A.Concept & Story

• Our concept is about desire and meaning. When “you” first saw a fancy city called Phyllis, “you” were attracted by all the fancy things and amazing life in the city, and “you” wanted to stay in the city forever. However, when you could really stay there, as time passed, you found all the surprising things disappeared. You felt bored,  void and meaningless. When we were discussing the text of VO, we wanted to talk about something relatively deeper. Crystal recommended the book Invisible City, and we picked this chapter because we found the topic of meaninglessness very interesting. 

 B.  Creation Process & Execution

• The final video actually changed a lot from our originally storyboard. But by thinking about the storyboard, we had some basic ideas and we followed them when making the final video. For example, we wanted our video to have some reflections and we kept the beginning and the ending. We wanted to present the process of a curve becoming straight to show the disappearance of things and convey a sense of emptiness. We Based on these ideas, we draw a new one and made our project according to it.

• For most of the scenes, we first decided what to shoot, and then we thought about the places, settings, etc. For example, we have two scenes of fish, the first one is fish swimming in the water, the second is fish struggling on the ground. Our primary idea is that in the first one we show they are in the ocean, happy and free. To find somewhere that looked like the ocean, we went to the aquarium and shot some fish in a simulated undersea tunnel.  However, the second fish scene is an exception among all the scenes. We had wanted to shoot some dead fish being sold, so we went to a supermarket. Suddenly, a fish jumped out of the glass box and struggled on the ground. Chenxuan quickly shot it, and we thought it  showed a kind of hopelessness, which is even better than our original idea, so we used it, which is totally a surprise.

• At first we wanted to use some clips to show the fancy life in the city, such as jewelry, beautiful dresses, or something like that. However, it was really hard for us to find these objects. We shot some candies, flowers, but if we simply put these things together, our video looked very “broken”, and the scene didn’t look fancy either. Finally we decided to shoot a party with delicious food, laughing people, wine ( which was actually grape juice)and glasses. We had dinner in the CenturyLink complex and honorably had my roommates to act as the people attending the party.
• We edited different scenes severally and then combined them on my computer. Mine is two eyes scenes, the party scene, the hands’ scenes, and the lego people. For the eyes scene, I used crop effects to make the eyed fill the screen, and I also checked the number so that the eyes in two different scenes could look in the same place and the same size. For the party scenes, I adjust the speed to make it more immersive. There were some specific scenes (such as the one where someone was filling a glass with wine) that were not stable, since the speed adjustment and stabilizer could not be used at the same time. I exported them separately and then imported the slower one again to add a stabilizer on it. For the hands’ scene, I also adjusted the speed to match the timing. The legos were the scene that I spent the most time on. We wanted to make it look like some stop-motion animation, so I cut some frames from the long video and presented each frame for the same time. Due to lighting issues, there was one frame that looks brighter and yellower than others, so I also adjusted its color temperature. After putting each piece together as the whole video, we polished some transitions, timing issues and added the title and subtitle together.

C.Collaboration

• We three brainstormed the description of the storyboard together. At the filming stage, I was the one whose eyes and hands were shown in the video. I also filmed the party scene, the glass scene and the lego scene with chenxuan. At the editing stage, we assigned our work and my parts were as above. 
• Crystal is the one who recommended the text and finished the voice over and chose the background music. I really love her voice and our audio for the project. When we were editing the video, she made some cool effects and she helped us to make the timing and subtitles look more perfect. Since she is the only native English speaker, she really did a lot when we were dealing with things related to English.

Chenxuan had many brilliant ideas when we were thinking about the storyboard. She also shot many beautiful scenes. and she was also the one that reminded me to think about the reality when I got some unrealistic ideas.

• When we were shooting the scenes, sometimes I thought one scene was “Okay”, but my teammates always told me that we should make it “perfect” instead of  just “Okay”. I think that’s what I should learn from them.
• D.Aesthetics & Results

• Generally speaking we chose a documentary  style for our video. So most of the scenes were shot in real life settings and natural lighting, and we intended to make the lighting not quite bright to achieve the documentary style. But the object we chose had some metaphorical meaning, for example, the string scene were shot in front of a blue board under natural light, but the string could represent the city, and two hands playing with it just like a person wandering in the street, finally its drop metaphoring the disappearance of the fancy city.
•  We tried to explore as much camera language as possible. The eyes were an extreme close-up, through which we wanted the audience to feel like they were the “you” mentioned in the voiceover. Then, the party scenes have both close-up and medite shots, also various angles of the movements of cheering up to better show the fancy life of phyllis and then we put a still scene of the close-up of glasses that were put together to express “stay there”.
• One thing that we spent much of our time working on was the connection between each scene. Both the beginning and the ending were a person opening her eyes, but the audience can see that at  the beginning the eyes were full of excitement but at the ending they become tired and the light in them disappears, we want this comparison to show “your” emotional change. The scene of filling the glass is connected with the party scenes as well as the broken glass scene. We wanted to show some process of accumulating and destroying, which is the metaphor for not only the fancy city Phyllis that became invisible but “your” desire and excitement disappearing and being replaced but the feeling of meaninglessness. 
• The pace of our final video was slow, because we wanted the audience to have more time to consider all the things that happened and feel more immersed in our video.

1.   Project Title
2. Team Members: Phoebe Li, Crystal Wen, Tracy Wu

III.  Concept | Storyline:

1. Our narrative voiceover will be an excerpt from the chapter Cities & Eyes 4 from the book Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino.
2. The story is about your arrival in an invisible city called Phyllis. You are amazed, but over time, you lose interest and the city becomes nearly invisible to you.
3. From the story, we are going to focus on the last section of the chapter, which describes the desperation and aimlessness of an empty life.
4. We are going to pursue ____ style/aesthetics

1. Execution Plan: 

1. When shooting the movie, we will use equipment including a cell phone, a DSLR camera, a sound recorder, and a stabilizer.
2. We will shoot at various locations. 
   1. We will use lively scenes at many times of day in locations like a busy street, a party, a restaurant, Puxi Nanjing West Road, the Bund, etc. to show an actor being unamused by situations that should be very stimulating. 
      1. We will shoot at the same locations at times that are more deserted and not busy, while our actor stays constant, to show the transition.
   2. We will use everyday daytime scenes in locations like an office, a study room, etc. to show an actor being worn down by repetitive obligations.
   3. We will use very blank scenes at a purposefully unknown time of day in locations like a bed, in front of a window, staring at a wall, etc. to show the desperation and meaninglessness.
3. We might prepare for some challenges we might encounter, such as using photoshop or similar streets if we can’t get an empty street,  or we have prepare a wonderful intention but we can’t express it properly.
4. We will collaborate and divide work as specified in the Gantt chart below.

1.   Storyboard Draft

1. Gantt Chart*

• A.I use my father’s memory. His car broke down when he was driving along in the mountain. He heard the howl of wolves from the dark mountain. He was scared, and thought of many horrible things. But he could do nothing except fixing his car as soon as possible and drive home quickly. Iwanted to conclude both the real surrounding sound and the sound that reveal my father’s inner activity. I asked my father about this memory, and I also imagined how I would feel if I were in the same situation.Finally I decided the order of the different component. As for how to mix to composite some pieces of sound to achieve certain effect, I did have some ideas from the beginning but most of them was got when I was mixing and trying.
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• B.  (1)The project begins with the sound of wolves, which was edited from the sound of husky, a king of dog. The wolves’ howl is the trigger of all the emotions and memories, and the sound of husky is the sound that most close to the wolves howl in my consideration. Then is the sound of clothes friction and a bell’s sound. When I was imagining myself experiencing the same thing, I thought I would feel afraid just after hearing the sound, but it might take one or two seconds to really realize what happened and how scary it was. My heart might felt like shaking, which is the function of the bell. And then there were some dull tapping sounds, which was recorded when I was knocking the wall of a piano room, to intimate of sound of heart beating. I thought when people was scared, they would feel their heart beating easily, especially when the surrounding was extremely quiet. Then it’s a piece of mixed sound, which I wanted to reveal his imaginations. I mixed the sound of water, knocking and some noises of some machine and I wanted to create an effect of darkness and chaos, because he just thought of some horrible results and his mind was chaotic. Next was a chord of pipa, a Chinese traditional instrument, which means his emotion reach a peak. Then he calmed down, and some sounds of knocking on the metal can be heard, it was him repairing the car. Finally, he repaired the car successfully and started the car. The starting sound is composed by the sound of clipping the keyboard and the sound of scratching a iron fence. Some piano sound fades in and out, reveal his mixed mood after the horrible experience.
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• (2) Noise reduction was the effect that I use the most, and I used it in almost all the clips. For the wolves howls, I added an FFT filter and a convolution reverb to make it sounds higher frequency and from a distance. I also adjust the panning so that it could sound like the howl it’s from all directions. Then I edited the sound of clothes and the sound of the bell. Both of the volume was switched to be a little higher, and a echo was added to the bell’s sound. Next I edited the sound of heart beat. There are two different sound for it, one is slow, the other is relatively fast. I copied the fast more some times and linked them together and make the volume of these clips from low to high, to show that the heart beat became stronger and faster. The whole heart beat part was intended to fade in and out, so it could switch to his inner activity smoothly. For this part, I put different sound in different tracks, and added clip effect such as FFT filter, reverb, and guitarsuite. The volume of the machine sound was turned down while the volume of the water sound was turned up. Then I added the pipa sound and then it’s the sound of knocking metal. I used reverb and made it fade in. For the sound of the keyboard, I increased the volume and added reverb to make it sound more clear. And the piano sound was faded out. Finally I added an FFT filter, a multiband compressor and a mastering effect in the master track.
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• C. A challenge I met was that after adding echo or delay effect, there was a loud “si” or “sa” sound, and it couldn’t be reduced by adding denoise effect. Finally I thought these sound might have a certain frequency and FFT filter did solve the problem.
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• D.If do it next time, I would do more work on panning, and I would try to make the transition between different clips more smoothly.
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Steyerl talks about how the “unbroken belief” of the documentary form is challenged. What does Steyerl mean by this? Certain movies and films are based on a true story.  How does truth inform the fiction? How might fiction inform the truth?

Instead of presenting the one hundred percent reality, these documentary use some special images to convey some feeling. The images can be uncertain, vague and low-resolution, but they finally create a kind of atmosphere for the audience to feel like immersed. The author used the example of documentarism of CNN to demonstrate the argument. In the broadcast in 2003, the picture was composed by green and brown blotches. It did express the atmosphere, though it’s hard to distinguish what was presenting in it.

On one hand, truth provides fictions with materials. For those movies and films based on true stories, truth just like a pathway telling them where to go next. Some creators imagine the people, but use the real story, some imagine the story, but the main idea is still based on real society. In most of the cases, there always are some factors absorbed from the reality.

On the other hand, fiction can also reveal truth and make it more impressive. Fiction comes out of truth, which means it can reveal the truth to different extent. Moreover, fiction can use some technique such as exaggeration to strengthen the power of truth.

What is the significance of the authenticity and representation of the truth in the media that you consume on a daily basis? What is the role of a live broadcast?

In my opinion, the authenticity and representation of the truth in the media gives people real information. They help people to make decision. From the social dimension, it help maintain social stability in most situations. Take news for example, real news can tell people what is happening. Based on the information convey in the news, people can think and make decision. News also have the function to stop the spread of rumor, which can prevent people to get in panic and finally maintain a stable society.

A live broadcast tells what is happening right now. It has immediacy and relatively high authenticity. It enable the audience to know what is happening in the first time. And since it is difficult to be manipulated, a live broadcast seems to be more convinced than those that are broadcast a while after being recorded.

I want to use my father’s memory. It happened around 20 years ago before the Chinese New year, on his way back to our hometown, a small village in the mountains in the east of Liaoning Province. He was driving a car borrowed from his colleague on the rural mountain road. It had snowed some days ago so the road was covered by snow and mud. It was nearly midnight, and the surrounding was dark. Because of all these reasons, he couldn’t watch the condition of the road clearly, and his car broke down in a gap. At that age, the mobile phone had not popularized yet. There was still some distance from the nearest village. He failed to find any one for help, so they had to repair his car alone. Then, he said they heard the howls of wolves in the mountains. It happened in a sudden so he used one or two seconds to recognize what had happened, then he felt extreme nervous but helpless.He imagined many scary scenery in his mind. Luckily, he had learned how to solve problem of the car from my grandfather and he managed to repair it. The moment he jumped into the car, he felt so relaxed. And he just couldn’t wait to return home.

• Yongxin Li, diptych
• My concept is to fight against the virgin complex. For women, it is normal for women to be not a virgin, and women with sexual experience are not dirty or shameful. The origin image is a white rose smeared with some red color, which means that in some people’s mind that women who is not a virgin is “dirty”. The second one reveals the truth, and shows how this complex hurts women in social life. The red color is actually drawn by lipsticks,.It usually reminds others of women’s beauty, which is precious and not dirty at all. However, because of the virgin complex and people’s behavior brought by it, many women were locked and hurt and the painting of lipstick becomes heavy read patterns which look like blood.
• (1) Part 1 was photoed in a cafe. I put a use my lipsticks to draw on an oil paper which is usually put under the bread. Then I dipped the rose on the painting to get it colored. I put the another oil paper on the table and put the rose on it. I made the light shoot from the upper right corner, and the background is dark. When looked generally, the flower faced towards the light. The photo is focused at the flower.

           (2) When creating part 2, I first created the background. The background is constructed by black and white, which were divided by a diagonal line, to create a feeling of conflict. Then I cut the flower down and put it in the middle as the subject. Next, I cut the figure of the lipsticks from another picture and attach it to the left of the flower. A pair of pure white rose is put up the subject, and I made change the light mode of their layer so they looked darker, but seemed to be more white because of the contrast and more stressful, like something hinted at the subject. I cut some branches of rose and put them on the rose which looked like iron chain to lock the subject. Then I use the photo of my original photo. I distorted it and use the stamp tool to modify its shape, and I used eyedropper tool to collect different colors cause by light and shadow and I adjust the color of the pattern to make it look more close to blood. In this step, I chose “dissolve” mode as well. Finally, I added a hand streaching towards the bright side.

• I will try to use more factors and consider more about the composition and color to make more visual impacts as collage

The technology we choose is photography, and we are going to use a diagram to present it for the aliens.

The scene of taking photo is shown in the middle. In detail, there is a person standing, and another one standing in his lower right corner, holding a camera towards him.A dotted line starts at the screen of the camera and connects it with a square, in which there is a person in the same position as the person who is being shot. Everything in the square is just same as things around the model, which means that this is a technology that can record things vividly.

Then, we want to show them the tool we use to photograph. We use an arrow pointing the camera to the top left corner, where there are two bigger pictures of camera. One is complete, and the other one is a cutaway view, presenting under the complete one, in order to illustrate the inner part of a camera. Around the second one are some smaller pictures showing the structure and principle of some indispensable components, which are, the view finder, the shutter, and the pentaprism.

For the viewfinder, there is a line representing the light, and after crossing some lens, it was 90 degree reflected by a retroreflector and at the end of line there is a shape of an eye. It aims to show that thanks to the viewfinder, a photographer can check the view in the photo before taking a real one. The shutter is composed by a mechanical switch, a big gear, a smaller gear and a flap, and all these things are connected by three mechanical arm. When a photographer presses the shutter, it will drive the whole system, the mechanical arm will shrink and the the the flap will open. The pictures are presenting together with one’s flap open and the other one’s closed. As for the pentaprism, we want to draw its plane diagram, so that we can show how the light was reflected.

The right part of the diagram illustrates the core principle of photography，the puncture forming picture. There is a stick figure person standing to the right side, two arrows starting at his head and feet respectively, which represent the path of light. The arrows converge through one point until they get lens, which is drown a little behind the point, and they become two parallel lines. The lines reach the Charge Coupled Device and form an exact same image, except being inverted. This is how a camera works to catch a image.

Finally, in the blank part at the bottom of the picture, there are some example photos showing the genres of photography, arranged from left to right. The first one is some apples, which means Still life photography. The second one is a photo of a person, which is, undoubtedly, Portrait photography. The third one is Landscape photography, and the forth one, is an image that has been distorted abstractly, which means that there are some methods to modify a picture to achieve some art effect, which someone calls Art photography.

Since the aliens have a simultaneous mode of consciousness, we mean to avoid anything about time, so they won’t be confusing about the time line.