SELF EVALUATION OF MY ENTIRE  BODY OF BIG PROJECT WORK!!!!

HCCS - A mess!

Nostalgia Man - Structurally simple/safe!

The School System - An experimental mess, and that's what it was supposed to be and it inspired others to make some stuff which is cool! But it also has some objective glaring flaws that I must not overlook

Mister Moon - proudest life achievement but of course there's still flaws.

HP's Comedic Comedy Show

Looking back on this 10 episode miniseries I concocted for no reason other than to make something and to "be funny" is a nostalgic treat for me. It hasn't gotten to the point where it's necessarily embarrassing yet because it truly was a stepping stone for me and I wouldn't have made some of the better things I've made without this stepping stone. Some of the jokes I came up with are still pretty funny to this day - most have either become dated or were just unfunny to begin with. Most of the show's flaws come from the fact that I made the entire show on a whim basically. And when I was making the first few episodes, I wasn't thinking about the fact that I only wanted it to be 10 episodes and I needed a way to end the series. So in turn I ended up making this strange half episodic half story driven comedy show. It sort of works in the show's favor at most points but I kinda hate the motivation monstrosity stuff now which is pretty ironic. I do still enjoy the episode where Handeye is introduced and HP and Socky find out that they're in my head though. And I feel like in the end I tied the relatively misjointed loose ends pretty well. The show was a learning experience for me, I had a lot of fun creating it though and it's an experience I look back on fondly. I wish I tackled it significantly differently though. I think the idea was cool and I did some things right but other things very wrong - and I also think I relied way too much on meta humor when I should've followed a meta approach I've thought of recently where shows don't necessarily make a joke out of being self aware but it's just a part of the show. I think I was sort of trying to do that but it also kind of doesn't make sense at the same time. I don't know, I have a love-hate relationship with this thing. It's kind of like the annoying child who has their funny moments. Nonetheless it was my first more ambitious thing and I'm glad I made it. 

NOSTALGIA MAN

This was more of a Frankensteined 3 parter miniseries but I ended up just calling it a short film in the end. I made Nostalgia Man when I was in this strange patch of my life where I'd look back on my childhood experiences and would really want to go back. I was self aware of how stupid this mentality was and how I should be focusing on the future but this overwhelming wave of nostalgia consumed me. I remember staying up until 5 am listening to early 2010s pop music (no joke) and crying. It was sorta the most pathetic thing ever. I remember reading a comment on one of the early 2010s pop songs that compared nostalgia to a drug, which inspired the creation of Nostalgia Man. Nostalgia Man is an allegory for drug usage. I think I am still proud of this film. It's a good mix of comedy and tragedy which is something I was initially experimenting with at that time. I was really inspired by Jonni Phillips' "We Are All Dying In The Wasteland'' while creating Nostalgia Man. Jonni is a huge Inspiration to me in general if it wasn't obvious enough, but this film in particular struck a chord with me at the time. Nathaniel himself is heavily inspired by the character of Lawrence. I love how Lawrence is shown to be this kind hearted spirit at first but is sort of subverted into a panicked state once Janice heckles him. I was also inspired by how Jonni illustrated the way each character perceives the world differently by giving each character a different visual art style. I took inspiration from this and made this a huge part of Nostalgia Man by switching the style up once Nathaniel is "sober." Nostalgia Man is my most structurally safe film I feel, it's not necessarily conformist but it doesn't do anything too experimental either. But I'm sort of glad it's stupid and simple, it's probably the easiest film of mine to digest. I just kind of wish I didn't Frankenstein it together and instead just made it an entire film initially because you can tell that the final 7 minute film is Frankensteined together. There should've been a more natural flow to it I guess. It's really just another stepping stone that I don't totally hate although the backstory behind its creation is kind of embarrassing. But c'mon! I'm a teenager! Give me a break! I'm in that period of life where things are starting to get more complicated and thinking about how simple things used to be is really comforting, and I feel like this film is kind of a testament to how I initially delt with those feelings. It's a strange piece of mine, but not too strange. 

The School System

Well this one's a doozy! I came up with the idea of this film specifically during my AP human geography class freshman year, funnily enough I ended up dropping out of this class because it was too much of a work overload for my tastes. In this class I was sitting next to a bunch of upperclassmen. I immediately noticed how these upperclassmen tended to only really talk about college. Not even just future plans in general, strictly college. It was almost like they were hypnotized...

Uh oh.

I got to work - I knew I wanted to make something out of this line of thinking. So I created an 11 minute micro movie about a blob creature trying to escape a strange interdimensional version of the American public school system. 

Some of its “flaws” are intentional, like the pacing being super fast because that's what school feels like to me and I wanted to disorientate the viewer. School feels like a jumbled mess to me and I wanted to illustrate that through experimental film. But I think this approach hindered the story elements of the film. Someday I want to make a remake of this film because I have a lot crazier ideas for plots and my hatred for the school system grows more and more everyday. But if I were to do this film again I'd try to balance the messy and disorientated experimental film with a compelling story that wholly articulates the problems with the school system. But I also am glad that I made this film the way it is, because I've been told that the nature of the film made other people realize that you can make a film as weird as possible. You can just do it, you don't have to follow rules. But personally I just wish I sort of focused a bit more on the narrative instead of visual spectacle. It definitely disorientates the viewer and tells a bit of a story while parodizing certain aspects of the school system but I just think it could've dove deeper into this world that I created. There's a lot of story I came up with after the fact that takes place in the school system universe and I definitely wanna revisit this universe at some point, and realizing what I've realized about balancing the experimentation with some construct helped me immensely with making my next project... The best thing I've made so far...

MISTER MOON: Village Of Seminor

Yeah so I don't really know why I called this village "Seminor" because that's not a word and people get it confused with the word seminar but I digress. Mister Moon is my biggest and most ambitious project I've ever done in my life actually. It's my first genuine delicate serious film with complex themes. I haven't really outright said this bit of information publicly but I feel like I'm in a place where I'm comfortable to reveal this to the world. I've realized how important it is to be blunt and upfront about these kinds of things because of how common they are and how easy it is for people to remain in these situations. I started this film while I was in an abusive relationship. I didn't know this when I was originally starting to make it but I was subconsciously basing this story around abuse and how it made me feel. I was completely blind to my exes abusive behavior despite how much people tried to break me out of that state. I ended up breaking up with my abusive ex in may of 2023, and I soon realized that I was making the film about her. This really pushed me into completing the film - although I was making it in the hardest period of my life. Constantly realizing more and more everyday that what I went through was contorted and wasn't something that someone as young as me should have even begun to go through, let alone anyone of any age. I call Mister Moon a journey through "the worst feeling in the world" because I was trying to make it feel like how I felt in that timeframe, which was the worst feeling in the world. Something that several people have pointed out about the film is how they don't trust Solaria, this was completely intentional and i'm so very glad that feeling of uneasiness ended up working out! I've grown really distrustful of a lot of things + people sometimes because of the stuff that I went through so even though things are objectively better for me now I still have a constant feeling of uneasiness and this is something I really wanted to illustrate in the film. Going off of what I was talking about with The School System - there are moments in mister moon where it's to a sort of dreamlike state - akin to the hypnotic cuts in The School System. Although the cuts in Mister Moon or "muck" scenes as I like to call them serve a narrative purpose unlike the hypnotic cuts in The School System. It had visual spectacles, but they weren't as random as the school systems. This is something I really need to make sure I follow in the future too - there can be experimental visual elements but they should serve more of a purpose than to just be there. A lot of criticism I received on mister moon had to do with the audio being unintelligible and loud too. For a bit I sort of didn't think about it too much and it felt like a hindrance to my creative process because I like having almost alien audio in a lot of my work but I think this is another issue of something that I need to learn how to balance better. Instead of going full reverb and distortion, I should find a balance between distorted but still legible. I wanted the film to be loud too to really give it an overbearing and chaotic feel, but I could've simulated loudness and chaos without it actually being earsplitting. 

This is another film that I tried to intentionally mess with pacing too. I wanted the beginning to be more fast paced and then slow down once Cicada drowns in the muck. I wanted to simulate the feeling of brain fog that I felt. I wanted it to be a complete subversion that isn't in your face in a way. Something to make the viewer feel like "Oh my god... How did we get here?" I didn't end up liking how the beginning of the film is paced though and the opening scene kinda feels weirdly misjointed compared to the rest of the film, but something like the opening scene had to exist to establish how the lunar colony acts too. I feel like Mister Moon is another instance of something I should've dove a bit deeper into narratively, but it's definitely my best thing so far no doubt. I even think the general narrative is really cool as a story as well. I'm really proud of it, and people seem to really love it. I wanted it to be very painful to watch and I wanted the audience to feel like Cicada. I just want people to feel things while watching it. This one was a HUGE learning experience and definitely the most important thing I've made so far. Please don't let yourself be a Cicada, a real loud bug who can easily be squished. Mister Moon is a journey through abuse, neglect, suffering, and naivety and should only be watched by those who aren't de lune.

Welp, that's it for the big boys. I'm planning to create a lot more nonsense in the foreseeable future. But I also gotta focus a little bit more on not going insane too! Life is great! Oh jolly!