In this section you can find some context with regards to the story that has been written for this project.
Briefly, the protagonist of the story resents her family because of the moral stigma that is connotated to addiction. Growing up, she experiments with drugs based on a desire to feel socially accepted. Alcohol presents a whole new world for her as it is socially accepted and gives her that strong feeling of confidence that she is craving for.
You can find an excerpt of the story below:
When I was young, I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood. I enjoyed the summers I spent on boats with my family, and in elementary school I was in the mentally gifted program. I was raised in a loving household, and on the outside my life looked great. Addiction has forever changed me and touched my life at a very young age.
Different forms of addiction – food, shopping, money, alcoholism, and drugs – touched each one of my family members. My biological mother suffers from alcoholism, and due to her untreated mental health conditions, she was not able to be a parent and show up for my siblings or me; that’s my earliest childhood memory of dealing with alcoholism and addiction. My father remarried when I was about four years old, so I’m thankful I grew up with a mother. My father experienced food addiction, and has suffered from diabetes since then. My sister Ilene was 32, when she died of an overdose from opioid use disorder.
No one had ever explained to me that my family members suffered from a disease and they were sick. I was taught from friends, family, teachers, and society that addiction was a moral failure. Much of my childhood was spent resenting Ilene and my biological mother. To me, they were just bad people. My family’s way of dealing with the chaos of many different issues was to become avoidant. It is much easier to put on a happy face and keep it moving.
My issues with substances began around 13 or 14 years old and centered on my desire to feel approval. As a young girl, I had extremely low self–esteem, and always wanted to feel acceptance from anyone. I was always looking for an escape. Instead of going to class where I probably would have excelled, I was drawn to hanging out in the woods drinking alcohol and experimenting with other substances. Alcohol and drugs gave me this freeing feeling of confidence I was searching for. At the time, I was trying to navigate a lot of challenging emotions that mostly centered around my family. Luckily, with alcohol and drugs most of my feelings diminished to nothing. I enjoyed not feeling self–conscious and feeling free from my own negative thoughts. In the ninth grade, I was considered delinquent due to not attending class and was forced to go to an alternative school. I graduated high school with a diploma and a poor education at 15 years old.
At the age of 16, I thought to myself, “It is time to grow up and be an adult. I had my fun as a child. I really need to get my life together, so I am only going to drink alcohol. No more substances. I’m an adult now.”
I took a few college classes and I started working in clubs . Working in clubs was a whole new world for me, and I loved it. It was fast-paced, and we had this mentality in the service business that we work hard and play hard; there was lots of alcohol. To me, the most important thing was to be able to look good on the outside yet feel good on the inside as well. Since alcohol is accepted, I felt like I had finally found what worked for me to mask all of my feelings deep inside.
I quickly became obsessed with alcohol, I started drinking day and night and my first addiction was born.
I started this prototype out with the idea to manipulate existing stock footage with TouchDesigner. I first brainstormed about what kind of topics and symbolisms would be interesting with regards to the story and collected a bunch of videos from Pexels, which offers royalty-free, high quality stock footage.
In the first prototype you can see that the video is slowly moving forward and being pushed ahead when the kick in the song hits. This way it seems like the dance is moving with the music. I am also using this technique for the other two prototypes. In addition, I am animating the period of the color ramp that is being used to vary the red hues over time and I also use a feedback loop to make the video look more blurry and atmospheric.
Next, I wanted to create a nice lead sound. I first found this preset library but couldn't really find the sound I was going for so I decided to make my own patch in Vital, which is a software that creates various synth sounds . Of course I also added here a good amount of saturation, distortion and compression to get that typical Lorn sound.
Next, I simply followed the tutorial and created some atmospheric sounds by adding some pads as well as some rain, factory and monster samples. For the samples, I always chose 3 different samples respectively, which I panned left, center and right to create a better feeling of space.
Finally, I also added some FX (risers and impact sounds) to transition into the drop of the song. At this stage I had a nice intro with some dark atmospheric sounds, transitioning into the main melody of the song.
Next, I brainstormed on how to integrate this work into the existing story I had written and found it would fit quite nicely into the scene where the protagonist is exploring alcohol and the night life. I then structured the song into basically five parts, consisting of an intro, chorus, break, another chorus and outro.
For the intro, I imagined my voice actor introducing the scene in a bar environment, transitioning then into the dark atmospheric sounds I made earlier. I then started with sound design to create the feeling of being in a club, where I first layered various crowd noises and the sound of a club thumping in the background. I also made my own foleys of people cheering / clinking with beers and glass shattering.
I then faded in the dark atmospheric sounds and voila, my intro was done. However, I then checked how well this would actually work with visuals of other other stock footage (e.g. bar sounds, opening doors, etc.,) and found that it was very hard to create a matching scene…
Lesson learned: first create visuals and then create sound design!
Due to time issues, I decided to simply dump the idea of having an intro with bar sounds and to go straight to the atmospheric part instead. I then looked on Pexels for other footage and found this collection which fits thematically perfectly into the story.
In the intro, the protagonist talks about how she is exploring alcohol as a new drug to numb her feelings and feel socially accepted, which opens a “whole new world” for her. This is symbolized by the character opening the door in the video.
We then transition with the drop into “chorus” and the club world. There is a stark contrast between the drug that this video is about - alcohol - and the trippy, Acid look which is usually connotated to psychedelic drugs.
This contrast is meant to let the viewer question themselves about why some drugs (like alcohol or tobacco) are generally socially accepted while other drugs often face stigmatization and legal restrictions. How do our perception of cultural norms, historical contexts, and perceptions of risk tie into this specific issue?
After the chorus I also added a break in the song, for which I thought it would be nice to introduce a new sonic element. Here I opted for some layered strings and I also resampled the recording of my voice actor.
I thought it would be nice to include the legato feeling of the strings also in the visuals. Compared to the chorus, you can see that in this section that dancer is not moving with the kick anymore, but is just moving in slow-motion. Additionally, I am slowly blending through the various stock footage I used of the person dancing (there are about 8 different videos that I am using).
We then go back to the chorus and afterwards to the outro section. For the outro I am using footage from the same collection that I used for the intro. Here we see the protagonist smoking and playing with a globe, which references the “whole new world” she has discovered.
For the sound design, I am using basically the same elements that I used in the intro, where I increase the reverb and distortion at the very end. Additionally, I also sync the video playback speed to the volume of the low frequencies, which creates a very eerie feeling, making the protagonist look like a puppet that is controlled by a different person (or the stigma).
If I had more time I would have spent more time on the sound design of this piece. Specifically, I would want to experiment more with resampling of sounds as well as do a better job on mixing and mastering. For instance, everything is mixed with my headphones, but for a live installation I should make sure that this sounds good on big speakers as well.
Additionally, I didn’t have that much time for the break section. As it is now, it kinda works, but I think I could do a better job by adding some more FX, and using more creative sampling of the voice recording.
I am also not quite happy with the transition from the break part to the 2nd chorus. The break part is very atmospheric and when we transition to the 2nd chorus, it feels like it lacks atmosphere. Originally, I planned to also use strings and maybe some of the vocal samples to fill the gap in atmosphere for this part, but sadly there wasn’t enough time for this.
Offline Website Builder