Here it is!!

 Its finally done! Our final Portfolio Project. Dramatic Coming of Age Queer short film, "Writing on the bathroom wall". 

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Critical Reflection

 The film is over! Through all its many ups and downs, its now time to critically reflect and unpack these last 8 weeks!

Our short film, “writing on the bathroom wall” is a coming age of queer drama that paints a brief picture of the lonesome life of our protagonist Luna, and compares it to the girl she idolizes Sol. Through the anonymous space on the bathroom wall, the film asks, can anonymous superficial changes lead to real-world actions? The film explores a story, in which it does. Through Luna's story, the film explores themes ranging from how to find the bravery to reach real human connection in a world where it is so easy to remain anonymous to the ability for small symbolic changes to have profound impacts in one’s personal development. Our approach was that leaning into the bathroom graffiti element would be an exciting and novel approach to explore these themes, and allow us to develop strong branding and audience engagement. 

Our key art heavily leaned into relatable bathroom graffiti to create a clear visual brand identity.

We hoped that these themes and story, through the irreverent relatable world of bathroom graffiti would effectively target teens and young adults. Another primary target for our film would be queer audiences, though its coming-of-age themes would make it more focused on the younger end of that age bracket. 

 

One thing that I wanted to ensure we got right, was the tone and genre of the story. I am a lover of films like Past Lives, Moonlight, La La Land, and 500 days of summer, were the films are not “romances” in the traditional sense but instead stories about love. I really wanted to ensure we got the style of this mini-genre down. When we first brought up the concept of a queer love story through writings on the bathroom wall, my vision for it was never to have a perfect ending, or make it super soapy. As I explored in my research, what I think makes these movies so beautiful, is the subtlety, grace, and realism, with which they approach very difficult concepts. At the infant stages of planning, we started with a few outlines that were both over-dramatized and over-romanticized. In that version of the story, Sol and Luna’s character would have both had character development, and instead of Sol accidentally pushing Luna into changing herself, Sol and Luna would develop a complete love story on the bathroom walls, that eventually fell apart as one of them tried to move it to the real world and the other abandoned. Our vision with this idea, was to look at two different approaches to queer identity, one approaching it with anger (bullying, internalized homophobia), and the other approaching it with shy openness (shy, but treating others kindly, and making an effort to connect despite barriers).

 

However, what we quickly realized after a discussion with our instructor is that if we wrote our film like this, we would be spreading ourselves too thin, and losing the subtlety that makes these other films special in the first place, maybe even creating a caricature of queerness instead of a celebration. Which is where we learned one of our first of many lessons this project, simplicity is key. We could not feasibly tell two characters’ stories, we could not make them fall in love through back and forth messages, and more importantly we did not have to.  We realized it was okay if Sol’s character was not developed and was instead, somewhat of an idealized symbol of liberation emanating from the point of view of Luna. Which, instead led us on the path of exploring the story through only Luna's point of view. This is also more in line with the conventions of the film's previously discussed. For example, in Past Lives, 500 Days of Summer, and Moonlight, though there are love interests there is a clear point of view in the film from the perspective of the protagonist. We realized that this was for great reason as trying to explore two perspectives instead of 1, especially in a short film limits the amount of time one has to enter emotional depth.

Instead of bombastic crazy shots, we instead focused on intimate shots that showed rather than told the viewer about Luna's emotional inner world. 

 

 

Another thing this research inspired us to do was to create a bittersweet ending. On the first dramatized outline, this was not just going to be a bittersweet ending, but downright sad. One of them would try to reach out, and the other would shyly disappear, not wanting to give up the facade they have created in their real life by challenging it with this new identity. However, as we thought about our refrain in simplicity, we thought how we could communicate similar themes in a less brash more artistic manner. What we settled on is that the writings challenge Luna’s ideas about herself, and push her towards small symbolic actions that start in the anonymous space of the bathroom, but eventually permeate to the real world when she puts an LGBT pin on her bag. The next day at school Sol, her crush, spots it, and compliments it. The film ends just like this, pushing the reader to recognize how monumental the real social interaction her “small” change enabled was, in a world where it is so easy to lock our personalities and identities into the anonymous spheres of internet chat rooms, or bathroom walls. 

The Short interaction with Sol, though likely not amounting to much serious, leaves Luna with a beaming smile, showing how impactful those little everyday interactions can be.

 

To market to our target audiences we created a brand identity that was in 2 words: young, queer. This was clear in our mise-en scene elements, and social media marketing where we featured clear images of LGBT symbolism, and in our key art included relatable bathroom graffiti to our young audience. 

Examples of utilizing queer symbols in our film, marketing, and brand creation strategy Queer symbols were also present within the film to develop the proudly queer brand identity

In order to market our film to audiences we decided to launch an Instagram marketing campaign. During our research, we saw that this platform was the most widely used in the film industry to promote and on this front saw no reason to challenge industry conventions. Our social media campaign followed many of the industry norms. Our socials were replete with behind the scenes, posts introducing everyone involved in the production from directors to actors. However, we also tried a few specific creative endeavors that utilized out subject to its full potential to create some cool audience interactions. For example, this post said to “treat the comments like a bathroom wall”. This plays with the idea that inspired this project, we watched a video of an etymology guy discussing how bathrooms are essentially the first “comment section” as they share many traits with internet comment sections. We thought this would be a fun way to integrate this idea, and create authentic audience engagement since it would be a digital manifestation of a bathroom wall. 

 
                   We essentially created a digital "bathroom wall"

Additionally in terms of visual style our brand identity heavily leaned into the look of bathroom graffiti, which was present all throughout our film. From beginning to end, literally, we practically made our opening credits to be bathroom graffiti, to establish from the very beginning of the film the visual style of the production clearly. The style is also present throughout our social media marketing, and as previously mentioned within our key art. This helped us to create a very visually cohesive brand identity, that is unique, immediately recognizable, and helps to further the meaning of the story.

Our Opening Credits, quickly established
the bathroom graffiti visual brand identity

To Better engage with our audiences we also decided a merch line would be a great option for our film, since art, in the form of bathroom graffiti is at the core of it. We developed this by using Canva to create mockups for Tote bags and Hoodies (two gen-z favorites). We would sell these in link in our bio and link it to a print on demand storefront such as Redbubble.com. Print on Demand shops are a great option for low-budget projects as it involves no inventory or upfront cost, inventory is only created 'on demand' once they are purchased. This option would allow us to not have the risk of purchasing merch inventory, while still allowing us to use merch to market our product and gain extra revenue. The Tote Bag mockup we created    This project taught me transferable skills and life lessons I won't forget. It was not an easy project. It had far more ups and downs than any other I've worked on and we had some serious challenges with scheduling and serious production push backs. But, we pushed through and we persevered. As it always is with any creative endeavor, I am my own biggest critic, and while there are many aspects of the project I wish I could spend more time on, I am in the end very happy with what we created, and not just what we created, but the immaterial remnants of this project that will follow me into my future.