Tuesday, August 30, 2011

What is a capstone?

In retrospect, this post probably should have come before the preceding post.

What is a capstone project?

A students capstone should be the defining work of his undergraduate career. It should show how the student has progressed, and it should show how well he can finish a huge, long-term project. It should be something the student is willing to pour his heart and soul into, because it will statistically be the last time he will be able to do so. After his final semester, he will begin working outside of the educational system, trying to find how to make his degree fit into his career.

For this reason, I will be creating a narrative short film. It's my dream, and it has to be for me to be able to do it justice for the next year.

~TomBob

Ideas

Capstones are tough. They should be.

A students capstone should be the defining work of his undergraduate career. It should show how the student has progressed, and it should show how well he can finish a huge, long-term project.

I decided to shoot a narrative short film, because my long-term career goal is to make narrative films.

Ideas for narrative short films:

An uptight man loses his glasses and discovers there is beauty in the world.

A self-obsessed pop star and her hired bodyguard find out that life is not about them after a terrorist bombing.

In a future where computers determine marriages between citizens, a fireman cannot afford to refuse his marriage to a famous celebrity. She has no such financial issues, and pays her refusal and leaves him to fend for himself.


Inspirations: I've always found it easiest to write while attending band/orchestra music concerts, which is where I came up with the glasses concept.
My wife told me to invent futuristic stories, not by planning out the story first, but by deciding on the environment first by taking modern culture and technology and extrapolating what the future would look like.
Another way of creating a story is to find at least two pieces of your potential film and fish around creatively without consciously considering the ramifications. Beth showed us this in our visual storytelling class (N110).

Capstone

Welcome.