The Ringing College Required me to create a three-part project that totals overall skills here at Ringling college of art and design, but at the same time, I wanted to tell my story as well for what I discovered here in school.
For this story to work for any and all viewers, I have to make it so that anyone can understand what it feels like for anyone who watches this to feel the kind of uneasy feeling that people like me go through in this type of situation. I figure watching a character animation and a narrative would be difficult to connect to with the viewer seeing if they have never experienced a similar situation social anxiety victims experienced.
Then I thought what better way to connect to anyone through the experience, then a POV experience.
With that, the setting I have made the film take place in was to be made as if you were in the positions of someone with social anxiety. Just like my mom said, “Try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes.” That quote helps me understand others, and I hope others understand those who take place in this film.
For the first five months, I have focused on what should the anxiety be represented by, and for that, I have taken a look into the role of creating a “Monster”. This monster would transform the common background people in the film into an unknown best that will convey the idea of “unwanted focus” on to the victim.
Resulting in different types of art styles to portray to this self imagining monster only their victims can see.
When I first thought of how this would work, the style frames were a bit rough, but they did portray the idea of how it would show how the project would seem to the viewer.
Then, when the darkness finishes swallowing you up, it then reveals the inside of your own mind, your own thoughts of what people think of you.
The idea was first through a playground to represent the idea of innocents where it takes place at a young age. And as the darkness takes over the screen, it also settles in real life as well as it engulfs you in judgment and fear of other thinks of you when those voices aren’t even really there.
Then it takes you back to reality at the park, the transition from playground to the park, is to show a time jump of how the anxiety carries on with you to the future where you grow more mature knowing it’s just in your mind. But it’s still there, watching you.
To capture the real world, I have to record a normal lecture class I had to film after class and that was a nightmare. Just filming the class watching me make a fool of myself and look at me with disgust still shakes me to my core. After I filmed I then took the film to Photoshop and began to rotoscope all the characters to the monsters.
After that, I discovered a college Humor once did a video of a POV hot girl and that inspired me to recreate the mirror scene in my film by filming myself in the bathroom then the sink scene in the school’s public bathroom.
Once that footage was finished, I then spliced them together to make it look as if I was looking at the mirror on my face on the reflection of the mirror.
