Theodore Fan, Period 7, 4/18/2023 Modern Mythology 2023

 Atomic Habits & Growth

At this current point in time, what specific standards have you set  for yourself? 

How and why did you come to craft these standards? 

How do you demonstrate resilience towards achieving these standards?

How do you assess yourself?  What adjustments do you make? How often?

The specific standards I have set for myself is to make the best Monster Project movie/film. I love to review and heavily critique movies/shows and I want to make a film that meets my standards. To establish a Fusaro and group approved plot, to set up the meeting dates, learn filming techniques. Basically try and make the most professional attempt at a short monster film. I met with Justin over the break to work on the Monster Project script and we spent a solid hour just watching the previous groups films and breaking them down. (It was probably collectively an hour as we brainstormed ideas, we would occasionally watch a project to try and get ideas on what they did). We also saw why animation projects were banned when a lot of the animated projects were more like voiced comics. The biggest flaw that we could both agree on was the over usage of a single camera angle. One of the projects had a table scene where multiple people were talking and instead of having the camera cut to each person in a natural way, they shot the entire scene in a single camera as it just spun to each person one by one. Another issue was the audio. Echoey hallways and such, no professional microphones. The group about Bubbles being possessed did a good job counteracting this when necessary with voice added in editing/post. Seeing all the past monster projects, I felt we could definitely do better. The only fear I have is scuffy filming. We’re not professionals and filming something for the first time would probably add an amateur layer of scuffed that I rather not have. It’s probably (at least in my opinion) what plagued all the other groups as well. I came to craft these standards not just from the event above but also because I genuinely love film. While not necessarily reality films as opposed to anime, a lot transfers over and a lot doesn’t. I still really like making stories and feel the Monster Project is a perfect toe dip into how it’s actually done. 

I tend to focus more on the mechanics of a story than the actual filming of it (again, I’m an anime watcher so real life scuffed-ness doesn’t normally exist for me) but trying to do it myself can make me appreciate some scenes a lot more. For example, the Vertigo shot. Now I don’t have a professional camera but I still find the vertigo shot hard to do. To explain it, a vertigo shot is when you keep the object of focus the same but the background around it moves in or out. I searched up a video on youtube on how to film it using an Iphone and I found it ridiculously hard on my water bottle. The fear of scuffing comes back again because to do these shots you have to be really close to the person with the camera. What if the person laughs during filming? Or the camera is shaky? That’s why I wanted to buy a dolly. Which is when I realized they can cost a lot. Which is where I ended up making a camera dolly out of a pizza cutter from a youtube guide. It doesn’t help that when I asked other groups, they said they would start filming around this week. I want the plot to be perfect in every way. Easy to make, easy to film, easy to produce etc. etc. A fatal flaw of mine is that I hate letting ideas go. I often need an outside influence to talk me out of an idea which is why the miSTAKES group has scheduled a bunch of conferences with Fusaro (some of them I just went by myself) to keep revising the plot. I’ve found democracy to be a great tool to decide something. I’d post in the group chat several different ideas I have and ask everyone to vote on which idea/path they think is best. So far, there’s never been a tie. When first hearing about the monster project my mind instantly went to the supernatural. I guess it’s anime-like of me to instantly imagine an animated series so I did feel deflated when animations were banned but realistically speaking there is no way a group of amateurs can make a decent looking animation. But with the loss of animation comes the loss of a monstrous looking monster (at least in my imagination). Lots of the monster project films I saw with Justin had workarounds for this as making your own costume seems horribly hard. It reminds me of the black egg I wanted my group to make last year for the creation myth project. We did manage to do it though it took us a month to make an awkward black trash can that I could fit into. And then it turns out the paint we used in the makerspace comes off with water which I found out the hard way. The monster itself has gone through many renditions from time loop monster to it’s actually the bully to the protagonist is actually the monster to intrusive thoughts to split personality to just mental breakdown. I actually really liked the split personality idea, suggested by Fusaro in one of the conferences, but Justin didn’t like it and after further thinking it is a cliche’ thing in a lot of kids shows these days. 

I assess myself in a contradicting/inefficient way. At least in my opinion, writing and storytelling is a creative state of mind. Especially when one writes about the supernatural (an original creation that is). Yet the way I try to fix issues in my writing is by thinking about it methodically. I like to focus on the mechanics of writing itself. Specific actions the author made and why it works or doesn’t work or how it could be done better. For example, I look at a scene I wrote or a plot idea and feel that it could use more foreshadowing. And then I think of any event that can accomplish the objective and squish it in somewhere. And then I need to think about the event itself and how it can better connect and flow with the rest of the plot. Such a bit by bit process seems really inefficient to me but it’s a logically foolproof way of dealing with things. Methodically thinking about one's writing like this is good to an extent (everything should be a balance) but I fear my writing would become too robotic/episodic. For my own personal story (hobby), I fear actually writing it the most, relying on “eureka moments” or ideas more than methodical writing. (when you’re  not on a clock you don’t have to force yourself to write basically, thus leading to a cycle of procrastination stemming from wanting it to be perfect). I had a lot of this with the time loop concept I originally presented to Mrs. Fusaro. Just a bunch of cool ideas I had that I wanted to somehow jam into a coherent mess. The creative side also loves all these eureka moments which makes it hard to let them go too. I’ve come to the conclusion that I should still methodically sort things and methodically deal with my “epiphanies.” Let them happen but sort them out basically.  Places where I really let ideas roam free are oddly enough long smooth car rides and showers. Thought trains if you will. I always have a notepad open to jot any good ideas down or anything amazing I find in a show or scene. Finding a balance that doesn’t drive me insane in either direction is what I’m aiming for basically.