Desktop video - My Grandmother

I was very inspired by the "Missing" movie, using the desktops and devices to tell a story of a father looking for his missing daughter. In the story, through these devices in our daily life, many different angles unfold in front of the audiences, very subtle, very true. 

To me, that's like open a new world. I borrowed this idea to work on the video of my grandmother, to tell her story in my way. I lived with her almost half of my life, but never occured to me to ask her about her life in details. Until I did, it felt the time was never enough.

I started with my storyboard, write the lines, and choose the apps that I was going to use in the video.

I have my partner helped me to portrait my mother in the video, so we can finish a complete conversation online, and help moving the story forward.

The intro of the video, are materials I have collected through years, about Shanghai, my hometown. After leaving Shanghai, it becomes everywhere in my mind. I showed some of the things that matters to me when I grew up.  

The video was made mostly by screen recording. At the beginning, in order to show the changes in my mood, I turned on the zoom camera to show it. And I did the same for the ending, to use the background changing effect, put my grandmother's picture as a background, having both of us in one frame. 

As the story goes along, the searching on google, and google maps are showing via screen recording too.

And some of the content, was using Midjourney to generate, in order to somewhat shows an idea what it might look like back in 1930s for my grandma. And to be honest, was very touching seeing these images.

I changed my background music three times, starting with chill music as the story started on a chill sunday. Then it changes to a bit sad tone melodies, and bring out the vibe. Last song I put in, was a song written by the songwriter to her grandma, I was very triggered by her lyrics, even before I made this video. I thought about put the lyrics and translation on it, but in the end to avoid audience having too many info in one screen, I did not.

Thanks!