Informed Practise 1

Your assignment is to write an essay (1,600 words, +/- 10%) in response to one of the three prompts from the project brief (below). Your essay should deal critically with your chosen subject and reference at least five scholarly texts relevant to your enquiry. These could be sourced from textbooks, the writing of philosophers and cultural theorists, academic journals or texts used during the unit.
All research sources in-text must be fully referenced (using the Harvard system) and a bibliography at the end of your submission must be included.

Project Briefs
write an essay in response to one of the three prompts below:

a) Select a visual narrative of your choice that is broadly dystopian or speculative (either comic book, film, television programme, animation or video game) and discuss the role fear or hope plays within the narrative. What is the source of the fear? What formal techniques are used to manipulate the feelings of the audience? Explain how the narrative, and in particular the representation of fear within the narrative, relates to broader cultural, social or political issues in play at the time the work was made

b) Choose a storyteller/philosopher/artist known to you whose work deals with broadly dystopian or utopian themes, and whose ideas have been adapted for the screen. Is the adaptation a straight or a loose interpretation of the original idea/story? Is there a shift in how formal elements (such as the theme, characterization, style, tone, and plot) are presented within the adaptation? Is the overall message of the original text retained?

c) From the Utopian Play List – choose one documentary (or compare two) and for your essay analyse how the director addresses the audience; how the voice-over, the cinematography, the editing and the way subjects in the documentary are framed to represent a particular point-of-view. Or how does the director disrupt the typical documentary mode of address? And what ultimately do you think the films say about the future.

For this assignment, I chose the first project brief. The media I chose was Train to Busan 2016

For this assignment, I worked together with Hunter Main. the brief was to create a 40-60 second film on the phrase ‘the last night of the world’

We met up over the break and went to the national history museum to get some inspiration for the project. After discussing it, and creating a moldboard, we decided to go with a more science fiction approach with an alien invasion concept, using 2D animation.

Hunter created some storyboards:

We ended up revising them as it seemed a bit too much to fit into 1 minute

I sketched out some character designs and Hunter redrew them to fit his style, as we have slightly different drawing styles.

We then animated parts of it separately using the revised storyboard as a basis and created this final animation:

Create a storyboard based off the concept ’the end of the world’

Homework:

1. select a sequence of moving image (film, TV, game, animation etc) and also a quotation from a critical text (not specifically related to the object) of no longer than five sentences.
2. if you need to add minor transitions or effects so text and image sync do so (but not attempt editing multiple clips).
3. The quotation should then appear onlife screen in some dynamic interaction with the video.
4. Further, either replace or significantly alter the soundtrack.

I used a clip from the tv series ’The Haunting of Bly Manor’ and paired it with Ludovico Einaudi ‘experience’ and the quote ’death always leaves one singer to mourn’ by Katherine Anne Porter.