Marisa Green
Reflection on True life: I’m a High School Senior

My film for the final project was True life: I’m a High School Senior: a documentary about four different seniors from four different high schools on Long Island. My group consisted of Sofia Alcalay, Alenna Kanner, and Elaina Epifan. The idea came about the second the project was announced. I suggested that we do a “film” similar to MTV’s True Life series. I thought what better way to go into second semester then documenting the lives of seniors from different towns. We all go through the same journey, emotionally and physically, so the idea reaches out to all our viewers.
Everyone in the group had a specific role. Aleena filmed, Sofia interviewed, Elaina edited, and I directed. Each role had crucial and particular parts to it. Filming contained making sure we accomplished all the material we needed to complete the project. Aleena had to make sure she shot certain angles and had good lighting at all times. Interviewing at instances was very difficult; Sofia was in charge of making sure that the interviewees understood the question and that they were able to answer it in a timely manner. Elaina’s job was without a doubt the hardest, she pieced all of our clips together; even though she had little experience with iMovie she was still able to craft our project incredibly. My job was to oversee everything, making sure that everyone’s schedule didn’t conflict and that we had more then enough material to bring this documentary together.
To say making a movie takes a lot of effort is an understatement. We had at least an hour worth of film and had to pick only five minutes of it to use. All through our filmed material, we had at least five cinematic aspects. My favorite cinematic aspect that we attempted to make use of was the tracking shot. Not only did Aleena capture this shot by following our objects, but I also hopped on my long board and was skating around with another camera. (Due to the camera’s bad microphone, the tracking shot that I filmed couldn’t be use, but it was still so much fun filming it.) My favorite scene in the entire film was when Jimmy was introducing himself. At the time, some siren was going off and it was rather annoying but as we brought the movie together it sounded as if we planned to have that noise. We also used close-ups a lot; we utilized them because it made the interview more personal, you saw the person’s facial expression and that led to seeing their actual thought process. As I said before, the hardest part of our entire project was the editing, more specifically shifting from one interview to the next. With iMovie’s transition it helped all the scenes shift smoothly which was most important.
Overall, I think our documentary came out very well. Our film was designed to be real; showing what life as a senior is like and we definitely achieved that. Our interviewees answered questions about what activities they partake in, how senior year is different from all the others, and about the process of applying to college. I think our film is a great selection to show to future classes because not only does it pertain to what everyone is going through but also it has all the necessary requirements for the project. I feel that as my second encounter of making a movie, it was very successful.