The Story Of Forgotten History
Clodagh, Lucien & Yasmin
We took the project theme “There are stories everywhere” quite literally, and decided to construct a short play that would both tell a simple narrative and showcase the skills we have developed in audio production and editing. When we originally started brainstorming, we decided to focus on the mysteries of the universe and forgotten moments in history. When we put our minds together we came up with the idea of a time travelling duo venturing through the time vortex.
Our piece is presented as recorded instructions left behind by two soon-to-be-retired time travellers, explaining to their successor how to operate the time machine. They experience some mishaps while visiting Pompeii, the future and retrieving the so called lost Russian princess Anastasia from the Wild West, where they accidentally abandoned her on a previous journey. As our time travellers jump from place to place, year to year, we demonstrate that there are indeed stories everywhere: in every time and place. We are witnessing just a small sample of this duo’s adventures, which span all of history.
The variety of locations and periods visited also gave us opportunity to experiment with sound effects, ambiance and the ability of audio storytelling to convey vivid imagery to the listener.
We divided the workload equally on this assignment. We all contributed to the script, which we tinkered with for several days as we chose which time periods our travellers should pop into. We also deliberated what historical female figure should be rescued at the end: Joan of Arc, Princess Diana and Mary Magdalene were considered before settling on Anastasia. Clodagh and Lucien recorded the main roles of the two time travellers, and Yasmin operated the recording equipment. We worked together as a unit to edit the piece in Adobe Audition. Yasmin provided the voice of Princess Anastasia, but the file of the original recording was damaged and Yasmin — who was sick at home on day of completion — had to rerecord her line remotely, hence the inconsistently clear audio quality.
The medium of audio allowed us to play with the non-visual side of storytelling. This was essential to our story as it delves into the idea of time travel and the unanswered questions of our universe; we couldn’t recreate that in video format. The availability of sound effects and the editing software Audition allowed us to create our own universe of sound and creativity. We wanted to end our story in a way that allowed the listener to create their own ending, so we ended it with a cut off due to the trio travelling back to the beginning of time. This allows the viewers to forge their own ending. Did they get stuck? Are they the reason Anastasia’s body was never found? Is anything real? It adds a really interesting element to our otherwise short and simple play.
The theme of forgotten history or unexplained truths is prominent throughout this piece. It was important to us to explore this, as too much of history has been erased or repressed. We hope to highlight this with our finished piece, which we feel strongly reflects the integral themes of this assignment.
