Cloudy With a Chance of Brainstorm

Bonjour mon ami!

Today was our first brainstorming session! At the time of our call, Jake and I were in different countries, in separate continents in fact! I was in El Salvador and Jake had just

returned from a visit to “fabulous Las Vegas!”. The goal of today was to come up with as many short film ideas as possible and - if we were lucky- to choose an idea to start developing into a story we could feasibly deliver for our project. We had both come up with ideas beforehand to pitch to each other at the session, and that’s how we started it off; we began listing ideas and writing them down. After we had a couple of ideas on our shared google docs file, we had a decision to take. We had to determine the type of short film we wanted to create; not the genre, but whether we wanted it to be primarily entertaining, existential, inspirational, informative, etc. After talking it out for a while Jake and I decided that we wanted to do something that was fun to produce and entertaining to watch but that was also meaningful for our audience. This helped us determine what sort of ideas we should focus on and consider as candidates for our project’s story. 

We talked for about an hour about the different ideas we had and just when we thought we were done with our session, I remembered a dream I had a few nights back. You know those dreams you have when your latest thoughts, nighttime entrainment, and dinner food all mix in your sleep? Yeah, that type of dream. It was about a post-apocalyptic world where an authoritarian society had wiped out part of the population and it was up to a teen resistance to figure life in this new society out and even perhaps try to stop the government. I dismissed the idea and commented that it was probably due to the genre research I’d been doing as of lately. Jake, however, thought we could build off of it though, especially because he really liked the teen aspect to the story. 

And then it hit us, I said: “What if there’s a society in the future where students are told to compete in a series of games for the title of valedictorian?”. And before I knew it, we were off to the races; inspiration started hitting us both like bricks! We began building off of each other's ideas and for a slight second our minds appeared to link in perfect synchrony.

Overall, the session was extremely productive! We developed the setting, started listing the characters, and planning the narrative (which I will share with y'all soon!). 

As more ideas start to pour in, there’s a creative storm in sight. I hope you packed an umbrella!

Working With My Best Friend

Hola! 

I bet a lot of you are wondering, “why do platypi lay eggs?” and truly I don’t have the answer to that; a question I do have the answer to, however, is why I chose my best friend as my project partner. The first decision I had to make when embarking on this project, is whether I would do it alone or not. Teachers often say that students shouldn’t be in a group with friends because they just slack off, but that isn’t the case. Early on Jake and I knew that we wanted to work together on our advanced portfolio assessment because we make for a really good team - not to brag or anything -. In this post, I discuss the qualities that we based our decision on.

Communication Is Key

When working with partners, having good communication is super important. Clear communication sets expectations, creates a stronger team and improves morale. It can also help save precious time; when both people are on the same page, it’s harder to make mistakes in individual work or take bad decisions alone which could affect the overall quality of the piece. This leaves more time to work on perfecting the production and ensuring that all the accompanying components are the highest quality we can make them. Because of our friendship, clear communication is already present in our everyday interaction; it’s embedded as one of the cornerstones of our relationship, making it easier for us to share ideas or criticism.

We’ve Worked Well In The Past

Jake and I have worked on other projects in the past; we've filmed a music video (for our class), a documentary (for our school teachers & staff), and XXX. Last year while working on our individual foundation portfolios, we gave each other tons of feedback during the production process which -I think I speak for both of us when I say- helped us a lot to improve our projects. In addition, we have each have skills that complement each other; most notably, Jake can act -like really act, he's a lead on every theater show I've seen him in and I've seen a lot of them- and I've been known to have an act for storytelling and a good eye cinematography -or so I like to think!-. We have also worked in leadership positions together; thus, we can separate the personal from the academic - which can be a huge advantage when we need to be honest with each other about our work-.

Can’t Spell F-U-N without “U”

Who better to spend sleepless editing nights and long shooting days with than your best friend? It's our senior year and we want to have fun doing what we love which is making media! We're both going into the media & communications fields in college - at least partially because of our love for AICE Media & our amazing teacher- and we want to make this an unforgettable experience! 

We have planned our first brainstorming session for next week! Time to get the creativity going! 

Introduction

Hey there!

I’m back!! If you are reading this confused about who I am and where I’m back from, my name is Luis, I’m a creative extrovert that enjoys studying business and media (I’m also one of the biggest “Disnerds” around and a theme park fanatic). You can go read all about my last project for AICE Media AS Level HERE. This time around, I’m partnering up with my best friend Jake -whose blog you should definitely check out- to produce a short film for our AICE Media A-Level portfolio project. I love producing media because the stories we convey through its various forms possess the power to move us to tears or make us excitedly cheer for the underdog! I can’t wait to apply the knowledge I gained from last year’s experience doing my foundation portfolio to make a quality film that is as engaging and entertaining as it is reflective and meaningful. 

Get ready to join my best friend and me on this coffee-filled, detail-oriented, media adventure!