quiz.

As many of you have probably already realized I am not naturally inclined to wake up early. Every weekday I have class at 9 am or earlier and in order to wake up I set the alarm on my phone and my computer in addition to a real alarm clock I put on the other side of the room to really get me up and out of bed. Most mornings I also get a concerned series of calls from my father whose experience waking me up as I was growing up gave him a better idea of just how deep of a sleeper I am. I have been told that I can be pretty tricky in my half conscious state between real wakefulness and that ridiculously sound sleep I can get in to by the people who have tried to wake me up in the past too. I can have entire conversations with people in that in between state, assuring them that I am indeed awake, that I don't recall at all minutes later when I've actually become fully conscious.  Last summer I was interested in this phenomenon and created a system where I rigged my macbook to take a picture of me with its built in camera when the alarm sounds. Unfortunately the files got deleted so photos to come for that. Taking the picture gave purpose to the one part of my day I don't remember.

storyboard.

video scavenger hunting

Spacial:




Temporal:

stop motion: shark attack

I tried to make it more simple than those other tries but I still think I have work to do on it.



Questions:
Is it easy enough to comprehend?
Does the end get too choppy?
How could sound help me out here?

stop motion.

Bringing Food to Life from Marissa McClain on Vimeo.



So this is a piece I made for my animation class. The storyline seemed super clear to me when I was making it, but after critique and showing it to a few people I have been able to take a step back and realize that it is actually pretty tough for all of those living outside of the mess in my mind to understand.  What I realized was perhaps I was trying to rely too heavily on the audio and by not incorporating any farming or natural imagery into the photos it feels disjointed. 




Question for all of you is:
Even though I haven't really worked out the subject matter in my next piece I mostly just wanted to ask if you all could give me advice on how to maintain a simple clean look (this time without meat) but still make a storyline that can be easily understood but at the same time surprising. 


It is a pretty loaded question with a million answers, but I am curious to hear about other solutions to the problem of having to introduce and resolve a plot in such a short amount of time.