A Level Project Thoughts and Deliberations

Hey there. Remember when I told you guys that I'd be back on this blog during and after the documentary project? And then didn't say anything for like 2 months? Well I'm actually back now! 

This week is a very important week, as it marks the official start of the A Level Portfolio Project. This past week I've been thinking constantly about what route I could possibly want to tackle for the next 2 months, as each route is so separate from the next yet interestingly challenging. However, after a few days of deliberation and finding who I think I'll be pairing up with this year, Alejandro, we're definitely leaning towards making a short film.

Our instructor has been going over each individual project choice in class and even showing us past project examples, which has been pretty awesome. Alejandro and I both share a very strong interest in music and we've been sharing some songs we like throughout the year with each other, so we know one thing for certain - music must play a huge role in this film, whether it be through the narrative or soundtrack, or both. Over the past few months, I've gotten super into media where stuff just happens. Sure stuff happens pretty much all the time. You could listen to a Bon Jovi song and argue that stuff is "happening", even if it isn't because it's a Bon Jovi song for god's sake, but I mean media that's just as eventful as it is immersive and sticks with you long after you consume it. A film that perfectly captures what I mean is the 2017 thriller Good Time. This movie was insane. Every plot point in this film could probably be expressed in like 4-5 sentences, but it's just so immersive and raw each plot point occupies like 30 minutes of the entire film.

Within the short film, I can see this style of immersive and intense plot as well as raw dialogue being influenced heavily by projects like this. Additionally, while Ale and I both hold a deep love for music, a significant obstacle I also ran into last year is the enormous task of getting permission to use the songs we wish to use. Therefore, something I've been contemplating for a while is scoring my own short film. While this sounds like an enormous task - creating a short film and also scoring it - not only will lit let me carry out a specific vision to a greater extent, but it also adds a unique aspect to our project that not many people will have attempted before.

That's pretty much all we know about our future project so far. While the plot is still in the air, we definitely know the approach we're going to take, which I think will prove to make our project all the more stylistic and reflective of the vision we wish to bring to life.