Portfolio

Reflections Video

In the first semester of senior year, we began with the “Reflections” video essay, a two-minute film answering the central question: “Who am I?”, inspired by a past film supplement prompt from Chapman University’s Dodge College.

The process began with writing a script, as a short essay was the basis of the film. From there, I worked with voiceover and B-roll to represent my message visually and aurally.

My film explores my need for human connection through the metaphor of a pet rock. I had a lot of fun matching different video clips to my essay to both support and expand upon my writing.

While I don’t think this film represents my best technical skills, this is my favorite writing that I’ve done for film. I think it’s a good balance of the quirky and metaphorical without feeling pretentious.

Junior Narrative Film

The Junior narrative was my first stab at narrative filmmaking. I worked with my partner, Carly, to develop and produce a film about a girl who sets out to make a film to enter a film festival. The process spanned from preproduction to production to post-production—all completed during a pandemic.

I think this film showcases my narrative filmmaking skills and my ability to work in difficult circumstances as well as to adapt and improvise.

Mandala

The mandala project implored us to express ourselves visually. Mandalas, being a free-form and flexible form of art, allowed us to put a lot of ourselves into it. When it came to my mandala, I took a more abstract approach by including odd shapes and forms and incorporating hidden details.

Stacked Wood Art

For my multi-layer art, my inspiration was my family’s A-frame cabin. The wood texture and stacked element provided some realism and depth to the piece.

What was most challenging about this project was planning out all of the layers and visualizing how they would come together. It was one thing to know what I wanted the final product to look like, but I also had to deconstruct and break down my plan to see how all the layers fit together. In hindsight, I had fun playing with the depth and geometric shapes of the cabin art. It was rewarding to see all the individual pieces come together to form one unified piece. 

Junior Documentary

For the Junior Documentary Project, we were tasked to portray an intriguing person, group, place, idea, or issue through different forms of media (writing, video production, design, etc.)

For my documentary project, I was inspired by my friends Kaavya Butaney and Aman Shah, who are debate partners. Their unique relationship inspired me to explore the intersection of friendship and partnership.

Zenith Documentary

Zenith or “The Ultimate Freestyle Project” is exactly what it sounds like. As a culmination of all the skills honed at Freestyle, the Zenith project challenged us to self-direct and focus on a project we’re passionate about.

Because of all the creative freedom we had, I took the opportunity to do something more unconventional. I knew I wanted to do a documentary to redeem myself after my junior year documentary was void of B-roll, but I was unsure of a subject. On a whim, I decided to do my documentary on the Zenith project. The documentary would include talking with my classmates about their projects, the process of my own documentary, and the Zenith project as a whole.

In the month that we had for this project, I went through the stages of pre-production, production, and post-production. My process included researching forms of documentary and structures, scheduling interviews and drafting interview questions, conducting interviews and collecting B-roll, and editing all the pieces together in the end.

I had a lot of fun with this project. There were moments toward the end when I regretted choosing this subject for my documentary, but I’m happy with how it came out. Because my documentary was partially about my own project and process, it gave me a lot of opportunities to reflect and hold myself accountable. The final product is far from technically perfect, but I think I did a good job capturing the Zenith process and the voices of the Freestyle students that I interviewed.