We had another project in Communications this month. The whole goal was to plan out and make a presentation about our own original movie. We got most of our inspiration from Pixar movies and characters. Most of the first couple of days was just us planning and watching mini masterclasses from the lovely Pixar crew, to teach us about their experiences working their profession and how we can make a strong story for ourselves. After we did our research and did some raw and unscripted planning, we were finally able to clean up all of our work and be able to make a organized planner about what we wanted t0 do with our story, where we wanted it to head, and what it was about. After we were able to finally clear up our work and get the premise of the main idea, we started working on our slideshow. I stayed up late at night and worked during my vacation to put the slides together, so it would be perfect. I was very proud of the end result, as I had put my energy into it. The slideshow ended up looking clean and aesthetically pleasing, which gave me a major confidence boost in presenting it. When I did present it, I was asked a lot of questions and my teacher said that mine was amazing.
My idea for my story was about 4 teenagers accidentally stumbling across a time machine that travels them back to the past. They reminisce about their old memories and get caught up in the beautiful wonderland, that they don’t want to leave. They try to change the past but its not helping them. Its only hurting them more and no matter how much they try, their past selves will still go through the same fate. They eventually realize that they need to let the past behind them so they can move on with their lives without their old mistakes burdening them. I am very glad I got this idea because it paid off in the long run.
Now I did have some struggles such as coming up with an idea for the actual story. At first I was going to make it about a bunch of private school kids gaining superpowers to win against the opposing team in a field day tournament, but I was unpassionate about that idea, so I scrapped it. There was also some difficulty with timing because I had a lot of stuff to do and very little time, since I started much later than the other students. I was also behind the class. I thought this would be a challenge but it ended not being that big of a deal, so I’m glad about that. I also had a major issue with the storyboard, since I didn’t know what to do, and I was having trouble coming up with something. I ended up staying up very late to finish that as well. It was all worth it though in the end because my storyboard looks great.
There were some things that were very easy for me such as making the character designs. I couldn’t draw so I used a generative A.I to make the characters. I even searched up on Pinterest about certain ethnicity designs so I could make sure I got their ethnic and personal features to be as accurate as possible. It was very fun decorating them like little dolls and giving them their cute little accessories and features that fit with their personality. I also really liked to give them their personality traits. I based them mainly on my friends and also from their experiences in the story. It was really fun. I liked this project.