Photo Essay <A Fire>

EXEGESIS

This is my first time making a photo essay, why I named it < A Fire> and chose this story because those are true experiences I had a year before, and the whole story is combined with the flame grows from small to large, goes out, and finally reignites, so the fire means the girl’s deeply mind changed from up to down and finally up in her life. I used “She” to call myself in the offscreen voice, this is another kind of self-narration to express myself in this short story. In my mind, this makes the audience more involved with the characters and the story.

The various locations I chose to reflect the shifts in the girl’s mental state and lifestyle. They visually contrast the beginning and end of the narrative, highlighting the transformation she undergoes. The filters also changed from black and white to bright. This change in tone and atmosphere visually mirrors the character’s emotional arc, as she moves from moments of despair to ones of hope and resilience.

At the same time, the off-screen voice still maintains a more peaceful and calm tone, which can form a contrast with the story itself and better highlight the effect that the voice-over wants to express. I carefully selected royalty-free tracks that complemented the emotional tone of each scene. Such as heart beat, a rising spike sound, and there are also some audio like phone rings, and fire burns are recorded and made by myself. This decision also allowed me to explore the relationship between sound and image, and how these two elements can evoke different emotional responses from the audience. By keeping the voice calm, I wanted to communicate the idea that, no matter how intense the external circumstances, there is always a potential for calmness within.

The use of background music also played a key role in shaping the atmosphere of the piece. The music was chosen to subtly guide the viewer’s emotions without overshadowing the visuals or voice-over. One of the challenges I faced was recording my voice and editing it correctly with the photo, it is hard to match them together, sometimes my voice is too fast or the picture is too short, so I need to adjust them accurately and play the same part many times to make sure it is good to listen and express right emotion even for a single second. Adjusting this balance was crucial in achieving the seamless integration of sound and visuals that I had envisioned. This process taught me the importance of sound in storytelling, as even a slight mismatch between audio and visuals can disrupt the emotional flow of a piece.

For me, the whole process was new to me, and I kept learning when I edited it. Matching my voice to the rhythm of the images required patience and precision. I also had to experiment with different pacing techniques and audio adjustments to make sure the narration felt natural and enhanced the story’s emotional depth. Despite these challenges, the experience allowed me to develop new skills and try to pay more attention to the content of what kind of story I want to express and make more good photo essays in the future.

Assessment 1_Zixuan Pei (Precious)