New Final concept

One of the reasons why i was comfortable with changing medium was because i had already had a new idea and narrative i wanted to explore. From the very start I had already started building a narrative around a story of inner demon. I wanted to create many possible narrative with different endings. I took the lyrics " So heres to drinks at the end of my road", " looking for heaven, found the devil in me" and the chorus "its hard to stand with a devil on your back so shake it off." In order to create this chance of the order i was reminded of a key ring i had when i was younger in Asia. You could shake this tube and a random slip would fall out and told you of your luck that day. When explaining this concept to my flatmates, they immediately thought of these magic 8 balls.

My concept would follow the same idea where the images would be in a box and when you shake it a random image would fall out, you could then put the image back in and retry. 

Changing the choice of medium

When I first started started think about the song, I had initially wanted to create a stop motion video but after a lack of time and me wanted to really explore the idea of the narrative changing based upon the order of the images, i decided to change the medium of my final. I had borrowed books from the Massey Library about how to create stop motion videos as well as looked up examples from films. One style that really caught my attention was the stop motion section in the film the little prince.



I really liked the aesthetic of this style but the more i read about how to create stop motion videos the more i realized that i really hadn't had enough time to do the idea i had. I would still really like to try stop motion in the Future. One of the other major reasons that contributed to this decision was the fact that I was fascinated by the idea that of the narrative changing base on the order of the sequences of the images and i felt that this couldn't really be achieved in a video. While the images can be mixed up and shown a video still has a linear start and finish so while I  can imply and put doubt into the viewers mind, in the end there would still be a set order the images appeared in.

Research the song and characters

The song i chose was shake it out by Florence and the Machine. I really liked the lyrics and thought i could come up with a really interesting narrative around them. The lyrics that i chose was "so here's to drinks at the end of my road"," looking for heaven, found the devil in me" and the chorus "its hard to stand with a  devil on your back so shake him off". I initially imagined a narrative where a forest guardian is fighting a shadow within the forest. It was suggested to me that i start research into animals that could be seen as both a bad and good influences on a forest.

One of the animals that i thought of was a deer. From my own memories deer had always been seen as the guardian of the forest with examples like Bambi,


or Snow White and the Huntsman,


So i though creating a character based on a deer would be an ideal choice. I started looking of negative impacts of deer on the forest and found that they actually have a very negative impact on New Zealand forests. On the Department of Conservation page it lists deer as game and pest.
 The following paragraph was found on there and outlines the effect deer have -

Deer cause damage to native forests by feeding on forest plants, trees and seedlings. By targeting these plants, deer can change the composition of the forest understorey.

When deer populations get too large, favourite plants like schefflera, broadleaf, three-finger, hen and chicken fern and lancewood are all but removed from the ground tier in forest understoreys. Plants like alpine buttercup, Spaniard grass and tall tussocks are damaged by deer in subalpine habitats.

In New Zealand, deer have no natural predators (apart from hunters) and apart from occasional instances of bovine Tb, are relatively healthy. Whilst red deer and sika compete where their ranges overlap, none of the other deer species in New Zealand are competing for food." - http://www.doc.govt.nz/nature/pests-and-threats/animal-pests/animal-pests-a-z/deer/

Understanding Non-Linear Narrative

For the second brief we were given a project that involved creating a non-linear narrative triptych from a song. The first thing i decided to do was research about non-linear narratives because i was a bit confused as to what non- linear narratives. I was confused between wither the narrative could have a start and finish or not.  A lot of the material and resources online were about the writing style and film and they all have a plot line with a start and finish but it was the way it was presented to the audience that made it non-linear, The basic idea however was still the same. In the end i think this image really explained the concept nicely.

In class it was also mentioned to us that in order to create a non-linear narrative we either had to take the choice away from the audience or give them the choice. I really like the idea of giving the audience the choice and it an idea came to me about creating a narrative that would change depending on the order with which you view the triptych.