THE LITTLE MERMAID

Year 1 University Semester-end Film, NTU

Role: Cinematographer, Assistant Director, Art Direction, Storyboarder, Editor

Worked together in a team of 3 other brilliant brains in a film foundation studies class to create a film combining the genre of folklore and a chosen narrative structure. Edited the second segment of the three-part-trailer (1:45-2:44)

Upon receiving our project brief, we went ahead to brainstorm for ideas we could use – mainly the genre and type of story we would make into a film. Amongst folklores, movies and fairytales, we decided to do a modern twist on Hans Christian Andersen’s story of ‘The Little Mermaid’ as we felt it would be an interesting challenge to create a story revolving around a protagonist who lives in a completely different world from ours.

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And so after picking out the main plot points in the story of ‘The Little Mermaid’ and analysing it, we were quite interested in the idea of Ariel giving up her identity as a mermaid to become a human in order to be with the man she loves. The idea of sacrificing everything she was and what she knew of her life for someone was something we found to be very impactful. Thereafter, we watched quite a few movie trailers to get ideas for our cinematography and mood for our film, and we chanced upon “Catch Me if you Can”, a story about a highschool boy who goes around acting as different occupations in order to gain experiences he cannot get at his age.

Thus, our story revolves around a female protagonist, Ariel, who is a professional swindler. She enjoys doing what she does, especially the money she earns from it, until she meets Jay during one of her “occupations”. Initially, she thought she could get money out of him, but the more time she spent with him the more she started to question the whole nature of her job and her own identity – because since she has acted as so many identities, she doesn’t know who she really is anymore.