Treatment:

Film name: Echo

The film is about JASON – a deeply loving teenager with his partner. After finding out his girlfriend Karsyn is about to go through a high-risk surgery due to a brain tumor, he determines to create some unforgettable memories together before that day comes. Despite the fear of time’s passage, they plan many activities in the next few days. Those are the moments JASON would never forget, all the quiet nights under the stars, their road trip to the beach, and all the videos he captures during their journey with his old camcorder.

Think they will have the most wholesome days until the day KARSYN has to go through the surgery, yet her hair starts to fall off. Even though she tries to stay strong, the feeling of insecurity and fear is just too much. KARSYN locks herself in her room despite JASON’S efforts. He keeps coming to her house every day, bringing her flowers and notes just to check up on her but she does not even reply to his messages. One day, she is just too stressed and shouts at JASON, telling him to go away in frustration, but he never gives up trying.

One day before the surgery, she decides to go out with JASON one last time. They return to the park where they usually go, under the dim light of the stars and moon, they have a deep conversation and both start to cry. The day after, Jason goes with KARSYN’S family to the hospital. He broke down after the doctor said KARSYN did not make it. Going back home looking at all the videos he captures and realizing there is no one with him in the videos, he finally admits everything is just his delusion and KARSYN passed away months ago.

The Concept Sentence: JASON – a teenager wanting to give his girlfriend the best few days before she has to undergo surgery due to a brain tumor, during the days together, they have a wonderful time but there are days his girlfriend feels so insecure that she just wants to lock herself in a room and shout at JASON, in the end he realizes that her girlfriend passed away months ago and everything was just his depressive delusions.

Inciting Incident: When Jason knows that Karsyn has to go through a life-threatening surgery due to her brain tumor.

Goal/Obstacle for the inciting Incident: Wanting to give his girlfriend unforgettable moments before her surgery

Act Turn:  Act I: Jason plans activities to go out with Karsyn

Act II: They hang out more often

Act III: Karsyn feels insecure and keep a distance from Jason

Act IV: Jason realizes everything is just his delusion

Goal/Obstacle for the act turn: Act I: To gives Karsyn unforgettable memories

Act II: Tries to hold beautiful moments together

Act III: Arguments and distance appear

Act IV: Jason has to face the truth and move on

Twist: Everything from the beginning, their road trip, all the picnic dates are just his delusion.

Genre: Psychological and romantic drama

REFLECTION.

“Echo” the short film explores the pain of facing the truth, explicitly losing someone we love. It guides viewers through stages of love, fear of loss, and the power of memories. The main audience target for this film is everyone from any age but people who have experienced the loss of their loved ones or just went through a breakup would be affected the most. The blend of romantic and psychological will catch viewers’ attention throughout the film. Moreover, I am planning to have many stable and wide shots to capture the beauty of the landscape and try to mix something charming with the gloom to create a slow feeling and nostalgia. Those themes and tones will relate to people who are struggling or used to struggle to let go of something meaningful to them.

Some challenges were writing this treatment for my short film, but the thing that I found the most difficult was to keep the right number of words when trying to ensure not cutting any major part of the script. There were too many small details that impacted the final twist, but I had to eliminate them to make my treatment more concise and focused. There is one more thing that I find difficult is maintaining the emotional tone and making sure that the main theme the fear of loss remains present in every scene.

The most crucial plot element in producing an engaging short film is to have a strong twist, which is the moment Jason realizes everything is just his imagination in the “Echo”. Since a short film does not have much time to build up emotion or catch the attention of viewers, a shocking twist would be a great idea to leave an impression. Besides the twist, maintaining emotional depth throughout the whole film is also a major point to grab attention. Ultimately, a balance between the twist, the right amount of screen time, and visuals creates the most engaging short film.

Both working individually and in a group has its pros and cons but I prefer to work in a small group to develop an idea or story. Since group work should enrich the portrayal of grief and character depth. Collaboration also helps balance pacing and emotional tone, also have more ideas for the script. Personally, if I did not have to do this assignment, I would not start to write a treatment now. Although it’s very helpful to develop an idea and to have a clearer vision of the film, I prefer to find someone who specializes in directing to work with to make the project more professional and have the best outcome I can.

Assignment 1.

Concept Sentence

Tu Phi Ho S4075196

AugCr reflection

I thought that I would not be able to experiment with filming equipment in this course at first, but I was completely wrong. After this week, I had another thought about the course, it is not just about Gen AI, it’s more like a place to try new things and learn from each other to create my own media. This is my favorite class so far as I got a chance to use a camera and microphone. I used professional filming gear a few times when I was in college, however, there were so many buttons and settings that I forgot quite a bit but the camera I used that day was much easier to practice on. We formed a group and walked around school to film an experimental piece which helped me learn a lot from the group members. Everyone in the group takes turns to use the camera and try different roles in the filming crew. We also discussed our final assignment, and I got a lot of feedback and advice that are helpful for my working process. Overall, I really enjoy this class as I can work with cameras and audio gear, which is the best thing to do in the media field in my opinion.

This is the last week of the course, I was very busy with all the assignment, I chose to do the last assignment individually and it was not as easy as I expected. I want to experience with many new filming and editing technique which took me a lot of time, I feel a little regret choosing that at this point because I think I should do something simpler. I am trying to finish this assignment by inserting many AI generated media and ensure the realistic of my final piece.

For this week’s class, we had an opportunity to visit The Hideous Replica exhibit. This is the second time I went to an exhibition and it did not disappoint me. There were some pieces that really caught my attention that I will discuss further below.

The first thing that stood out immediately when I entered the room was a “machine” with 2 strings attached to many poles with hands on it. Daniel stepped on the small platform and started to pull the strings, his action triggered the strings to pull, and all the hands clapped, a round of applause was made while we burst out laughing. Then we got a chance to try the “machine” one by one. It was really fun, nonsense, and creative at the same time.

Another work that I really liked was the one that takes up the largest space in the main lobby. The one that has three huge monitors and 4 projectors. The collaborations of light, space, and sound create an unsettling feeling but aesthetic. This work is so amazing that I just stood there for about ten minutes straight or even more, to find out what it was about, However, I still did not understand what it meant but that was still one of my favorite pieces as I always love abstract artworks.

Last but not least, from the dual-monitor-piece, take a left turn and then one more right turn, was the “Shadow Tresses” of Liang Luscombes. It was placed in the darkest space of the whole exhibition. At first glance, it looks like a shadow of a monster’s hand in a dark forest, trying to grab something, and it all happens behind a curtain. When I took a few steps forward to see what was behind the curtain, I realized that it was a small moving light source attached to a thin stick, in front of that is some nylon-like stuff to create the monster hand. It was simple but really creative.

For the upcoming presentation, I am planning to discuss how AI should be considered as a closed companion rather than just a tool and my ideas for the big assignment.

Overall, I really enjoyed this week’s class, It was really informative and triggered my creativity when I was in the exhibition. I feel great attending that class as I nearly missed it.

This week, we had a chance to share our thoughts and experiences about working with generative AI and the key ideas of these tools. At first, I thought this assignment would be fast to do until I started to do it. I got stuck when it came to the point “What is my key idea about AI”, I spent sometimes to scanning through all the slides from the first week to finally realize that, AI is more than just a tool to use, it is more like a companion to creators or artists, by inform it our ideas, it will visualize and generate new possibilities to finish their works. I agree with most of the people who said that it was challenging to work with AI. Personally, I struggled a lot at generating media. Many times I feel confused and get tired of these tools, especially when the results do not match my vision, or even the first frame of the results comes out perfect, but just a few seconds later, it transforms into a super chaotic video, forcing me to re-prompt and generate over and over again. For this assignment, I tried to insert the media that I had generated in the past to help viewers understand what I had been through, I also inserted some scenes of the videos on YouTube, to show what I wanted to do for my final assignment. After the presentation, I was given some feedback to help me gather all the ideas and do better on my final assignment.
On Wednesday, we had a special guest coming, Professor McCosker. We discussed our experiences with AI generative tools. It was super informative as I learned more about different tools and how to use them properly.
There was a motorcycle advertisement in Vietnam that was published a few years ago I was really fascinated by its special effects, such as the “Tetris building or the “color pathway”, I tried to generate it by RunWayML, even though it did not look exactly the same as in the video, but it still great and the result came out the way I did not expected, and I think that’s the great thing about AI.

In the eighth week of Augmenting Creativity, we are given 30 minutes to brainstorm about our third and final upcoming assignment. I have written down some ideas for the presentation happening next week. Then we had a special guest coming. She gave us a speech about her background and ways to approach and use Generative AI and machine learning models, as well as a quick overview of GANs – Generative adversarial networks, which is the key point of her speech today. She first talks about the Richmond birding butterfly and the reasons why they are about to extinct. She also talks about the complex habitat of the Bull Oak Jewel butterfly, it’s can only be seen in the old Bull Oak trees where there are lots of ants. The reason is that this kind of butterfly only lays eggs on the stem of the trees when ants are present. The caterpillars of the Bulloak butterfly rely on the ants to provide protection. With the research of butterflies, she led to the results of how GAN is working and how can we cooperate with AI, then displayed the butterflies research in the community center, and she then received hundreds of hand-drawn flowers. Those drawings are used to train a GAN.
After the speech of the special guest, we had a chance to look at everyone’s assignment two submissions, which is “The Machine Ate My Work”. It was amazing as I saw others’ creativity. One of the things I learned from my classmate is the ability to use sound effects in the video, I did not think of that when I did my video. Overall, that was a fun and very informative class, I really enjoyed it.

In my third week of Augmenting Creativity, I had been taught how to do the first assignment properly, Daniel showed me how to submit my video and also created a folder for us to upload all the generated videos. I had a chance to discuss my ideas with my deskmates and Daniel, which help me a lot to improve and smooth out my ideas. Daniel gave me a lot of feedbacks and example for the best result. After sometimes considering which aspects of AI should I choose from, I finally came up with the idea of AI helps us in our daily task, I would talk about Alexa – a companion to make life easier. However, I decided not to discuss about it normally, I want to exaggerate it and make Alexa do more complicated task. Daniel like my ideas and suggest that I can use generated AI to create videos that Alexa can not do such as “Alexa, make me breakfast”. I did not think it’s that hard to generate a short piece for my video until I actually do it. It was so complicated because I need to typed down the prompt super detail to get the correct media generated. Moreover, I got so stressful due to the lack of time so I had to request an extension for this assignment.

In the same day, we also discussed about the lesson will be taught next week, and we got sometimes to work on our assignment. Overall, I think it’s a very informative afternoon. I fell happy with my final piece for the assignment even though it did not reach my expectation, I still feel great because it’s the first time using generated AI in my work.

In my second week of “Augmenting Creativity”, I got a chance to play around with Leonardo.ai website, which is a website to generate media based on the prompt that typed in. I got really interested about it as this is the first time I truly learned about generated AI. I have used ChatGPT a few times to generate pictures but it just for fun. I have learnt that Even changing a small detail in the prompt can lead to a whole different image generated. As a person who loves making films and advertisements, I think I would use Leonardo.ai a lot in the future to generate pictures for my storyboard, which helps me and my crew to get exactly what I want to create.

I got to generate my self portrait in this class, I did not think it’s that hard until I started to do it. I got really annoyed when I can not generate my own appearance, which I think it’s the easiest thing to do. I got stuck when did not find the right word to describe my nose, eyes, ears or my glasses, but in the end, I finally generated one that looks like me in the 30s. However, I consider it a win. I really enjoyed that class as I have learnt how to use Leonardo.ai.