Movies are fun, movies are exciting, movies have many important components that go into making them such as high quality cameras, top notch actors, inticing storyline, but what if a group of teenagers had to make a thriller, with phone quality, no Hollywood actors and a storyline that had to fit into 2 mintues. Henceforth a two minute thriller.
This might have seen easy and many people have probably made movies as kids with their friends to show to their parents, but this was not the case. We spent days of learning, anazylizing evey detail on multiple short films such as “Laundry,” “Blackhole, “Tuck me in,” and more. We learned many skills that helped for our finsihed product such as angles, continuity, sound, emotion, plot, character dynamics, storyline, cliffhangers, foreshadowing, and much more.
Every class we paid close attention and by the end we correlated all this information into a productm which is my two minute thriller. I worked in a gorup with Lila, Syd and Alex. We worked as a gorup and collaborated especially when we were faced with challenges.
The big challenge was we wanted to film our thriller in a pool. I’ll remind you that it is winter right now. The issue was the entire story was based in the pool, but it was too cold to be in for more than a couple minutes. We attempted to film but we realized this idea didn’t work at all, so we regrouped and found a different solution.
So we made an entire new movie. In the end we got an extension because our work before was not something we felt proud of handing in. We made time, a storyline and setting and we got to work, focusing hard and finishing our movie in an entire weekend. This was definetely a learning experiance and for next time I would make sure our ambitions match a bit more with reality.
This is my movie if you’d like to check it out:
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No phones, lots physical activity, growing as a group, the sound of it felt weird like a dream which is exactly how this trip felt. Without physical documentation such as photos on my phone, what do I remember, what did I learn?
Throughout this trip we were accompanied by a learning group called Pinnacle. We had sessions with them daily and during these we became comfortable with our class, the people we spend time with almost everyday, hours on end, yet we still acted like strangers. These sessions included personal reflecting on our private journals to learn about ourselves, group activites where we got to know one another like sharing our goals and lastly bigger groups where we did inticing activites such as trust falls. Each one of these helped us or at least me grow as a person and understand our driving question which is “How do the choices we make set our future path?” This is your life and the choices you make can better your life or worsen it. How do you want to be in the future, think about that before you make a hard desicion.
A quote that really stuck with me is “it’s everyone’s first time living.” Everyone goes through their own struggles, which we learned in a very emotional activity we did one night called Crossing the Line, it showed us how different yet connected we are. For me this activity was hard due to the leader of Pinnacle Johno asking us some tough and personal questions. This actvity showed me to be more gentle with everyone because if I have hard times, they can have them too, and or don’t bother negatively if someone is happy because everyone needs a break of their own.
Besides the learning portion of this trip we also had a ton of fun! We went rock climbing and archery, as well as we did high and low ropes. My friend Syd and I did the high ropes together and we had to put a lot of trust in eachother as we crossed this rickety bridge together. In the end we made it across but we did fall, but we fell together so we were fine, more than fine we were laughing.
Overall I learned to better analyze situations and how to deal with them with hard decision making, and lastly I learned to be more open and to think creatively in my own way. Because everyone’s thoughts can help contribute solutions. Now we’re at the very end and personally after this trip I wish I didn’t leave, but my own special goal I would like to be transferred is “I would like to be more confident for myself and for others, and speak up for those who can’t or fear it.”