Welcome to Stok High!

Oi!

After a good rest from our last brainstorming session, I’m excited to share with you our characters! I took the liberty of making up a backstory for the characters that expanded on them and their lives more than the outlines Jake and I worked on, and we both love what resulted. Meet the students from Tstok High! 

Isabella
Isabella is a senior at Stok High, she’s the captain of the varsity female soccer team at school and is an involved member of the National Honorable Students Society (our universe’s version of NHS). She is considered smart, physically fit, and socially connected by her classmates. Isabella, or Isa to her friends, has a strong personality and a bit of a temper. She is known to sport athletic clothing and a ponytail. 

Bryce

Bryce is a senior at Stok High, he’s president of the school’s Student Government and of the school’s Political Appreciation & Education Club. He’s considered to be an intellectual by his classmates and teachers. Bryce has an ardent passion for politics and activism which fuels his need to be a charismatic figure at school, sporting a youth business casual outfit daily. He is a meticulous, ambitious, entitled, and power-hungry kid that will stop at nothing to achieve his goals. 

Andrew 
Andrew is a senior at Stok High, he’s involved in many extracurricular activities, primarily in his school’s Mu Alpha Theta chapter -where he is president- and STEM club. He is highly academic and considered a brilliant and passionate student by his teachers; his peers, on the other hand, see him as a kiss-ass and the school’s premier teacher’s pet. He spends his days with his nose in a school book and limits his social interaction to a small circle of friends within his niche.  

Riley

Riley is a senior at Stok High and the school’s in-house social media celebrity. She is always keeping up with the latest online trends and spends her days blogging away in school for her youtube channel. Her classmates either follow her and like her content or are annoyed by her constant retelling of that one time she “went viral” and “blew up” on TikTok. With a scrunchie in her wrists and a hydro flask in her hand, she is ready to be the next David Dobrik. 

Charlie
Charlie is a senior at Stok High, they have been the lead in 2 of the school’s theater productions and are a true theater kid to the core. Though being a thespian takes up most of their life, Charlie is also involved in other art-related activities like chorus and 2d studio art. Their peers don’t know exactly what to think about them except that their bright vibrant dyed hair makes them stand out from any crowd at school. 

Courtney
Courtney is a senior at Stok high and the leader of the cheer squad. Every high school needs an apex predator and at T-stock High, Courtney is at the top of the food chain. Sporting her designer clothing, apple watch, and distinctive shades of pink, she is the most socially influential person in school. Her classmates fear and admire her. On the other hand, her teachers find her petulant, entitled, and can identify that she mostly plays dumb to seem prettier, yet she’s anything but dumb.  

Z
Z is a senior at Stok high and may remain a senior for a year or two more. He spends his days at the skatepark or indulging in a joint to smoke his worries away. He fostered a puppy for his service hours and works at Spengler’s (our universe's version of Spencer’s). Z’s long hair always seems to be covered by a beanie and his clothing is taken straight from a Zumiez store. His classmates see him as a stoner and his teachers see him as lost potential. The only reason he’s in the valedictorian competition is because he had the highest GPA out of all the stoners at school, making him the group’s candidate.

Miles 
Miles is a senior at Stok High, he’s the president of the school’s motivational club and friends with people from every social group in school. Miles is extremely smart and trustworthy. He is a member of the National Honorable Students Society and volunteers to help tutor underprivileged children. His honest and humble nature has earned him the respect of his teachers and his personable character makes him likable to his peers. Miles has a strong emotional intelligence, which makes him emotional and vulnerable. He is well rounded and extroverted but struggles with high stress and anxiety which takes a toll on his mental health. 

Garrett
Garret is a senior at Stok High and recently formed a band called “Glowe'' with his friends. He plays the guitar, the piano, and sings from a young age. Garrett is quiet, optimistic, and quirky. His peers and teachers alike find he’s oddly insightful at times, yet completely spontaneous other times. He has a very niche group of friends that make alternative rock music together and he's writing a single called “float on”, which he hopes will land his band a tour and maybe even a record deal.  

The Chair Recognizes The Honorable Gentleman

Hello, governor!

There’s a lot going on in the production process for our short film, but this post isn’t about that, it’s about the census. More specifically, it’s about my experience building a marketing campaign to promote the 2020 Census for the City of Weston. I recently finished the campaign and sent it off to the city for review by the Director and Assitant Director of Communications. So yeah! I basically, technically, kind off, worked for the government... well volunteered for the government... sort of...I think. Anyways, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on my campaign and the lessons I learned along the way. 

Don’t procrastinate 

Who likes to be stuck with stress and work over winter break? The answer is no one. As Tstok would say, “when I go home, I GO HOME.” Last year while working on my portfolio project I trimmed myself based on some unrealistic expectations of what I could do with my time and without accounting for surprise interruptions; this delayed my project a week or two past the original deadline I’d given myself. So the very first thing I did when I received the details of the campaign was jump right in and start. I made a timeline for the campaign and prioritized sticking to it, whenever I had some time off I hopped on my computer and

worked. Through the course of a week or two, I completed my research and was almost done with my content. With the extra time I saved by working fast, meticulously, and effectively, I decided to add extra materials to my campaigns such as more media content and a 12-page proposal. I didn’t once feel stressed and I was always one step ahead. I’ve taken what I learned from my time management from this campaign and have applied it to the project and I plan on continuing to do so. Jake and I started talking about ideas for the project a while before it was assigned in class and once winter break came around we jumped right in. We’re going to make a calendar and a timeline for our production and post-production goals and prioritize sticking to it. 

Research like there’s no tomorrow

Another thing I took away from my Census campaign is the importance of research in order to deliver a quality piece. For my campaign, I researched my target audience meticulously, everything from their average financial status to their physical address. This research allowed me to develop content that effectively targets my audience. In my foundation portfolio, most of my research was about storytelling and genre, this helped me because it facilitated my application of the technique to a rare genre. This year, however,  I’ll focus on heavily researching the audience and the representation aspects of our production; to ensure our content will be as entertaining to our audience as it will be rich in technique and inaccurate representation.

Client Feedback is everything 

Lastly, one of the most beneficial lessons from this campaign was the importance of constant communication with clients in order to gain feedback that is helpful in decision-making, branding, and tailoring the campaign to the client’s needs. In the context of the campaign, my “client” was the City of Weston, so I communicated extensively with the City’s communication Director and Assistant Director to get some general feedback on ideas for the campaign and certain campaign branding sessions I had taken to make sure they lined up with the City of Weston’s public image. For the advanced portfolio project, we don’t have a client; however, we can still get feedback from people in our target audience (since we have daily interactions with them). We can get feedback from our fellow media students and/or set up a focus group that can provide us with feedback on our products from an entertainment point of view. 

I'm certain that this project is going to be a great help when planning the technical aspects of my portfolio project and I'm excited to see what the City Of Weston uses from my campaign!

Late nights, po' boys, and brainstorming.

How's ya mama an' them?!

Today we had an impromptu brainstorming session over some good old New Orleans Po' boys for dinner! Because of the nature of our story, we’ve known for a while that we want our short film to present modern high school groups that better embody the diversity in Gen Z high schoolers than those groups traditionally used to represent high school students in the media (jocks, nerds, cheerleader). Our main goal today, besides being able to finish our po’boys, was to figure out what our characters would look like and who they would represent.

We started by thinking about the different social groups that we saw at school every day and trying to identify or create stereotypes that were accurate to that group so that we could use to clearly convey them on screen. After we had a list of about 20 groups which included everything from the traditional theater kid to the underrepresented female athlete, we figured it was time to decide on the number of characters we could feasibly fit into the production. We agreed on 10 characters, 5 of which we would kick out of the competition early in the film to allow time for the other 5 to have some development (but we still want the other 5 in the film because they fit the storyline and are a great opportunity for representation.) Once we had the main framework for the characters down, we felt comfortable enough to actually begin building a specific storyline.

When it came to the storyline we started at the logical place to start...the end. It was difficult to think of how to start our story but we both knew how we wanted to end it, so I suggested starting there instead. The short film ends in a challenge between two characters, preferably one that symbolizes a niche approach to high school and a well-rounded one. The challenge is a social vote where spectators can vote for the winner; thus, making the competition’s competitiveness truly pointless and ironic. Although we don’t plan to show the end result of this challenge, it was important to include it because it’s the ultimate face-off between two very different approaches to education and life. We thought we had gotten over the biggest challenge of the night, that being finishing our po’boys, I’m kidding! (Also, Jake didn’t finish his po’boy so technically I won even though it was never established it was a competition). We had the framework of 20 characters and an ending for the story, but we didn’t know which characters were going to make it to the face-off, and that was our next challenge; the night was still young.

We went back to Jake’s house to continue working. At first, we had the STEM/Teacher’s Pet character up against the Thespian theater kid (who we would like to present as a non-binary individual). Then I stumbled into the problematic symbolism that created, it was STEM v.s art and regardless of who won at the end, the message of the film could be lost or overshadowed by an accidental and incorrect message about a superior interest or personality (extrovert/Introvert). Jake wasn’t fully convinced that I was right about my concern, but after thinking it over for some time it became clear that we had to come up with a way to avoid any accidental messaging and prevent that dilemma. In the meantime, we set out to continue developing our characters. After bouncing a lot of ideas off of each other, we finally settled on on-screen 9 characters for our short film (which I'll share soon). As you can tell by the picture, unlike me, Jake is not much of a night owl, so I think it's best to hit the hay and get some sleep for today! 

The Story

We talked and took notes for an hour or maybe more, and once we were finished we both loved the concept we came up with. We decided to pitch it to our friend group of AICE Media students to get some feedback since our age group is constantly exposed to dystopian films. Thankfully, they loved the idea and the concept and immediately wanted to hear more about the characters, the plot, and the way we were planning on pulling it all together on-screen. We love our concept, we think it'll be really fun to write (because of the many opportunities for comic relief) and produce (because we'll be tackling a story we developed together so we share a vision for it). I'm excited to share it with you!

Our story takes place in Stok High, a fictional high school named after our AICE Media Instructor, Tina. The story is centered around a competition held by the school to determine the senior class valedictorian through a series of mental, physical, and emotional challenges presented in a VR simulation. The elite students from multiple social groups on campus are the competitors. Participants are sent into a VR simulation (representing how high school itself is simply a simulation of the real world) to test their skills against the other candidates (which represents and its criticism on the highly competitive nature of the school system in the US). During the competition, we explore the reasons each candidate has for wanting the valedictorian title, just to find that most of them want it as a shallow addition to their resume or because of the pressure inflicted on them by their peers or parents. Fellow students, faculty, and eliminated participants are the spectators to the competition and participate in the end in the form of a social vote. Through our production, we want to imply that the purpose of the story is to reflect on the nature of the US school system and the tolls that it can take on the mental/physical/emotional health of students. However, we also want to make something that is somewhat light-hearted, funny, and fun to make; all of which we believe we’ll get to do with this story.

Now that we have the concept and framework for our story, it's time to fill it with interesting characters and rich details!