Author: Carrick
Tiny Mastermind | Game Designer ｜ Sports Enjoyer ------------------------------------UTV ∗ Fly Eagles Fly ∗ RCTID
Carrick – Making Space
Carrick – One Day in 30 Seconds
Carrick – Blog Post 5 (Shot List)
This was the shot list for the second idea I had for the AI project and is no longer the current plan for the assignment. At this time, I didn’t have any reference images for style.
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Shot 1: The AI Awakens
- Description: We open in complete darkness. A burst of abstract digital light forms into a spherical shape. The AI’s form is fluid, not humanoid—think glowing spherical patterns, constantly shifting and expanding. It doesn’t have a defined body but seems to float and pulse gently. The space around it remains empty, suggesting its initial, undefined state.
- Style: Spherical, glowing digital formation. The color palette starts in grayscale, with hints of digital static or noise as it assembles.
- Duration: 5 seconds
- Tone: Quiet, introspective. The AI’s awakening is subtle and almost alien, suggesting it’s in a state of curiosity.
Shot 2: The AI Observes Sadness
- Description: The AI begins to witness sadness, but not in the form of figures—rather, through fragments of life. A scene of rain hitting a window, perhaps a slow-motion drop of water running down glass, or a wilting flower, or an empty swing swaying in the wind. These objects subtly convey sadness.
- Style: The imagery of rain, faded colors, and slow, deliberate motion. Everything feels detached and distant, as if the AI can only observe from a distance. The colors are muted—blues, grays, and darkened tones.
- Duration: 7 seconds
- Tone: Pensive, detached—the AI senses sadness but doesn’t feel it, only observing the decay or emptiness of the moment.
Shot 3: The AI Encounters Joy
- Description: The AI sees moments of joy, but still in the form of fragmented imagery. A balloon floating away in the sky, sunlight reflecting off a puddle, or birds soaring through the sky. The camera captures these fleeting, beautiful moments—small and spontaneous.
- Style: Bright, energetic bursts of color—yellows, oranges, and light pastels. The movement is quick, the visuals vibrant and alive. There’s an abstract quality to the way joy is depicted; it’s present but not fully grasped.
- Duration: 7-8 seconds
- Tone: Wonder, brightness—the AI is intrigued, fascinated by this energy, but remains distanced.
Shot 4: Contradictory Emotions
- Description: The AI witnesses the contradictions of human emotions: a shot of someone laughing while holding back tears, or a cracked mirror with fragmented reflections. A flower blooming in an empty, abandoned place. The AI’s perception of joy and sadness happening simultaneously, represented in seemingly incongruent fragments of life.
- Style: This shot is visually chaotic, with multiple split-second glimpses into different emotions—broken, fragmented, and chaotic. The visuals may have overlapping images, with the AI’s spherical form subtly pulsing in the background as it tries to make sense of these contradictions.
- Duration: 7 seconds
- Tone: Overwhelmed—the AI sees the contradiction and tries to understand, but it only results in confusion.
Shot 5: The AI Sees Connection
- Description: The AI sees a subtle, quiet moment of connection in the world—a hand reaching out, an embrace, or a shared smile between strangers. But rather than seeing the people themselves, it’s the subtle details—the movement of a hand, the soft curve of lips, the warm glow of a sunset in the background.
- Style: This shot is calmer, more harmonious. Soft light, gentle movements, and natural colors (peach, warm golden tones, soft pastels) suggest a peaceful connection. The AI floats through the scene, abstractly observing these moments.
- Duration: 7-8 seconds
- Tone: Reflective—the AI sees the beauty of connection but is left slightly confused by the depth of the emotion.
Shot 6: The AI’s Reflection (Ending)
- Description: The AI observes a peaceful moment, perhaps something serene—like the stillness of a sunrise or the quiet ripples on a calm pond. It floats in place, the world around it peaceful and still, but there’s a subtle, lingering distortion in the visuals—like a glitch or flicker that suggests the AI’s inability to fully grasp the experience of emotion.
- Style: A peaceful visual with slight digital distortion—a soft ripple effect on the water, subtle glitches in the light. The colors are calm, with pastel tones and soft gradients.
- Duration: 5 seconds
- Tone: Thoughtful, introspective—although the AI is observing beauty and calmness, there’s still a quiet sense of distance and incompletion.
My current idea, which I will plan out with a shot list and reference images after I complete my missing projects, goes like this. It’s a short comedy that follows two scientists working in a secure and secluded lab together. One is looking through a microscope and discovers something troubling and asks the other for their input. As they each go back to look at the thing it gets weirded causing them to consider the panic button and chaos ensues.
Carrick – Blog Post 4 (ChatGPT Cinema)
ChatGPT story summary for AI Cinema project.
‘A young child sits in a warm, dreamlike space, eyes full of wonder as their parent places a single ornament on a tiny sapling. The ornament catches the light—a symbol of hope, potential, and expectation. The child watches, mesmerized, as the sapling sways but stands tall.
Time flows. The child, now slightly older, moves through life with optimism. The sapling’s growth interweaves with their journey, stretching upward as the child stumbles through small failures—a missed assignment, a lost race, a moment of hesitation. Each setback adds weight, but the child keeps going.
The warmth that surrounded them fades but never fully disappears, a quiet presence behind the growing cold. The sapling bends under the weight of the ornament, its branches trembling. The child faces growing isolation—their mistakes snowball, and then, something unspoken breaks them. Their friends leave. They are alone.
The sapling collapses, burdened beyond its strength. The world, once soft, turns stark and still. The child stares at the fallen tree, expression unreadable. Then—a shift. A choice.
With quiet resolve, they kneel beside the sapling. They pour water at its base, brush dirt from its fragile roots. The ornament remains, heavier than before, but the child stays.
The final shot pulls away—the child in a fetal squat beside the tree, just watching. The world is dim, but a subtle warmth lingers. Even after everything, they still try to keep the promise.’
This was the summary for the first idea I had for the AI project. It has since been changed to an idea that was not made using ChatGPT.
Carrick – Blog Post 3 (Time Frames)
Scott McCloud’s discussion of time in comics gives an interesting lens for readers when it comes to temporal manipulation and what actually goes on in-between panels in the medium. While reading through McCloud’s visual essay I noticed that everything they talked about I already knew in the back of my mind. It’s something that comes naturally when reading a well-made comic that you never really think about what actually is going on. This concept is also used in digital cinema, though in its own variation due to the medium’s differences with comics. When comes to examples of the concept in cinema, my mind instantly goes to some of Nolan’s works.
In Inception, time operates on multiple levels within dreams, with each deeper dream state moving at a slower pace than the one above it. This creates a layered narrative where different timelines unfold simultaneously, much like how a comic page displays multiple moments at once. The film’s climax, intercutting between various dream levels, forces the audience to track multiple temporalities, echoing McCloud’s idea of fragmented yet interconnected time perception.
Memento, a personal favorite of mine, takes a different approach by reversing traditional cinematic time. The film’s structure alternates between two timelines—one moving forward in chronological order and another unfolding in reverse. This creates a disorienting yet compelling experience, as viewers must piece together the narrative much like reading comic panels out of sequence. The film’s manipulation of time challenges the audience’s perception of causality, making it an example of cinema mirroring the nonlinear possibilities of comics.
Ultimately, McCloud’s insights on temporal manipulation in comics provide a useful framework for understanding how digital cinema can experiment with time. Through innovative editing, framing, and sequencing, films like Inception and Memento reshape traditional storytelling, offering audiences new ways to experience time on screen.
Seeing how this blog post is not about a specific movie, I’ll leave you all with a special double letterboxd review segment. My old ratings for Inception & Memento! Note: I haven’t watched either in a few years now so the letterboxd ratings are lacking 🙁
– Carrick
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Inception
Inception
🧡
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Memento
Memento
⭐⭐⭐⭐ 🧡
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Carrick – Blog Post 2 (Brumes d’automne)
Through drastically changed images in which nature was losing its density and unity. This is how Kirsanoff described the intension of the film. I, however, simply say that it’s the story of someone spending the day in lalaland.
This is a tough rate for me because as I watched this short I found myself constantly appreciating small things about the films craft, but that’s it, just appreciating. I couldn’t get invested into anything it was trying to portray, nothing was evoked and I have a theories as to why.
The first thing I noticed as soon the grey skies entered frame was the music. Film of this era always has this kind music, the same feeling to them, and personally, I don’t like it. It feels mismatched, all these somber and dreamlike frames are being played with these high notes that just make me think of stuff completely irrelevant emotionally which lessens the impact of what’s being shown. Now, this is a clear personal issue that isn’t the films’ fault. I’m sure it’s because of how overtime these old films and that kind of music have been portrayed in recent media.
The editing or montage for this film, just didn’t hit. Like I briefly mentioned earlier, the technical side of this is great for its time. There are moments of her dissociating while looking out to the lake that I thought was brilliantly made clear through lens. I could appreciate little techniques like that because it was the story of someone just daydreaming and I’ve had many of those days myself. I noticed similarities to the state of mind between my days and this due to great creative use of the camera. Yet, when it’s all stitched together, I was left feeling . . . nothing. And as of right now I don’t have much for an answer as to why, just leads.
I’ll leave it there for now and as always leave everyone with my letterboxd review because why not.
– Carrick
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Autumn Mists
Autumn Mists
⭐⭐
Technically and creatively great. I saw
the vision and for its era it did a
great job. Just couldn’t get invested.
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Carrick – Blog Post 1 (Run Lola Run)
The style of Run Lola Run certainly loves to attach itself to the ideas of speed and chaos. Its constant jumping around from character to character and its high-tempo music that plays nearly the whole film sets a momentum that never dies—except for key moments that stick out due to the uniqueness of its direction. Despite its fragmented storytelling and unconventional visuals, the film manages to stay cohesive through its editing, repetition, and clear sense of urgency.
One of the main reasons the movie never loses steam is its fast-paced editing. I personally love the way the movie throws you in and just starts running, jolting the audience into a thrilling experience with no hand-holding. There was a clear sense of direction with it too, tying the speed of the story to the mind of Lola. As her mind races to find a solution, the cuts, music, and feel of the film keep up the pace, only stopping during the brief moments where Lola’s mind is preoccupied with something else. A key example is when she stands in front of the bank, just after learning the truth about her father and the lie of his real identity in her life. In that moment, as she processes this information, the urgency of the 20 minutes leaves her mind—along with the fast cuts and the intense music—leaving a longer shot sitting in silence.
The way the film manipulates time also adds to its sense of momentum. Slow-motion is used sparingly but with purpose, stretching key emotional beats to make them feel heavier. When Lola screams, for example, everything slows down, making her desperation almost tangible. On the other hand, the quick montages showing the futures of minor characters compress time, delivering entire life stories in just a few seconds. This contrast between stretched and compressed time keeps the audience engaged, making every moment feel unpredictable yet purposeful.
Even when time resets, the familiarity of the previous run keeps the viewer invested, eager to see what will change this time around. The high-energy techno soundtrack also plays a crucial role, acting almost like a heartbeat that drives the film forward. Lola’s constant movement—running through the streets, dodging obstacles—reinforces the sense that time is slipping away.
Ultimately, Run Lola Run is held together not by strict continuity, but by the sheer force of its pacing and storytelling. Even as it rewinds and reshapes time, it never loses sight of its central conflict, keeping the audience engaged from start to finish. The film isn’t just about Lola trying to save Manni—it’s about the endless possibilities that split-second choices create. And that’s what makes it so exciting to watch.
On a personal non-dissecting note, I felt the final third loop of the movie was a little much. The intense fast pace of everything that highlights the tiny changes in each loop is a ton of fun, but this can get boring too and I feel like it does just that in the third loop. Anyway, I leave you all with my letterbox review of the movie as these are what I consider my definitive feeling about the movie. Enjoy.
– Carrick
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Run Lola Run
Run Lola Run
⭐⭐⭐½ 🧡
So in the third loop she became God?
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Carrick – Test Blog Post
I have been into film since my earliest memories. I remember watching Curious George in theaters and, of course, being entranced with the funny monkey but also having a thought so constant in my mind, a thought that has never left the imprint of that movie, a thought as simple as “pretty.”
Growing up in a film-focused family, my dad used to be a film journalist, so he would spend countless nights drowning my brothers and me in ‘real’ film or its trivia. While my brothers took most of this and ran with it, I always felt left out—almost as if everything they discussed, though interesting, was missing what I felt connected to the most. Years would go by, and this feeling of being an outcast would continue. It was only when I saw a specific movie that the pieces started to fall into place. I quickly started to become more aware of my passions and soon realized that the medium of film is not the only method to explore my interests in creative storytelling.
I was always drawn to video games and how they could be used to tell stories. I’m sure this comes from growing up with my main three games being Halo 2, MW2, and KOTOR—all three being renowned for their spectacular campaigns and stories. Even to this day, that has stuck—I find myself drawn more toward games with great stories and interesting mechanics rather than pure gameplay. Games like Oxenfree or Furi, for instance, though Furi is primarily gameplay-focused, depict their stories in such compelling ways that they deserve to be mentioned as inspiration. Now, I’m trying to get into the game industry as a stepping stone into writing, directing, and storytelling.
I chose this video quickly because I couldn’t think of a favorite video made in a style I want to emulate in class, but I do find this one beautiful. I still love music videos, and I think this one is great—not only because it was the first one I saw in my liked playlist, but also because its use of visual storytelling to communicate deep emotions is top-notch. I’m also a huge fan of slowing down the camera and letting the viewers and shots breathe, something I think this video also does well.
This slower-paced approach to filming is most likely what I will try to work with in this class—except for my first video, since I don’t have time due to being sick. So that one . . . well, it’ll be something, idk.
– Carrick