moving fast

Wow. I feel like everything is happening really fast and I feel overwhelmed if I'm being honest. I know what I want but then again I also don't. This week I should start posting on my social media platform of choice but how can I do that if I don't know 100% what I am doing. It's hard to market an idea that isn't fully solidified. That is why I am going to work on solidifying my idea by writing it out. Here is what I know:

-I want my film to be a coming-of-age film

-I want my film to center around 3 girls who are graduating from high school

-I want my film to be about grieving one's childhood and the bittersweet experience of growing up

-I want my film to follow these 3 girls and their creation of a "vlog series" called Wake Up where they can document their last few months as kids

-I want my film to capture the pain and the excitement the characters undergo (internal struggle aspect of coming of age film)

-I want one of the trailers to highlight the internal struggles aspect of the film and the other one to be about the documentation and fun part of the movie

-I want the trailers to contrast each other heavily but still be cohesive

-I have an idea for one really cool shot where one of the characters is looking down thinking and I overlap a shot of a fire burning over the character to symbolize the passion and fire she feels toward the subject.

-I know how I want to feel when I watch it which is conflicted. There are so many emotions I personally have with this idea and it is something that everyone has experienced in their life. 

Okay wow. I actually know a lot more than I thought I did. I feel like my brain has been spinning with ideas and I haven't been able to fully express these thoughts and put them on paper, but I think I just did a pretty good job of describing what I want.

One thing that I think is very important to mention is that this is based on a true story about, my two best friends and me, and how we attempted to start a vlog type of thing documenting our lives, especially during such a pivotal moment in our lives. That is why this story is very personal and demonstrates the "slice of life" aspect of a coming-of-age film. This vlog series never stuck as we got caught up in school and life but I want these characters to achieve what we weren't able to do. When we started our vlog series, the three of us created a shared Instagram account called "Wakeup54321" or something like that and our plan was to post 5 posts as a countdown to the vlogs. Ex: the first post would be a picture of something with the caption "wake up in 5", and then the next one would be "wake up in 4" and so on. The reason we named it Wake Up was because our intention behind the vlogs was to capture our memories on film to look back on but also to "wake up" other people and have them take a step back and realize that time is limited and things are finite. I want my characters to focus more on their own benefit and their relationship with the vlog series and less on other's people reactions to it. I want my film to be titled "Wake Up" to demonstrate how these characters are so aware or "awake" as they grieve the loss of their youth. I want this movie to also serve as a wake-up call for people who watch it, especially teenagers who are experiencing a similar thing, which makes this name even more fitting.

Here is a picture of the profile picture that my friends and I had for our account. There was a blue moon one-day last year and I got my camera and took pictures of it. I thought it was so cool that I took these pictures so we added some text, put a retro filter on it, and made it the profile picture.

As for social media, I think I want my Instagram promotion to mirror the fictional Instagram page that the characters have. I want to play around with the idea that my friends and I had to have a countdown before the vlog series. I am going to make the account today when I get home as I don't have Wi-fi here at school, and I know I want to do the countdown but I am not sure what I want the pictures on the post to be. I don't have any cover art yet because I haven't even casted my trailers or storyboarded them so I might just get my camera out and take some metaphorical, abstract, pictures of things that could represent either waking up like an alarm clock, or something about leaving childhood behind. 

I know this post was supposed to be about social media pages that are similar to what I want, but I truly felt like I couldn't start researching without solidifying my plan. I have decided to move my blog posts back one day. Here is what I mean:

Because I gave myself wiggle room during my planning, I can push this week's blog posts back a day and not mess up my entire schedule. My next blog post will be about my social media page, and the rest will follow as it is planned and now my shooting schedule will take the place of my planning post that didn't have a specific purpose. YAY, it works out and now I feel a lot more confident going into the rest of the week. This was a super productive blog post, I feel really inspired and happy. I will see you soon.