I could fight before I could walk. What they made of me.
Violence, the answer to everything.
Soon, fights turned into murder.
I lived in the shadows. Then I faded into them.
I am nothing but a silhouette.
Now reminiscing-
(maybe the ghost can have a voice too, do some noises?) (vocoder calling her name)
It’s you! What’s left of you! Go away!- as she sees ghost
It’s not even you anymore.
I killed you.
(letter)
Why didnt you say this before?
Why now, why so late?
Why is this left unsaid?
I can’t stand this pain.
The Letter
Initial process:
We were inspired by Thai cultures at the early stages of the making of the film. I have been a martial artist since young age and although I wasn’t raised in Thailand, I have a deep sense of sympathy towards a huge population of children whose family may be suffering from poverty. Many have no choice but to step in the ring to fight in Muay Thai just to survive. Though they are mostly boys. After choosing the words: love letter, poison, shadow, answer and evil, we agreed as a team of three that it would be exciting to have a female fighter as our main character, X.
Concepts and Backstory of X:
X is a very mentally unstable girl who was raised in a poor family in Thailand. She suffered from many traumas her whole life so she has learnt to numb her emotions over the years to protect herself. She began as a muay thai fighter to make money for her family who did not take care of her at all. She finally met someone who she loved but accidentally killed him out of anger. She felt no guilt at all for many years as at the time she felt threatened by him. She was lost and allowed violence to take over her life since the incident and she began to kill, for comfort. Anyone she got close to she would kill. It became a habit.
Until one day a letter was being passed onto her. It was from her lover who she’d murdered. She has built up layers of thick skin over the years, so she became a master at feeling no emotions, a psychopath. But the letter broke her. It was a secret message her lover never managed to tell her as in doing so would put her in danger. Yet she has been holding in her resentment and taking it out on murdering anyone. She’s lost again as she thought violence really is the answer to everything. But she has gone too far to stop. She self-sabotages and becomes even more angry at the world. This behaviour spirals and she has gone completely insane. she would hallucinate often and even try to fight her own shadow. She sees her lover as a ghost and tries to fight him but never succeeded.
Technical process:
Graphic novels have been a huge influence in my work. Inspired by the colour theme and the heavy use of contrast and bold shadows in graphic novel Sin City, we agreed to use only black, white and red in this film and I am very pleased with the outcome as the colour red really helps making fight scene and important moments stand out to the audience.
With regards to my role in this group project, I am responsible for the overall composition, background design, writing, recording the voiceover and mostly post production where I enjoyed the most! I was able to be very experimental and creative in the process and edit the digital animation drawings that Vera and Alex had produced in a very short period of time. I used Premiere Pro and After Effects mostly for organise the sequence and apply effects on top of the animations. Though the most difficult aspect of the entire project was the time limit of 20 seconds.
The voiceover was way over the time limit to begin with but the solution to this was to mix this up with the music that Vera had produced being inspired by Asian assassin film soundtracks. We were all very pleased with how the music and voiceover blended together and I made use of Audition at the end to shortened the duration of the track without affecting the pace of the music.
Overall experience:
This has honeslty been one of the most enjoyable experience I have had in group projects. Vera, Alex and I were able to utilise not only our strengths but also our interests. For example, Vera is very quick at drawing whereas I’m the complete opposite so she contributed the most towards frame by frame animation, as well as character design and sound. Similarly, Alex who enjoys drawing frame by frame and working with abstract elements produced a few scenes of the motion of the ghost X is fighting and did an amazing job with moving images of the letter and hearts and flies.
In Summary, I think the three of us worked amazing as a team as we all have very different skills that enable us to compliment eachother’s weaker sides. Working with them also really inspired me during the process to make more collaborative work in the future and I was able to learn a lot of new skills and gain new perspective from their ideas.