Brent D Digital Story Treatment

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[edit] Summary

Title: Unconventional Family

Description: My best friend and I met our first year at college waiting in line before our matriculation ceremony and we quickly became very close. His father passed away when he was very young and his mother (whom I considered my second mother) passed away from cancer a few months afterward. Though no blood ties existed, we considered ourselves brothers and my parents accepted the role of providing guidance and support for him. He later married and had two wonderful children and we have have been able to maintain our close ties through all of the changes in our lives. Our journey has been very special to me and I wanted to share it in a special way. The story will be told from a first person perspective via images and text. The intended purpose of the story is to encourage the viewer to reevaluate their definition of the concept of family.

[edit] Media Assets

I am using a soft piano track for the background music in this piece. I wanted to choose something that would provide a warm yet calming ambiance against which to display the text and images of the piece. I finally settled onA minor Ambient Piano (excerpt) from Contemplations Mixby The3amAssociation that was retrieved from CCMixter because the slow pace lent a somber feeling to the overall story. As images go, I chose several symbolic images. This is Where I Work is a picture of the library at Bellarmine University, just a few yards from where we met. I decided to use this image because the clock face and lights along the side of the otherwise dark building and night sky seemed appropriately symbolic of a friendship that would be the bright spot in the otherwise difficult times that would shortly occur. I chose Aneis Rings was symbolic of marriage and the brightness of the gold kept the mood light as it was one of the happier times in our relationship. I chose brothers on feet as I felt it relayed our sense of brotherhood and the newfound uneasiness that we both felt without his mother's guiding influence. I chose Baby parts- feet and Grasp to be symbolic of his children's births as I did not want to place their pictures directly into the story. Finally, I chose Autumn Fun as a happy scene symbolic of my future children that works to portray a sense of optimism about the future and end the story on a positive note. I chose this particular picture of my friend and I because this image was taken shortly after he and his wife renewed their vows and it was a very happy time in both of our lives. The picture of Momma Maura was the only image that I was sure about from the story's conception and shows her on one of her good days during her illness.

[edit] Pacing, Rhythm, and Juxtaposition

The pacing is deliberately somewhat slow and rhythmical. I wanted to provide a calming atmosphere that conveys a sense of stability and reliability- the things that a good friendship should be. The pacing of the images will be in slow chronological order from our meeting to the present so that a sense of stability consistent with the background music is maintained throughout the story. The trick was not slowing down the pace so much that the story crawled, as I didn't want the viewers to lose interest.

[edit] Narration, Dialogue, and Text

I deliberately wanted to use short pieces of strong text in the video to tell the story. I was intrigued by "An October Wedding" and the strength that the piece had dispite its lack of narration and I wanted to experiment with a lack of narration for this project. To accomplish this goal, I felt that the text that I choose for the story had to be strong and convey vivid images in the viewer's mind. The text will be interspersed between the images with the images providing both a break in the story and visual support for the text. The challenge was in keeping my text short enough to fit within the confines of the background music's duration, without losing the text's impact. I had to carefully choose and reword several of the text images to keep the text concise and strong. I also used several fade-ins within the same section of text to keep the length of a text cut reasonable.

Rough Draft: Below is a draft of the text used within the piece:

Who thought that waiting in line could change your life forever… I met someone there who would prove that family isn’t just defined by blood… We became best friends and shared many good times… Then the unthinkable happened… We lost his Momma Maura… and we became closer… We became family… Before long, he was married…and we were still family… Then his first son was born… and we were still family… Then his second son was born… and we were still family… soon I will be getting married… and having children of my own… and we will still be family… Many times our lives have changed… during good times and bad times… but through it all we are family.

[edit] Reflection

I'm excited at the possibilities of this short movie. Please let me know if you all have any cool ideas that I could explore. I'm wondering if I am conveying what I'm feeling. As the viwer, are there any questions you have? Am I leaving out details you think I should add? I know I have some editing and cutting out to do. Music ideas would be helpful also.

Getting the timing right on this video have been very challenging, but finding the images for the piece was a lot easier than I had anticipated it would be. I believe that the video conveys both the message and the feeling that I wanted it to fairly well, but feel like it doesn't do so as well as it could. I must admit that I'm somewhat at a loss as to what I could do to make my good video excellent though. I would love any suggestions that I can get for what I could do to improve upon it.

I am extremely happy with the piece now that I have added Rob Costlow's instrumental family for the second half of the story. The mood was a bit more somber than I had bargained for using A minor Ambient Piano (excerpt) from Contemplations Mix all the way through the story. Family adds a nice upbeat mood for the more recent and happier times in our relationship, while A minor Ambient Piano (excerpt) from Contemplations Mix keeps the somber mood for the earlier more challenging parts. I also feel like brothers on foot more accurately communicates the feelings that we felt and the situation that we were in just after his mother's death better than Family of Mourning Doves did.

[edit] Draft Media

I made a number of changes based upon everyone's feedback. I cut the first soundtrack after the first part of the story and added a second track in that I got from Jamendo, thanks to Alexia's suggestion. The second soundtrack entitled Family is more upbeat and lends a more joyful feeling for the latter half of the story. I also replaced the doves with brothers on feet and the clock tower image, with a photograph of the actual ceremony that we participated in that has us both picked out from the crowd. I am adding in one more picture of my best friend to replace the Christmas one as I think it will better convey the message of the story. Two sound effects were also added to signify his childrens' births- BABYCRY and Jazzgiggle-10-8-05(9mo) from The Freesound Project.

[edit] Copyrighted Materials

Both Family by Rob Costlow and Autumn Fun by Bast Productions had Creative Commons Attribution Non-derivative licenses so I requested and received permission to use both files in my digital story. All other media used in this project had Creative Commons Attribution licenses and none were copyrighted works.

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