Part Un

I’ve been looking back at some of the “best of” DS106 storytelling pieces this week.

On the in[SPIRE] site, I looked around for awhile until I found a submission that really struck me.

This submission by Annie took me by surprise. I’ve embedded the video below for everyone to understand what I’m talking about.

The video was from the Black Swan trailer, but the music is from silent movies.

I think Annie’s idea was brilliant to choose such a visual movie that really doesn’t require words to make you feel something and adding a silent movie effect with the piano music.

I’m surprised that the trailer alone could be a story when played with this music. We enter the trailer with soft music and what could be a tale of a beautiful ballerina. Then suddenly, the music changes to something quicker and darker. The video changes, too. Things are happening fast and the ballerina seems to be going through a crisis. The music slows for a moment, then speeds up again to match the chaotic end of the trailer.

That’s a story in itself. It has a beginning where she introduces the characters, then there is a slight tension between the three main characters. When the music becomes more urgent, we reach the climax of the story where everything is going crazy. Then the music slows for a moment of reprieve, where we think the story is to be resolved.

BUT IT’S NOT!

Suddenly the music speeds up again and, like the movie, the trailer comes to a sudden end with little resolution.

Well done.

Part Deux

I also took a look at some of the ‘best of” from last semester.

It took me much longer to find something I liked on all these sites. I was looking for something that I didn’t know about this time. I wanted to see how well someone could tell a story about a story that I know nothing about.

That’s when I found this gem.

Pretty Little Liars Supercut

Before reading her explanation, I watched the video and did not know what was going on at first. But then I realized it was scream after scream after scream. Woah.

That show would give me a headache.

I’ve heard of the Pretty Little Liars series, so I knew there was like a death of one of the friends and weird drama going on. This SuperCut, however, demonstrated to me that the show may be a little over dramatic. Do they really need to scream so much?

“HALLLP!”

This really cemented to me why I should never watch this show. Nevertheless, it was a well done representation of how to tell a story through short snippets of clips. I don’t know why they are all screaming, but I think it expresses the general story of Pretty Little Liars: lots of screaming.