Discussing the Plot

 Good evening and a happy Friday to all!

Today I had a long meeting online with my group discussing the direction we wanted to take with our short film. Last week I had mentioned two ideas that we had in mind, but were unsure about which to work on. The first concept was a spin on teen movies based on the desire to be “the main character” in your life. This approach would both be comedic and meaningful, as the film’s actual protagonist would attempt to recreate the coming of age films they romanticized but later realize they do not need the glamour to take control of their narrative. The second idea took the main character concept literally, as it was about two characters in a script arguing about who should be the main character of the 

story. I personally thought that this idea had a lot of room for creative freedom and experimentation, something which my peers and I definitely want to pursue for our last high school short. For this reason, we decided to move forward with the latter.

The voice call did not end here, though, as we continued to tinker with the project and evolved the film beyond what we had previously envisioned. We came to a realization that the original proposal of having two characters argue against each other would be difficult to pull off for a couple of reasons. We are limited in our crew due to COVID-19 and therefore do not want to work with too many people or risk infection. Also, we were unable to come up with a reason for the argument between both characters to continue for over 5 minutes, which means that at the end of the day the idea is substance-less. This was why we changed the argument to be between one character and a narrator, who would be the one in control of the script the character is a part of. In the short film, the character is going to disagree with the narrator about their role in the narrative and continue to mess up the part in order to make a stance about wanting to pursue their own story. Not only is this safer, but as well creates a clear sense of conflict between the two, which is crucial for any great plot. 

I will be back soon with more details!