The View Is Always The Same
Clodagh, Yasmin, Lucien
The prompt of “We live in a world made of stories” inspired us to explore the friction between narratives that are, on the surface, distinct and unrelated, and to highlight the inherent connections that exist in all human interaction. Our video features two individuals, played by Yasmin and Lucien, with separate stories that intersect when they share a fleeting moment on a park bench.
One of the challenges of creating this project was to fit as much material as possible into 90 seconds without the video feeling cluttered or incoherent. While retaining its simplicity and straightforward thematic elements, we wanted to showcase a variety of technical skills and gain experience in various areas of filmmaking.
Clodagh conceived of the initial premise and began working on the script before the group met and determined the specifics of the video. It was decided that the character’s story was the most important element of our video, so changes were made to the script and our concept to complement this. The idea was to showcase the way that people get so caught up in their own stories and problems that even when the solution is right in front of them, they cannot see it. Lucien and Yasmin’s characters are on the same campus and are dealing with similar problems; loneliness and abandonment.
They both deal with their own inner struggles in their own ways, Yasmin physically and emotionally separates herself from her mother so she can move forward with her life and Lucien puts himself out there and stops hiding from the anxiety he carries in his everyday life. Both find each other in a fleeting moment of chance, and as they glance up and look at each other we cut to a shot of multiple eyes. This was an important part of our project because this is not a story of one singular person but rather how interconnected all of our stories no matter where you come from or how old you are.
The ending is quite ambiguous, as was intended; it allows viewers to take whatever they wanted from it. The aspect of using eyes to tell someone’s story was one of our main concepts that remained a constant in this project. It was important to not only show some of our character’s storylines but also to reveal their most vulnerable side of someone’s identity — as the eye is said to be the window to one’s soul.
We filmed it over two days a week apart, during which time we reconsidered certain elements of the story, so some of the first day’s footage ended up unused, to what we felt was for the benefit of the finished video.
When we reached the editing stage, we spent some time researching interesting quotes to open the video with; given there is no dialogue, it seemed like a nice idea to include a bit of thought-provoking English in some form. The Chinese proverb we selected struck us as a perfect fit for the tonality of the video.
“There are many paths to the top of the mountain but the view is always the same.”
The other pre-existing element was, of course, the choice of music. We experimented with several instrumental pieces, all of which had too strong an effect on the mood of the video in unintentional ways. When we tested instrumental music, it didn’t fit the tone of the film and with the lack of dialogue, it appeared undone. This problem was solved when Lucien came across the song “Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Would Understand)”. It sprang to mind as a potentially-suitable choice, and when we edited it into the video it synced up near-perfectly.
