Author: Caleb

Week 4 Blog Post: Diagrammatic Storytelling

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Caleb

Hello everyone,

This week’s story titled Great Rock n’Roll Pauses utilized a digital slideshow to tell a touching story. This slideshow wasn’t simply text in boxes formatted like a regular book. Instead, each slide conveyed emotion and ideas through design elements and positioning of text and shapes. This story is one I’ll be recommending to those I know would appreciate it’s creation.

We are introduced to a table of contents if you will depicting 4 distinct acts of the story. Next, we are introduced to the characters of the story including our main, Alison Blake. The story contains a handful of conflicts that are at first hard to distinguish which one is the main conflict of the plot. Alison being annoyed with her mother, Sasha, at just about everything she does, indicated by the “annoying habit #number” she puts in the slides, is indicative of one conflict. Drew Blake, or Dad, and his drinking problem that’s attributed to past trauma and his current work life is yet another conflict. Even Sasha refusing to talk about her previous life experiences with Alison is another smaller conflict. However, it appears that the main conflict comes from Drew and Lincoln’s (Alison’s older brother) communication barrier.

We see in the story that Drew has a hard time understanding the way Lincoln communicates his thoughts and feelings, in this case Lincoln is fascinated by the pauses in popular rock and roll music. In slide 16, we see that Alison has created a flow of text to describe the thought that Lincoln intends to communicate and what actually comes out in words. To further the idea that this is the main conflict of the story, it’s the only conflict that gets resolved at the end of the story. If we follow the classical pyramid structure of plot, the outburst that Drew has over Lincoln’s response represents the climax of the story, or where the conflict becomes clearly identified. Then, following the pyramid structure, the scene back at home where Drew asks Lincoln if he “hears” the pause of the outside world, we see that Drew finally understands how Lincoln’s mind works.

“Okay. I know.”

Considering the explanations of Diagrammatic Writing by Johanna Drucker, we can see where Alison Blake incorporated the use of special awareness to draw the attention of the reader. For my own story, I have a much better understanding of how to use a pages space for my benefit. I can really get creative when it comes to conveying my ideas, but not too much so that the reader is left confused or unsure of where to go next.

“The space of a page is finite” (Diagrammatic, pg. 11)

Through the proper utilization of the space of a page, I can experiment with size, shape, direction, color, order, and text style to generate pace, rhythm, and flow for the reader to grasp. I’m eager to see where these creative thoughts will take me in cultivating my story.

Thank you.

-Caleb

Week 3 Blog Post: Narrative Traditions II

Caleb

Hello class,

This week’s short films depicted interestingly complex stories that differed from Aristotle’s definition of plot structure.

“…Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude… A whole is that which has a beginning, a middle, and an end.” (Poetics, pg. 14).

Whereas Aristotle described stories having a core conflict that creates the story, these films dive much deeper to where the audience might question what the story is trying to tell. They do, however, maintain the ability to tell detailed stories in a fraction of the time.

Meshes of the Afternoon was the first film I chose to watch, and boy was it a mind-bender. This psychological thriller of sorts depicts a woman navigating her own thoughts in a dream loop that ultimately ends in her demise. This short film makes use of visual storytelling through repeating scenes. There is no dialogue and no clear description of the central conflict. On top of this, there are elements of a narrative structure in the form of Freytag’s Pyramid. Throughout this story, there seems to be an internal struggle with the woman as she wanders through these time loops in her dream. Each loop adds another piece to the puzzle, or another step up and down on the pyramid. At one point, there are three different versions of the woman sitting around a table, occupying the same space. Each version appeared to be a personality type of the woman represented by their hand/facial gestures as the camera focused on them. This scene solidified my theory that this woman is facing an internal battle. A knife is shown throughout the film as well and it progressively gets closer to the woman to where she’s seen holding the knife in various loops. When a man is introduced, assumingly a partner to the woman, she stabs the man with the knife who in turn changes to a mirror, shattering to pieces on the ground. This scene could represent the climax of Freytag’s Pyramid and it seems to suggest the idea that she’s a victim of domestic abuse, or at the very least extremely unhappy with her relationship. Lastly, leaning towards the catastrophe of the pyramid, the man comes home to find the woman passed away on a chair, surrounded by mirror shrapnel. Each of these scenes utilize visual elements to progress the story without any sort of dialogue to guide the audience, in turn it makes the story unique in that it’s really left to the audience to decide on what’s happening.

I found the film 160 Characters to be immensely interesting through its combination of text, narrative, and visual storytelling. The utilization of these elements evokes emotions from the audience while we interpret how the main character is feeling as she narrates her life through her texts and interactions with J. The conflict too comes from these narrations and text messages as we learn J is primarily leaving V to deal with their, but really her, newborn son.

Thanks for reading!

-Caleb

Week 2 Blog Post: Narrative Traditions I

Caleb

“Aw geez!” may very well become a common phrase used in my vocabulary after watching the film Fargo. A film with quirky characters, graphic scenes of violence, and a creeping sense of dread as some characters continued to fall further down the tragic rabbit hole. After reading and noting Aristotle’s Poetics and being able to compare his ideas about Tragedy and Comedy to the characters in Fargo, it’s clear his thoughts remain prevalent to this day.

Character Driven Plot:

The spark that would ignite the plot of the movie can be narrowed down to one character’s action, that of Jerry Lundegaard and his sketchy deal with criminals Carl Showalter and Gaear Grimsrud. As a reversal, each character in the film must react around the situation they find themselves in because of Jerry.

“…for it is by these that we qualify actions themselves, and these – thought and character – are two natural causes from which actions spring…” (Poetics, pg. 11).

Aristotle’s idea is perfectly depicted in the plot of Fargo with one character’s action causing the rest, including Jerry himself, to respond. In doing so, the audience is exposed to the flaws, strengths, and transformations (or lack thereof), of the characters. We instantly see the flaws of Jerry for setting up a deal to have his wife kidnapped for some money. Scheming, apathetic, and selfishness are characteristics that instantly come to mind. We see the two criminals, Carl and Gaear, vaguely like Jerry but much eviler. Marge and Norm throw our character expectations out the window with a pair of seemingly nice people. As the plot continues, we see that these characteristics of Jerry remain the same with worsening progression. The same goes for the two criminals, whose actions drive the plot in a darker direction. Marge uses her actions to steer the plot into its resolution, tiding up the tragic decisions of the criminals and Jerry.

Tragedy / Comedy

According to Aristotle, what would be the best way to describe this film?

“… Comedy aims at representing men as worse, Tragedy as better than in actual life.” (Poetics, pg. 4)

Fargo can be seen depicting both concepts through its characters. You have the Comedic elements of the two criminals who are despicable and the bottom-of-the-barrel when it comes to imitating a normal human. One could also place Jerry in this pool of characters as he two isn’t the best representation of a good person and never quite gets to his goal. Although Jerry could be seen through a tragic lens, having a good standing as a husband with a child and wife, respectable job, and a home. And through the tragic events he loses all of that to achieve his selfish goal. Through these examples, I feel that it’s reasonable to say Fargo is a tragic comedy.

Thanks for reading!

-Caleb

 

Week 1 Blog Post: Self-Introduction

Caleb

Hello there!

It’s very nice to be learning with you all. My name is Caleb and I’m pursuing a major in DTC with a double minor in business and film studies. I am a transfer student from Clark College, but I took about a 6 month break between Clark and WSU Vancouver to work and gather some income. I live in a coffee shop that my parents started themselves nearly 12 years ago.

Regarding storytelling, I’ve noticed that my interests fall in line with a lot of others in this class. I primarily enjoy sci-fi, fantasy, psychological thrillers, and comedic stories whether it be on paper or on screen. From the works of Jordan Peele, James Cameron, JJ Abrams, and Christian Nolan to J.R.R Tolkien, Timothy Zhan, and Octavia E. Butler. These people have created some of the coolest stories I’ve ever seen/read. An interest that I’ve found over the past few years is that of storytelling through images. An increasingly notable author and artist by the name of Simon Stålenhag, who has published various art books with his “kitchen sink sci-fi” aesthetic, are now some of my favorite books that I own. While only his first two books do this, I enjoy his simplistic writing that leaves the audience to place the pieces together themselves of what story his artwork is conveying. His later works follow a linear storyline which is no less intriguing.

Video games are another platform of storytelling I engage with. The genres I play are pretty much identical to the films and novels I read. If a game has an interesting story that can hook me in with a trailer or clip, I’m sold. I think of God of War, The Last of Us, Halo Reach, Red Dead Redemption (1 and 2), and Spiritfarer just to name of few. I believe that video games are just as important of a storytelling platform as both books and film, especially in our current time.

I’m extremely stoked to read, hear, and watch the stories this class creates and hopefully gain some new skills myself in the process of becoming a better digital storyteller. Thank you!

-Caleb