Film by Lilliana Strozier
Lilliana majors in Digital Imaging and worked with this medium for 4 years. Lilliana will receive a bachelor's degree in Studio Art with a focus in Digital Imaging in May 2020. Lilliana's career interest after college is filming and animation with huge corporations like Disney and Dreamworks. Lilliana believes her art should be able to tell a story, capture, or spark an emotion inside the audience, but not limited to these standards. Art can be defined as the expression of human creativity and imagination, but art can be in a free state as well. With past projects throughout her college career, she focused on work that mainly interacts with emotions, views that the audience can depict in their own way, or creates an impactful story.
“Silent Whisper" is a short live-action film that focuses on a teenage girl, named Leigha, who must watch over her siblings while her parents are out of town, but it becomes difficult when she struggles with depression and anxiety during that time. The short film consists of small animated segments that depict Leigha's thoughts. Her thoughts are depicted as an animated character named Lee. Lee takes on a form similar to Leigha as if she’s talking to an actual person, however, the voices are only in her mind and no one else can see or hear Lee.
For this short film, I chose to focus on mental health as my theme because mental health in the brown and black communities is not openly or comfortably discussed. Many teens and adults experience mental health problems at least once, yet it’s not talked about. People are aware of mental health, but awareness and actions are two different things. While growing up in multiple African American communities I noticed speaking about mental health is frowned upon. I’m hoping for my short film to break this stigma and help people be more comfortable with discussing mental health and providing resources for those in need.
This short film was composed using live film that was edited and spliced using Adobe Premiere Pro. Sounds and sequencing also took place inside Adobe Premiere Pro. For animated and text segments, I used Adobe After Effects to help animate and organize the film better and special effects.