character, I would have to describe how the killer thought. I then realized that I can show the thoughts of the killer by shifting the story into his perspective, and create a truly interesting twist to my Flash Fiction.

Silence

I woke to the sound of wind relentlessly pushing rain against the window of my apartment building. They definitely weren’t lying when they called this the windy city. I groaned, reluctantly pulling myself out of my warm bed to get ready. Soon I found myself standing at the front door, grabbing my umbrella and briefly pausing in front of a large mirror on the wall. I quickly pulled my brown hair into a ponytail, studying the growing dark circles beneath my emerald eyes. I sighed, shaking my head as I recalled waking up in a panic the past few nights, night terrors leaving me shaken at 2am, not being able to differentiate reality and my dreams.

As I walked down the street towards the bus stop, I struggled to untangle the white cords of my headphones, before finally plugging the cord in and pressing play on my favorite song. A frown instantly made its way onto my face as I saw that the song was playing, but I heard nothing in my ears. I turned the volume up, twisted the cord around, unplugged and then plugged the cord back in. Finally, I gave up, sighing. These earbuds had lasted me almost 5 months, and they finally broke today. Dropping the headphones into the nearest trash can, I waited for the bus in silence, the sound of passing cars and people becoming my temporary song.

Before arriving at my office building, I made sure to stop by the thrift shop to pick up new earbuds, because there was no way I could make it through a whole day without my music. Searching the store, I eventually found a promising pair of black headphones, and quickly made my way out and walked the rest of the way to work.

Once I sat down at my desk, I plugged my new headphones in to finally listen to my music. I put my earbuds in and pressed play once again, waiting when a rush of noise filled my ears. But it wasn’t my music. It was voices, whispers. I pulled one earbud out, listening. No one in the office was speaking, let alone whispering. Figuring it must have been a glitch, I moved to unplug them, but stopped when heard a faint voice say my name. I paused. There was no one else in this building named Blair. I put both headphones back in and listened closely for the voice. The whispering returned to my earbuds once again, getting louder, yet I no longer heard coherent words.

Suddenly darkness enveloped my vision, causing ice cold fear to run through my veins, my heart pounding in my chest. I lifted my hand, trying desperately to pinch myself in hopes of waking up from whatever horrible night terror this was. The darkness quickly disappeared, however, and I found myself walking outside of my apartment. Much like most of my recent night terrors, I could no longer control any part of my body.

I watched the door open and quickly stole a glance at my mirror, when I realized I was not watching from my perspective. The person standing in the mirror was a man, wearing thick black clothes and a black ski mask, bright blue eyes gazing back at the mirror. I continued scanning the stranger, when my heart immediately dropped to my stomach. This person was wielding a knife. Feeling so utterly helpless and weak, I stared in pure terror as he began walking through my apartment. My brows furrowed as I watched him pass multiple electronics and other expensive items worth stealing. What was he looking for? The sound of a door creak brought my attention back once again to the intruder, who was now walking into my room.

My breathing hitched as I realized I was asleep in my bed.

The stranger moved slowly, knife facing down in his fist as he made his way toward my sleeping form. Tears blurred my vision as I tried desperately to scream, yell, anything to stop this person, but no sound escaped as I watched his blade raise from the corner of my eye, reflecting the light of the moon as it came down.

Suddenly, I ripped the earbuds from my ears and collapsed on the ground, gasping for air as I tried to take in what had just happened. Through my daze, I saw a hand offering to help me up. I gratefully took the person's hand and regained my balance once again, sitting in my chair. Right as I was about to thank the stranger, my eyes met his bright blue ones.

In my Digital Media class, one main part of my Narrative project was to create my own music using Pro Tools to go along with my Flash Fiction from English. When first writing my story, I chose to write a genre I have never explored before, thriller/horror, and I knew when I chose this that creating music to accompany it would be an interesting challenge. Because the genre I chose was different than music I normally listen to, I made sure to listen to different classic and new horror/thriller soundtracks to find inspiration and common techniques that I could eventually apply to my own music. When beginning the process of producing my music, I made sure to keep in mind the three different music themes necessary to tell the story: a main story theme, a main character motif, and music for the climax. Splitting the music into three parts helped me realize what I needed to focus on in each part, and overall made the process of making the audiobook much easier.

When creating the Story Theme, I kept in mind the common technique used in many successful horror/thriller films and made sure to make the music seem very calm by using only major chords on the piano to make the climax that much more of a shock to the listener.

When producing the the Main Character Motif, I made sure to continue the technique of making the music sound calm through the sound of the piano. I also chose to use this theme to represent the fact that the main character was content, and make the climax more unexpected.

Creating the climax theme for this story was a very exciting experience because I was finally able to apply everything I had learned when listening to common horror/thriller soundtrack techniques to my music. The techniques I used to create this music was the use of a minor key, a constant rhythm and growing volume that reaches a peak at the climax of the story. My main inspiration when using these techniques was in the classic theme from Jaws. In the Jaws theme, the music creates a sinister feeling of suspense using its crescendoing minor chords, and many researchers have found that this dissonant noise triggers an instinctual response in the brain that there is danger, which in turn leads to fear.

This is a screenshot of my narrative music production in Pro Tools

Along with the Narrative Project, my Digital Media class had the opportunity to work on another small music project using the program Reason. When we were first introduced to Reason during this unit, and after learning the basics, we were assigned the EDM exquisite corpse. EDM is a popular genre of electronic dance music, particularly following one tempo. An exquisite corpse is a collection of the work of multiple artists assembled, each person participating adds to a sequence, usually following a rule. For this project, we were told to create a short EDM song following three rules: 1) The song must be 8 bars long. 2) Tempo must be 120 beats per minute, 3) You can only use the white keys of the keyboard, and once everyone finished their portions, we would put all of them together into one EDM exquisite corpse. When creating my music, I first started by creating a consistent beat using the Redrum Drum Computer, and looping the same beat throughout the 8 measures. Then, I used the NN-XT advanced sampler and the keyboard to make the melody before adding effects to create the final song. Overall, I enjoyed this project because not only did I get to see what the rest of my class created, but I was also able to be a part of the finished product. In the final EDM exquisite corpse, my portion of the song begins at 1:20, and ends at 1:36.

This is a screenshot of my music production in Reason.

The main project that I worked on in my Digital Media class during the Narrative Unit was my audiobook. The audiobook project includes a recording of myself reading my Flash Fiction that I created in English, original music I created using Pro Tools, and finally sound effects to truly immerse the listener in the story. When recording the story, I made sure to add emphasis and emotion to my narration to help accurately depict the story and feelings of the character. Additionally, I produced my own music by using Pro Tools to create different themes for the story, character, and climax along with adding sound effects. During this project, I valued being able to add music and sound effects, because I was able to build the story in a new way that I had never experienced before. Overall, this project allowed me to take a written story and bring it to life through an audiobook, and creating and finishing it has been a very fulfilling process.

This is a screenshot of my narrative audiobook production in Pro Tools

In my Design class, we were asked to create a hybrid animal of three different animals that shared characteristics with our character from the Flash Fiction and sketch different combinations and poses. Then, we used Adobe Illustrator to draw the final hybrid and place it in a scene from our Flash Fiction. Using Illustrator, though it was very challenging, allowed me to grow in my knowledge of the program and gain more experience through using various tools to create the final project.

The first step in creating the hybrid was choosing three animals to combine. When choosing these animals, I wrote down the characteristics of my Flash Fiction character, Blair. In my Flash Fiction, some characteristics Blair deptics are introverted, shy, and scared. The animals I chose that match these characteristics are a cat, deer and mouse. After choosing my animals, I sketched different parts of each animal to find which hybrid would be best before deciding that deer legs, a cat body and mouse head would make a good combination for the final hybrid.

In order to create my final illustration, I needed to have an idea of the pose and proportions of my hybrid. In order to do this, I took multiple photos of my dog from different angles that I could use as a reference when drawing my character. Being able to see how the body of an animal moves in real life helped me illustrate movement in my hybrid and helped give the final illustration a sense of movement and realism.

In my English class, I created a short 750 word story with no dialogue on a young girl named Blair who lives in Chicago and loves listening to music. One day when her headphones suddenly broke, she bought a new pair in a thrift store near her job. What she did not realize was that these headphones held a special ability that allowed anyone wearing them to watch the thoughts of people around them. When she eventually tries to listen to her music, she is suddenly launched into someone's thoughts of breaking into her house to kill her, the only memory remaining of her killer being his striking blue eyes. When she is finally able to take the headphones off to escape the horrible thought, she collapses to the floor, and a man with striking blue eyes reaches out to help her up.

For this project, I created a hybrid creature using three different animals that shared characteristics with my character from my Flash Fiction. The first step in creating this was to sketch my initial draft ideas in my sketchbook, listing characteristics of my character (scared, introverted, shy) and finding animals that shared those characteristics (mouse, cat, deer). After sketching my hybrid, I drafted multiple ideas for poses and linear perspective background scenes from my story. One difficulty I struggled with while sketching the background was understanding what angle the perspective was going to be from. However after a few attempts, I was finally able to find an angle I was satisfied with. Once I finished sketching, I used Adobe Illustrator to draw the final hybrid and place it in the background scene of a city. Though using the program was difficult at first, I am glad that I was able to learn through the experience of using various tools.

This is a screenshot of my illustration in production in Adobe Illustrator