Critical Reflection

When coming up with ideas for our short film Sprouting, my team and I really wanted to create something that represented us and the point of our lives we are in. Our film is about a high school junior named Dahlia, and how she explores the overwhelming pressure of school and its strain on her friendship. The takeaway is that even through fears and stress, you keep growing, which is also shown metaphorically in the story through a plant named “Sprout”. 

   From the very beginning we wanted Sprouting to be of the genre coming of age. In order to achieve this successfully, we had to do a lot of research during the scriptwriting process. I researched the specifics of the genre's storyline first, through websites like “Studio Binder”, where I learned how to properly introduce conflict. In most genres the protagonist goes through

an epic journey, fights a “battle”, and then overcomes the conflict to defeat evil. But in the coming of age genre most of the battle is internal, which is why we decided stress should be the source of the protagonist's conflict. Then, watching pieces of the
same genre, like the animated show Win or Lose (2025) and the film Ladybird (2017), helped in developing Dahlia and her struggles. For example, Win or Lose portrays anxieties and fears through metaphorical representations like a giant blob of stress. This inspired us to do the same with Sprout the plant, but instead of representing the stress it represents the growth. In Ladybird the protagonists conflicting relationship with her mother helped us explore character dynamics and friendships. We wanted our main characters to have a close relationship, confront a conflict, and reconcile at the end.  

After researching, we heavily focused on our branding and products. Our target audience would be ages 11-21, as they are the demographic for our genre and can easily connect with our main character, Dahlia, which was the goal. Our whole reasoning behind the story was not only to create something that only represented my teammates and I, but most individuals our age. We exhibit this in the story through Dahlia’s main internal struggle (stress). Junior year (11th) is known for being the most overwhelming year of a high school across students in the United States. Moreover, we made sure to write in moments that felt real and relatable, like having a messy room and falling asleep at your desk.

Additionally, we designed our social media in a way that was engaging to our demographic. We posted short form videos, designs with limited text, and lots of photographs, as our target audiences' attention is retained through short form content and limited text. We posted multiple stories on the account, which easily notified followers of new posts and updates of the production. All story content was kept accessible on sorted highlights. For our promotional postcard, we kept the text limited and straightforward, while including engaging graphics and colors that matched our established branding. The combination of graphics and photos keeps the visual appeal interesting. Our tagline, “everyone’s just growing up” and the featured young actresses also acknowledge our genre, and that the film is about teenagers.

Branding was an important priority for our group. We wanted all branding to look and feel cohesive across all elements. For the social media page, we decided to use Instagram as it is the most popular among our target audience, and typically the desired platform to promote student short films. We looked up and researched a handful of accounts for inspiration. Some of the social media pages we viewed felt cluttered and lacked branding, so we kept those in mind as examples of what not to follow.  Before creating any posts, we decided on a definitive color palette, fonts, and backgrounds. Using these elements, we created a set “template” for each kind of post (meet the cast, behind the scenes, etc.) that way all postings could maintain the same look and feel. The color palette was important not only for the socials but for the short film, as lilac represents Dahlia's character and Pink represents Melia's. During research, we realized that keeping our target audience in mind was crucial. We looked for pages with the same demographic as ours and noticed a lot of content came in short form video format. From influencer style vlogs to funny clips, we made sure to post a handful of “reels” on the social media page as well. 

Our goal throughout this process was to represent teenagers, specifically in high school, and the often overlooked issue of academic stress and the strain it can have on mental health and relationships. Through Dahlia’s character, we highlight the pressure many students face, shown through her exhaustion, disorganization, and distance from her best friend Melia. Additionally, the use of the plant “Sprout” serves as a symbol of development, and the idea that personal growth still happens even in periods of stress. We focused on the friendship dynamic between two young female characters, which is not fully representative of all teenagers but still reflects real life experiences.  

Creating our short film, Sprouting, allowed us to combine research, study demographics, and establish a brand in order to produce a cohesive and meaningful final product. By following and adapting standard conventions the coming of age genre, we created a story that is both personal to us, and relatable to the audience. In the end the pacing of the story could have had more beats and pauses, especially before the ending. There could've been more of a pause to take it all in before Dahlia called Melia. As the director, I also could've had the actresses practice beforehand as some of the delivery in the conversations were off. But that all comes from gaining more experience. While there are areas for improvement, particularly in the story and technical execution, the final product successfully communicates its intended message. I had an amazing experience working with my team, and I'm satisfied with our final product.  

Sources: 
PoCCulture. (2024, December 5). Review: Pixar’s “Win or Lose” is a hilariously fun story about the value of perspective. https://pocculture.com/review-pixars-win-or-lose-is-a-hilariously-fun-story-about-the-value-of-perspective/

Links for Final Products

Here are all of the components! Enjoy :) 


Social Media Account Link - Social Media Page (Video)

Short Film

Print Component 

[Fade Out]

Hi Blog!

Wow I cant believe we have entered the final week of this project. Thinking back to when we first received this assignment feels like ages ago... Renn, Kenna, and I have worked so hard and dedicated a lot of time to the creating of this. We are all really proud. I've been feeling nostalgic, to when I first started this class, back in AS level. I have learned and changed so much since then, I'm grateful I had the opportunity to take AS and A level. 

This week has been all about polishing and finalizing. I sent Renn my 1st draft of the postcard and he added his own changes and we all agreed we liked Renns postcard better.

My version:

Renn's version:

I'm really happy with the final product, I think it is super cute! I was also working on the end credits for the film. I used canva, and I exported each individual credit and then I edited it together. I used the same fonts, and the same purple and green colors that we used for the social media and postcard. Here is the final look of the credits

Throughout this week I will be working on my critical reflection that will be up on my blog soon. Renn is currently finalizing the edit, and Kenna is actively posting on the instagram everyday!

Postcard

 Hi blog! 
Here is the front of the postcard :) I have the back design somewhat done, I just need to punch in times and showings, and socials and stuff. I think this component is really cool and I'm excited that I got to work on it while Renn edits and Kenna focuses on social media! 

Editing

 Hi blog! 

We are now in the editing process! Yay! Renn is our main editor, but I helped out by line editing these scenes: Dahlia getting ready for the party, Dahlia in the trunk outside her party, and Dahlia coming back home from her party. I kept it super simple for Renn since he wanted to do the main editing, so I just picked our best takes and put them in order. I didn't correct audio or color. And I didn't add in anything extra. Here is a screenshot of my finished timeline!

Here it is if you would like to watch it^^


As of today (April 4th) Renn has finished the line edit for the entire short film! It came out to around 6 minutes. He is now in the process of finishing the edit. Although the project is due April 10th we want to have it fully finished by the 9th so we have that extra buffer day for any editing emergencies (a computer crashing, a graphic getting corrupted, etc). While Renn edits Kenna will continue posting on our socials while I work on the postcard!

Filming

 Hi blog!! 

Good news :) Filming was started and wrapped last week! YAAAAYYYYY you don't understand how happy this makes me!! Let me tell you how it went: 

So Renn and I created a super awesome shot list in order to make sure we shoot everything (it can get confusing without it since we are filming everything out of order). It was a really silly process because we would doodle out our ideas on a notebook paper to decide what we wanted for each shot. You can view our shot list here!

Then, Thursday (March 26th)  last week was supposed to be our first filming day, but we ran into a big issue: we checked out everything except a battery TV programs equipment closet. We all take full responsibility for this though, we should've checked to make sure we checked everything out. We freaked out for a second because our actors were already on set with us and we didn't want to waste everyones time (spoiler alert we did end up loosing that day for shooting). The good thing is that Renn and I know a friend who has the same kind of batteries and charger, so Renn quickly ran out to go get it while Kenna and I went through the script with our wonderful actresses! It was also a good moment for them to bond since they are supposed to be best friends in our film and this was their first time meeting. Sadly, our battery situation got worse. Our friends battery charger was damaged and wouldn't charge. By that point, Kenna, Renn, and I looked at each other and we all were like "ok yeah we lost this filming day". At least our actresses were able to meet and bond. We then rescheduled and decided we were going to try and get almost everything on Sunday (March 29).

Sunday (March 29th)

Crazy insane locked in fantastic productive shooting day. So basically: We started at 12:30pm. We knew we wanted to start shooting Stephanie's (Dahlias) scenes first, so we told Estefania (Melia) that we would call her when we needed her! We shot the entire opening sequence (Dahlia getting ready for the her party) and then a lot of inserts of thing and walls in Dahlia's room. Everything was running pretty smoothly and we shot this scene quickly. After that, we shot the scene of Dahlia coming back to her room after her birthday party. Since it was still the middle of the day we closed all the windows and used a tube light to try and make it look like nighttime (the night isnt purpleish but we liked the style of it). We also kept the lights on in the bathroom and that added a yellowish glow to Stephanie which we loved.

Ok then we filmed the montage. What I thought was going to be the easiest thing to film ended up being long, annoying, and tedious. We had a bunch of different days we wanted to highlight in this montage that would help us show Dahlias workload, the passage of time, and the growth of sprout. But filming every day/time skip required us to change the look of everything. For example: messiness, writing on the whiteboard, desk, bed, outfit. It probably took us around 2-3 hours to shoot everything. After that we took a nice hour long break and ate some pizza! This is also a good moment to mention that we made 2 insta reels.

At 5pm right after our lunch break Estefania came! We had a quick mini photoshoot with her, Stephanie, and Sprout. This is for our postcard and any promotional stuff for the Instagram! It was super cute and fun! After that we filmed the confrontation of Dahlia and Melia, which went pretty smoothly! We were rushing a bit though because that's when we realized we wouldn't have time to film the ending scene or Melia and Dahlia leaving for the party scene. We talked to our actresses and decided we would film that on Friday, April 3rd. Sadly, Kenna wouldn't be able to go because she had a color guard bonding. After that, Stephanie and Estefania changed into their party dresses and we shot the scene with them outside in the trunk of Dahlias car during the party. It was a nit chaotic because we rushed a bit, and our tube light died so we had to find an extension chord to plug in Renns light kit. And after that, it was a wrap for the day yay!!!!!!!

Friday (April 3rd)

 Honestly quick and easy. We did the same thing that we did on Sunday by filming Stephanie first and then Calling Estefania to come after. We quickly shot the ending with new and old sprout. After that we called Estefania and we filmed our very very very last scene which was them leaving for the party. We took 3 hours for both scenes which was great! And then Renn and I took the set down. Heres a quick video I shot:

Social Media Postings

 Hi blog !

Our social is up and active! Our handle is @sproutingshortfilm on Instagram!! 

We already have a couple posts up so yay! As mentioned in an earlier blog, our color scheme basically consists of purples and greens, which is exactly what we are following through with here in this image. One of the most important things we are keeping in mind is branding!! We want everything to look and feel the same. We created a bunch of blank templates on Canva which we will be using based on the kind of post to make sure everything looks the same (which is why our cast and crew announcements look the same but have different colors). Also, this would be the perfect time to mention our two awesome main actresses Estefania and Stephanie (almost name twins ahaha)! They are both super nice and talented and we are so grateful they agreed to act in this project :)




First of all, the main elements: 

A profile photo and the highlight covers! These are the first things you see when you open the account, so we wanted to make sure they looked clean and represented the film well. Since our main color is purple that is what we decided on for the profile image (made by Renn), and then I created these highlight covers where we will be archiving all of our stories!

We will be trying to post every other day to get as much content in as possible. So far we have 6 posts up! 

First a cute little teaser created by Kenna! It obviously had to include the sprout which is basically our brand logo now, and the color green!

Then we had our first main three posts come out, the crew! Kenna, Renn, and I all worked on these three together and i love how clean they came out!!

Yay we all look so cool! These posts are clear, concise, and on brand. Since pink and purple are Melia and Dahlias colors, we all stuck to green (main brand cover). Which I think looks really neat since it really does show us as a unit! We ofc still included highlights of pink and purple in the background and text. Also, we created a logo for our "studio" name (i know we are 3 people but still), RVK (Renn, Vicky, Kenna) studios! it'll be in the top left corner of every post since everything is about the branding (i dent know a synonym for branding I'm sorry). 

Next up our wonderful actresses! 

Since we only have 2 actresses we figured why not just give them their own individual color (which is their respective character colors yay). And of course, just like the crew posts, we included in the green through the font and background.

CRR Preplanning

 Hi blog! 

CCR. These three acronym that traumatized me last year. I seriously struggled with my CCR is AS level for a multitude of reasons, but thankfully this year it is an essay instead of a video (thank you Cambridge I appreciate you). Now to ensure I write up a nice critical reflection (i guess i can call it CR), we are going to start prep NOW, by making sure I know what it is, what is requires of me, and how I will execute it. Thankfully I have a goated media studies teacher that gave us all of the information a couple of months back, so no stress on figuring out what the CR is, and also thankfully I took lots of notes. Heres an image:

CRITICAL REFLECTION AICE MEDIA STUDIES A LEVEL

Ok so basically: 

- 1000 words 
- An evaluative essay that is guided by four compulsory questions: ↓
1. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
2. How do your products engage with the audience?
3. How did elements of production work together to create a sense of "branding"?
4. How do your products represent social groups or issues? 

HOW TO WRITE:

• Intro: Short and straight to the point. My thesis should be focused on a an overall theme/idea shown throughout the entire peace 
  
• Body paragraphs (addressing questions): The questions can be addressed in any order (yay), I may also address more than one question at a time BUT i still have to address all 4 questions and make sure it comes together into one cohesive essay,

WHAT THE 4 QUESTIONS MEAN:
1. How did your research inform your products and the way they use or challenge conventions?
I should include
-Specific production samples and how I reviewed them
-Specific techniques I researched
-Genre and important conventions
-Specific examples of how research impacted my production choices.

What I would write:
- Discuss the films I researched 
- Include techniques from videos I found online
- Discuss how our genre (coming of age) was super important for our film 

2. How do your products engage with the audience?
I should include:
-Description of our target audience
-Specific ways your three components (media, print, socials) engage your audience (or not)

What I would write:
- our target audience is teens and YA and our film was specifically created to be relatable to almost every teen  
- How our specific design choices engage our target audience (ex: the set design, social media)

3. How did elements of production work together to create a sense of "branding"?
I should:
-Describe the brand I wish to develop
-Discuss how to how/ how not all three components develop your brand 

What I would write:
- Our very cohesive social media 
- The postcard

4. How do your products represent social groups or issues? 
I should:
- Provide specific examples of representation incorporated into the production 
-  Consider if my project successfully develops our representation goals

What I would write:
- Representation: teenagers 


PS: This outline is written more in a format that i understand more easily. This will allow me to fully understand my task, and start brainstorming more complete ideas of what I want my response to be!

Set Decorating

 Hi blog!

The team and I decorated today and it went super smoothy, plus it was genuinely so enjoyable!! I've
always loved production design so much, and its so nice to see Dahlias character start coming to life through her room! My favorite part? The fact that we got to transform an empty room into a cozy space that feels lived in!! 

Here's the before (drumroll please):

And the after (Ta da!!):

The lighting is doing it dirty, but fear not because I have more photos!! 

So first we all got to Renns house after school and we took out all of our props and layed them out to have more more of a visual of what we are working with. It definitely looked crazy and chaotic, but it also allowed us to fully analyze everything we had (especially the stuff we each brought from the list).

So yeahh it looked a little messy (peep the emotional support oreos LOL)

Posters:
Kenna shared with me a Pinterest board full of posters we felt that Dahlia would have up in her room. I went to Walgreens the night before and printed them out! I then spread them out on the floor and organized it in a way that would look cute with the big artist poster and calendar Kenna brought. This is how it ended up looking! Since our color palette is green and purple, we printed out little mini posters of those colors. And the calendar will be used to show the passage of time.

                                                                           

Paper Cranes + Whiteboard: 
Renn is cool and already had these up in his room. We decided they fit the room very well so he transferred them over from his room to the set room! Then the whiteboard in the room (which fun fact is a plank of wood) had to be deep cleaned while Renn in order to get rid of the old handwriting. Then Kenna wrote Dahlias to do list in their very nice handwriting. We also added some extra pizazz to the whiteboard by putting fairy lights around the border! I think its very cute and something Dahlia would do. A lot of this process was just asking our selves "What would Dahlia do?". She is basically our close and personal friend now. 

Certificates + Medals:
Dahlia is clearly stressed out about school. What better way to show it than through adding certificates and medals! She works too hard and wants to show that off, i respect it. It also represents how important her academic achievements are to her, which is why they end up confuming her world. Kenna created the certificates through Canva and the medals are actually all Kenna's from band and colorguard! 

Sprout the Plant

Hi blog! 

Uhm so basically how do we control a plants growth?? 

One very important question Mrs. Stoklosa brought up during our meeting last week was “how are you going to make the plant grow?”. As group we thought buying three of the same plants at different stages of growth would cut it (it won’t, apparently stores only sell plants at the age). ALSO we would have to for real take care of the plants and we would have to make sure they dont die... thats difficult. So after a lot of back and forth we settled on fake plants! Plural because we will be buying 3 of them and cutting them to different heights (our original plan didn’t suck too much, it just needed re working!). To make it look real we will be using real soil with the fake plants.

Here are some images of what we were thinking of purchasing. 

ALSO, the plant pot: 
We want to look into purchasing two pots, one will be the OG pot Melia gifts Dahlia and the second one will be the the pot Dahlia decorates at the end of the short film!  

SOURCES

Baost. (n.d.). Baost 10pcs artificial bean sprout fake vegetable plastic green plant flower arrangement home kitchen decor. Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/Baost-Artificial-Sprout-Plastic-Arrangement/dp/B087TB1P7F

Threshold. (n.d.). 6" Mini tabletop schefflera artificial plant. Target. https://www.target.com/p/6-34-mini-tabletop-schefflera-artificial-plant-threshold-8482/-/A-87993600

Social Media Stuff

Hi blog! 

Kenna and I have officially started planning the social media! We chose Instagram as the social media platform since it is the most popular platform for both advertising short films, and our target audience (teens and young adults). Before anything we established the color palette for the brand and social media posts, here is an image: 

The green shades are meant to represent Sprout the plant, and they will be the overall main color used throughout the posts. The pink represents Dahlia, and the purple represents Melia; both of those colors will be used as accents. We still haven't decided on a font, but we know whatever we choose has to legible while matching the rest of our brand. We will be creating a set of templates for all the kinds of posts we need (in order to keep it uniform and similar). That way, depending on the kind of post, we pick a premade template and just drop in any images and text. 

Kenna and I also wrote down the list of posts we want in chronological order! Here it is: 

There will be more posts than this, these are just the first handful :)

Dahlias Room Mise en Scene

Dahlias room

 Hi blog!! 

LOTS OF UPDATES!!! 

Kenna, Renn, and I called for 2hrs!

A lot was discussed I’m really excited!! First off the script is 100% totally completely finished (for real this time).

You can read it here!

We reviewed all of the previous critiques Mrs. Stoklosa gave us, and we are all really satisfied with this final script . Plus, we finally have a title! 

“Sprouting”

I personally love it because it really represents that “growth” that we ware going for without being really straight up (plus we renamed Tom the plant to Sprout the plant, super cute in my opinion hehe). 

Apart from that we also established important dates: 

PRODUCTION DAYS 

• 2/24 decorating the set (Dahlias room) and meeting up with the entire crew for introductions!
• 2/25 start shooting 
• 2/26 film 
• 2/22 film

**I will be creating a shot list and splitting up what we film for each day.

Okay now for the actual content for this blog: Dahlias room (mise en scene). During our long call, Kenna showed us her mockup, and using that we created a list of what we need and who can provide which prop (we are trying not to break the bank by decorating the room with items we already own).
Here is the mockup: 

Here is the list: 

- headphones 

- hang paper cranes from the ceiling 

- kennas color lamp 

- posters 

- calendar 

- playbills 

- vickys fairy lights 

- trash can kenna

- vickys/kenna squishmallows 

- kennas trophies and medals 

- kennas dried flowers

- renns plants

- vickys lego flowers 

- print out fake certificate 

- honor roll corner (print out)

- printed photo of dahlia and melia (frame from kenna)

- anything renn wants to add in 

- kenna gets the pot (x2) + sprout the plant (x3)

Here are some photos of what some of our props look like: 

Poster

Headphones

Medals

 
Kenna also created a mini shopping list for a couple of items like the flower pot, and I will go to Walgreens sometime before we film to print out all the posters we want her to hang in her room! We overall want it to be a safe space that really represents Dahlia as a person.