Annie Liang, Period 1, 5/11/22

 Annie Liang

Modern Mythology 

PD. 1

Goal Setting & Growth

At this current point in time, what specific goal(s) do you have for yourself? Why? How do you demonstrate resilience towards achieving this goal? (or these goals?) How does the world around you affect your perception of this goal? (or these goals?)

At this point in time, my current goal is to try to pursue some of my interests that I’ve never gotten around to doing. The monster creation project has shown me that I never got to learning more about editing beyond the beginner level form Introduction to Audio and Visual Engineering from freshman year. This project started out rough with my group members as we were quite indecisive about what our project should be about and how we should portray these messages and morals. In fact, it didn’t get much better even as the weeks had gone on as we ended up having three different project proposals and no working script. Amazingly, we managed to pull it off as we spent every possible moment filming and trying to come up with ideas on the spot. It was hectic and stressful but the majority of our group came together to get things going as well as they possibly could. 

I had taken on the role of editor from the get go but I still very much wanted to have a role in developing the plot, especially when everyone had to chip in beyond their assigned role. Selina, Sarah, and George all had great ideas that we attempted to turn into different scenes, but it became really apparent that our largest shortcoming was not taking the time to come up with a solid script before rushing to write. So, Selina and I spent Sunday night, before Memorial Day, to rearrange the entire plotline to make sense chronologically, while still keeping the audience engaged. We ended up realizing that there were a lot of filler scenes that needed to be filmed to transition some of our major plot points. That night we walked away with a long list of about 8-10 scenes that we had to film and edit in the span of one day. It was stress-inducing to say the least.

Truly, the way our group had pulled together this project was nothing short of incredible and I’m so thankful for them: Sarah never stopped trying to contribute new ideas, George embarrassed himself for the sake of our film as he played our protagonist, and Selina who was the very backbone of our entire project and kept everyone moving and on track. This project has led me to re-realize the interest I had with editing clips together to tell a story no matter how small or mundane it may seem. I'm excited to see where this interest takes me as I’ve started doing small tutorials from Adobe and watching Youtube videos. I supposed that branches out to how my goal would be affected by the world around me as telling the story of people that aren't typically heard in mainstream media is a passion of mine. I love hearing about minorities breaking out into industries that most wouldn’t think they’d be in as it breaks stereotypes and brings forth a more inclusive world for all of us to live in.