My projects this semester have focused on the abnormal. The abnormal holds a special spot in my heart and soul because of how much I relate to it. I’ve always been abnormal, down to how my brain works. For these projects I wanted to push myself to explore the different ways I felt I could depict something that focused on the viewer’s emotional experience.
I wanted to create something that would keep me entertained and be the type of thing that I would actually enjoy watching. If I were to pour countless hours into a project, I’d want it to be engaging for myself. I’ve always been drawn to the unconventional and uncanny–the abnormal, if you will. Halloween has always been my favorite holiday, I used to watch horror movies all the time as a kid, and I’ve always been fascinated with media that makes you feel uncomfortable. I love media that experiments with the various ways of eliciting specific emotional responses, such as fear, discomfort, apprehension, tension, etc.
“Yes, and . . .” became my mantra for all of my projects. My original idea with my first project was to make a cartoon about a monster named Sploopy that goes to school but isn’t accepted by his peers because he looked different than them. He goes through his day wishing he was able to fit in and look like everyone else until he notices someone who looks different. Sploopy sees that this person looks happy, and it gives him hope that he could also find happiness in being himself. That didn’t happen because the Runway AI wasn’t generating the shots I was looking for and I was running out of credits. I had generations of different styles with two different monster characters, and it didn’t seem like any of what I had would work together. There were so many wasted credits. My professor mentioned that I could create something like a kids video where different styles for different sections would make sense. For example, a video about the days of the week where different things happen each day. On Monday this happens, then the style changes for Tuesday and so on. This gave me a brilliant idea where I could name both creatures and have them experience a day of school. I was also struggling to have enough generations to meet the time requirement. The dwindling supply of resources gave me the bright idea to reuse footage within the video. However, it had to be in a transformative way or else it would’ve felt repetitive. I decided to change the plot of the video to align with the generations I had. Sploopy’s first day of school was going to be a horror movie from then on. My other projects followed suit, adjusting ideas on the fly to align with the generations I had. In a way, it’s an interesting way to develop a video with a somewhat unpredictable medium.
The videos I’ve created represent a lean to the uncanny that I wish to see more of in the world. Media should be more non-traditional and not be afraid to evoke those “dirty” emotions people tend to stay away from. Discomfort isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it’s a sign of something else. Pushing past discomfort can reveal so much more than you initially thought because you’re so used to seeing it as a stop sign. It’s more like, “tread with caution.”
