Critical Reflection

    Our short film, Sprouting, highlights the complicated relationship between managing friendships and being a high-achieving teenager from the perspective of Dahlia, a Junior in High School. Sprouting explores how stress impacts teens for the worst, to the point where they push their loved ones away but invites the idea that hard times don’t mean you stopped growing.

    Sprouting is a coming-of-age film that pulled a lot of inspiration from Domee Shi’s Turning Red, a film with a similar message that teenage years can be extremely emotional, conflicting, and overwhelming. Much of our research prior to creating the production was focused on analyzing films of the same coming of age genre, specifically ones about the High School years of adolescence. Some of the films that gave us inspiration were Perks of Being a Wallflower, Bitchin’ (short film), and Lady Bird. Having done so much research both individually and as a group allowed us to create a clear vision for our own production. 

    While we did take a lot of inspiration from other films, Sprouting is unique in the sense that many coming of age films lean into naturalistic lighting, since the genre itself mimics reality. We chose to go a different route with the visuals of our project by having more colorful lighting both in Dahlia’s room and in the car scene. This not only appealed to the youthful energy of the entire film, but also shows Dahlia’s creative and chaotic, yet still organized mindset, as room designs are a very personal way to build character. 

    The coming-of-age genre as a whole tends to have a younger target audience, and Sprouting is no different. It is a short film made by teenagers, for teenagers, making our intended age range from 13-19. Vicky, Renn, and I thought the story that we could tell best would be the one that we relate to, so not only is it aimed towards teens, but specifically honors students who feel academic pressure to excel, since that experience may be common, but that doesn’t make it any less isolating, and seeing it highlighted in the media can make our audience feel understood. 

    The brand for Sprouting engages with our young audience since we connected the plant metaphor for growing to the overall brand. This was especially evident in our social media, as we kept a consistent color scheme of green, purple, and pink, and the individual posts had plant-themed graphics as well to further establish the branding in a cohesive way. Our social media posts and postcard were also physically branded with our personal logo, which gets the audience familiar with it while maintaining a professional front, even on more entertainment-based posts. 

    Having our social media page on Instagram makes it easy for our audience to engage with our posts and stories, since it is a very common platform for our age group. We also used Instagram’s features to our advantage, since the most common way for teens to discover new content is through Reels. We uploaded several, from ones with trendy sounds to behind-the-scenes clips.

    One aspect of our social media that I think was especially effective was the daily countdown to the release date of our film, which built anticipation while also providing an opportunity to give sneak peeks to our film’s visual style and added to the overall branding. We reposted the posts to our story and made highlights to categorize the posts based on the intention behind them, “Meet us”, “Teasers”, and “BTS”. The unique highlight covers and emojis throughout the page also were a fun way that we intentionally added to the branding. 

   For our postcard, the text and title graphic match the font that was used on our Instagram posts as well as in the short film itself to bring in cohesion with all 3 elements. On the cover of the postcard, we also included our tagline “everyone’s just growing up” which is also in our Instagram bio and a quote that is said in our short film. We included this line throughout our marketing since it captures the essence of our project as a whole, while connecting to the target audience. However, I do think we could have done a better job with teasing more about the plot than just the “aesthetic” and genre of the short film, since the academic burnout aspect was not necessarily highlighted on the Instagram or postcard, and that was a major plot point that could attract our target audience. 

    In addition to the target audience being academically motivated by teens, as I mentioned earlier, we also consider the experience of “girlhood” a major topic in our film. Melia and Dahlia’s friendship as two girls who motivate each other and share a deep connection was one of the themes that we thought was important to do well, since their relationship drives some of the more intense moments. 

    Experiencing burnout to the point of pushing away those who are close to you was the experience that we highlighted over the 100-day period of our film. It is not a very common thing to see mentioned in the media, since high school is often romanticized, and the more emotionally conflicting part is less emphasized. Going to a school that is very academically focused, we relate to the theme that it is easy to lose yourself to seemingly endless math problems and book chapters. Our uplifting ending reminds the audience that there is light at the end of the tunnel, and even when you felt stuck, you were growing as a person, even when the stress made it hard to see it. 

    After spending weeks on this project and getting to see the final result, I am really proud of how all the different elements came together to tell our story. There are a few things that without a doubt could have been better executed, given we had more time to fully work out all the kinks, but for the resources we had, it does create the uplifting story that we wanted to tell, and effectively puts the high school experience in a new light.