At first glance, I was quite pleased with the stuido I was assigned. From the start, I knew I wanted to make a film for my final project. I began to brainstorm. At first, I began to write a web sitcom based around Polk County made for the people in Polk County. However, due to my lack of resources, I was unable to do this. So, I decided to look at ways to combine different motion picture mediums in order to deliver a basic story in a new way. This is when it hit me -- make a film that is half animated, half live aciton. 

The following months after my epiphany, I began to brainstorm story ideas. I knew I wanted to tell a coming of age tale about a girl in Polk County, but what would cause her to come of age? How many characters should be introduced? Should there be a big fight at the end? As I began to write the screenplay, all these questions started to answer themselves. Once my draft was finished, I began to animate. Even during the animation process, however, the screeenplay was still being tweaked. As the animating came to a finish, an obstical was put in place as I was metaphorically driving full speed down the road to success -- my computer crashed, erasing all of the work I had done to that point. However, after being angered for a hot minute, I decided to tweak the screenplay once again and began animating from scratch. 

Filming was a whole other playing field. The only obsticals that prevented me from finishing the filming process were time and physical energy. Since all of the live action in the film consists of one Point of View shot spanning 10 miles of area, I would have to spend an afternoon walking from my house to Lake Hollingsworth to Downtown Lakeland and back, with a few tangents here and there. So, one hot winter day, I decided to conquer the 10 mile journey. Although I did suffer from mild heat exaustion and some blood was shed, I completed the filming, as well as the project. This led to the long, difficult editing process that brought all the elments of my project together. 

In January, we were introduced to the concept of Innovation Studio. Our studio was given the task of telling the story of Polk County. Linda and I decided to tell the story of an important part of Polk County that has had a major impact on the community. We started working on a video about the Terrace Hotel in January. We started with the idea of a really long video, but we decided to focus on the impact on the community. We believed that this was the most important part of the story, but we didn't want to leave out the story of the hotel. Throughout the past semester, we have constantly changed our idea. These changes have lead to what we have achieved today. 

In January, we wanted to make a video with five parts. This was incredibly ambitious at the time considering that we only had a short time to work on it. When March came, we realized the video needed to be condensed and changed. We went from having five parts to having 2.5 parts. We worked to make the video interesting through animations. However, the animations became distracting, and we got rid of them.

Today, we have a video with 2.5 parts. First, we tell the story of the hotel from the beginning. In this part, we start in 1924 with the construction of the hotel. Next, we tell of the impact the hotel has had on people's lives. While we have a guest talk about the hotel, we use a timeline to demonstrate how the hotel has grown from 1924 to today. Lastly, we have a nearby business owner discuss how the hotel has impacted her business. While this is happening, the timeline is finishing, and there are pictures of a recent event at the hotel. Our goal was to tell a story about the hotel through the impact it has had on the community.

The problem that I faced was that there was no clear representation of the stress that school puts students through in order to choose and apply for college. This animation was intended to help illustrate that said stress.

    As inspiration I looked towards well known animators like Walt Disney and the experiences of my classmates as a storyline. As a whole, this animation went through the typical process of rough draft, to storyboard, to animation, like any animation. But, the animation itself takes place in All Saints Academy, a real place, but some aspects that happen to the fictional characters are entirely fantasy-oriented.

    The importance of this animation is to show and explain just how being pressured into picking a college that you don’t want to go to can chip away at your sanity, and that it’s ok to need help.

Today, we worked on the audion for the beginning. Since we changed the beginning of the video, we changed the audio to best fit the beginning. The beginning part of the audio is supposed to resemble going back in time.