In the Canterbury Tales, several travelers meet in a bar and band together on a pilgrimage to a sacred land. They are inspired by the beauty of nature, and decide to go on a journey to explore themselves and their relation to the natural world. Here I have set the tales in a contrasting scene: In the future, the Earth and its lunar colonies have become desolate and polluted. The world in on the brink of a war. Our travelers look to nature to find respite from the barren cities of the world, and find that it has been all but wiped out. Like the Seven Sisters in the Decameron, the pilgrims decide that the best course of action is to flee their homelands and go to a place where they can make a new home in a safe environment. They leave for the only place in the solar system not contaminated by pollutants, the planet Mars.
The slideshow is chronological. At the beginning, we see a busy street on the moon, lined by vendors, epitomizing the condition of the human race: run down and dirty. The Earth is looming in the sky, the symbol of the home our pilgrims are leaving behind. Leaving everything they have ever known in life, the pilgrims are ready to forge a new life for themselves in this “New World.” The ship they are taking recedes into the distance at the top of the picture, moving away from the Earth and the Moon. The camera pans out from the city street, letting the viewer take in each symbol one at a time as they enter the field of view. The camera zooms in on the space ship; the next slide.
A ship moves slowly across the screen. It is a large open glass dome, enclosing a large courtyard ringed by buildings. In this setup, the story plays out like a small village instead of a ship, with a house for each pilgrim, and a courtyard in the center. Light emanates out of the dome into the total darkness of space, illustrating the pilgrim’s separation from civilization. The scene moves slowly to the left, giving the impression of forward motion, and then zooms into the ship, the next image. The source of the light is the main feature of the scene: An electric fire, illuminating the traveling village. Pilgrims gather around the fire, passing the time by telling tales to illustrate the morality of humanity and keep it sacred.
Every part of this composition was made from scratch specifically for this project. For the audio, I used the music-creation software called Fruity-Loops Studio to make the melodic parts, and a free text to speech program to make the ominous voice. The whole feel of the audio is dark because of the situation that the world is in. The dissonant strings in the background give an extra-terrestrial feel to the slideshow that emphasizes the departure from the Earth. The text of the voice gives a succinct background to the story, introducing the viewer to the setting in which the tales will be told. The audio track and the slideshow are a seamless composition, and each part in isolation would not have the meaning that the two have when placed together. The audio was designed to fit with the pictures, and the words in the track sync with the transitions in the show.
Works Cited
Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (Barnes & Noble Classics). New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2006. Print.
Giovanni, Boccaccio,. Decameron. London: Penguin, 2003. Web.
Wharton, Robin. "Canturbury Tales Discussion." English 1102. Skiles 311, Atlanta. 18-29 Jan. 2010. Lecture.
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