This semester in LIFE (Literature Intensive and Film Experience) we created original short films focusing on themes of Change. The project's title is "Change is Gonna Come" after a song by Sam Cooke. We were given the options of focusing on Change in Social Justice, Personal Change, Change due to COVID-19, or Environmental Change. I chose to go with Social Justice Change, specifically the discrimination that occurs in America. My inspiration came to me through the quarantine, when I realized the president didn't care about this country. Over the summer I began seeing the microaggressions and the lack of empathy towards minorities.

To write my script, I took my idea from our previous project, the “I believe” project, and began expanding on that. For my script, I chose to write a prose, because I felt it was the best way to relay information. Drafting the script came pretty easily, as I knew the message that I wanted to get across. However it was difficult to come up with 8 individual shots to use because of how informational my project is. We had to make a cross-curricular connection to something that we were currently studying in another class. I chose to draw connections to US History. For History, I included some lines and pictures referencing slavery and the civil rights movement.

To create my film, we created storyboards and first planned out 8 original shots to include in the film. Storyboards kind of look like comics or graphic novels, but they are important in pre-production and helped out a lot once I started filming. I can't really draw all that well, but used Kami to draw on a pdf. Even though it wasn't super detailed, it did help me think about how I wanted to frame these shots. For initial filming, I gathered all my videos and shots and then inserted them. Then I placed my voice over the videos to get the correct timing. I had to do several takes to make sure that it sounded good and my pacing and pronunciation were effective. I used a song that went well with the theme of my film, which I'm proud of. I then recorded some of my shots of myself and filtered them in black and white, which came out well. I edited the film using “VN”, which I have used before. To get found footage, I screen recorded some parts of Youtube videos and put them in my film. This worked out well because everything flowed together. I tried to include as many different video shots as I could, so most of my shots were less than 5 seconds.

Overall, I am really happy with how the film turned out! I had to cut some parts out due to time and lack of footage, but you can't really tell.. I really liked my editing and music because they make the film flow smoothly. as they sound really good and expressed my position well. The process did teach me that I'm good at editing and I can't wait to learn more about the camera film process. Some of the steps, like scriptwriting, were new to me, but I do see how they can be useful in the production process. I am happy that I got to show other minorities struggle and I hope that one day our country TRULY changes.