For the visual metaphor project, we were asked to create a 60-90 second film explaining a story with a voice over. Hugo Wang and I were partners, and decided to create a story based off of the poem “Elm” by Sylvia Plath.
To start, we drafted the original storyline. We decided to create a story that follows the progression of a breakup, starting with the initial breakup then the contemplation period and eventually the loss of self in other people and substances.
Section 1: The breakup. The man is seen with the girl, then the girl disappears and and he is left alone. After, he is seen by the riverside, fading into it. To film the disappearing scene, he had to stay still while I walked away, and we cut the video into two parts and crossfaded it. As he is leaning back, we rotated the camera with his motion and crossfaded it with the video of the river. With the heart in the coffee, it is a visual representation of heartbreak.
Section 2: The contemplation period. The man walks alone in various scenes, from walking across bridges, to structural forms. As we were in the park, I noticed that a lot of the structures allowed people to disappear and reappear at certain angles, and we decided to utilise that to have a continuous flow of the man just walking. We also filmed the scenes at different perspectives for more contrast while still providing the flow.
Section 3: The loss of self. The section is introduced by the church, signifying a change of heart. Then we follow the man’s journey through his eyes at a party, observing people, then seeing all of the faces of people he has used to try to get over the breakup, interspersed with moments from his contemplation in black and white in quick flashes. In the end, we see his vision fading in and out, just seeing the party lights.
In terms of the music, we chose “Destroy Myself Just For You” by Montell Fish because the lyrics and entire tone of the song describes the story we wanted to portray. Integrating church bells as a change of scenery helps to let viewers know that it’s the start of the decline after the contemplation period.
We decided to put a film/retro filter on the video clips for Sections 1 & 2, to portray the reflective tone of the scenes. For the third section, we increased saturation and contrast to create a little bit of a darker tone.
Contributions: We both filmed segments – Hugo did most of party scenes and I did most of the park scenes. I did the video editing and Hugo did the audio editing.
Overall, I loved doing this project and learned a lot about how to portray emotions in a visual context by pairing the visuals with audio.
Special shoutout to Daniel Cashdan III for being the actor!
Video link: video
Poem: Elm by Sylvia Plath