Film Project

For this project we were asked, “How can you find, explore, and/or expand your passion?” I learned about three different types of comedy and created examples for each type. I chose to learn about comedy because I love sitcoms, sketch comedy, and stand up comedy.

To start this project, I did a lot of reading articles, and watching youtube videos about comedy. I watched comedians like Keegan-Michael Key and Tina Fey talk about writing comedy. After learning about comedy in general, and then the three types of comedy I picked, I wrote down all of my ideas. For months I had been writing down situations that I had observed or found myself in that I thought could be funny. I had a notes app folder full of these situations. Once I wrote them all down, I tried to add parts to them to make them fit the types of comedy I picked. This did not work for me. This project stressed me out and as a result of that, I put it off for a long time, which made it worse. I would keep trying to write and then get overwhelmed because I didn’t want to write something bad. After weeks of that, I switched my goal to writing something bad so that I would at least get something down. I also figured out that talking to people about my ideas helps. So after a few days of focused writing time, I got my three sketches. When I was done storyboarding, I found a cast.

The last time I storyboarded was for my Narrative Film, so it was weird to have a many month long break from this whole narrative process. We had half a day to shoot the three sketches. I showed my cast the storyboards and we got to work, shooting for four hours with a few breaks. It is interesting to watch how the sketches change from storyboard to post. During the editing process it changed even more.

Final Product:

I was really nervous about this project and that got me stuck at some points because I was focused on trying to make something good. After I focused on just making something and not needing it to be incredible, I got a little less stuck. I was worried the whole time that people wouldn’t like what I did or wouldn’t laugh. But after I presented and reflected on it, I realized that this was my first time trying to write comedy while knowing the rules, and that means it wouldn’t be like the works of incredibly experienced comedians. I think this project was a good start to learning about comedy.

Poetry

For the poetry unit, we had a poet come in and teach us about poetry. She would have us do writing exercises to make short poems. By the end of those lessons we had around five poems written. We picked one poem to get feedback on, edit, and present. I picked the poem where we wrote about poetry.

A cockroach

Ran out from an old pizza box

The same day we started

The poetry unit.

Both of those thing

Scared me

I don’t like poetry very much

The same way some people don’t like

Matcha, or pineapple on pizza

It’s not for them

And they don’t understand it

But I choose not to disrespect it.

There’s no reason for that

I would just rather be creative in other ways

This unit was really interesting and helped me expand my interests. I went in to the unit with the idea that I didn’t really like poetry, but I would not let that stop me from genuinely trying to learn from this unit. When we got to the presentation day, I really didn’t want to present my work because I wasn’t confident in it. I presented anyway and felt a lot better after having it done and having my work appreciated.