Draw Wars

Artists are typically drawn to visual solutions--as opposed to dialogue--to convey character and narrative. Here are four common strategies:

Expressing the inner life
Use of dream sequences, flashbacks and other devices to show a character's inner life, backstory, psychological state or thought process.

Mise-en-scene
While traditional film uses production design, artifacts, and other imagery to convey character, this technique was pushed to fetishistic extremes in the CD-ROM games of the mid 90's (Myst, FreakShow, Ceremony of Innocence, Buried in Time, etc.). What we can take away from these experiments is that this technique works, but cannot sustain long-term interest by itself.

Narrative unfolding in space (sometimes literally)
This is the George Lucas approach. Locations, (in Lucas' case, planets) serve as visual markers for the narrative: e.g, "if we're on the volcano planet, this must be the climax of the movie!"

Visualizing conflict
While conflict visualization is an important part of conventional filmmaking (think chases or fights), artists tend to visualize conflict via symbols, artifacts and images that function as signs.

Our project
In our video we're instinctively using the last three of the four techniques described above. At first glance, there doesn't seem to be much visualized conflict; the story seems to be about Ben, a solitary figure who has few interactions with other people. Yet, the project centers on his relationship with an unseen adversary and their extended conflict not with words, but with fire, sound, inventions and natural forces. What makes our project a little unusual is that the entire engagement, not just the final act, takes place without dialogue. This conflict, by its nature, isn't shot in real-time but is created in the editing.