Kati Davis - Final Project, Philosophy & Reflection

Airplanes final from Kati Davis on Vimeo.

Philosophy:

“The creation of a single world comes from a huge number of fragments and chaos… We depict hatred, but it is to depict that there are more important things. We depict a curse, to depict the joy of liberation.” – Hayao Miyazaki

Why do we tell stories, you ask? We tell stories as a means of finding meaning in the meaningless and hope in the hopeless. We tell stories to splash color into a grayscale world, to illuminate parts of ourselves that would have otherwise remained in shadow. We tell stories to breathe life into characters who are like our children, people who possess the brightest and the darkest aspects of ourselves. We tell stories to awaken the child that has begun to drift asleep within us, the one who fills our dreams with dragon fire and fairy wings. We tell stories to build worlds of our own with the pieces we have been given, constructing a clumsy jigsaw puzzle of memories and mayhem: that stranger in the corner of the cafe, that sign we glanced at on the way to get groceries, that conversation we overhead in the back of the bus, that piece of the dream that clung to our consciousness. We tell stories because they are the rope to which we cling to keep us from sinking into the dullness of reality.

We tell stories because we are stories. They are embedded in our bones, coursing through our veins, flowing in and out of our lungs with each breath we take. We are pages overflowing with words, torn and tear-stained and smudged with our scars, our crow's feet, our stretch marks, the wrinkles in our knuckles and the lines of our palms. We are bound with the skin that houses our spirits and stitched together by the bumps of our spines. Our blood is ink and our flesh is paper. We are, each of us, waiting to be read and cherished the same way we love our favorite stories, cradling them to our chest and comforting ourselves by breathing in their bookish scent.

Stories are more than the words that pour from our mouths or the ones we scratch upon paper with sticks of charcoal. Stories happen all around us, every moment of every day, and all we have to do is pause for a moment to notice them. Notice the beating of our hearts, the leaves dancing in the breeze, the stray cat skittering into the alley, the water running in liquid rainbows down the street. Notice them: the fragments and the chaos.

Notice them, and then begin building your world.

Reflection:

What I've learned from this class is this: stories don’t have to make sense. Dreams are a perfect example of this. We can analyze and interpret them until we’re blue in the face, but will we ever really understand or make sense of them? Do any of us dream in perfect, Academy Award-worthy narratives? Of course not. Our dreams are composed of fragments: fragments of people, places, fears, desires, and memories shoved deep in the recesses of our consciousness... yet they are stories all the same, and they are stories worth telling. This is the kind of effect I was going for with my project. Because my audio story involved me describing a series of dreams I've had and exploring the meaning behind the evolution of these dreams, I wanted to choose videos that would simulate a dreamlike sensation for my audience.

Although I didn't originally plan to use as much footage of the beach as I did (it just happened to be a result of the fact that I went to Miami over spring break), I ended up liking the effect it produced. There's something about images of oceans and sand that creates feelings of calmness and relaxation similar to the ones we often experience while sleeping, and I felt that the contrast between this soothing imagery and the audio story about the anxiety I experienced during my airplane dreams was effective. I also included clips and stills from the animated movies The Wind Rises and My Neighbor Totoro because I wanted my visual story to blur reality and fantasy the same way dreams do. Also, The Wind Rises is about a man who designs airplanes and often finds his inspiration for them in dreams, which perfectly fits the theme of the story I am telling.

After showing my rough draft to the class and receiving feedback for the first time, I went back and made changes that I hope reflect their constructive criticism. I removed some of the scenes that were too literal, such as the literal girl on the playground, and replace them with ones that give them more room to conjure up their own imagery. I also shortened, lengthened, and adjusted the speed of some of the clips in order to better match the flow of my voice, and I added a couple of transitions that I felt were fitting, such as a fade out when I talk about watching the airplane in my final dream "fade into the distance."

Overall, this experience has taught me not to limit both myself and my audience when it comes to the stories I tell. It has taught me to explore abstract visual representations that give my audience the freedom to think and feel however they want to while listening to/watching my story and not to try to force thoughts or emotions upon them. My favorite form of storytelling has always been through writing, but this class has provided me with a new and fun method of storytelling that I plan to continue experimenting with even now that the class is over - after all, I have a lot of crazy dreams to talk about. :)