Echoes of the Past

By: Tianyu Wu, Yujia Wan, Yiting Wang
Course: IAT 313 Narrative and New Media

Description: During the initial conceptualization phase, our team decided to create a short shadow play narrative film based on the script of Echoes of the Past. We envisioned conveying a story of regret and reflection on the past through the movement of the puppets and the narrative content, and planned to use tools such as Procreate to design the characters and paint the backgrounds, use a green screen or white wall for projection, and use Photoshop and After Effects for post-processing. In iterating from the concept to the final project, we kept the original shadow puppet idea and expressed the storyline through the movement of the puppets, the action of the camera, and the scale in the composition.

Our final script focuses the narrative on Liu's reflections and guilt over her past, as well as her emotional entanglement with Wang's family. The narrative was streamlined to make the central conflict clearer, which helps the audience to quickly grasp the main storyline and empathize with the character’s emotions. The adapted timeline is also tighter, enhancing the drama of the narrative.

The script opens with Liu's daily life, as she meets a boy by chance and finds her home in disarray, learns of her old colleague's passing through a phone call, and then embarks on a journey back to Guizhou. Ultimately, the script opts for an open-ended ending, leaving the audience with profound room for reflection. 

We used puppets to create a shadow play. We aimed to convey our story through the movement of the camera, the puppets, and the composition's scale. We expressed our story by manipulating the puppets and fostering empathetic interaction with the audience.