The process of letting go represents the battle between letting go of a dying love and wanting to fix it. As it plays out through the lenses of the 5 stages of grief, the 5 individual parts form a story about a young girl deciding to break up with her long-term boyfriend.
The idea is based on my own experience with heartbreak a couple of months ago, but the story is fictional and does not include personal details about my breakup. Throughout my own experience I felt that I was alone and could not reach out to anyone because I did not want to face the prospect of breaking the heart of someone who I spent years of my life with and did not know anyone who had gone through a similar experience. The process of letting go was created to represent my experience and humanize falling out of love, which is often demonized by the one on the receiving end. Everybody talks about getting their heart broken, but nobody talks about being the one breaking hearts. Throughout the film there is no mention of toxicity or any problems within the relationship because I did not want there to be any factors that biased the audience towards or against the protagonist.
Because it is a piece about a young breakup the target audience is teenagers and young adults, especially those experiencing or having recently experienced their first loves. Although a first love may come by during adulthood, by then the relationship is more mature and the short film would not be relatable, therefore the target audience reaches its peak at young adults. To be relatable to the audience, I cast people my age, including myself as the protagonist.
The cast consists of my friends Jula Mardenli, Juan Menor, Santi Estrada, Miri Castro (not pictured), and myself (also not pictured). My original plan was to cast people of several ethnicities to further the scope of an audience, and once I realized one of my main friend groups consists of two Colombians, a Venezuelan Arab woman, a black Dominican woman, and a Venezuelan Japanese man, I realized I did not need to look far.
Since I spent the majority of filming with my friends, we were able to get a lot of footage for bloopers for the Instagram page. I decided to mainly focus on Instagram for the digital aspect of the short film because it is one of the main social medias my target audience uses and the ability to add several clips to a post allowed for a serious look at a glance but a more casual look at the film when people swipe.
The idea is based on my own experience with heartbreak a couple of months ago, but the story is fictional and does not include personal details about my breakup. Throughout my own experience I felt that I was alone and could not reach out to anyone because I did not want to face the prospect of breaking the heart of someone who I spent years of my life with and did not know anyone who had gone through a similar experience. The process of letting go was created to represent my experience and humanize falling out of love, which is often demonized by the one on the receiving end. Everybody talks about getting their heart broken, but nobody talks about being the one breaking hearts. Throughout the film there is no mention of toxicity or any problems within the relationship because I did not want there to be any factors that biased the audience towards or against the protagonist.
Because it is a piece about a young breakup the target audience is teenagers and young adults, especially those experiencing or having recently experienced their first loves. Although a first love may come by during adulthood, by then the relationship is more mature and the short film would not be relatable, therefore the target audience reaches its peak at young adults. To be relatable to the audience, I cast people my age, including myself as the protagonist.
The cast consists of my friends Jula Mardenli, Juan Menor, Santi Estrada, Miri Castro (not pictured), and myself (also not pictured). My original plan was to cast people of several ethnicities to further the scope of an audience, and once I realized one of my main friend groups consists of two Colombians, a Venezuelan Arab woman, a black Dominican woman, and a Venezuelan Japanese man, I realized I did not need to look far.
Since I spent the majority of filming with my friends, we were able to get a lot of footage for bloopers for the Instagram page. I decided to mainly focus on Instagram for the digital aspect of the short film because it is one of the main social medias my target audience uses and the ability to add several clips to a post allowed for a serious look at a glance but a more casual look at the film when people swipe.
All components maintained a lowercase and simple look because I, once again, wanted to approach the components in a casual manner. The lack of capitalization may seem nonsensical and unprofessional at first, however it was used as lack of capitalization in text has become popular in recent years. This further adds onto the branding of the film as a coming-of-age piece that relates to the audience. And I also think it looks really cute. As for the research, I spent much time worrying about the time crunch of the piece and researched a lot about how to form a concise story in such a short period of time. My research throughout many film websites and other blogs brought the 5 stages of grief to my attention. Organizing my film into parts made it much easier to think of and helped me decide what transitions to use and when. The transitions were another important source of research for me. Although I am experienced with editing, transitions have never been my strong suit as I generally edit videos for my parents’ church rather than school productions that require professional finishes.
I decided to challenge the convention of a good ending and ended the film on a cliffhanger because although a happy ending is prevalent throughout many coming of age films, I have always hated them and much prefer a cliffhanger or sad ending. Therefore, I added my own touch by straying away from this convention and ended the film as the character walks away when she hears a voice calling her.
My font research did not bring me much information besides using Times New Roman for the translated captions, so I ran with the idea of handwriting after I incorporated the notebook idea. In many coming-of-age films such as Moonlight and Call Me by Your Name the main characters are generally in their heads, talking to themselves, or writing out their thoughts, so I went with the latter because I couldn’t figure out how to do voice overs without sounding corny. I wish I could’ve been able to further incorporate the notebook itself, however I think its prevalence throughout the film should explain the font choice.
I am glad I was also able to see my classmates develop their films and see their insane skills. I’m surrounded by a lot of talented people, and I hope one day I can be like them. The only way is up.
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