critical reflection

 

The short film Writing on the bathroom walls is a film created to represent Young queer teens who are struggling to accept themselves. It shows the emotional turmoil that many young people part of the LGBTQ + struggle with daily. This is shown in the short film but the main character Moon, who is constantly struggling to come to terms with who she is because of her sexuality. She kind of looks up and has a crush on this openly queer girl at her school. We wanted to show a different side of struggling with their sexuality, which is to say it isn't always just about an outside person, such as friends or parents being the one to make you feel like you need to hide your sexuality, but it can be your own self holding you back. In this short film, there is no outside force telling Moon that she shouldn't be who she is. There is only her inner turmoil, yet she still has this overwhelming fear of finally being who she is Which can be seen when she's fleeting the classroom. There is a scene showing what she wishes she was but you can tell that she is scared of it, but she learns to trust herself. The clothing choice was deliberate to represent this self-consciousness and fear she feels and at first she's wearing a very big baggy clothes and Gray do represent her as kind of small and scared, and then as she changes clothes, she starts getting into A more and more colorful outfits to represent that her confidence is going up, she wears the very bright pride flag in her reflection as a way to show where she wants to be,  and even at the end, she's not wearing a very bright outfit because she's still not as confident in herself as she could be showing that she's still going to have to work on herself to feel as confident as everyone around her. This shows that accepting yourself is a journey and that It's OK to still be on the journey of finding a way to be more confident in your authentic self.

Social media was made with a very specific brand in mind. Since the first post we wanted to use doodles such as you would find on a bathroom wall as our focus on our brand. Even though we know that most of the time the writing is black we thought that adding more color to the overall social media would make the film feel more like intended genre, coming of age, that usually features film with bright colors. I did a lot of research of what would be seen as interesting by looking at others films social media such as edge of seventeen and trinkets who have a similar age range to see what the best way was to get people in our target audience, queer teens and young adults, to interact with our page. Colors was one of them but also putting up behind the scenes videos are always fun to watch If we keep them short., as well as bloopers make the post more engaging and have audience want to come back to our page for more content, hopefully leading for them to end at our film.  We also planned on having things that you can buy, such as merch, such we each took a piece of the wall, and we thought that would be a fun thing to put on Instagram to sell to audiences as limited time which gets audiences to engage more because people like getting merch that is considered limited. Since this film is based heavily on the writing on the walls, we decided to also do our opening credit Over short film writing is on the walls with a bunch of doodles over them which Showcases the brand we created on the Instagram in the film, connecting both of the mediums.  

At the beginning of this project, I ended up doing a lot of research, in film such as the short films Reply by Elle Mills and the movie edge of seventeen by and we took a lot of inspiration especially on what to post to keep audiences engaged from these films. As well as Took inspiration from both of these films for the ending. they both had a hopeful ending but not exactly A happily ever after, which I think we followed suit with our film ending., that even though she didn't end up with the character she liked, she gained confidence and even had a conversation with her crush and Moon started wearing stuff that feels more like her And she got the hang of, finally being able to see herself for who she is. And even though it wasn't what the character wanted from the beginning they got what they needed at the end. Moon like many other coming of age Main characters found herself. We also Took inspiration by putting the characters into character types where the main characters Is a loner while they are in love with the character that is popular that can be seen in a lot of coming-of-age films, as well as we kept the colors. Pretty bright that usually go with these types of films. We also happened to have challenged this convention a lot by not using any dialogue except that the very end, because especially in like coming of age stories they heavily rely on dialogue, but we thought it might be a fun challenge to do this storytelling without words We also challenged The films I researched but not making the romance the central focus of the story and instead of making it as obvious as possible but the central part of the story is the fact that the main character is trying to figure out who she is and that the romance is a side plot as a way to help the main character come to terms with who she is. We thought this would make it more authentic to a real-world situation where you don't always end up with a person you like but most times you end up just having a crush on someone and it doesn't take over your entire day It said just consumes your thoughts. 

Writing on the Bathroom Wall is out Now

 The print component 

The Social Media 

Now for all been waiting for Short film 

Editing

 Okay so today was an editing day and god it was long, so when we first started editing we were using un copyrighted music so we had to lock in and find the music we were going to use for the film. So we went to the handy website,  recommend by Nicole, called bulletproof bear for royalty free music there we went searching for music for our film and we went out looking for some music to fit the vibe. We needed a coming of age sound, a romance sound and a bunch other things. and when I tell you that was the most annoying task in the world I mean it nothing sounded right to the video so it took a lot of trial and error to find the right sound. 

Nicole bless her took the job of the main editor while she was editing she realized that while we filmed the credits we kind forgotten to film the literal title so after some panic looks in pour eyes we decided that obviously we had to go film this and after scrounging ideas like driving back at night to the park we found a back of a mirror that can definitely pass as a bathroom wall and thanks to the mirror or lives were saved or more it was a fast thing to film and it was fast an easy and then it was back to editing, now while in this room I came to the realization that wow I really don't like editing and I've come to appreciate every single person who wakes up and chooses to watch the same clip over and over again to get in the perfect spot cause wow it takes super long time. 

more and more filming

 We woke up bright an early this weekend because there was no more pushing anything back and lowkey it was really fun. 

We first had to start by making the prop of the bathroom wall that we took from accounts on the internet that post writings on the bathroom walls and so we took inspiration and started to doodle on the clear vinyl to look like a bunch of highschooler wrote on it anonymously. We decided to use different colors but leaned most to black because most kids have black sharpies in their backpack so we wanted to make it realistic as possible. 

Then we went to film at our choice of park  vista which was the most stressful thing we could have don people kept walking in and out of the bathroom and it kept us on or toes on when we could and couldn't film in retrospect we should've filmed a weekday because people barley go to the park on week days and the bathroom would've been like a ghost town but you learn from your mistakes. So that's our plan to fil the opening scene since our actor for that couldn't today because of a holiday. Now once we get into the bathroom and finished setting everything up Nicole realized she forgot a very vital piece of equipment the SD card and after a freak out we sent Juan to go grab it which was an excoriating 40 minuets because let me tell you that bathroom was hot. but once we got the SD card we began to film now we did it as quick as possible but not to say we didn't run into some poor people who went into the bathroom but through it all we finished the bathroom scenes. 

After this we had to film a montage that was added last minuet to really emphasizing the point of thinking and self reflecting on a character now this is where we ran around trying to film in different locations ending up in a park and back to Juans house for a couple scenes but over all it was a really productive day. 

we strated filming

Ok so we took a bit to start filming but we finally did it in school so we didn't film any bathroom scenes but we did all the ones we where i was walking and thank god we did cause I don't think we would have a lot of time to do it later. This went relatively smoothly other than the fact that we had to later plan what we needed to use to not write on the walls of these public bathrooms. We went on call later at night to finalize that and schedule everything, our original idea would be markers that can wash off but we were terrified it would leave a mark and we aren't doing this It do something that can be potentially be illegal and then we get into trouble but in Nicole's group talk thingy she got suggestion to use a clear wrap to wrap the wall and we all thought that was the best course of action, now we were thinking Saran Wrap but we didn't have enough and we just didn't like how it would look so we ended up going with a clear vinyl now is it possibly leave a glare? probably but it would be 10x more legal to do then vandalize so we decide that it was a  risk we were willing to risk.