group meeting

 I want you to picture yourself in my situation. You have just spent the last week away on a trip for a competition you have spent months preparing for. You have never been so mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausted. Of course, you have become sick after all of this chaos, but you've already missed so much school, so you drag your ass into class the next day. 

Yeah so that was me on Friday. I will have to say that I was definitely not in the happiest mood, nor was I especially ready to use my brain a bunch. I hadn't really worked on my project in a week. So just imagine how I felt when the first thing I hear from my media teacher is "Time for group meetings!".    :D

Yay! I was hoping I would at least have the entire plot figured out before this point, but I was a teeny bit behind schedule. Luckily, I at least had the basic outline to present to my groupmates, and it ended up being really helpful. 

As you can tell I was so ready to be there!!!

Martina started off explaining what she had planned for her short film, and I tried my best to be helpful but I'm going to be honest (and I'm so sorry Martina), I only heard about the last 30% of her plot. However, we all gave her some advice, and then it was my turn. 

The first thing Martina asked me after I described my whole plot was what the deeper meaning behind my story was. Sure, a bunch of things happened, but what is the whole reason for all of that to happen? Well damn, that's a really good question. I think it my hatred for short films that got too philosophical, I forget to put a theme into my story. WHICH IS KIND OF IMPORTANT. I'm really glad she asked this however because the group discussed some ways I could maybe improve the story. What was suggested, and I'm really heavily considering putting into my story, is having the boss not like the final story at the end of the film, but the main character goes ahead and publishes it on his own. It would show that the character realizes he doesn't need that company to express his creative talents, and I honestly really like that. 

I spent a lot of time trying to describe the mood and tone of my film, and the members of my group gave me some recommendations that they thought would really help me, based on what I told them. Sofia recommended the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, and Megan suggested How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. They both seemed to really feel that I'll take a lot from those films, so I'm definitely going to give them a shot. 

The biggest thing I got out of this meeting was adding a little extra motivation to the character in the plot, or just some way for him to develop himself over the film. I wrote the ideas down to implement them, and will definitely include them while I write my script. 

I really wish I could individually credit every group member for their ideas, but I was like half conscious for most of that meeting. Our teacher kept looking at me and just looked so sad seeing me, which meant I must have really looked ill because she's never given me that look before. So anyway, if any of my group members read this, thank you so much for all the help, I think the end result is going to be improved a lot by what you guys suggested. 

Anyway, now that I have the outline mostly figured out, I should prooooobably write the script next. yay

DO_NOT_READ.docx

 Okay so I'm going to lay out the basic idea I have for my short film. If you are in my media class, I would prefer if you don't read this to avoid spoilers. I mentioned before that I want just a teeny little "ah ha" moment in this film, and that's difficult when people start watching already knowing what it is.

Okay, without further ado, lets go look at what my brain somehow conjured up. 

Okay, so I need you to understand that when my mind somehow connects together its single digit number of brain cells, I have fleeting moments before that idea is gone forever. So, I had to write this very quickly into my notes app, just in a way that would remind me of what I thought of. 

Translating this from incomprehensible jargon to actual words, it starts with a writer who, as the holy notes app note suggests, has extreme writers block. For some reason however, I'm picturing this guy to be a writer for some big company, where he works in an office for a bunch of people. I think I can give the character more motivation if he's writing because his boss gave him a deadline. I'm kind of picturing an environment kind of like the office in 500 Days of Summer? If you remember, Tom works for a greeting card company, so while his work is creativity based, he still works in a more average office environment. 

His boss then talks to him, saying that he's come up with no new stories in the past 5 weeks, and he have to be let go if he can't come up with something asap. Our main character, who can't come up with something good for the life of him, stays up all night at his house trying to write something to no avail. Waking up at his home desk at 4am, he decides to go to a coffee shop and trying to work there. 

As he's sitting at his table, still very early, a woman around his age (they're both in their younger 20s), starts asking him about what he's doing. She's clearly a lot more lively than him at his hour. They have a little chat, but it's unclear why the woman came up to him. 

I mostly came up with this part of the idea because I LOVE the aesthetic of a coffee shop or cafe right at the crack of dawn. It just feels so special, and a tad bit mysterious, and I would love to capture that vibe on film. 

This turns to the middle part of the story... that I do not know yet. I know, I'm supposed to have this figured out, BUT THIS IS HARD OKAY. Basically, I want there to be a turn of events that sparks what I can only describe as some "crazy adventure". I'm not sure of what it would entail, I have a few ideas but I need to check with my teacher for what she would consider "appropriate" (nothing that bad I promise, I just need something ridiculous).

At the end, after something has happened to cause some physical harm to the writer, like a big scratch or something, the adventure has mostly climaxed. Suddenly, what is happening on screen cuts suddenly to a script, showing what was just happening a second before. It is the boss reading a script that the writer turned in. The boss asks how he came up with this, and the writer just shrugs, trying to hide the scratch he got from his "adventure".

So yeah, it's very incomplete, but I have a solid beginning and end. I just need a fun and creative way to connect those two pieces, meaning I just need to sit my butt down and write for a bit.