Title
Myth
Project Abstract
By combing Chinese traditional art form with the digital effects of MAX, the project adapts and visualizes the original story from the song, “Myth”. Through this project, we demonstrate our thoughts about human’s inner fear.
Project Description
Our project takes the form of shadow play to visualize a narrative story. In a nutshell, this story is about a young king struggled with his fear and successfully freed himself from it. We divided the story into four senses. The first scene describes how the young king was troubled by different charges and criticism. To gain courage and ability, he decided to follows the demand of the public to find the demon and kill the demon. The second scene is the young king’s journey. Along his way, he was always in dangerous situations and faced different obstacles. At the end of the second scene, he found the demon. In the third part, the young kind and the demon confronted with each other. The demon tried to tempt the young king to kill him. Once the young king followed the command of the demon, he was controlled by the demon and lost his own will. It cost the young king a hard struggle to finally give up killing the demon but leave it behind. In the fourth scene, the young king went back to his country and at this time, he has gained true freedom because of his decision. We want to demonstrate the theme that the most horrible devil that people faced is the fear and loneliness in their hearts and the only way to gain independence and freedom is to face the fears and coexist with fears.
In terms of content and theme, we were inspired by the Dementor in Harry Potter and the Chinese song “Myth” (Shen Hua). Both Dementor in Harry Potter and Old Lady in Myth are not the devil in the traditional scene. They are the projection of people’s inner fear and can never be separated from people. For the Dementor, it consumes human happiness, creates an ambiance of coldness, darkness, misery, and despair. For the Old lady, she seems to be soft and gentle but always tried to control the king by her tenderness in disguise. Based on these two characters, we came up with the image of the devil in our project and developed the story about the young king. We hope to deliver our critical thoughts on the relation between people and their inner fear. Besides, in terms of performing form, we were inspired by the shadow play. Among all the Chinese traditional art, shadow play can make full use of light and shadow and perfectly combine vision and hearing to narrate the story.
Perspective and Context
Wilfred emphasized the significance and possibilities of lights in his LUMIA work. Light also plays an important role in our project. On the one hand, we take the form of shadow play, which should be achieved by lights. On the other hand, we use removable light sources to create a more vivid environment. Also, our project response to the concept of Synaesthesia. I think the Synaesthesia in audio-visual performance means high consistency and harmony between vision, hearing, and emotion. In our project, we tried to use different color filters and different environmental sounds to create a certain atmosphere that can fit the story plot and evoke a certain emotion of audiences.
Development & Technical Implementation
The development of our project can be divided into three stages, developing the script, implementing technicality, practicing and rehearsing.
In the first stages, we determined the practical script. At first, we were quite interested in the Dementor in Harry Potter and wanted to reproduction one clips on the movie through the Chinese traditional art form. But after communicating with the professor, we found there was not too much significance to repeat the plot. Also, it was difficult for us to achieve a higher level than the movie. Luckily, the Chinese song, “Myth” gave us new inspiration, based on the song we determined our story. We wrote the story as detailed as possible and then considered and examine the feasibility of each sentence in the story. We deleted the scenes which were hard to visualize and organize the practical and realizable script. Based on this script, we can know the materials we need to prepare, the audio and video effects we need to achieve and also the final performance effect we may realize.
In the second stage, we divided our work into three parts, shadow figures, audio effects, and video effects. We made shadow figures together. I took on some of the work on creating images. I drew the tree and bat as well as figured out how to fixed them in the stage when performing. My main job in the second stage is planning the script for both video effects and audio effects in each scene. I wrote down the script detailed, for example, “In the first scene, in order to demonstrate the confusion and pain of young king through a chaotic scene, we will hold the black bats around the young king and use video effects rotate the hole video and at same time, change the color of video. Also, for the audio, based on the mysterious background music, we will add people’s voices at a specific point in time. With the gradual chaos of video, the sounds of video will also become more and more slur and mix. At the end of the first scenes, the chaotic sounds disappear, only leave a clear to push the young king to find a demon and fight the demon to refresh himself.” Not only that, but I also draw graphic scores to demonstrate the whole process. And then, Ellen worked on the background music, Katie worked on video effect and I worked on the audio effect. The main problem I faced is how to balance the volume of different sounds. I totally need to control eighteen pieces of sounds during the performance, I need to control both order and volume to make sure each sound is triggered at the right time and can be heard clearly, especially the background music, it should be always there but cannot too loud to cover other sounds or too small to be covered. I wrote a separated timeline for myself and left comments in Max to remind myself.
I collected different environmental sounds
I combined and controlled different audios by MAX
I drew the graphic scores
video patch: https://gist.github.com/JiayanLiu27/e911824cb8eca4074b1b18075bdf2461
audio patch: https://gist.github.com/TheaSang/85b97f92a144c0b42f15dd8ecacd2541
In the third stage, we determined the division of work when performing. Our project is a little bit complex so it will be hard for three people to complete the performance if we do not plan well. Through many rehearsals, Ellen does most of the acting, Katie control video effect and light source, and I control audio effect and do some of the actings. To avoid the mess, we wrote a new script for both performance, video effects, and audio effects. We spent a lot of time performing in the dark classroom. But on the day before the presentation, when we rehearsals in the auditorium, we still found many problems. For example, the position of the camera and main characters should be determined again and the video effects and audio effects were always out of order.
Performance
The final performance generally went well but admittedly, it still did not meet my expectations. Firstly, the position of the camera did not put well so its shadow can also be seen during the presentation. Secondly, we did not expect that some video effects gave out. Maybe we still more practice before the formal presentation. Thirdly, I was so nervous during the presentation that I did not control the audios well. My classmates pointed out that some audios were too light to hear clearly. Although I prepared the audio script to remind myself, I still felt a little bit hectic during the presentation as I needed to control all the audio effects and one-character performance. Also, I cannot see the screen as I need to focus on MAX. Thus, I did not quite sure what was going on about the overall performance. I think I need to spend more time practicing and adjusting the volume and it may help to develop my confidence and relieve tension. Last but not least, our presentation could be better if we introduce the overall story before our presentation. It can give our audience a basic idea about or presentation and help them to understand our performance. But from another aspect, it may constrain the imaginary of the audiences. In short, we need to explain our performance more clearly to our audience.
Conclusion
I want to highlight two aspects of the project,
The inspiration. We were inspired by the shadow play but from another aspect, we were also restricted by this kind of performing form. We thought a lot about how to made the shadow figures more vivid but neglected the deeper and further exploration of MAX. Just as the professor said, we can make a piece of video to demonstrate the environment and remove the tree, mountains, and bats during the presentation. My classmates suggested that we can visualize the dialogues. Maybe made an original video and add the subtitle or video effect can be a possible solution. I appreciated this suggestion and it shows me how narrow I was when I using MAX. For my later project, I think I need to more carefully think about the role and function of MAX and full use it.
The collaboration. I think our group perfectly collaborated on this project. We worked together to determine the overall script, make shadow figures but also separated the work of MAX so that each of us took on a similar amount of work and can learn more about MAX by ourselves. This kind of group work achieves high-level efficiency.
Although the final performance is not so perfect, the process itself is meaningful enough. I enjoyed the process of turning the idea into reality and working with my partners. Also, the suggestions from other groups bring me new ideas and thoughts. In conclusion, I need to think more deeply, widely, and critically when using MAX and considering the project content.