The Cinderella Edit

As a child I was exposed to animated movies that almost always ended in a happy ending. As great and positive as these movies are, they do not go further than that when it comes to actually teaching about how life really is. They mainly emphasize how good things will always happen, and all of our problems will be resolved instantly. That is why I wanted to take a story that was made into a positive, unrealistic representation of what one desires for reality, and twist it to match how life really works.

I feel that society is becoming too passive and unoriginal with storytelling. Most movies have the ideal resolution, everything just seems to fit into place, similar to the reading, “How Texts Become Real” when the author is describing people’s desire to just have the TV on. People just want to watch TV just like they want the perfect ending, it’s not edifying in any way, just a way to pass the time.

Cinderella is the epitome of happy endings being the result of “magic.” It is not just the fact that everything turns out well in the end, it’s the point that everything will turn out perfect that bothers me the most. The original story was published in Grimm’s Fairytales before Disney ever came to be. Their stories, even Cinderella, have darker themes to them with gruesome events. Specifically for Cinderella the step sisters mutilate their own feet in an attempt to fit the slipper to win the prince. Though even the Grimm tale of Cinderella has a happy ending where the girl gets the perfect man. I do understand that the underlying theme of the story is that patience and hard work will pay off in the end, however, the implications of this are dramatically exaggerated with the ideal yet unrealistic outcome.

In my edit, I twisted the ending so that she does not get what she desires. I believe this ending is tragic, but there is still an important lesson to learn. That is that we need to know how to cope with problems, even when we come so close to ridding ourselves of them. This new edit may not be as enjoyable to watch, but there is much to be said about how it turns out and how that can relate to the audience.

Now you may be wondering what Cinderella has to do with me. I connect with Cinderella because I have been and am working hard to obtain the ideal happy ending. I have noticed that this just isn’t probable. More than likely I will find a girl to love, a job to earn money, and a life that is meaningful. But this future most likely will not involve an elaborate castle with the most beautiful princess. The realization of this has upset me in the past, and others should be aware that these stories are not realistic for us.

Medium Specificity - Scary Story

Hunger

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Ghost stories have been told and enjoyed for many years. It’s always a thrill to find yourself frightened by a story despite having the knowledge that it is fake. There is even a popular genre within film that displays such stories in a format to elicit fears. What makes these stories so intriguing? I decided to explore this topic by making my Medium Specificity about the art of telling scary stories.

Creating this piece, I wanted to use more than just the words. The story can only go so far on its own, and part of storytelling is actually telling the story to an audience. To tell the story effectively the correct ambience must be established. The audio recorded is manipulated to make a darker sounding voice, and manipulating some of the other audio effects to make it sound creepier. In the past, stories were only told out loud to those listening. As creepy as this was back then, today’s technology allows us to manipulate the stories in a way to make them scarier. Similar to how McCloud explained the history and evolution of comics. They started out more rudimentary, but effective for the time, and ended up how we have them today, which are enjoyed by the present society. Technology allows us to create more interesting and terrifying pieces. The resulting audio emphasizes these dark tones and gives more character to the story without even showing anything.

The picture included represents how the storyteller might look while telling the story. The main part of the picture is the lighting, which represents how dark and moody the atmosphere would be when one is telling a scary story. Specific lighting is used often while someone is telling a scary story. As children, we would hold up a flashlight to our face in a tent. In the television series, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, a campfire was used to light up the kids’ faces while they told the story. The lighting does an effective job at emphasizing how mysterious and dark the story is, making the story much more frightening than it really is.

The story itself is not scary. However, these elements implemented in with the actual words gives it more of an edge as a scary story. What also adds to the fear of it is the context of the story. For anyone who has been in the same situation as the man, the story would have an element of horror. This is true for any story, it becomes more frightening when the listener can personally connect to it.

All of these elements add to the overall scary story that is presented. It is not so much the story itself that is intriguing to the audience, it is the way that it is executed that draws people in. The scarier the story is told, the better.

Bell

Zach Connell

Weber Griffiths

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByQ989949AxzQmdKWWhXMkExQ0k/view?usp=sharing

This was a very interesting and exciting project, and it really allowed both of us to see history in a new way. Using two sources, listed below, we were able to enter the world of Alexander Graham Bell and intertwine it with the fantasy world we created. Since he was a teacher for the deaf, we thought it would be important to include him doing that, giving him a reason to not be in his workshop and thus creating an incentive for the heroes to track him down. One of the articles mentioned Bell receiving all the credit for his invention, and others criticized him for it. This allowed us to give the Alexander in the story more reason to not trust his Assistant.

This slight blend of historical fact (Bell teaching a class to deaf students and the tension between him and his assistant) allow a certain amount of reality to permeate an otherwise fictional story. It helped to build humor as well by portraying Bell and his assistant at odds with each other. This clarified motivation and also showcased a perhaps less known character trait of the famous Alexander Graham Bell, which added to the “over-the-top” humor of the whole short. It is an almost poetic contrast as well between fantastical time travel and true to life historical fact.

The graphical novel “After the Deluge” by Josh Neufeld is a great example of a creative treatment of an historical event and inspired in part our own work. Though his novel is more serious, Neufeld’s portrayal of Hurricane Katrina and its effects on New Orleans is done in a creative and new medium not often associated with the genre. It’s colorful sketches and comic book formatting engage the reader in history and allow one to take a whole new perspective on what history means and what it can teach us. Though Bell is humorous and improbable, it echoes similar ideas in its plot. The dichotomous use of fantasy and history uniquely engage the reader in the story and gives them a new (and perhaps very strange) perspective on past events.

This creative treatment of history is seen all over in modern pop-culture, often comedically. As in our script, creative and comedic treatments of history are common and serve to engage and inform an audience. One example of this that reflects our own work is the film Inglourious Basterds (2009). Both Bell and Inglourious Basterds deal with an alternate historical past and specifically they both deal with a comedic execution of a famed historical figure. While Inglourious Basterds is different in many aspect, the comedic execution of Adolf Hitler at the end of the film (A very inaccurate and incorrect portrayal) is very similar to our own execution of Alexander Bell. Both treat lightly major historical events, though not frivolously. It all very intentionally conveys the stories mood and theme while at the same time allowing viewers to see history in a new and creative light.            

Sources

http://www.britannica.com/biography/Alexander-Graham-Bell

http://www.history.com/topics/inventions/alexander-graham-bell

The Elevator Pitch

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When we were first assigned this project, we were at a loss for what process to create. We felt overwhelmed with the infinite possibilities of processes we could duplicate. What would stand out more so than just duplicating daily, mundane routines? From our viewings, “The Smokehouse” and “Scriptures” were completely different processes, yet they both represented an event—whether it is something that occurs daily or infrequently—in a very creative way. While working with a partner, we were able to combine our creative minds to develop a process that was less common and more innovative. However, it is still a process that has a beginning, middle, and end and tells the narrative of an act of human labor, whether that act be quite rare. We were inspired by our 30-second elevator pitch for our next project: The Historical Story. We recreated the process of entering an elevator, running into someone famous—in this case our made up film critic named Benjamin Thevenin—, pitching a 30-second pitch for a movie, and being embarrassingly rejected.

Recording an event that does not occur often is interesting because it puts into perspective the unpredictability of daily life. While this process was staged, we tried to stay true to what a real chance encounter in an elevator may have been like. The fact that this process is only an audio piece makes it that much more difficult to clearly demonstrate our process. However, it forces the audience to personalize the process and create their own meaning. Similar to the silent film “L'arrivée d'un train en Gare de la Ciotat,” where the audience must imagine what the train would sound like as it comes into the station, our audience must visually imagine the scene we set up for them sonically. Just as everyone knows what the sound of a train sounds like, we can all imagine what an elevator pitch would possibly look like. However, each person has minute differences in what they hear or what they see due to past experiences they may have had with either a train or an encounter in an elevator.

For our process, we found an elevator with typical “elevator sounds,” such as indicator beeping and the voice of a woman repeating the floors we pass. Because there was no elevator music, we decided to add to the ambiance and create our own elevator music, simulating the stereotypical elevator experience. We used an additional person to be the “pitch-giver,” who recreated the fake scene with their own improvised dialogue, adding to the spontaneity of this type of situation. After multiple takes due to unexpected outside elements, our finished product turned out to be truly representative of our chosen process. Every sound within the 60-second piece added to the visual authenticity of our process. Whether it is played out on a screen or heard through audio recording, our understanding of the given process and our creative imaginations inspire us to visualize the process in our own unique way.