After agreeing on doing a sci-fi film with the main character being an AI, we went into script writing and asked everyone to write some plots/scenes or even lines that they wanted to see in the film. I couldn’t think of what I should do until the afternoon before the meet up, where we sat down and talked to Paul about our ideas. I didn’t know why but for weeks I had been super low on creativity and to me, the best way to get some creative juice flow was to not think about it at all. On my way to the group meeting, I thought of something that vaguely resembles a dream in which A recalled all the best and worst memory that she’d had. Like a child’s voice saying “can I see your chip?”, a girls’ voice saying “I wish I could handle all that numbers like you do”, a young man’s voice saying “do you even dream?” and an middle aged man’s voice saying “some might disagree, but I know you’re just like us” etc. With these voices fading in and out, visuals such as trees and clouds and nature views could be accompanied to represent the most innocent and carefree side of A, it’s a place where she goes every time when she dreams. It’s debatable whether the place she goes when she dreams is encoded in the chip or not. Anyways, that’s just a vague image that I was having when I thought about how my part should start.
In week 8 we sort of all agreed on starting it off with writing a monologue of our own for Margot to narrate in the film later. I had no idea what to write man, my the god of creativity hadn’t been on my side. But eventually I thought of something as I was lying in my bed that morning and thought of something that’s vaguely relevant to Wonder Woman. To me, A. is a warrior. She represents the ultimate opposing force to all injustice in the society. Her attitude is a fearless fightback to those who prejudge and discriminate. And the fact that she resembles femininity reflects the rising power of the female gender. But after all, her kind is marginalized and oppressed, being the punchbag of the dark side of the society and humanity. So I wrote this while I was processing all these pieces of info and putting them into their places.
Do you think she knows what she’s doing?
She heard them murmuring
Aloof but loud
I bet it’s the chip that’s telling her what to do
She can’t process a real thought, right?
The warrior stood
Letting the blood that’s pouring from the wound blur her vision
None of this mattered
She offered herself to the demon’s mouth at her last thought
None of this mattered
I had some really strong visions when I was writing the last couple of lines. You’ll find them in the images and storyboards below.
We had Margot to do the narration and her voice was perfect for the monologues. She had a good grasp on when and how much emotions should be involved. We’re all very pleased with her narration. However, I was kind of worried that my monologue was too short and it couldn’t last long enough for my visuals. But I remember Paul and other tutors have suggested to show not tell so I thought maybe this would work properly with some manipulation. I liked how It had two parts, with the first one serving as a objective perspective as it includes other people’s thoughts on her and the second part serves as a subjective perspective as it reveals A’s innermost thoughts. I started to sketch some visuals that would go with the monologue.
These two are the beginning of my part in which A. has woken up from a dream.
This one is something I came up with to be put at the end as a closure. Where the warm lighting coming in from the gap of the door slowly goes out as the door’s shut. Maddy proposed she wanted orange and blur to be the base colors of the film, so I thought it’d be great for the lighting to be in warm orange, representing the outside world – too vibrant, too warm, too much. At the end of the day, she is excluded, isolated and unaccepted.
I started to think of some plots that could work with the theme of isolation and discrimination against AI. I wanted to show the dark side of the society, the mistreatment towards AI, rather than just her own subjective feelings.
Here are the storyboards that I did.
I wanted the story to begin with how she started with her mornings. After a bad dream she just had, she’d think about why she had a dream like that and probably contemplate about her past a little bit. Margot mentioned she wanted to have a lot of reflections, so I imagined she’d look into the mirror for a long time and think about her existence and you can see she’s insecure about many things from her expressions.
The last couple of images are of the second scene where A walks out of a grocery store and gets texts from a man she met some days ago at a bar. And as she talks to him she finds out Jake is an asshole and only wants her for sex. It reflects the abusive side of the society that targets AIs and sees them only as servers not beings.
The last couple of storyboards are the hallucination that she has after she’s blocked Jake on her phone. The conversation with Jake triggers her fear of not being accepted. She fears that people see her only as a piece of metal who can speak and is designed to serve humans. I imagined the POV shot could be a bit shaky so it’s obvious that she’s panicked. With the 3 random pedestrians that stare at her judgmentally when passing by, the tension is building up, and when the girl suddenly appears in front of her face and says “you’re not one of us”, the scene is pushed to a climax.
The last scene is at night and in her apartment where she slowly walks towards the bathroom with the only light source coming from the door and the rest is dark. The camera tracks her form behind. The second part of the monologue comes in at the start of this. And the last storyboard is the third image in the post. I’m still not sure how I’m putting these together with the monologue Margot recorded. But I guess I’ll find out once we get the footage. I’m not sure what to do with the sound yet, for now, I just want atmospheric sound to be in the background. Maybe I’ll compose something, not because I’m good at composing but I hate spending too much time looking for copyright free music.