Group Meeting

 It's already the third week of planning for my opening and we started it off by assembling a group meeting. My teacher put us into groups with 6-7 students who includes Kai, Macie, Caesar, Kai, Nicole, Gaby, and Ava. The whole purpose of this group meeting was to share our blog links, explain our plot ideas, and help one another to overcome obstacles we are facing. This meeting was helpful since it guided it to view how other students are approaching their film openings and let that reflect on our own decisions.

During the meeting, Nicole shared her coming of age film about a girl who struggles with an addiction to drugs. She explained to us that she was unsure about whether the topic would be accepted by the teacher because it's dealing with a sensitive/strict topic. Altogether, we discussed ways that can guide her to create a theme without being too direct. We also helped her come up with her title, The Cost of Happiness, displaying the emotional tone of her story while still being vague.

Ava shared an idea that was somewhat similar to what Nicole was doing that involves a girl sneaking out. This conducted us to discuss how hard it can be to come up with ideas that feel original when many people are working with the same genre. 

Gaby talked about her struggle with representing the grief of her story that loses a family member. We suggested how to visually show the loss instead of explaining it directly. We created some ideas by using symbloic imagery like a photograph, a vase filled with ashes, or a funeral scene. Also, she mentioned about wanting a actor who resembles the person who died, and we explained how that character could show up to the funeral to create an emotional impact without any dialouge that would link to it. 

Macie shared what helped her create an idea to her opening and introduced an MadLib, which I've never heard of. This helped her by showing how creative tools and type of prompts can make you develop any idea easier when someone feels stuck on what they're doing. We also shared our blogs so everyone can see eachother's progress and journey so far.

MadLib template:

When I shared my own idea, which is focusing on both the mental and physical challenges of long-distance running, Gaby and Ava gave me helpful feedback. She suggested specific locations to film the running scenes and advice on how to shoot them to make the scene feel realistic. My group also enjoyed how I included my next steps and personal thoughts in my blog, but recommended that I should be more specific in my explanations so my ideas are more clear. Overall, this meeting benefited me tremendously to my own portfolio project experience. Listening to other peoples struggles and research ideas helped me reflect and rely that on my own project and consider how I can improve in the future. The feedback I've recieved will help me go more in depth in detail with my filming and planning. Also, this meeting reminded me that group collaboration and constructive criticism are important and essential to this process. 

Sources:

Nicknadel. (2013b, June 27). Make your own superhero movie, mad libs-style. ScreenCrush. https://screencrush.com/superhero-movie-mad-libs/