Assignment Three: Photo-essay with a twist

I got my brother to star in this photo-essay of mine. :)

The story
He receives a phonecall about a meeting that will start in thirty minutes. Extremely flustered, he spends a great deal of time writing on Post-it notes and his whiteboard, reminders that there's a meeting later. Also, time ticks while he dresses for the meeting later. Finally, when he is ready, he realises it's already past the meeting time, to his horror.


The twist
how ironical it was that he was trying so hard to remember to be punctual for his meeting, and spending so much time writing notes to remember, only to overshoot the meeting time.


Comments:

The class generally found the storyline confusing, and the photos ambiguous. Apparently, they wouldn't have been able to piece the story together without my narration. This all points to a lack in focus for my photos, and a weak flow throughout the story.

Also, I feel that the twist is rather mild, and was not conveyed clearly in the photos.


Hence, I think it would be more apt to create an entirely new photo-essay, rather than improve on this.

/Edited

Final Work for Assignment Three

Having failed rather miserably for my first attempt for the photo-essay, i had no choice but to redo the assignment. And so i set to work on brainstorming for ideas and stories which i could tell using photos, plus they needed to have a quirky, surprise twist. i tapped on everything i came into contact with, for inspiration. Bus-stops, teachers, campus life. Finally, it dawned on me.

Shall not give anything away yet. Hopefully, these photos make sense! :D and read on!

The Story:

Viewers are led to believe that a business man is stressed out about his work. But finally, it is revealed that the man is just trying to welll, do some other kind of business. :P

Comments:

People who i've shown this series of photos manage to piece the story together without much problem, so hooray! :D

Reflections:

Yar, the idea struck me when i was answering nature's call, hee.

Anyway, I made sure to take photos using the same alignment throughout - all landscape, because the tutor had specifically reflected that it was distracting to the viewer, to look at a chain of photos which alternated between landscape and portrait alignment. I guess, it's because the different alignments broke the consistency, and in turn, disrupted the train of thoughts that the viewer was trying to link up into a story.

One thing i must note, it was so much more difficult than i had imagined to convey a story, using no words at all. Emotions and actions which seemed blatantly obvious to the signifier, was in fact insignificant and often looked over, by the intended recipient. An outsider's point of view was particularly important in this assignment, as only he/she could accurately tell you if the correct message had been conveyed.

Also, to link up seemingly disjointed photos into a story proved difficult, and it was no easy task to capture the necessary (i must emphasise on the word NECESSARY, as irrelevant elements only served to distract and confuse the viewer from the main message) elements of a picture into a frame.

Not forgetting, special thanks to my boyfriend for agreeing to be in the photos. :)