Project Reflection

I will never doubt my words when I say that this project was the ultimate challenge of my senior year of high school. Throughout the year, this class had been teaching me so much about media and film. From the beginning of the year I was ready and excited to start learning in order to put my full focus on my work, considering this is the career I was to pursue. However, I could not have been ready nor was I ever close to expecting what senior year, or should I say 2020 had coming. In the beginning, I did struggle with choosing my story. I was so excited that I had way too many ideas and a big indecisive state of mind. For each idea I had to picture what style I was aiming for as well as what mood, theme, color scheme, and so on. It was very difficult since each idea was really complicated and each offered obstacles in the writing and overall storyline. After a long time contemplating which story, I decided to go with the pawnshop idea. I did have a plan to film at a real pawn shop, as well as have my actor run across downtown Fort Lauderdale. To be honest I was kind of scared that all pawn shop owners would've said no to me filming, and I would've ended up empty handed. However, as soon as I began planning locations, COVID-19 happened. Suddenly, there was a deadly virus that resulted in having all of the world quarantined, making it extremely difficult and complicated for me to film my short film in the locations I wanted. This event was a big obstacle in the making of my short film. Suddenly we were told we should alter our stories to fit the circumstances. Honestly, I believe that is the biggest lesson I learned from this class, and it happened involuntarily. I had to rewrite my script as well as accommodate new locations. At first, my motivation dropped below ground as anxiety creeped in due to a whole pandemic taking over the world. It was surreal, I could've think about anything else. Eventually, I realized that my education must go on as well as my creativity! So I got to work. Working with my actor meant wearing gloves in the process as well as lots of hand sanitizer. Compared to last year, I am seeing a huge improvement in my work. However, when I began filming, I realized that I was not as ready as I should've been as a director. Slowly, I started to understand how to get ready for shooting and how to plan ahead. Writing little notes on my phone, highlighting the script, and sending the script to my actors beforehand were some of those things I learned. Now here I am, with my finished product. I have to say that I am very surprised of myself. Sadly, I had low expectations of myself due to my pessimistic views during this pandemic. However, this time alone has made me reflect about a lot of aspects in my life and it thankfully gave me lots of strength so I could continue making this film. All in all, I have to say is that even though I am still an amateur filmmaker, I am proud of my hard work, and I only hope to get better.