This short film is prohibited to be publicly released and has no affiliation with City Colleges of Chicago. You can only request to view this film, for I don’t have the authority to release this in any official capacity as of May 1st, 2024. This current state of the work print is incomplete through its visual retouching, audio, and lack of soundtrack. I hope I get to revisit this project to refine it, yet it might not see the light of day due to the permissions I was given only be for educational purposes. Only a frame from the film is submitted to the 2023 "Garland Court Magazine".
What I may show you is a script for the short film. Here is a summary as follows:
The film is about a college student that hates himself through the actions he’s done, and a self-conscious that tries to direct him to a good mindset without leaning to pessimism. A key event occurs where the student is fixated with a water bottle thrown in the trash, but consciousness suggests that he shouldn’t worry about others and should worry about himself. The student doesn’t believe they’re not worthy of focusing on himself to change but made the conscience to propose that they should be in a relationship with each other to sort out any differences. The situation leads to the student's self-doubt and to him shutting down his body as a form of denial of life. Inside the conscience, the student manipulates the conscious into believing that death is the only option. Then the conscience realized that supporting the student wasn’t the answer, but the individual should be the one to love themselves to improve. The situation is resolved by the conscience saying great aspects about the student which leads to the antagonist to be reborn. They both touch hands and the film fades to white.
Disclaimer: This script has crude language, suicide references and verbal abuse. Scenes 1 and 8 never got shot due to time constraints, but it appears in the original script while the film starts from Scene 2 to 7. “Cognition” is the short film I’ve done previously in May 2022, but isn’t up online anymore due to the realization of utilizing a location for filming without permission.
Elaboration
Maybe someday the work print can be complete, but I now have a different perspective that isn’t congruent with the idea of loving oneself. Self-esteem is the most essential for one to have the will to keep moving forward, but it shouldn't be used in a way that could make us prideful and inconsiderate of others around us. The elements of other’s action that consciously annoy us could’ve been a good scapegoat for better development of how we feel about other people and in what way can we be kind towards others without condemning them.
This film was made at the same time I was making a paper relating cognitive dissonance and its relationship with climate change, for that mental paradigm became one of the elements I wanted to show in the film. While the water bottle act was the main element to showcase cognitive dissonance, it didn’t do a good job to showcase why these acts occur, but only shows the reaction to what has happened. Yet, the reaction is only served to attack those that have decided that we aren’t meant to access within their realm of conscience. The decision has already been made, and we shouldn’t jump to conclusions on their intentions on why they didn’t choose to recycle. No further scrutiny should occur, and the best we can do is to keep informing people on what actions we should take to further improve our environment.
On the other hand, the student character chooses to claim that people should change their actions, but he doesn’t believe he should change as a person or is worthy of giving any attention even if it can be used to improve their character. I unintentionally created a character that was contradictory of their own statements, for its best showcase dissonance on the character’s thought by trying to change others rather than themselves. This exact theme of improvement should’ve been left in the oven a bit longer than the idea of self-esteem. Both themes are worth tackling. If an extra scene were added, it would’ve focused more on improvement and tackling the issue of self-esteem with the constraint towards the mentality of being better towards others. These elements could be the key component to make the themes more cohesive or best serve as a different project.
Nonetheless, this project helped me understand what the best parts of myself were and how retreating to suicide or negative thoughts shouldn’t be thought of as a solution to a depressive episode.
