Mythological RPG

My final project started out as an extension of my first project in our class. For my first project I made a flip book of peoples faces so you could match different eyes with noses with mouths. With this project I was emphasizing the role of being able to choose your character or avatar. For project 4 I assigned the actors their characters, the element of personal choice was taken away. I used three of the same faces I had photographed for my project 1 but I went back to those people and asked for them to give me different facial expressions to convey different emotions.


Rather than just speaking on the act of choosing a character, I wanted to have actors become the "character". The actors had to wear someone else's face and with the changing actions had to reveal different emotions of the character by pulling off layers of the face.

I used the mythological story of Orpheus and Eurydice as the background for the play. In this story Orpheus and Eurydice are in love and while frolicking in the meadows she steps on a poisonous snake and is sent to Hades. Orpheus is a master musician and has the ability to lift up or bring down anyone’s emotions around him with the sound of his music. Orpheus approaches Hades to ask back for Eurydice. Hades agrees because his music is so saddening. There is only one condition, that Orpheus cannot look back at Eurydice on the long journey home, he is to trust that she is following him. Near the end of the journey Orpheus is not certain she is still behind him and he looks back at her, she is then pulled right back to the underworld with Hades.

The story itself ended up not being that important and what was mostly important was the interaction of the characters wearing the masks. It was necessary to have a story line to follow and using a mythological story really played into the idea of role playing. Mythological stories are made up but have been told over and over for ages. So, having a well known story but not any faces or specific looking characters associated with it tied in with what I was trying to do.

I had a lot of difficulty in conveying what my vision for this project was. It isn’t just a play, it’s about the characters. The characters are acting as someone else and when their emotion changes, their face changes. I created a real life documentation of a Role-playing video game. A RPG is generally when a “player controls a character, and lives as this character when immersed in a fictional world.” That is exactly what I did but the players are real people. The “quest” began when Eurydice was bitten by the poisonous snake and Orpheus asked Hades to bring her back to the surface of the Earth. The “quest” was failed when Orpheus looked back at Eurydice on their long journey.

The masks themselves were very low grade, referencing the old low quality bit map video games. I really liked this hand made/rough aspect about them. I tried to play with the light and darkness of the scenes so you could depict if the characters were on the surface or in the underworld. I also used sound as a way to convey the mood of the scene. I think the sound was successful and enhanced the piece by really identifying what was happening in the scenes with the characters and emphasizing the climaxing points.

I had never directed anything before so I definitely learned a lot from the process. I wish that I could have rounded up my actors and shot the scenes earlier so then I could have gone back and re-shot specific scenes. In the future, i'll definitely do things a little differently but all in all i enjoyed the experience of being able to tie in the acting of a play while keeping the aspects of video games in mind.

Unfortunately had to put the T2i to shame by exporting in such low quality, but had to get it up here somehow!!