Historical Story

Getting together to work on this paper, we both expressed that part of the allure of Houdini and the history surrounding him was the consequent artistic style, shown through movies like The Illusionist and The Prestige. That sort of raw, sepia glamour was something we wanted to communicate in our screenplay. We tried to do that specifically with the reference to the poster, and the scenes onstage and backstage. 

The historical sources also had a big effect on our story. Just as Josh Neufeld, the author of the New Orleans graphic novel After the Deluge, drew from real sources and people to write his story, the tricks Houdini performs are historically accurate and many of the things the announcers say during his performances are taken from real accounts that we found in online reprints of newspapers and other sources. For example, the description of the Milk Can trick was historically accurate, and the phrase “Failure means a drowning death” came directly from an advertisement of Houdini’s trick from that time. We wanted to do this to make sure we got the syntax correct for characters from that time, but more specifically to add to the grandeur of the event. The way they spoke for performances was very over-inflated, but delightful, and made the mood we desired more palpable through the screenplay. 

Samuel, the main character in our story, was based off of Sarah’s real-life ancestor Samuel Markel. Family history accounts tell of Samuel living in London during the time of these events and actually meeting Houdini, who teaches him some simple tricks. While we did fabricate and embellish upon these records to make our script more histrionic, the simple story of him is real. We based the structure of our script off of Neufeld’s graphic novel, as the characters in his story are also real, living people acting in a (now) historical context. Neufeld’s story provided us with a good example and starting point of how to appropriately create a dramatic story with real-life people in a historical setting.

Lastly, we tried very hard to have Samuel be very affected by the history he was living in. The performance of Houdini defeating The Daily Mirror’s challenge is quite a rousing thing to read on its own. But after we read it, we asked ourselves “How would this affect the bystander?” We thought of how Houdini’s desperation and ill health after the challenge would be terrifying to an aspiring escape artist—and so it was with Samuel. In a similar vein, we tried to limit the history Samuel experienced as well. While Houdini actually goes back out on stage after the Mirror Challenge (once he’s gathered himself) and gives a moving speech, we decided that Samuel would not experience this—just as a bystander may have missed that bit of history in real life.

Process Piece

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This project was initially very challenging. Being so used to working with visual mediums, it seemed hard to get any sort of meaning across with only sound. However, both the viewings and some outside inspiration helped us create something worthwhile, as we noticed the importance of daily sound and realized how important composition and juxtaposition are.

            One of the things that struck us most about the viewings was how fascinating  normal sounds were once we paid close attention to them. Sawing, hammering, chopping, boiling water—all of these things were simply fascinating once we bothered to notice them. Because these daily, normal processes were so interesting, we decided to incorporate a daily process into our audio documentary. Similarly, we were inspired by NPR’s podcasts This American Life and Radio Lab. During the stories of these podcasts, the producers catch a huge amount of ambient noise. They turn on their recording equipment far before they even get to their subject. This noise adds a lot, and carries the listener through the entire process. We tried a similar technique in our short audio by including the beeping noises of the treadmill, etc. Overall, the emphasis on ordinary sounds became a key player in our audio documentary.

            Another inspiration for our piece came from one of the viewings—“The Smokehouse.” We noticed that while the sounds and images of making the smokehouse were interesting, what really set that piece apart was hearing what the philosophy of building the smokehouse was. The smokehouse was really just a smaller piece of a much larger process for Rohan—living a self-sufficient life from the land. This led us to ask questions of our own collected audio for the process of running. What was the bigger process? What would lead someone to do this task every day, when it is so physically demanding and often so unpleasant? We answered those questions through the form of an overlaid narration.

            Taking advice from some of the suggestions sent out to the class, this narration as a conscious choice. While we did decide to make it narrated, we decided not to directly comment on the process at hand. Rather, we depended on the composition and juxtaposition of the sound to get across a meaning. We also decided to juxtapose style. While we made an emphasis on capturing the hard breathing and mundane process of running on a treadmill, the narration was academic, formal, and voiced with little motion.

Our end goal was to have the focus be on what the world spends so much time doing, and to contrast that with the maybe scary implications of why we do it. By hearing the cold definitions of the severe mental obsessions contrasted with the basic humanity of breathing so hard and the inhumanity of the sounds of the machine, we wanted our audience to question why we would run a treadmill to begin with.

            

Tiny Stories

Abby then realized she had left the saran wrap on the fish fillets. Now she would never impress Chris.

The past week, in which Jake had no right foot, had proved difficult. Stupid Piranha.

Amidst all of the chaos Lucy shouted, “At least I proved Sharknado could actually happen.”

Sean threw another punch. He hadn’t wanted to get involved, but now his Finding Nemo DVD was scratched. There was no turning back.

300 PSI. 150 feet deep. Barracuda. Joel’s feet were already tingling. “Just one more picture,” he said to himself.

Brevity is something I appreciate. When a feature film is 90 minutes long, my opinion of it automatically goes up. However, it has never been one of my strengths—which is probably why I love it so much. Consequently, this assignment both challenged and fascinated me.

            I began with inspiration from what we viewed in class. I specifically enjoyed Tim Burton’s stories. I loved how what he said at first seemed implausible, and then left the reader itching with questions. Why did the clam boy dress up like a boy for Halloween? What is a clam doing celebrating Halloween anyway? I felt that the genius of his stories was that he made no pretense to say anything more—it was like a teaser-trailer, calling for the audience to speculate and fill in the blanks. I tried to incorporate this teasing into my own stories.

            While reading I also looked for good techniques. I noticed that in the @VeryShortStory, the author played off of universal human emotions and experiences. Using these experiences in his stories add contextualization and description that he then did not have to write out.

            When I turned to write my own stories, I started by writing out whatever came to mind, for practice. In class we talked about how an object could be our unifying theme. I loved this idea because of the versatility. I went back to my favorite stories I had written, and simply replaced some of the objects with fish.

            However, in the end, “fish” wasn’t my only universal theme. After writing my stories, I realized that my favorites—the five that I chose—all involved characters who, amidst chaos and adrenaline, had made stupid decisions. The adrenaline came from all sorts of emotions, and whether their decisions were life-threatening or just embarrassing, they created a great story. This adrenaline also involved the basic human emotion I found in @VeryShortStory, and provided a nice amount of questions to use Tim Burton’s technique of teasing the reader.

            As for my illustrations, I decided to go with something simple. I felt like both the simple nature of the stories, as well as the raw, out-of-control emotion applied well to a children’s illustration type of image. Additionally, I took inspiration from vintage children’s books and ads—kind of a “Dick and Jane” feeling. I liked the vintage flair because I love the irony of taking those innocent, stereotypical images and using them in bizarre circumstances.

            Overall, I loved this assignment and the experience. I felt like I learned a lot about mystery and brevity in filmmaking. I had to pack meaning into everything—whether it was color, word choice, or allusion.