Alba

Self love the film.

Teacher: Wayne Ridgwan

Student Number: T0117818

Student Name:Alba Maria Nsue Maye

Final Film Self Love:

Story:

Digital storytelling involves the creation of short, personal narratives combining images, sounds, and text in a multimedia computer based platform (Anderson & Chua , 2010).

This type of digital story is based on a story about a subject . The film is called Mirror. It is about how a girl who suffers from low confident and self esteem. She gets bullied in school regularly and how she overcomes all the obstacles and grew to love myself. It is a story i and other teenagers could relate to.

Audience:

The target audience is teenagers. The transition from a child to an adult is a very difficult stage for every teenagers life. Trying to discover your identity and with all the pressure that society puts on us about how you should look like, specially in the digital age of social media where you are judged by your physical appearance and not the mental or emotions. In the age of social media, peoples validation comes from the number of likes and comments you get in a picture. The whole film in the story denotes that the film was created for teenagers.

Message:

The message of the story is to love yourself and self validation is more important than other people’s validation.Hence the audio choice of my film which is very motivational and uplifting .The message is to be happy and confidence about what you look like in the mirror because lies in the hands of the beholder and disregard everybodys opinions about you.

Style/Genre:

The genre is a teenage film as denoted by the characters in the film which are young teenagers. Media techniques used are video performance, music and dialogue.The story is about a subject which is Mirror .

Overall Thoughts:

The overall message is to be happy and confidence about what you look like and disregard everybodys opinions about you. The filmmaker conveys people to see the film and be inspired to be themselves and not let anybody to opinion affect theme.

Scene 1:

This scene uses low camera angle.  a low-angle shot, is a shot from a camera angle positioned low on the vertical axis, anywhere below the eye line, looking up.^[1] Sometimes, it is even directly below the subject’s feet. Psychologically, the effect of the low-angle shot is that it makes the subject look strong and powerful. This shot is contrary to the narrative of the scene because the actor is not confident and she’s embarrass on who she sees in the mirror. I, the camera did this intentional to make a powerful statement.

Scene 2:

This scene uses long shot. a long shot (sometimes referred to as a full shot or wide shot) typically shows the entire object or human figure and is usually intended to place it in some relation to its surroundings.

This shot was done to highlight the window from the whole building and how the actor is walking which has been done on purpose to reflect on Scene 3 where the actor is looking up at the other actor who is confident with herself. The actor in scene 3 wishes she’s as confident as the actor in scene 3 standing in the mirror.

Scene 3:

A close-up is a photograph or movie shot taken of a subject or object at close range intended to show greater detail to the viewer. You should be able to recognize the imagery in the frame, and if the close-up is on an actor, there will be a much more significant emotional connection between your viewer and the subject or object featured in the shot. 

Close-up shots signal to the audience that something is important, and this can be a prop or reaction, but often it is best when the subject or object has a significant influence on the story and the viewers understanding of your story.  This shot was done to show the reaction of the actor in scene 3 and how she looks up to the actor in at the window of the building in scene 4.

Scene 1 : Mirror Reflection

Alba Voice: They say looking at the mirror is like looking at your soul. Sometimes people are not happy with what is being reflected in the mirror.

Other voices in my head : (In laughing tone)You are so skinny!!!!! You look like a broom sting. I can break you with one finger.

Scene 2: A picture of my family at the dining table

Alba Voice : When I was a child, I use to hate having dinner with my family because my mother will always fat shame me. I guess its false when they say self love starts with your childhood because it rather made me hate myself.

Scene 3: Walking to the university Campus with my crush

Alba Voice : Sometimes we as girls want validation from the opposite sex. This day, i fell confident like i never had before. Getting attention from someone i had crush on for the longest was telling he found me attractive when no one has not even myself.

Scene 4: My room

Alba Voice: Falling asleep its suppose to be peaceful and relaxation but even then i still hear voices in my head.

My father voice: Let her eat until she explodes!!!!!!!!!

Scene 5: Magazine shot

Alba Voice: For many generations, magazines have always been a trend for how girls aspire to be. looking for your favourite celebrity and trying to be like them.

Scene 6 : Instagram picture

Alba Voice: Society is always telling us what the standard of beauty is. In the age of social media, It is even harder to love yourself when your self worth depends on the number of likes and comments you get in a picture and also looking at peoples bodies and lives makes you feel bad about yourself.

Scene 7 : Inspirational video

Alba Voice: Building confidence happens gradually. Its starts with accepting all of you. And trying to be the best version of yourself . Doing things that inspire you such as watching people that you admire maybe on TV and seeing that they also did not have self esteem but the built it and now they are happy. It doesn’t matter whether you are fat or skinny everyone goes through accepting themselves.

Scene 8: Clothing Store

Alba Voice: Clothes expresses and affects how we feel inside.Clothes can turn a bad day around helps you see the beauty within yourself.

Scene 9: Mirror Reflection

Alba voice: you are beautiful, you are worthy, you are smart.

The image in fig.1. is a photo I took online in a website called vice.com where a woman by the name of Eternity Martis wrote an article where she talks about what was like growing up an obese kid.

I could relate with her story immediately which is why I chose the image because is the perfect picture I want to set for my audience. The little girl in the picture reminded me of myself as a kid and how I was always either in the kitchen eating or standing beside the fridge to find some snacks.

The image will be used for my film self love in scene 8 where I have a flashback of when I was a kid trying to reach for an icecream but I was too short so, my father catches reaching for the icecream and he says some hurtful words towards me concerning my weight.

Videos Used in my film extracted

Inspirational videos about self esteem.

Video.1 is one of the inspirational videos I have chosen for my film. This video will be used in scene 9 of my film . Scene 9 shows how I am trying to better and love myself by watching this type of videos. The speaker in the video is a popular plus size super-model by the name of Ashley Graham. The irony that she’s a super-model but she does not have the typical super-model physique which is tall and skinny really intrigues me when doing my research.

Editing techniques for my film Self love:

J-cut Transition:

• A J cut is a variant of a split edit film editing technique in which the audio from a following scene overlaps the picture from the preceding scene, so that the audio portion of the later scene starts playing before its picture as a lead-in to the visual cut. Also called an audio lead or audio advance (paul,2016).
• The J-cut is the opposite of the L-cut. With this technique, the viewer hears the dialogue of Character A — but only sees Character B on screen. From this shot of Character B (which provides emotional information and context for the scene), the editor cuts back to Character A (Zac, 2018).
• ​

Dissolve:

The dissolve transition can carry many meanings and affect your story in many vastly different ways.

The dissolve is defined as a gradual change from the ending pictures of one shot into the beginning pictures of the next shot.
shots with a simultaneous downward and upward ramping of opacity (visibility) over a particular period of time. As the end of the first shot “dissolves” away, the beginning of the next shot emerges onto the screen underneath it at the same time. You get to see the images overlapping. A dissolve may also be referred to as a “lap dissolve,” a “lap,” and sometimes a video “mix.” The standard default duration of dissolves in editing software is one second, but this can be easily changed to the length required by the given variables at that particular dissolving point in the story.

The dissolve is most often used where:

-There is a change in time
-There is a change in location
-Time needs to be slowed down or sped up
-There is an emotional component to the subject in the story
-There is a strong visual relationship between the outgoing and the incoming images

Jump Cut:

A jump cut is a cut in film editing in which two sequential shots of the same subject are taken from camera positions that vary only slightly if at all. This type of edit gives the effect of jumping forwards in time. It is a manipulation of temporal space using the duration of a single shot, and fracturing the duration to move the audience ahead.

A jump cut is a transition between two shots which appears to “jump” due to the way the shots are framed in relation to each other. Jump cuts are usually caused by framing which is quite similar, such as these two:

• I used jump cut in my film Self love in order to focus the audience’s attention on the message of the film rather than the drama or emotion of the narrative.

Cut away:

Use cutaways to solve continuity problems such as jump cuts. For example is fig.3.

Reference:

L-cut/J-cut editing research https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/what-is-j-cut-and-l-cut-in-video-editing/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwl6LoBRDqARIsABllMSak490l8doCObLHDXVt0PhRg96EPgqTDfZqlD-ZJtjaIYF-oUkN4EcaArlbEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Media College.com . Jump cut transition. https://www.mediacollege.com/video/editing/transition/jump-cut.html

Zac. (2018). Improve your Editing | What is a J cut and L cut?. https://filmstro.com/blog/improve-your-editing-what-is-a-j-cut-and-l-cut

Story:

Digital storytelling involves the creation of short, personal narratives combining images, sounds, and text in a multimedia computer based platform (Anderson & Chua , 2010).

This type of digital story is based on a combination of stories about a subject and a personal story . The story is called Self love. It is about how I grew up having low self esteem because of my weight and how I overcame all the obstacles and grew to love myself. The story is also about how teenagers in generally grow through having low self esteem issues because of how they look and how society looks at them.

My story uses the Tovdorov state of equilibrium format: What changes is my outcome as instead of harming myself or continue to require society validation about loving myself, I turn the obstacles into solutions by learning how to love myself by finding beauty within myself and looking for validation from myself.

Audience:

My target audience is teenagers. The transition from a child to an adult is a very difficult stage for every teenagers life. Trying to discover your identity and with all the pressure that society puts on us about how you should look like, specially in the digital age of social media where you are judged by your physical appearance and not the mental or emotions. In the age of social media, peoples validation comes from the number of likes and comments you get in a picture. The whole film in my story denotes that the film was created for teenagers. For example in scene 11 it shows how the actress is on social media looking at pictures models on instagram:

Message:

The message of the story is to love yourself and self validation is more important than other people’s validation.Hence the audio choice of my film which is very motivational and uplifting .The message is to be happy and confidence about what you look like in the mirror because lies in the hands of the beholder and disregard everybodys opinions about you. I want people to see my film and be inspired to be themselves and not let anybody to opinion affect them.

Style/Genre:

The genre is a teenage film as denoted by the characters in the film which are young teenagers. It is first person narrative. Media techniques used are video performance, music and voice overs.My story is personal story. The voice over and music contributes massively to tell the story because the music choice is an uplifting and motivational song This is a story that happened to me from the age I was born to the age of  18. It is a personal narrative more like a memoir which captures and examines my life during a specific moment in time.

Overall Thoughts:

The overall message is to be happy and confidence about what you look like and disregard everybodys opinions about you. I want people to see my film and be inspired to be themselves and not let anybody to opinion affect theme

Reference list

https://www.mediacollege.com practical and digital techniques about films.

Reference List:

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/yvx7jv/i-was-a-90s-fat-kid-a-harbinger-of-the-childhood-obesity-crisis the fat little girl that looks like me.

Definition of Digital storytelling: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44429857?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Scene 1 : Room mirror

Me: (walks to the mirror in the room)

Me: ( hears internal voices of people calling her obese, worthless and unattractive

Me: ( runs out of the bathroom crying)

Scene 2: In the dining table

( My mother serves breakfast)

Mother: Bon appetit!!!!!

Me: Mom, why do i only have an apple and water but Rosa has eggs , bacon and juice?

Mother: (speaks in angry tone)You know the answer by now i have told you that you need to lose weight because you are embarrassing this family.

Me: But mom!!!!!!!!!! an apple is it going to satisfy me till dinner!!!! ( speaks in exasperation)

Father: ( speaks with authority) Listen to your mother, Alba.

Sister(Rosa): (stings her tongue out at me in a mocking way whiles laughing).

Scene 3: College Hallway

Me : (Walks in the hallway surrounded by students)

A boy yells: Look!!!!!!! guys , the whale is in the building

Students: Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!!!!!! (erupts in laughter whiles pointing at me)

My crush: Leave her alone!!!!! (yells in anger)

Scene 4: Walking home

Me: Thanks for coming to my defence and walking me home. I really appreciate it

My crush: Is my pleasure ( smiles in a flirtatious way)

Me : (Blushes in a shy manner) This is my stop(points at the house in front). Thanks again.

My crush: You are always welcome. I know this is the first encounter we are having but will you like to have coffee with me tomorrow morning? (ask in a nervous tone).

Me: Yeah sure ( speaks in a shocked voice)

Mother: (talks from the doorstep) Oh look what we have here. Someone actually likes you? ( talks in a disgusting tone)

Me: (talks in a sad tone referring to my crush) please leave and thanks for the coffee but I’m busy in the morning( talks whiles rushing to my house).

My crush: (stands in a shocked manner)

Scene 5: My room

Me: (rushes in the room whiles crying) (lays on the bed whiles crying)

Me: (has flashbacks of when i was kid and my mum was feeding me food and my dad says) Let her eat until she explodes .

Scene 6: Inspiring videos

Me: (sits on the bed whiles watching inspirational videos about how to be fit and how to overcome fat shaming)

Scene 7: Gym

Me: (walks in the gym and finds it difficult to use the equipments, keeps sweating and running out of breath in a frustrating manner)

Scene 8: 3 weeks after going to the gym consistently.

Me: (starts to notice progress and starts to feel confident about herself)

Scene 9: Clothing shop

Me: (Try new clothes that she will not usually wear)

Scene 10: Bathroom Mirror

Me: (walks to the mirror in the bathroom)

Me: (hears internal voices of herself calling her beautiful, confident, attractive,)

Me: ( Smiles at the camera) says self love doesn’t come from peoples validation it comes from within yourself.

Audio recording techniques and principles:

• capture: mics/ directionality/ gain/ proximity
• basic digital theory

Audio editing techniques and principles: 

• diegetic/ non-diegetic
  
• Foley/ sound effects; soundtrack

Jamendo is a great free site for finding soundtrack audio to use in your projects.

You will need to sign up and then you can download music.

There are lots of different styles to choose from.

The Youtube audio library is a fantastic free resource for both music and sound effects.

Reference of sound websites.

http://soundbible.com

https://freesound.org

https://www.jamendo.com/search/tracks?q=tag:romance