MAKING A SHORT MOVIE

When I was told that grade 10 would be the year where I would have to do personal project, I felt ecstatic. The reason being is that I sort of knew what I wanted to do already. I had a few ideas in mind and one of them was to make a short movie. I have always loved making short skits with my friends and I also used to join a theater club when I was in grade 4 up until grade 5. One of my favorite things to do when making skits with my friends is how we would just come up with one solid idea and from there, we would improvise and record the whole thing. It was a thing that my friend and I would always do when we meet up. Another thing that I like to do is recreating music videos. It is one of the most fun ideas, yet the most challenging videos to edit. From there, I knew that it would be a great opportunity for me to incorporate filmmaking and acting into my personal project. I decided that my learning goal would be to learn how to do filmmaking and improve my acting skills.

Product Goal

[Insert Product Video]

My goal for this project is to gain more skills in acting and more knowledge about filmmaking, which is why my product will be a short movie. When I decided to make the short movie, I knew that the topic of my short movie would be about the harmful effects of social media towards the mental health of teenagers. I picked that as the topic for my short movie because I enjoy talking about how social media could have a negative impact on everyone's mental health, especially teenagers. I myself am affected by it too. Everyday, I would go through Instagram and look at these models and instantly feel insecure because they have the perfect skin, perfect body, perfect hair, perfect everything. It really messes with my mind because it makes me have no motivation to go out or even feel worthless sometimes. I would like to spread awareness about it because people tend to sugarcoat the reality of social media and how it really affects people. I also decided to make my short movie to be somewhat fictional while managing to send the message that I want to convey.

Reflection

As an IB learner student, this journey helped me understand myself more, in knowing my strengths and weaknesses in making a movie and acting, realizing which IB learner profile I have developed throughout the way, noticing what I am capable of doing, and it also helped me understand the global context better. I noticed that I could make a whole short movie in the span of six months, but I do think that if I had more time to finish it, the output would be better. I also realized that I am better at directing a movie rather than acting in it and that I could have improved my script writing skills. Not only that, one of my weaknesses was also in the editing aspect which I resolved by asking a professional to help me out while I supervise and give my ideas on how I want the movie to be edited. The IB learner profile that was strengthened during this whole process are: risk-takers, knowledgeable, and thinkers. The reason being is that, if anyone has known me for quite some time, they would notice that I am quite a shy person and no one would ever really think that I would make a movie or even act in it. I was always the type of person who would just listen and observe, but I wanted to change that so I decided to take that risk and be less shy and do things that no one would expect me to do. Even though I always liked acting or making skits, I would never really tell anyone about it. I also became more knowledgeable about directing, movie making, and acting. Though I had some general knowledge of it, I still had to research and do some interviews to fully understand what I am going to go into and how I will execute it properly. Lastly, for thinkers, due to the troubles that occurred during the whole process, I had to think of an alternative way to still be able to finish my product on time, such as when I took a long time to finish my script, when I couldn’t do face-to-face acting lessons, when my schedules were not aligned with my friends schedule, and many more. Not only that, I had to make the script and storyline by myself, think about which of my friends would fit as the characters, and basically organize everything. My understanding of the global context, which is identities and relationships, has been more in-depth than when I first started this journey, because it helped me find myself by finding out that I had a new interest. It also made me connect with the viewers by making a movie that’s about an issue that almost everyone is experiencing, which in this case is how social media affects all of us negatively, and could eventually also affect our identities, not knowing who we really are.

Product Evaluation

My finished product for my personal project is a short movie that talks about how social media has harmful effects on the mental health of teenagers. The title of my short movie is My Mirror. The reason why I decided to name my short movie My Mirror is because the antagonist in this movie is the mirror, since it symbolizes social media and gives the main character a fake image of herself. What inspired me to make my movie about this specific topic is because I and a lot of people that I know experienced this problem and I think it would be a good idea to showcase this topic in the form of a movie, since I also like to make short movies with my friends. While I was making this movie, I always had my criteria by my side to remind me what my goals are and what I had to do in order to achieve the score or the final output that I desire. The short movie is nine minutes long and is directed and produced by me, and the cast was played by my friends and I. For the camera man, lighting, and editing, I asked some professionals to help me with it since I am not capable of doing so and also do not know anyone who could do it either. I used my knowledge from my learning goal to bring this project to life.