Project Title:
Experimental Multimedia Storytelling: Image, Sound, and Structure
Project Description:
Film is often considered a primarily visual medium. However, this assumption limits the creative potential of film as a multimedia artform whose individual elements can be structured, manipulated, and juxtaposed as equal partners in a cohesive whole. When film is no longer framed as a primarily visual medium but rather a multimedia synthesis of image, sound, and structure, how does this challenge conventional filmmaking, and at what point does it become something else entirely? As part of my project, I will research visual storytelling and montage, the power of sound, and narrative and non-narrative structures in both conventional and experimental contexts. Using this research as a springboard and drawing further inspiration from music theory and composition, sound studies, art, literature, poetry, and aesthetics, I plan to develop a personal approach to creating and thinking about film. By placing conventional film theory in conversation with an experimentalist mindset, I will create three short films, which will explore and complicate image, sound, and structure. Through these film experiments, I will seek to extend film from its roots as a visual and narrative medium into a multimedia art form.
Most Important Accomplishment:
My proudest moment so far at Cornell was screening my short film, “Finding Belle,” at the Sub-Basement Cinema Student Film Screening in May 2023. The film is a parafiction about a girl who explores a mysterious woodland glade that was once her grandmother’s childhood sanctuary. Using alternating timelines to interweave past and present, the film celebrates the beauty of the woods with shifting sunlight through the pines, birdsong, and the colliding voices of two violas.
Reflections on the College Scholar Program:
After spending my first three semesters at Cornell trying to find the right box to fit into, I am grateful that the College Scholar Program empowers me to design my own boxes to think outside of. It’s wonderful and inspiring to be surrounded by passionate people with such a diverse array of interests.