The Pink Ball (Week 7 Theme: Characters, Place and Events)

Theme: Characters, Place and Events

Context:

When Max was going through his presentation, I immediately thought of the well-told story of a character trying to fit into a world where they don't belong. They see the world and react to it by changing themselves in some way, only to find out they should've kept their own identity, and the world would come to accept them for who they are. There are many examples of this in popular culture, like Elsa in Frozen and Andy Sachs in The Devil Wears Prada.

I recently watched Purl, a Pixar short, and was impressed how they showed contrast between the two types of characters (the balls of yarn and humans). It influenced me to think more abstractly, and led me down the path of using physical materials like the coloured pom poms to show differerences in characters.

Method:

Make a stop motion animation using just physical materials. Take photos with my phone, and then assemble and edit in Adobe Premiere Pro.

Response:

This is a story about a pink pompom trying to fit in a world of blue pompoms. She tries to change herself to belong, only to realise that being herself is the most effective in changing the world around her. Originally I didn't have the last scene where the world becomes multicoloured pompoms. Thanks to a tip from Max, I decided to add this in, to show how the world responds to the character's actions. I felt that the overall response showed how the character changes due to the environment and events she goes through (the world of blue pompoms, the party, the rejection, etc.). The contrast in colour between the pompoms were used to depict the relationship between the character and the world. 

I tried to go for a retro look after putting the stop motion together in Premiere. The sequence felt like it was calling for it. So I looked up tutorials on how to create a VHS Effect offset image effect and a VHS overlay noisy lines effect, and learnt how to do this with my video. I also ended up relying heavily on music and environmental sounds to convey the story, as I kept the pompoms without any faces, so in order to show the emotions (joy, sadness, despair, etc.) of these characters, I relied on audio.

Overall, I felt I could've timed the stop motion a bit better, but was still able to convey the story with the limited time and materials I had.

Credits:

• Countdown Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7gf6_85-jQ
• Music and Sound Effects: YouTube Audio Library & Adobe Audition Sound Effects Library