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! 
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