ALWAYS BESIDE YOU
Always Beside You is the title of a short horror film I created for the Digital Narrative Theory And Practice course. The story revolves around a girl suffering from schizophrenia and her one-sided love for another man.
![[Updated on Dec 2019] Poster.jpg](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/513ebd_a89d853e98a9412ba1557ea9ee6b3a8f~mv2_d_3508_4961_s_4_2.jpg/v1/fill/w_639,h_894,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_avif,quality_auto/%5BUpdated%20on%20Dec%202019%5D%20Poster.jpg)
My inspiration
The museum in the story is the current Vietnamese History Museum and was previously called the Vietnam National Museum in 1956. The special thing about this museum, is that it has a room dedicated for displaying an over-100-year-old mummy.
This mummy is considered to be very valuable because the condition of the body is still very good. When I first saw this as a kid, I was so impressed and still remember about it til today, which eventually gave me an idea for the base of the story.
Year 1956 is when Ngo Dinh Diem became the president of Vietnam. Ngo Dinh Nhu, Ngo Dinh Diem’s younger brother and Tran Le Xuan, Nhu’s wife, stood strong for feminism and women’s role in the society. With this background set, Han, an academic individual with professional knowledge on archaeology fits in perfectly well.
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1950s to 1960s is also the time when the people in Saigon are westernized, the society became more modern and were better-educated. And this once again let Han and her father’s job: an archaeologist, fits better in my story.
‘The tailor shop on Enbizaka’ is a Japanese music video about Kayo who believes a man in her village is her ‘husband’ who never comes ‘home’. She killed all the ladies he met and eventually himself. This is where I was inspired for both the theme and Han personality. Kayo and Han shares the same condition: believing something untrue and their love for the other person is strong to the point of committing murder in Kayo case, mummifying Dung then putting him on display in Han case.
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‘Yandere’ is a Japanese term describing one romantic obsession over another to the point that he/she turns psychotic, violent, and would go as far as needed to make the other person his/her. This term plays a very important role in Han’s personality, as her behavior in the story is the result of her romantic obsession over Dung.
For the poster design, I was inspired by horror/psychological movie posters that show half or some parts of a person’s face to give a mysterious feeling.
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In terms of costume, ao dai Le Pho is a very popular kind of ao dai in the 1950s designed by the artist Le Pho with a more comfortable fabric, very high collar and no decorations. Therefore, to make the poster more historically accurate, I decided to have the ao dai featured.