Project Title: Undecided (until we have finalized the parable that we will be using)
Team Members: Derek Eng, Kyle Lok
Concept | Storyline: American Born Chinese
We are planning to tell the story of being an American-born Chinese, and the process of assimilation that our families go through after moving to the US. In order to portray this, we will use a Cantonese narration, where four different people with varying levels of fluency read a Cantonese parable. The narration will start out as fluent, but then end with the least fluent speaker. To visualize this, we will have video of four different dishes being made ranging from extremely traditional Cantonese food to American food. Each dish will correspond with a speaker. This is to show the slow progression from being Chinese to American-Chinese and eventually to Asian-American.
We are currently asking our family members spanning 4 generations to read a traditional cantonese parable in Cantonese. As previously mentioned, the skill level of the speakers will vary, but it was very important for us to prioritize authenticity of the speakers. The parables that we are currently deciding between: The Legend of the Five Goats, The Porcelain Lion, and In A Bowl Of Rice. We are currently in communication with our relatives to deliberate the final story, the reason we have done it this way is because we want to make sure the narrators themselves feel personally connected to this specific story. We are currently leaning towards a shorter parable, due to many of the traditional folk tales in Guangdong being extremely long, which would put us past our 90 second target. Ideally there would be a food element to the story as it could tie into our visuals that we will be recording. We want to aim for a vintage aesthetic with the time period of our videos being somewhat vague to give the simultaneous feeling of timelessness and evolution. To achieve this we will not be showing any technology throughout the clips (excluding the cooking hardware).
Execution Plan:
We plan to have each individual speaker record their own sound, using multiple takes to make sure we get as good of quality as possible. Afterwards we will use Adobe Audition to clean up the audio for the final product. For the video, we will be using a DSLR and tripod for a stabilizer. Shooting time will vary per shot, as some will only be available to us during late hours of the night.
One challenge we might have is actually filming the cooking, since we have to get good enough angles to properly show what food is being cooked. Another challenge would be to create shot variation while keeping a similar aesthetic throughout. In order to capture some of the more accurate depictions of Chinese food we may need to contact some local shop owners and 路边摊 workers to see if we can film them for the project. We will also likely check out a TASCAM recorder to make sure the sounds of the cooking are as clear as possible. To account for potential difficulties with shooting locations, we may check out some equipment like the light fixtures in order to make sure our shot quality is consistent.
Attached below is our preliminary Gantt chart, but we have been very clear with our communication that the collaboration efforts will likely be a moving situation where in some areas one person may have to pick up more work than the other. But due to our motivation for this project we do not foresee any teamwork disputes as we both want to create the best possible final product.
