Concept & Story
- What is the concept & the story in your project?
Our project is about how a boy in 2019 COVID time and a girl in 2003 SARS time struggle under pandemic. The boy is a pessimistic person who initially gives up doing anything and just let his life passes by, while the girl at first is a optimistic person, who, despite the lockdown, still tidies herself up because she thinks her life must move on in spite of all the pandemic. Yet, this boy has discovered a card written long ago by his parents that expressed their love toward him. Thus, the boy has realized that he also needs to struggle within his life because there are people who count toward him, who thinks his life matters. And at the same time, the girl starts showing her pessimistic side under the seemingly optimistic shell of hers. She starts to feel worn out after taking such an optimistic view to this road that can see no end and starts feeling down. Thus, since the boy feels the need to move on his life, and the girl starts feeling the setback on the way to move on her life, they both begin to struggle, as what is expressed after the scene of ants crawling on the tree. Eventually, both of them realize their answer after struggling and opens the window to carry on their own answer into the future, into that bigger world.
- How were you inspired to create this project?
We were inspired to create this project when we realized how, when we were borne, there was SARS and when were turn adults, there was COVID. It feels as if our life, our youth was contained within a curse of pandemic. So we think it might be interesting to show how two generations under these two pandemics might behave, what are some differences and commons in their behaviors.
- What is the ideation process of this project?
At first, we wanted to let these two generations of people speak directly toward each other, through computer or through phone. In other words, we wanted to use explicit ways to show their obvious communication. Furthermore, we want the person in COVID time to mock the person in SARS time because he knows the people being optimistic in SARS has no use, since it is not human’s effort that kills SARS, but the nature. So we initially intended to make them debate with each other to express their contradicted values. But then as what our professor has told us, it might be interesting if there can be a bit vagueness in these two people’s connection, and create similar details to make the audience guess whether these two people are talking to each other or not. Also, professor said that making them debate with each other make him feel as if the person in COVID time is lecturing the person in SARS time. This power dynamics is not that helpful in showing the main theme of this project—the struggle and hope towards life. So we decided to cancel the debating part and instead, designed several plots, dropping the notebook and opening the window, to show how these two people are implicitly talking with each other equally, and going through similar process under the time of pandemic.
- Why do you want to explore this topic?
As now the lockdown in Shanghai is still undergoing, we feel like discovering such a topic can give us hope to the future that COVID might lead us toward. We figure out that no matter how era changes, humanity still remains the same. The toughness and the will to not give up are still there deep in human’s heart. Thus, if human can endure SARS time, human can also endure COVID time. People in the past also did not know when would SARS end, but they managed to get through it. So even though COVID is consuming people’s life, if we keep struggling in our life, keep making each day count under tough situations, our future will still be colorful and even more promising in spite of the influence COVID brought to our lives. The point is to keep struggling no matter what happened outside, because when it comes to an end, it is our life that we are living, we have every call on it.
Creation Process & Execution
Share your storyboard and describe how it helped you in your project.
Describe the process of choosing a setting, shooting, sourcing materials, lighting, and directing (if applicable).
Describe the challenges you encountered during the content creation process, and how you solved or overcame them.
Describe your editing & post-production process. You may share a few screenshots from Premiere about the editing techniques and effects you learned.
The storyboard is like a visualized script for our project. When we draw the storyboard, it prompts us to think about the design of camera angle and camera movements and the setting of the scene.
When we are choosing a setting and shooting, we usually think about how to show the characters’ characteristics and meanwhile put them in dialogue, or, juxtaposition. For instance, after the shots about the boy, for the scene the camera moves from the messy clothes to hands tidying them up. Though the shift in news reporting(from Covid to SARS) and music(from slower to faster) gives hints that the scene has shifted to another character, the audience may not realize it. The blurring boundaries between figures leaves the audience with imagination and confusion about the relationship between two characters. Besides, our lighting also serves for expression. For instance, most of the boys’ scenes (before the opening-window shot) are in poor lighting, which shows he closes his mind and lacks passion for life during the lockdown. Meanwhile, the lighting for the girl is brighter and warmer at first, showing her positive attitude towards life.
We also met some challenges. What we can shoot is limited due to the lockdown, so we call for our creativity for expression. Since Albert lives by himself, he has to act and shoot on his own, which makes it unlikely to create camera movements. Therefore he stabilized the phone and found nice angles for shots. Also, it’s harder to cooperate online. We hoped that we could edit the video collaboratively but failed to. Hence, we transferred the music and clips back and forth(which may not be open due to different versions of software). In addition, as new ideas pop up, our story outline and voiceover are modified constantly. Sometimes we get stuck as it’s hard to visualize the outcomes with merely a storyboard or words. We then realized that we can start shooting and editing along with polishing the outline.
For editing, we used parallel editing for the part where the two characters both dropped a book, but then reading the book/card led to their different emotions–the boy felt the bond, the memory and care surrounding him, while the girl feels sad about the fading blossoms, spring and closing life without an end. This parallel editing implies their connection across times and their shared emotions of hope and despair under two crises starts to unfold. We also learned to use some transitional effects to link the scenes.
We used color grading to better convey the atmosphere, mood or state of mind for the characters. For instance, we created a cooler color for the boy’s scene and a warmer and more nolgastic tone for the girl’s. We both tried some online resources as well as experimenting by ourselves.
Collaboration
- Describe your own role and contribution to the project.
I offered several great ideas toward the concept formation of this project. I also jotted down several notes for the idea I came up with in the shared document we had. As for the shooting scene, I have done lots of researches to classical piece and came up with various camera angles to consider, and I experimented different angles and discussed them with Ziyi to see whether it fits the effect we want. Lastly, I finished all the editing job for the latter half of the video (the part after ants crawling on the tree).
- Express appreciation for the work your teammate did.
I am really thankful for all the helpful video clips that Ziyi offered, they really helped me constructing the clips and plots of the whole video. Also I am really appreciated toward Ziyi’s note keeping and patience when we were discussing. Thank you really much for your great ideas!
- How did the collaborative process and exchange with your partner inform your project?
Discussing with Ziyi made me come up with lots of great ideas about the formation of the story of our project and the camera angles or different clips in our project. Ziyi also offered lots of great video clips and they really informed me the effect that could play an effective role in our project.
- Was there something you learned from your partner?
“Not giving up” is what I have learned from my partner. After submitting the final project, she was not satisfied with her part so she requested to redo it. And she kept doing it until 4:50 am in the midnight. She said she was not good at it so it took her some time, but her stubborn attitude really moved me. As long as there is a will, there is a way. I shall also carry this attitude in my future academic career.
Aesthetics & Results
Consider the aesthetics you choose to pursue your concept and story such as the following, tell us why do you think it is effective and you may also share your inspirations and references:
Camera language (e.g., long-shot, different camera angles)
Color correction/adjustment
Tone/Pace of video
We try to establish a variety of camera language. Angles from the side to the front, perspectives from objective shots to subjective shots and corresponding shots(i.e.when both characters face the camera and their emotions burst out). In particular, we both like the long shot at the later part(where we see the back of the boy who kneels in front of his windows) very much. You may also feel that space is broadened and your heart is open and ready to fly beyond the window of the lockdown room.
You may also notice a comparison of color. Besides the previously mentioned contrast between characters in the early half, there are also shifts in the later half when the boy opens the window–and all of a sudden the desaturated world becomes vibrant and colorful.
We designed empty shots in our films, which corresponds to our pace–the first black shot for transition between characters and times, with the corresponding news reporting providing a context. The characters first seem to be different, but as the cuts get quicker(i.e. Picking books) we see their similarities and bonds. The second shot of the crawling ant signals how two characters are struggling and indicates the burst afterwards, where the shifting of cuts speeds up even more and suddenly, everything slows down as the boy opens the window. At the end, you see two birds flying across the sky, and the music sings, “flock of birds”… All echoing with a line of words that we want to send to our audience in the end: “心有羽翼，随处可栖” (Wherever we are, may our wings fly our wish and life widely).
We used both Audition and Premiere Pro to edit our soundtrack. The right/left channels signal the two time periods. For the first half of the video, the sound of the boy in 2019 comes from the left, and it gradually shifts as the news report shifts, and finally to the right as it enters the girl’s scene in 2003.