Assignment 3

Stage 1


Well, was fevering from the CNY snacks and missed tutorial again. Anyway, I really sucked at creating stories and was really fretting over this assignment.


I understand that the requirement of this assignment needs a plot and not just merely display of lovey dovey-ness. Hence, I decided to choose a drama plot. And like some of what our class mate did, some one has to die in the plot . But I did not want to do it in a straight forward way. Instead, I want to potray the notion that the "Boyfriend" remained as a guardian angel to the "girlfriend" even years after he died. So this requires lots of flashback and transition techniques.


So my first picture will present the girlfriend writing a diary/postcard, which was dated 14 feb 2008 : Dear XXX, happy 8th anniversary. The following photo scenes will portray lovey dovey moments of the boyfriend & girlfriend together. I will focus on particular segments of the photos so it will create a illusion that the girl friend is celebrating Vday with his boyfriend. However, in fact the boyfriend has already died for a few years. The transition to show that the boyfriend has already died begins at this photo where it focus on the boyfriend kissing the girlfriend's forehead, who is looking down. I will slowly zoom back and reveal that the girl is actually holding a couple photoframe in hand. And a tear dropped midway. I will then slowly zoomed into the background, where the diary at the start lies. And attached to the bottom of the diary is a news paper clipping of the boyfriend committed suicide.


Afterwhich that I will flash back the SAME "lovey dovey scenes" once again. But this time, I will create a fading effect of the boyfriend fading away. Hence, this time, it will only show the girlfriends in these photos. I will take note that the posture & expression of the girlfriend reveals that she is not aware of the spirit of her boyfriend with her. It will create a feeling that the boyfriend has always been the guradian angel of the girlfriend, accompanying her no mattar what she do.


Stage 2

View Upload your own

Added a few more scenes to create a more drama effect. Increased to 34 scenes. Yups, will scan in my drawings once my neighbour comes back. I dont have a scanner now. Hopefully it will be before the tutorial timing.

REVIEW of Stage 2

Thanks for all the comments every one. I guess after all the suggestions, I do have ideas for some more added scenes . Of course, due to majority demand, a change in the plot with a "Boy died saving the girl" tragic scenes. Hmm, will continue revising my pictures, b'cos there are still quite little photos right now.

Change of plot

As my plot involves the protagonist dying, I have difficulty finding cast for the role. Had a had time before deciding to change my whole plot to suit my 'actor', who is my boyfriend.

To summarize, it is actually about a boy who died saving his girlfriend but came back as a guardian angel to sort of protect the girl. But the fact that the boy already died wouldn’t be shown until the middle of the storyline. So with flashback, I wanted to create a melancholy feel .
Sadly, my second plot was totally different from my first one. But with the comments given by my classmates on my first plot, some of them mentioned that certain scenes in my first plot were good. So I decided to adapt and reuse them in my second plot. My second plot is more simple as it directly captures the high and lows of my love life. As it is a more simple and mundane kind of plot, it was not easy to portray the emotions in my relationship. I didn’t want to do a photostory that simply flashes pictures of us being happy together. So, a lot of the photos were designed in a way which expresses different forms of values and emotions in my relationship.

My first prototype was quite dull and below my expectations. There was no narration, no gimmicks. So it turned out to be something I really dislike. So I tried various methods, including changing the background music several times. So finally, I came up with a few ideas :

1) Using words to express my emotions directly à to add a fun factor to my design
2) Play with the various transitions to suit the music
3) Adding my own narration to add a personal touch to the design. But I in fact have a few version of the narrative because the initial ones sounded quite amateurish.

A focus on my film was actually to play with the various sequence, transitions and colors because I believe that these are the little details which give an extra edge to my design. Had a really bad time with the crashing and rendering problem of adobe premiere though.
The comments given by the class was pretty good. Room for improvement includes:

- Narrative voice too much noise
- Got one or two image does not match the frame size

My final product resolves the mentioned problems and I added on to improve some of the coloring and lightning errors.