Quarter 3

 During Quarter 3, I really got into film-making. When I first got into STAC, I wasn’t sure what I’d be doing because to my knowledge, I was only good at writing. If I wrote a book during my time in STAC, nobody would read it. I would be the only one without anything to really show. Writing is also really hard to do research on, because it is really all about your personal style. I started writing scripts but they would have been very difficult to act out because they were incredibly maximalist. I had wanted to delve into film-making for a while but I wasn’t sure of what talent I could possibly have. It says on my blog, “I was thinking about learning how to make films, but they'd just be mediocre anyway and I think I need more experience with a camera first.” It turns out, I wasn’t really that bad at making films. So far, I’ve only made two silent films, so in the fourth quarter I’d like to try to make a film with dialogue because that seems to be the next step. I’m a bit apprehensive about that because in silent films, you can give the actors direction while they’re acting, but when there is sound you have to trust that they’ll do everything right. I would think that it takes longer because you’d have to practice more before actually filming and rely on the actors to know what to do.

            My experience in film-making has been really fun so far. The actual filming is the most fun for me, because it’s not as frustrating as really getting it together. When you’re developing the storyline, you have all of these ideas and you can’t use all of them and you have to organize them. Towards the end of this quarter, I especially had a problem with organization. All of my ideas were scattered in my brain and I couldn’t seem to get them down neatly on paper. Writing little snippets on separate pieces of paper really helped me because I could rearrange them as much as I wanted. That seems like a really good method for me. Editing only took me a few hours in my first film, but with this second film it took a bit longer because the way I filmed was I got more footage than I needed so I wouldn’t have too little, but I was still rummaging for exactly what I needed. I was more proud of my first film than my second, but it sure isn’t awful. 

Film/ StacArt

My film has really changed from my original idea. The original idea was that there is a girl who ignores the people around her while she's immersed in a book, then tries to gain back their attention and forgiveness. Then, I got the idea to cut in pieces of her acting out the story in her mind. Now, it feels more like the plot is about a girl who reads a book and finds that she wants to be like the main character, while people come in and try to tell her to stop. Instead of apologizing, I think it looks like she realizes that she can't be like her and she needs to live in the real world, so she tries to talk to them. Honestly, I think I like this plot better. One of the things that actually contributed to this new plot is the song that I chose for it, "I've Got What It Takes" by Alex Day. It's all about trying to be something and working hard for it by yourself. I think the song fits this new plot amazingly well. I'm not sure if I am supposed to post the video here or not, so I guess I won't just in case.
I've gotten really into my StacArt project. Really, really into it. It's sort of like the Game of Life. You get to have a job, get married, and have kids, but only if you want to. At any point in the game, you can kill another player, and you can die from anything. You can even have pets. The idea of it was to make a more truthful version of the Game of Life. And to do that, I decided: there would be no winner.
At the beginning of the game, you randomly choose a gender, race, and sexuality. Each space on the board is one "year." For sixteen spaces, the oldest player makes all of the decisions for the rest of the players. On the eighteenth space, a player can choose to get revenge on the oldest player or help them out, depending on what they did. Every fourteen or so spaces, you get "Milestones." This is partially inspired by "Life" chips in Life. You choose a "Milestone" card randomly and get things like "Learn to Ride a Bike" or "Go Bungee-Jumping" or "Learn a Foreign Language." The spaces go around the perimeter of the board and meet back at the beginning, with a drawing that says, "YOU DON'T EXIST!" as your character did before the game. I'm not yet sure if this game will have money or not, but I'm leaning towards no. I like the idea of having a game where nothing has consequences. This entire game is obviously a work in progress, but I think I'll end up being really proud of it.