This project highlights the tale of heartbreak, sadness, and loss from a comical and self-deprecating format. When I first thought of the idea of heartbreak, I imagined sadness and the end of an important relationship for a person. However, I wanted to explore the intricacies of a breakup and the resulting emotions. Some relationships end in a place of sadness, followed by intense anger and hatred, and finally a sense of freedom and rediscovering yourself on the path ahead.

The metaphors I wanted to explore to go along with this message involve the theme of identity, specifically self-doubt and lack of self-esteem. The first metaphor I wanted to include had to do with group and community identity by painting one individual as an outcast compared to the rest of their peers. However, I realized that heartbreak needed to be portrayed in a much more personal fashion and thus decided to use words as a large portion of my metaphor. Words are used in this piece to signify emotion and are purposely put in place to look unsightly and misfitting. This insight led the remainder of my creative process and helped me narrow down the focus of my project as I let the feelings of loss and feeling out of place guide the ideas and animations I included.

This audio poem was inspired by the environment of Stanford. People are always running around from class to campus activity to recruiting event, often without stopping to enjoy their day or world around them. The poem found in this piece is "The Lesson of the Moth" from Don Marquis and I chose this to represent how the moth is so focused on finding the flame that it doesn't realize the repercussions in the future of its actions. Just as the moth chooses to only prioritize its happiness in the moment, students are so focused in the bubble that they often keep their blinders on.

I layered a lot of different sounds on top of the poems to further the message and tone of the poem. The audio clip begins and ends with the sound of a bell, which every student associates with the beginning and end of a class. By framing the poem in this context, we further the metaphorical blinders established through the words. Additional layers include the sound of a metronome and tapping on a desk to convey anxiety levels as well as a whoosh to show the suddenness of the loss of time. The last level of sound added was from a Stanford kickback with loud music, providing an unexpected contrast in the middle of the piece to all the studying.

In this piece, I tried to replicate a horror style film while also leaving the viewer with an indirect ominous sense of what happened at the end of the clip. With various editing techniques, I wanted to explore how changes in the music volume and in the image intensity/speed would affect the creepy feeling we were left with.

This audiovisual piece was based off the musical piece "Bye Bye Blues" and the footage came from video clips from the Prelinger Archives. The music was largely untouched except for volume changes in some places, as I felt the music conveyed a somber and ominous enough tone that it was highly appropriate for the undertaking of this project. The video, on the other hand, was highly edited. The video was made more choppy and granular trying to replicate the style of a stop-motion film to add to the ominous nature of the piece. Gong sounds were also included to make the piece more dramatic at eventful times and different editing techniques were used throughout.

For our final project, I played around a lot with the idea of rejection. We all face rejection frequently in our lives and it's something we try to hide. Our stories and narratives downplay rejection and represent rejection as an obstacle that needs to be avoided at all costs. Yet, this approach is problematic due to its lack of acceptance of rejection. I wanted to highlight that rejection should be seen as a valuable stepping stone that helps bring out success.

The hyperreality filming style was inspired by a Modern Family episode I watched, where the entire episode was filmed entirely from one character's computer screen. I felt this approach really helped convey the character's emotions with the right balance of showing and telling and thus wanted to adopt and twist it for my purposes. The video features a lot of dramatic sounds (such as the bell signifying multiple rejections) and has a clear, consistent film style throughout - letting the reader grasp the story without the need for too much audio cluttering it out. The balance of words, sounds, and images really highlighhts these feelings of rejection and the resulting message that life can still be okay.