Socratic Seminar Part 2

As I talked about in the blog post before we had a bit of a hard time explaining what our idea was at first. Slowly through the questions, we were being asked our idea was becoming a little more clear. I want to give a more detailed outline of what we look to include in our project. So as I mentioned before it’s focused on a teenage friend group. But more precisely our short film will be the friend group creating a movie about their last moments together. What do we mean by them creating a movie? Well, the movie is basically them capturing a lot of their moments (through handheld shots) like in the movie Mid90s. It would include a combination of both types of shots in order to have a balance. At the end of the short film, we plan on having the friend group just laying in someone’s house watching their last moments together as a wrap in this stage of their life. Our peers enjoyed this idea however they suggested we work on it a bit more because it can easily include many cheesy stereotypes. 

This is why we want to emphasize that we are not making a short film about a group of friends that decide to make a short film. We want to create a short film about a group of friends that are spending their last moments together and happen to film some of those moments. After we clearly explained this to our peers we were told that it would be beneficial to us to create an outline of what we want our film to look like. That’s what Pearse and I will be working on in the meantime.

Socratic Seminar Part 1

This past Thursday WiFi was down at our school so instead of being able to work on our portfolio project we decided it would be best to have a Socratic seminar to discuss our ideas. Our teacher encouraged us to speak whenever since most of us were hesitant at first. Pearse and I were one of the first to share their ideas however we weren’t able to explain it perfectly at first. That’s when I knew this was a good exercise since we should be able to give a clear understanding of our project idea without sound cheesy. 

The Big Reveal!

Our idea is to create a coming of age film we’re a group of friends who share their last moments before all leaving for college. This is inspired by our current stage in life. We have grown up together for years and in just a matter of months, we have to say goodbye. This is a normal stage in someone’s life however it doesn’t make it easier when the time actually comes. That’s why Pearse and I believe that making this film will work for us. Not only would our casting be the age group we need but the emotions being captured will be authentic. I am super excited about this idea and I really hope we can make this work. A lot more work needs to be done as of right now but I am glad our creativity is working.

Sunday Funday!

Pearse and I started to get more overwhelmed so we decided to research ways on how to keep stress down during big projects. Pearse found a website called visme.com and it actually helped us map out the next few weeks. It's actually a super cool outline of how we plan on spending our time:

1st Meeting (Kind of)

Meeting recap:

- The first thing we addressed is our equipment. Due to some budget cuts, we no longer have Premiere Pro to work with so we will most likely be using WeVideo to edit. However, we did discuss maybe paying for Premiere for one month after our footage is done but we don't know yet.

- Ideas: A while back I was on Youtube and stumbled on to some short films made by an account called Omeleto. We really enjoyed how simple the story was and how the producers managed to create a quick but fun movie.

- Schedule: Pearse and I have taken a lot of new responsibilities this year so time management is huge for us. Since we are both working and have various extracurricular activities we have agreed to work on the weekend. Both of us are relatively free on Saturdays and Sundays so those are the two main days we will be working on.

- Blogger: Our blog posts will include more detail about or progress. Since this project is more complicated than last years there will be more blog posts about the story we plan on transforming into our short film.

It was a successful meeting and we did spend various amounts of time watching short films on Youtube. There were many we didn't particularly like and we took time to discuss why. For example, we watched a 20-minute short film about two people talking at a wedding. The acting was very amateur and the dialogue wasn't engaging. But we did find one we really liked which I will include the link to down below. The difference between the two was the dialogue and in the second one, there was more action happening that made it a better film (in my opinion).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVBhvVK8RwM

Back to Back

I passed AS Level!

I am super excited to get back to work and begin shooting my short film. I am still working with my old partner, Pearse Koch, and we agreed that it would be so much fun to create a short film. Last few months we have continued to work on other projects and what I think will make a difference this year is that our time management has improved and our communication is better. We are extremely comfortable giving each other criticism in ways we can improve and I know that's why we want to continue working together.
Pearse and I have been talking about what we want to create and although we haven't decided anything we really want to explore the idea of a one-shot film. However, it wouldn't be filmed in one take but our editing and scene continuation would be what will help us create this illusion. We are very confident that we can create this illusion because given that this our second year in Media Studies we have had the chance to explore various film techniques.
I will update you guys soon later this week since Pearse and I have set up a meeting to start discussing our project a lot more.