YELLOW BEANIE
A site specific short film told through Augmented Reality that unravels as you walk through New York City where these characters lives intertwined.
Role
Augmented Reality
Storyboard
Prototyping
Videographer
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Goal
Create a site specific short film that will be viewed in an urban landscape and eventually branch out into other cities around the world.
This short film is an augmented reality experience on a mobile phone where the viewer can see events in a characters mind when they revisit the physical location where these events originally occurred. The project challenges the way we recall memories and the spaces form our individual memory paths.
Storyboarding & Initial Sketches
In order to organize some of my scenes, I began sketching and outline places where I envisioned the characters. I had an idea for a bench to be the main object that the story would begin and possible end with. In addition to outline the process of these characters, I also wanted to play with color.
Initial Sketches
Since Augmented Reality can be difficult to place within a real environment, I wanted to use this as an advantage instead of a challenge. Instead of trying to recreate real life, I began brainstorming the scale of the characters and colors being used within the scene. I imagined epic scenes that involved strong emotions, the viewer would see these characters the size of buildings to represent the level of emotion.
For example, the breakup scene would have these two building size characters arguing in the middle of a street instead of life like. And for color, each time the viewer would see one of the characters in AR remembering a previous time, color would fill the screen in 3D.
Scale Prototypes
Scale Prototype
User Scenario
Ali is walking down a New York City street when she receives a text message from her friend, Maddy. The text message reads “You have to check this out” along with a link that looks like a trailer for a short film. Ali presses the link and begins watching the film trailer.
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The trailer ends by saying it’s a location based love story that exists only in New York City and unravels a love story as you make your way around one specific New York City block. Her friend Maddy lives in Los Angeles and heard about a location based love story that spans over various locations. She’s hearing buzz that there is a secret episode somewhere in LA to view, but she doesn’t know where yet. The goal is to try and find out what happened to the characters in New York and maybe that’ll tip off Maddy to find the rest of the story in her city.
Ali is curious so she sends Maddy a text back saying she just downloaded the app and is going to head to the first love moment. Ali enables the location base to perform on her phone and as soon as she gets closer to the specific city block, her phone gives a text message saying she’s within distance of beginning of the film. The application guides her to keep her eye out for visual cues on where the scene will begin. Specific trade marks that many New Yorkers would recognize, such as a specific tree, door, restaurant sign or oddly shaped building. Except, one of the visual cues for the beginning of this scene is a piñata. She finds this funny and wondering how it’s going to relate to the story. She follows the instructions and keeps her eye out for a colorful pinata as she walks down the street.
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A few moments later she sees a piñata hanging within a window of a Mexican restaurant that she’s standing across the street from. She opens the application and holds her phone within eye sight. The application is using the phone camera lens so she can see right throughout and where the piñata is hanging she aligns with her phone where there is an odd shape outline of a pinata waiting to be filled. As soon as she aligns the object, her camera screen fills in with a scene. The scene opens up as if water colors are painting the screen. Drip by drip unveiling the imagery.
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The scene is in the middle of the winter on late night and the two characters are standing looking at each other as it snows. One man and one woman bundled up facing each other. Ali starts laughing at the visual on how fun it is to see these two people talking in the middle of the snow despite it being a hot bright summer day. She turns her volume up and begins listening to the first scene.
Story Outline
Concept Video
Prototype