The word “zenith” can be defined as a culminating point, which I think perfectly sums up the idea of our final project at Freestyle Academy. In a very literal sense, it is the culminating point of our time spent learning the ropes in various Adobe programs, expressing ourselves through various mediums, and gaining confidence in our forms of creative expression. We had the opportunity to choose whatever project we wanted, provided that it fulfilled certain time and effort requirements. It also had to be connected in some way to our chosen elective: a Film student, for example, couldn’t create a set of mood-boards as their Zenith project. If your chosen project ticked all of these boxes, then you were free to create it over the course of around 2 months!
My Zenith Project was a screenplay, mood-boards, and basic storyboards for the hypothetical film I created for my Movie Poster Project. I left the Film elective before I was able to write a screenplay as a project, but I still wanted to write my own screenplay and create concept art for a movie. This Zenith project was a new challenge for me since I’s never written a full-length screenplay before, let alone creates other media like mood-boards and storyboards in conjunction with a script. I needed to be focused, motivated, and enthusiastic about my work in order to make a consistently entertaining screenplay, as well as mood-boards and storyboards to match it. The Design elements in this case would be the storyboards and mood-boards, with more of a focus on demonstrating literacy in composition and visual expression instead of proficiency in programs like Illustrator or InDesign.
Here is a reflection that I recorded after completing my Zenith Project:
Progress
Here are some photos illustrating my progress while writing my screenplay. First, I created a few mood-boards to represent each character, shown below:
In terms of writing the thing itself, I had set certain page milestones to complete by certain dates, from the opening scene…
…to the first 20 pages…
…to the first 50 pages…
…to 70 pages…
…and finally to the end!
As I worked on my screenplay, I was also creating storyboards to correspond with pivotal moments throughout the story. I’ve included photos in a slideshow below:
The Final Product
And now, ladies and gentlemen, the moment you’ve all been waiting for…the final product! I’ve included a preview of the opening scene to give you a sneak peek. If you’re interested in reading the full screenplay, it’s available for download below the preview.
Here are the mood-boards I created:
And here are the storyboards:
I’d like to take a second and thank all of the teachers at Freestyle for working so hard during this super strange year. It was hard enough to adapt to regular online school during the pandemic, but having to adapt your curriculum as a digital arts school that relies pretty heavily on in-person instruction was a serious challenge to overcome. Thankfully, I never got the impression that anything was lost in the transition from in-person to online school, or when we managed to have classes back on campus near the end of the year. Everyone in the administration worked so hard to make sure that we had a fulfilling and engaging year and I feel like I can speak for the whole class when I say that we appreciate their efforts so, so much! I, along with many others, will be graduating this year, but I’ll never forget the endless support and guidance I received this year. Thank you for everything, Freestyle!