First Draft Opening Film Submittal

Me and my group completed the first draft of our film. Our film takes place in present time and revolves around a hispanic teenager, Carla, who has high expectations to meet due to her mom’s strict behavior. Carla is walking out of class one day when suddenly, she receives a notification from her teacher, Mr. Johnson, regarding her final. Looking at her F, she panics and starts to think of her mom yelling at her for not meeting her high standards. Carla snaps out of it and goes inside the theater to talk to Mr. Johnson. Inside, Carla tries to negotiate with Mr. Johnson but is met with failure. As she walks away in defeat, Carla starts to feel overwhelmed by negative emotions, until she spots a knife. Carla slowly walks up to the knife and stabs Mr.Johnson behind his back. His now dead body lying next to her, she takes his laptop, changes her grade and quickly leaves, taking the evidence with her.

There were tedious aspects like figuring out what camera movement, angle, or framing we wanted for each scene. The most difficult task wasn’t filming though, it was the editing. While all of us contributed to the editing, we still had a hard time figuring out how to deal with certain aspects. For example, when portraying the flashbacks, we didn’t want it to come off as too tacky and we wanted to make sure the audience knew why Carla was having those flashbacks. Another example was the editing right before the killing. We didn’t know whether to add echo voices or just leave a heartbeat. We wanted the audience to feel as overwhelmed as Carla felt.

Of course, nothing come easy but nonetheless me and my team had so much fun working on our film and creating a storyline from scratch. We all got along and communicated very well and creating this movie just brought us closer as friends. The best part of this whole process was the end result. Seeing your work done after all those hours of work and being satisfied with it is what makes everything worth it.