Storytelling
"Betrayal — Don't Call Me Up"

This week, we focus on curating a storyboard to tell an original story of ours using 6-9 pictures.

During the process, I came up with 3 different storyboards but with a similar theme of "Betrayal". Here are the 2 sketches of my initial storyboards: 




After doing up the sketches, I went to seek others' opinions of my work. Unfortunately, it did not turn out well as many were slightly confused with my story development, especially from my third and fourth frames onwards. It was an attempt to make the story more exciting with subtle hints. However, perhaps with the lack of other non-verbal cues like voice, sound, and motion, audiences were unable to visualize the missing parts of the story that I thought of. As these missing parts are left for them to imagine, this had resulted in them considering other possibilities that contradicted the ideas that were put forth in the later frames. Hence, I decided to make it simpler by changing some of the frames to include scenes that can provide more explicit meaning than subtle hints.

With that, I came up with this final storyboard (as shown below) before proceeding to curate the photographs to represent the frames of the sketch:




The story begins with a pair of good friends who happened to hang out together at one of their homes. Shortly after, one of them — Janet went for a toilet break, leaving her phone behind. The other friend — Fionn decided to text her boyfriend to update him about the gathering. Before she could do so, she noticed that a notification/text message popped up on Janet's home screen. She took a quick glance and saw a message from Alvin <3. His message reads "Hope you are having a gd time! Rmb not to let her know about us. I love you!" Fionn thought it was a sweet gesture, but she was slightly puzzled about the second half of the message. However, she was not bothered by it and went back to texting her boyfriend. Her boyfriend asked if the gathering was going well and she replied that it was great and updated him about Janet going to the toilet at that moment. Abruptly, Janet's phone started ringing. The caller was Alvin <3 and his profile picture expanded on the screen. Fionn was startled because the profile picture looked way too familiar. At that moment, she realized that he looked like her boyfriend. She quickly expanded her boyfriend's profile picture on the chat as well. As she made a comparison and confirmed that the supposed Janet's boyfriend was indeed her boyfriend, a wave of sadness overwhelmed her. She started tearing and was shaking uncontrollably. As the footsteps became louder on her left, she knew what she wanted to do. She instantly stood up and gave Janet a tight slap on her face. It was shockingly powerful.

Curation of Photos


During the critique session, I received a few insightful comments from the class as well as Prof Kai En. One of the problems of this storyline is the framing of photos 6 and 7 as shown above. It was noted that the gesture of tapping onto the profile picture of the boyfriend in an attempt to cross-check with the photo on the other phone seemed odd. This is because the 'girlfriend' would have been able to recognize her boyfriend instantly when the display picture pops up on the other phone. There is no need to cross-check if the boyfriend uses the same photo in both cases. Hence, I decided to make some changes to the framing.

Here's my final product:


For my final submission, I decided to use a mix of both portrait and landscape photos to capture the moments better. I replaced the first photo with one of my unused photos as I believe that this shot was more candid than the previous one, and it could better reflect the closeness of the friendship between the two girls.  From Photo 3 onwards, I decided to change the storyboard slightly.

The caller's profile picture was changed as I wanted the boyfriend pictured in the photo to be less recognizable from a distance. This would make sense because although the face may somewhat look familiar to the main protagonist in the story, she might not be certain about it. Hence, this motivates her to tap on her boyfriend's profile picture to cross-check. However, after taking the shots, I think the framing problem was not solved.

I decided to take another approach which was to capture the moments when the girlfriend was 'curious' and 'suspicious' when the caller's profile picture popped up on her friend's phone and she reached out to bring the phone closer to her vision. This was an attempt to make a close-up shot of the ringing phone while the blurred "shaking" hand on the right corner was to reflect the "uneasiness" of the main protagonist.

She then decided to pick up the call, which left her in a terrible mood. Anger and devastation engulfed her and these emotions were being portrayed through the "shaking" fist pounding on the table while she was on the call with the boyfriend on her friend's phone. This was also another attempt to seize the reactions of the protagonist through her use of gestures instead of facial expressions. At this moment, the friend came back into the room as seen by the protagonist's vision of her friend walking towards her. I only wanted to capture the legs as I think that would be sufficient to set the context for the next scene. Alas, the last photo shows that the friendship was over with a tight slap across the face. I wanted to capture the moment in motion so that it seems more realistic and people would understand that it was a slap. I tried using a static hand which was not effective in portraying the slap as the one in motion.

Unused Photos:



I think overall, this is a difficult piece to curate even though it may look simple at the start. The reason being that unlike videos, photos do not allow for sounds and motions which makes it hard to portray some of the actions or ideas (for example, the slap) that require motions for people to understand. Moreover, there is also a need to use the right composition and angles to enable the audiences to understand the perspectives of the protagonists. The items portrayed in the photos cannot be too cluttered. There always has to be a focal point and it is also important to keep the most salient items within the rules of thirds. Sometimes, it is extremely difficult at the start but with more available shots, it became easier which makes me understand the importance of unused photos as well. 

That's all for the fun last week!

-End-