A. Concept & Story
We tried to recur the feeling of the fertility. To better get the audience involved in the environment. I wrote the poem myself. Aurora recorded the sound of recitation for us.
Fertility
by Reon
The seeds are growing
When the times goes by
The clouds are floating
When the petals fall down
In the halo
I fall asleep
deep sleep
I don’t know if
It’s day
Or night
I open my eyes
But I don’t know
If I really wake up
I can’t tell
Reality from dream
All I hear
Is the baby laughing in the dimness
Our concept is about fertility. At the very beginning, we used seeds to grow, pendulum wobble, clouds floating in the metaphor of a mother’s breeding process. After that, we use petals falling one by one to indicate that mothers are getting closer to meeting their children, and shape the anxious and excited psychological activities of novice mothers as petals fall. We then used a white light to indicate that the mother was being pushed into the delivery room and showed a sense of vertigo. We use fantasy scenes to suggest that the mother fell into a dream in the delivery room, into a hazy and sober state, to pave the way for finally hearing the children’s laughter.
B.Creation Process & Execution
We made the storyboard, too. At first, we list all the potential shots that we may need. For example, in the early days, we wrote and photographed a series of smashing tomatoes, spilling chocolate on the ground, flashing lights, and so on. Through the determination of the object and lens mode, we can make the video production purposeful. But further screening is also important. In the early stage of complex and diverse storyboards, we finally integrate and select the final one.
We used a fixed lens in this work. We shot clouds with a fixed lens and simulated the flow of time through acceleration. At the same time, we also deliberately blur the effect of the camera. In the middle of the video, we use the blurred traffic flow to indicate that the mother is in the dream. As for the shooting of petals, we carried out it behind the black curtain in classroom 818. However, what we didn’t expect was that the flowers torn by external forces would sometimes jump out of the screen.
We invited our EAP professors to participate in our sound recording. During this period, we aligned and denoised the audio. In order to match the background music, we also enhanced the audio effect appropriately.
For the entire video, the biggest challenge is the editing part of the video. We must integrate a large number of sound and picture together, and achieve the desired effect through different effects of Pr.
This screen capture shows that we use PR to color the picture. We deliberately exaggerate the color of the picture and enhance the color sense of yellow to conflict with the real day, so as to imply that what the audience is seeing is the content of the dream.
This screenshot shows that we use split-screen technology to show the conflict between reality and dreams. On the left screen, the baby raises his hand, which is an expression of a dream. On the right screen, it shows the reality of the delivery room. However, the space between the left and right screens of reality and dream is too tight, so the overall effect is not too prominent.
In this screenshot, we’ve adjusted the transparency of the layers to make the two videos blend and connect with each other to enhance the sense of the passage of time.
C. Collaboration
Aurora was in charge of subtitle production, audio recording, and editing, and I was responsible for shooting, editing videos, and writing storylines. We exchanged our ideas in real-time through WeChat and cooperated to shoot some scenes that were difficult to complete on our own, such as the scene of taking off petals. All in all, the inspiration of both of us completed this project together.
D. Aesthetics & Results
A the seed: children grow from embryos
B the clock and the cloud: time is passing
C the petals fall down: the birth of the child is coming
D the past petal: the day that the mother gives birth to the child
E the halo: the mother is anesthetized and pushed into the delivery room
F the day scene and the night scene: the mother falls into a dream
G baby and delivery room: the mother’s consciousness is not fully awake
H baby’s laughter: There are two kinds of interpretations. The first one is the mother’s beautiful dream, and the second is that the mother has woken up
E. Reflection
This time our theme selection is relatively new, but we need to improve the following three points
Sometimes our subtitles jump so fast that sometimes the audience doesn’t respond to the end. Sometimes the subtitles appear together with the picture, and sometimes they appear successively. This will make the picture not neat enough and bring trouble to the audience.
Our ending seems a bit abrupt, maybe we can make the background music weaken to make the ending smoother.
In the middle, we have a split-screen effect that is not good, we may rework it next time to improve the effect it will bring us.